The Vampire & Her Witch

”...at the moment, we have company...”

Ollie knocked once, purely for politeness, and then pushed the door open.

Warmth rolled over them, along with a smell so thick Eira could almost taste it. Acrid quenching oil. The sharp, metallic tang of worked steel. And beneath it all, the sweet, rich scent of exotic woods. Shavings lay scattered across every workbench like fresh snow, pale gold and deep red and nearly black. The forge in the far corner glowed a dull, sullen orange.

This had once been a swordsmith’s workshop, but the racks along the walls no longer held swords. Instead, the shelves were crowded with lumps of strange, dull metal and crystals that caught the forge light in shades of purple, orange, yellow and green.

A long shelf near the forge held what Eira was fairly certain were bones, pale and polished, one of them as long as she was tall. Timber was stacked everywhere, in neat piles and leaning against the walls, more varieties of wood than Eira had ever seen in one place.

In the middle of it all, two figures sat across a cluttered workbench from each other.

The nearer of the two was small, shorter than Eira by a head, with round spectacles perched on a small button nose and a fine silver chain that looped behind his neck. Silvery-grey fur covered his round face, and across it ran a striking band of black, swirling up from his left eye halfway to his brow and sweeping down from his right eye toward his chin, like a mask painted with a single, elegant stroke.

A thick, ringed tail curled around the leg of his stool, swaying gently as if it had a mind of its own. His leather apron bulged with pockets full of engravers and small saws and folded lenses, and a clay cup sat at his elbow, half full of something that smelled strongly of tart berries.

A second cup sat across from him, untouched.

The figure behind it rose as the door swung open, and Eira found herself taking half a step back.

He was tall, taller than Ollie, with a head like a great raven and feathers of inky black that gleamed with a faint blue sheen in the forgelight. His beak had been broken once, long ago, and a thick, gleaming vein of gold had been worked into it to bind the pieces back together. He wore long robes of deep midnight blue, trimmed in gold and embroidered with shifting glyphs and patterns of stars.

Eira might not know the shorter of the two men, but she had seen Commander Aspakos before, on the night he slew Rastlan, the captain of Lord Dirar’s Stone Guard, before naming Lord Reynold to take his place.

Reynold’s life had changed that night in ways that no one could ever have expected. Or perhaps in ways that Commander Aspakos had intended all along. The rumors about what he’d said on the stone platform that night were difficult to believe, but most agreed that he seemed to have read Lord Reynold’s destiny in the stars and that he killed Captain Rastlan in order to clear the way for Reynold to become the next Lord of the Blood for the whole southern Steppe.

Some wilder rumors even claimed that Reynold would be granted thirteen concubines so that his bloodline could rule over every city and herd in the Southern Steppe, but Eira found that one difficult to believe.

The gold vein in Aspakos’s beak caught the light as he inclined his head toward the doorway.

”Princess Jocelynn,” Aspakos said. ”I’ve been expecting your visit. I actually thought you’d have started your day here, but this works just as well.”

”Don’t listen to a word he says,” Erkembalt said. ”He’s only been bothering me for the past hour. If he really expected you this morning, he’d have been here long ago.”

”You know that I can see your front door from my bedroom window,” Aspakos countered. ”I’d have noticed Sir Ollie’s presence if nothing else and been down in time to receive them. But then you started working Star Metal, and I couldn’t stay away,” the feathered sorcerer said.

”Save your mystic, all-knowing act for someone who will believe it,” Erkembalt said, his tail thumping against the leg of his stool. ”Princess Jocelynn is Her Dominion’s sister. She won’t be so easily fooled.”

”Ahem,” Ollie coughed loudly, interrupting the pair before they could descend any further into their bickering. ”Commander Aspakos, Princess Jocelynn was hoping you could give her some advice. She’s preparing to face her Trial of Witchcraft to become the Olive Witch,” he said, hoping the feathered sorcerer would latch on to the topic that had brought them here.

”Oh?” Aspakos said, turning his attention to Jocelynn. ”Your sister must love you very much to contemplate creating an Olive Witch. Few would dare to bring such a being into existence, but perhaps for the Evergreen Empress, it seems like the only way to protect someone she truly cherishes.”

”I like to think so,” Jocelynn said carefully. It was also one of the only ways that she could suffer long enough to atone for the harm she’d caused Ashlynn, but she very carefully didn’t say that where so many others could hear.

”Commander Aspakos, you know more about different sorts of power than any other sorcerer here,” Jocelynn said, offering up genuine praise. ”You proved that in your battle against Captain Rastlan. I’ve also heard that you’ve studied some of the most ancient records that exist in the Eldritch world.”

”This is true,” Aspakos acknowledged in carefully neutral tones. ”Though if it’s knowledge of witches you want, some secrets are never written down outside of tomes owned by the Great Witches and their covens. Your sister may be of more use to you than I am.”

”I’m sure she knows a great deal,” Jocelynn acknowledged. ”And she has a collection of tomes that she brought back from across the mountains. But Ash is making her own preparations for my trial. I won’t be able to speak to her again until just before the trial begins.”

”I see,” Aspakos said, nodding in understanding. ”Then you have come to the best place to ask your questions,” he said, gesturing to a nearby bench with one taloned hand. ”Come, sit; this old thief and I will do our best to give you the answers you seek,” he said.

”And then,” Aspakos said. ”We’ll make sure you also get the answer you need, even if it isn’t the one you want to hear...”