The Vampire & Her Witch

At this hour of the morning, the manor was only beginning to stir. A few servants moved here and there on errands for masters who were early risers, warming water for bathing or bringing up trays from the kitchens, but anyone awake at this hour walked as quietly as a ghost as they went about their business, and no one said a word as they passed each other in the halls.

Jocelynn kept waiting to be stopped. There were guards on the landings, tired men waiting for first light to signal the end of their shifts, but they did nothing more than nod as Ashlynn led Jocelynn down one winding flight of stairs after another, despite the strangeness of two cloaked women carrying a lantern and bags over their shoulders.

At the bottom of the stairs, the kitchens were warm and smelled of yeast and clean woodsmoke. There were three people awake in the kitchen, and while they all looked up when Ashlynn and Jocelynn arrived, not one of them said a word.

The head baker, a heavyset woman with flour to her elbows, lifted her chin toward the far table and went back to her dough.

There was a basket on it, packed and covered with a cloth.

Jocelynn lifted the corner of the cloth and peeked inside the basket. There was a loaf of crusty bread, still faintly warm from the ovens, a wedge of hard cheese and a second, softer cheese wrapped in leaves. Cured sausage and cured ham had both been sliced thin before they were wrapped in neat bundles and tucked into the basket alongside a few winter apples.

A green bottle of wine with a label that Jocelynn recognized as coming from a vineyard in Keating finished the basket, and Jocelynn looked at it for a moment longer than she meant to as she tried to remember if it was one of the strong vintages that Bors Lothian had preferred or if it was something lighter and fruitier that the late marquis would have served to guests.

Truthfully, though, it wasn’t the wine that made her heart flutter as she looked at the contents of the picnic basket.

”You could have just ordered a breakfast,” she said quietly. ”I’d have been fine with toasted bread and boiled eggs again.”

”I could have,” Ashlynn said as she tucked the cloth back down and slid the basket toward Jocelynn. ”Come on. Extra quiet.”

”Extra quiet,” Jocelynn repeated. ”Ash, we’re going through the kitchen. We used to go around it. That was the entire point of the storeroom gate, you said the bakers had ears like bats and would sell us to Mother for two snips.”

”They would have,” Ashlynn said, glancing at the baker who was pointedly ignoring them while working the dough.

”And now?” Jocelynn said, glancing at the baker’s assistants in the kitchen.

”Now the bakers work for Master Jean.” Ashlynn pushed the door open onto the cold. ”And Jean’s people work for Marcell, which means they work for Nyri,” Ashlynn said.

”We don’t have to worry about rumors reaching the ears of anyone who would bother us today, at least, not from here,” Ashlynn explained. ”The guards on the walls are all Loghlan Dunn’s men so they should be fine too, but we should still be quiet,” she said as she gestured for Jocelynn to follow her. ”Outside of the kitchens and the guards, I really can’t speak for the rest of the household staff...”

Outside, the inner bailey was as dark as a cellar with a sky that had only just begun to lighten as the stars faded away. Jocelynn’s breath produced a cloud of white mist, and the cool morning air felt like it reached into her chest with wintry claws as she hustled to keep up with her sister.

Outside the manor, Lothian City was a dark, slumbering thing lying on the hillside and looking over the river. Here and there, a few streets were lit up where people either had the money to leave a lamp burning through the night or their business forced them to be up in the small hours before dawn. Most of the city, however, had let itself go dark in a way that neither Blackwell nor Vale City would have.

Jocelynn had known for a long time that Lothian let itself go dark, and she’d always thought it reflected the more frugal nature of the frontier in a way that could almost be called quaint. It wasn’t until she was moving through those streets with only Ashlynn by her side, walking with little more than the light of a single lantern, that the darkness became an oppressive, living thing stalking along behind her.

”Is anyone following us?” Jocelynn asked, three streets down, when the itch between her shoulder blades became too intense to ignore.

”Why would you think someone is following us?” Ashlynn asked lightly. ”Aren’t we just two women out on an early morning errand?”

”Ash!” Jocelynn protested in a whisper. ”I’ve been listening and watching for people since we left the manor’s gates, but I haven’t noticed anyone, which means that if anyone is following us, they’re better at it than ordinary servants passing notes to their masters...”

”You’ve a suspicious mind, Lady Minister,” Ashlynn teased. ”Not that it’s a bad thing to be alert,” she added as she turned down a side street, following it to a set of stairs down the hillside that led more directly to the docks.

”That isn’t an answer, Ash,” Jocelynn insisted, glancing over her shoulder and quickening her pace slightly to keep up with her sister. Since when had Ashlynn been the faster one of them anyway? Jocelynn was the taller of the two, and Ashlynn’s natural stride was shorter, yet she moved with a sort of brisk, determined purpose now that she’d never had before, even when they were sneaking out of Blackwell Manor at home.

”Nyri said she’d make sure that nobody would bother us,” Ashlynn said, glancing up at the dark sky as if she could feel dawn approaching from beyond the eastern horizon. ”Spy or cutpurse, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about, but we shouldn’t dawdle; we need to reach the docks before first light.”

”Is she, is she following us?” Jocelynn said, glancing up at the sky and wondering if the winged vampire was flying above them.

”She’s keeping us safe so we can enjoy a day together,” Ashlynn said with a light laugh. ”Stop looking for her, the stairs aren’t even, you’ll trip,” she chided as she took Jocelynn’s hand and led her down to the north gate that overlooked the river.

Here, several more people were making their way to the gate, converging from a number of side streets as they made their way toward the stalls of the fish market or the ships tied up at the docks. Ashlynn joined the queue of people passing through the gate smoothly, pulling a wooden token from the pouch at her waist and handing it to the bored-looking guard once they reached the head of the line.

The guard frowned slightly, looking from the token to Ashlynn and Jocelynn and back at the token in his hands.

”Fishing?” The guard asked, frowning as he took in Jocelynn’s fine woolen cloak.

”That’s right,” Ashlynn told the guard as she pulled Jocelynn forward. ”I even fetched me own sister from the manor to use as bait,” she said with a teasing smile. ”Wager I can catch something that’ll impress her lady that way?”

Jocelynn’s heart hammered in her chest as she watched the guard for his reaction. She knew, knew to the depths of her soul, that she wasn’t in any kind of danger. She was a Lord Minister and her sister was an Empress! All they had to do was explain who they were and they could go wherever they wanted...

But then their escape would be over, and people would follow after them and... And despite how frightened she’d been of the dark streets, she was still, for the first time in a long while, enjoying herself. She didn’t want the moment to end.

”Poor things,” the guard said, passing the wooden token back to Ashlynn. ”If you aim to fish from the docks, you should go back now. Someone said the new empress likes fish and half a dozen lords and knights already sent their squires down in the hopes of catching something impressive to offer her Master of Kitchens.”

”It’s crowded enough that no one’s catching much of anything,” the guard said. ”Molly’s opens early for the fisher folk,” he said, pointing to a tavern across the road from the gates. ”Better to go where it’s warm and buy something from the market when the first boats get back than to try to muscle through the pack of squires for a chance at anything,” he said in an attempt to be helpful.

”I can come fetch you from there when the market opens up if you want,” he added a touch too hopefully.

”Don’t worry ’bout us,” Ashlynn said smoothly. ”I’ve a boat to use, I do, an’ I won’t be crowding with squires for a spot to stand on the docks.”

”Suit yourself then,” the guard said, shrugging his shoulders helplessly. ”Good luck out there on the river, and I hope you catch something to impress your lady,” he told Jocelynn as he waved them through.

And then, before she knew it, Ashlynn was pulling her through the gates, leading her past the market that was just beginning to set up as she made her way along the docks, past the larger fishing ships with crews of ten men or more to the far more humble boats and a figure with a lantern who seemed to be waiting for someone to arrive...