The Vampire & Her Witch

The cart trundling down the country road toward Maela was nothing extraordinary. Its construction was simple and sturdy, with high sloped sides and a number of iron brackets on the outside clearly meant to hold a craftsman’s tools.

Right now, those brackets held a number of draw knives, a froe, thin iron bar-stock, hammers, wedges, and tongs. A cooper’s work cart, and one Maela would have expected to find loaded inside with timber from a sawmill or barrels and casks bound for their customer, though it wasn’t quite the season to be delivering casks to any of the vineyards in the hills.

But rather than materials or products of his trade, Maela found the cart filled to bursting with common household goods. A well-carved wooden chair that looked to have spent years beside a hearth, a stout iron pot, blankets wrapped around more fragile things, and sacks that bulged like overstuffed pillows filled with tunics and trousers.

The shaggy old mare pulling the cart looked like she’d seen better days, and like she wasn’t accustomed to walking such a long way or hauling such a heavy load. A lone craftsman walked beside the plodding horse, bundled against the winter chill air till little could be seen of his face but his eyes and cheeks, gone rosy in the cold.

”Stop the carriage,” Maela called, tapping against the carriage wall to catch the driver’s attention.

”It’ll slow us down,” Mirt said roughly, saying more than he had in the past two days.

”Not for long, but I want to talk to this man,” Maela said, hoping that, for the first time since they’d left DuCoumont, she might be able to get some news of what was happening in Lothian City.

Mirt didn’t answer, but the carriage did slow to a halt, coming to rest less than a dozen paces short of the man with his cart.

”I don’t mean no trouble to your lordship,” the man with the cart called, already leading his horse to pull off the road in case the carriage felt like it was too narrow to pass by him. ”I’ll get out of your way here in just a moment.”

”No, it’s not that, goodman,” Maela said as she opened the door and emerged from the carriage, enjoying the feeling of the sun on her face even if the air was still cold. ”I just have a few questions for you.”

”Questions, your ladyship?” the cooper said, ducking his head in an uncertain bow and watching carefully as a young lady emerged from the carriage behind the older one. The young woman resembled the older one enough to be her daughter, but one fierce look from the sword-bearing carriage driver was enough for the cooper to quickly avert his eyes from the young lady to focus on the older one.

”I don’t know much about nothing, your ladyship,” the cooper said, casting a suspicious glance at the dark carriage without a single crest or emblem marking its doors. He fidgeted nervously for a moment, his hands going to his stout wool cap as if he weren’t certain about whether he should take it off to speak to this noblewoman or not, but in the end, practicality won out, and he settled for an unpracticed bow.

”What I know, if I can answer you, I will,” he promised, swallowing heavily as he met the noblewoman’s gaze.

”It’s the middle of winter,” Maela said, looking past the cooper to his cart. ”Where are you going in such a hurry, and what drove you from your home? Has there been a sickness or a great fire?” Maela asked, supplying easy, common enough explanations.

”You haven’t heard then, your ladyship?” the cooper asked, his eyes opening wide. ”About the fall of Lothian and the...” He paused, looking nervously over his shoulder and out over the hills before continuing in a quieter tone. ”About the demons who took the city and the witch upon the throne?”

”I hadn’t heard...” Maela said with a carefully neutral expression. ”So who rules the city now?”

”The Marchioness Ashlynn does, or I s’pose it’s Empress now,” he added. ”Made a big fuss of it they did after lettin’ all the demons in the city. Her and the Demon Lady of the Vale and the Horse Lord and the Cat Lord and the Crimson Knight and all the nightmares your mother ever gave you with fairy stories by candlelight, all come to life here in our home.”

”I’m having none of it,” he said firmly. ”I’m getting out while I’ve still got legs that work and breath in my lungs, b’fore any of them get any ideas that I’m fat enough for the stew pot and old enough to be good for little else.”

”I heard that Lady Ashlynn was dead,” Micheline said, stepping out from behind her aunt. ”Everyone got the news. Are you saying she wasn’t? Have you actually seen her or are you just spreading tales?”

”I won’t make up no lies!” the cooper said nervously, holding up his hands in threadbare mittens and glancing nervously at the man with the sword in the driver’s seat. ”I swear it, I swear it’s true. I’ve seen her, you know, seen her myself...”

”Where?” Maela asked calmly, raising her hand as if to command Mirt to stay where he was, though the man had given no sign he intended to do otherwise. ”We won’t trouble you, I promise; we just... We don’t know what’s happened. Anything you can tell us will help.”

”It were in the plaza, your ladyship, outside the manor. The whole city seemed like it’d turned up there,” he said, reaching out to reassure the mare next to him, or to reassure himself by offering comfort to the horse. ”She stood up on the steps and told us who she was, and nobody believed it, and it turned ugly. Folk were shouting for Lord Owain. Shouting for Loman, if you can believe that.”

”And then?” Maela prompted when the man seemed like he was debating whether or not he should keep talking.

”A few folks stood up and swore she was who she said she was,” the cooper said. ”Baron Loghlan Dunn, they call him a ’Lord Governor’ now, he were one of them. And then she came down off the steps into the crowd,” he said, looking at the ground, his horse, or anywhere he could other than at the woman who increasingly reminded him of the one he’d met that day.

”Then she asked if anyone reckoned they were strong enough to protect us better than she could,” the cooper said with a defeated-sounding sigh.

”And someone did,” Maela prompted.

”His name was Petrok,” the man said. ”He’s a butcher with a shop not far off the docks. Big lad, sound enough.” The cooper’s jaw worked soundlessly for a moment as he struggled to find the words for what he’d seen.

”I were two paces from him, m’lady,” he said. ”Two paces away when he rushed her with that big butcher knife of his. She took his knife off him so quick I never saw it go, and she give him a sword after. She said he ought to have a proper one, so she borrowed it off a knight with a lighthouse on his chest, and soon as Petrok had a sword, he came at her like you’d chop a log.”

”She blocked it with a sword of her own, then she put her blade clean through his ribs,” he said, clutching his hands nervously. ”Clean and cold. Like it weren’t any trouble at all. Like it weren’t a man.”

Maela said nothing while Micheline’s face went pale and she pressed her hands over her lips.

”And then she held him up,” said the cooper, staring into the distance as if he were seeing something he wished he could forget. ”And she brought him back.”

”Back?” Maela asked.

”Back to life from the dead, m’lady,” the man swore solemnly. ”Standing there breathing with the hole in his ribs closed over in him and his blood still steamin’ on the stones.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his mitten as if to scrub away the words he’d just spoken. ”And then she twisted his ear. Like a mother would. Twisted his ear and marched him off to the temple to beg forgiveness for his sins, and the whole plaza started cheering like it were a fair day.”

”Just to teach him a lesson,” he said. ”That’s what she done all of it for. To teach the man a lesson, and to teach the rest of us watching. So I’ll have no part of it, your ladyship. And if you know what’s good for you,” he said nervously. ”You’ll turn your carriage around and have no part of it too.”