The Vampire & Her Witch

Lothian Manor swarmed with activity as preparations were underway to receive the most important guests to visit in the manor’s century-long history.

That activity extended to spaces both large and small, including a storage room that had never been meant to hold a man. It was a cramped, windowless space near the guardhouse on the eastern wall. Its shelves were crowded with spare tack for horses, pungent tins of bootblack, and the air was thick with the greasy stink of the lamp oil barrels stacked along the wall. A single tallow candle guttered in a dish by the door, and by its meager light Valeri Leufroy sat slumped against a cask, waiting for whatever came next.

He’d lost all sense of time in the days he spent here. The candle would be replaced when someone remembered to, usually shortly after they dragged him out to relieve himself before passing him the scraps left over from their meal.

The soldiers laughed and jeered as he ate from discarded plates like swine brought to the trough, but the instant he asked for a fork or a spoon to eat like a man, the laughs turned to punches and the jeers became kicks before he was hauled back to the storage room with filth on his face.

It hadn’t taken but twice for him to learn the lesson. There was no dignity to be saved here, and his strength was better spent enduring than recovering from fresh wounds.

Suddenly, Valeri heard the bar lift before the door opened. He flinched, hating himself for the reflex even as he threw up an arm to shield his eyes from a light that never came. It was only the servant. The nameless one, who moved through the manor like a shadow and carried no lamp because he seemed not to need one.

”On your feet, my lord,” the servant said in a tone as bland as an invalid’s broth, looking down on the lord with eyes that held neither pity nor mockery.

Valeri rose from the ground like an old man, with one hand braced against the cask and his breath hissing between his teeth as his cracked ribs shifted. His scalp had been shaved days ago, and a rough, uneven stubble prickled across it now. Both of his eyes had swollen to slits, and he breathed through his mouth in wet, whistling pulls.

A thread of drool hung from his lip because his nose had been broken. Even when he forced it back into place with his own shaking fingers, it remained too swollen to breathe through. When he finally got to his feet, he propped one shoulder against the cold stone wall, taking the load off the foot that had been stomped on by the heel of a guard’s heavy boot.

”Hold still,” the servant said before he stepped in close enough to Valeri to reach out and touch him. The man’s hands moved with practiced speed, pulling out a series of items from his own pouches and pockets and displaying them to Valeri one at a time before hiding them away in the folds of the baron’s filthy tunic or the lining of his boot.

”Your silver,” the servant said, holding up a pouch that made a soft -chink- when he bounced it on his hand. ”Not a single piece missing,” the man added as he pulled the strings on the pouch open before pulling out another object that couldn’t have been more familiar to the fallen baron.

”Your signet,” the servant said, dropping it into the pouch.

Valeri reached for it instantly, even though his fingers had swollen like sausages and were far too thick to slip on the treasured gold ring that had been handed down from his father, and his father’s father before him.

”Not now, my lord,” the servant chided, cinching the pouch closed before tucking it into the waistband of Valeri’s trousers. ”Soon. My lord only held it for safekeeping, but now it’s yours again. If you lose it now, my lord is not to blame,” he said pointedly.

The third thing he held up was a neatly folded piece of parchment, sealed with a blob of green wax stamped with three flowers that Valeri couldn’t name. It looked like a woman’s mark, but in the state he was in, Valeri couldn’t place it. He’d gone too many days without proper food or real rest, and a haze filled his mind as though it had been stuffed with wool.

”Baroness Brighde’s own seal,” the servant explained. ”You’ll carry this to Keating, to Duke Argidir. He is her cousin, and he’ll want to hear what happened inside these walls from a man who was inside them. This letter tells him everything he needs to understand and ensures that you can reach his side, no matter how you might appear.”

He tucked it into the lining of Valeri’s boot, securing it in a place that it was unlikely to be seen.

”Once you’re out, put that somewhere safe. The seal is not to be broken,” the servant said softly, leaning close enough to Valeri to whisper in his ear. ”Deliver it whole, and you’ll have done a great service to my lord and lady, and great services are remembered. But if the Duke finds the wax has been lifted and pressed again, he will know. And so will the Baroness. Believe me, my lord, you do not want the Baroness to know.”

Valeri nodded twice slowly before he stopped and held his head. It hurt to nod... It hurt to do anything at all, but the servant understood.

”Good,” the servant said before he stepped out of the dimly lit room and called for a pair of soldiers.

”Finally rid of this filth,” one of the guardsmen said as he grabbed hold of one arm while his partner grabbed the other. Valeri tried to walk with them, but his feet caught on the cobbles and he couldn’t match the young men’s pace. Instead of letting him walk, they dragged him out into the light of day like he was little more than a sack of grain...