Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Ayame had drifted up on his other side, running happily, entirely untroubled by the pace.

"A deserter with a bounty on her head, hiding in the dirt and biting people. And now the King of Vraven signs whatever you put in front of him, and his soldiers run when you tell them to run." She tilted her head. "Your rise rivals Quin’s."

"Say it."

"Say what?"

"The part where you think ’somebody’ handed it to me."

"Insecure, are we~? I’d never say such a thing," Ayame purred, full of joy.

"Eat shit."

"No, thanks~" Ayame grinned, shaking her head at this impossible girl. "Listen to my wisdom, young lady."

Iris sent her the nastiest of looks.

Ayame blew her a kiss and delivered the wisdom.

"Just enjoy your revenge, shed good blood, bash some skulls, and stop thinking useless thoughts.

Quinlan flew between the two of them and made no attempt to keep the pride off his face.

The girl who had once torn testimony out of a Covenant lord in a frozen basement was taking a duchy apart with paperwork, and the paperwork was losing.

Stormlord drew level on Iris’s far side and gave the road one flat glance, then the investigator a longer one, a beat past anything a report required. He said nothing about it at all.

"The crown’s escort does not require civilian assistance," he informed Quinlan.

Behind him, two of his own sergeants were riding on dead men’s backs.

"Duly noted," said Quinlan.

Walled in grey stone, the Corvane seat rose out of the river flats an hour before full dark.

Smoke came up with it, four columns thick and steady, leaning east with the wind and still fed after a full day.

Nobody said anything about that. The column had run itself hollow to arrive, and it had arrived exactly as late as Iris had known it would.

The gates were open.

...

The night before, the Duke of Ravenshade’s own escort had found those gates shut, with courteous men on the walls. For the crown’s commission, riding under the royal seal, the count had opened everything and strung lanterns the length of the approach.

An honor guard in polished ring mail lined the road, and a steward bowed to Princess Felicity at the gate arch and held the bow until the whole column had passed him.

"Your Highness... his lordship... the count waits within, Your Highness."

Count Corvane himself waited in the outer courtyard, a broad man in formal furs with rings on every finger and sweat standing at his collar in the winter air.

Iris had his name off the crown’s liege rolls before she ever came east. Her father’s barony had answered to this county.

What she had from before the rolls was a dinner table.

’Damn the count. He is pocketing the coins, I’m sure of it.’

Her father, drunk at his own table, complaining about a man he owed money to. She had been far too young for the words to mean anything, but lucky for her, Quinlan - who saw the same memories - was more than old enough to understand and relay those words to her.

When the barony died, the county it sat inside got bigger. However, that did not imply criminal behavior; with the family members’ deaths and Iris’s own disappearance, it was only natural that the barony returned to the count.

However, thirty years of a second toll, and the fires that were visibly burning before their very eyes...

It did not paint a favorable picture of the count, whose welcome had been drilled since morning. The welcome survived until his eyes found the tall man strolling loose at the column’s flank.

The bow he offered Princess Felicity was flawless. It also gave him somewhere to put his eyes that was nowhere near Quinlan Elysiar.

Felicity dismounted, and Stormlord brought his horse up at her right shoulder. Iris drifted to the escort’s flank and leaned there, arms folded. The princess had practiced in the saddle most of the afternoon, quietly, lips moving.

"Count Corvane. In the name of my father, Alexios Valorian, King of Vraven, the commission of audit requests and requires the toll archives of your holdings, in their original copies, surrendered to its bearers."

The count’s voice was rich and warm and a shade too quick. "Your Highness honors my house beyond its worth. Rooms have been prepared, and my kitchens... Your riders must be frozen through. Vraven remembers hospitality, whatever else these strange days take from us."

"The archives. Now, please."

"Of course. Immediately." He paused. "Of course."

The count spread his hands, rings glittering.

"There is only the small matter of the catalog. By statute, a holding surrenders records under seal with a certified inventory, and my seneschal, who has kept that inventory thirty years, is abed with winter fever. To hand Your Highness loose crates, uncounted, unsealed... the crown itself would rebuke me for sloppiness."

Somewhere behind the inner wall, burning timber let go with a crack, and a fresh gust of sparks climbed into the evening.

The count listened to it sideways, without turning his head, and lost half a sentence to it. "The... yes. The inventory. Forgive me."

Felicity held her voice level. "Count. There’s a fire burning in your holding."

"A chimney accident, Your Highness. Old flues, older timber." He dabbed his neck. "My men contained it swiftly. No documents were harmed, I’ve been assured."

Above his head, the smoke went on rising, uncontained, in four places at once.

"Then your men can show mine the archives. Right now."

"By daylight, Your Highness, gladly, joyfully. Night work breeds errors, and errors in a royal audit stain the innocent alongside the guilty." He bowed to her again, deeper. "You have my full cooperation. I ask only that it be done properly."

"A fire broke out." Felicity’s voice came up, and every scrap of courtesy left it at once. "The same night my father’s letter reached this duchy."

"A regrettable coincidence, Your Highness."

"I’ve heard enough."

Her hand had found the seal at her breastplate without her deciding to.

"You open those doors now, or I tell my father that Count Corvane refused the crown’s commission to his princess’s face."

The count did not flinch, and that was worse than flinching. He inclined toward her as though she had raised a point of law.

"Your Highness accuses. That is Your Highness’s right." The warmth stayed in his voice, and there were teeth under it now.

"An accusation is not a finding. A finding wants evidence, evidence wants an inventory, and the inventory wants my seneschal, who is ill. I have refused the crown nothing at all. I have asked for daylight and a clerk."

He spread the rings again, catching lantern light with them.

"If Your Highness wishes to name me traitor tonight, before witnesses, without one page in her hand, I will of course submit. My advocates will meet the charge in the morning."

This was where Iris quit listening.

Her eyes had gone to the smoke instead of the man, and they had stayed there through every word of the parley. Through the chimney accident that burned in four places. Through the count’s aching regard for exactness.

An ash flake drifted down and settled on her sleeve. She tilted her arm into the lantern light.

Paper. It was snowing paper.

She came off the flank walking, straight past the parley, and the courtyard’s temperature followed her.

"I’m done waiting." Her voice stayed low and her stride didn’t break. "Move."

Count Corvane worked it out a half second ahead of everyone else in that yard. The woman coming through the parley was coming at him.

"Your Highness." His voice finally cracked in the middle. "Your Highness, control your-"

Stormlord’s horse crossed her path first, and then Stormlord swung down off it and planted himself in her way.

"Stand down, investigator."

"Move."

"No." The word landed iron-flat, and what sat behind it had nothing to do with the count.

"That man is a vassal of my king. Until a court or damning evidence says otherwise he has the crown’s protection, and I am the crown’s protection." His eyes didn’t leave hers. "You deserted under my watch once. I have worn that embarrassment in front of my king ever since. You will not wreck a second mission under my watch."

"Your watch." Iris looked up at him, and her voice went bored. "Your watch is why a fat loser’s chimneys get to outrank a royal seal."

*Shing.*

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