The Vampire & Her Witch

The candles in Jocelynn’s chamber had burned down to stubs, and the tray at her elbow had gone cold hours ago with most of her dinner still on it.

There wasn’t anything wrong with her meal necessarily; the pork steak in rich gravy and the apples poached in cinnamon-sugar water were both things that Jocelynn would have enjoyed on most days. Today, however, the simple act of cutting up her food to eat felt like too much to bother with, so after she’d finished the winter vegetable soup, she hadn’t done more than nibble on the buttery, soft rolls while she pored over piles of parchment.

Ashlynn entered Jocelynn’s sitting room without knocking, gesturing to the pair of attendants to give them privacy while she spoke to her sister.

"You’ve been at that since I checked on you at sunset," Ashlynn chided as she pulled a chair over to Jocelynn’s writing desk to sit down next to her sister. "And you’ve barely touched your dinner," she said with a faint trace of worry in her voice. "Something wrong with it? I’m sure Master Jean wouldn’t mind making something special for the empire’s only princess," she said lightly enough to mask the worry.

"It’s fine," Jocelynn said automatically, the same way she had whenever Anne or Mary commented on her appetite or lack thereof. "I’ll warm it by the hearth when I’m done with this," Jocelynn said, holding up one of the sheets of parchment she’d been reading.

"I’ve been at this since midday yesterday," Jocelynn said, sighing as she sat back in her chair. "Ash, do you know what I asked the lords at the banquet?"

"You asked them a great many things," Ashlynn said, relaxing into her chair and watching Jocelynn closely for signs of strain. "You looked like a queen holding court with half the new Gardeners and Wardens clustered around you."

"I asked them three questions," Jocelynn said, setting down the sheet of parchment in her hand and picking up another one that was covered in neat rows and columns of Jocelynn’s precise, flowing handwriting. "It was the only thing I could think of that would get them to leave me alone. I told them that I wanted their answers in writing so I could study them and give them a proper response."

"So that’s why everyone scattered while you made your escape," Ashlynn said with a light laugh. "What did you ask them?"

"What does your village sell the most of when you send your goods to market?" Jocelynn said, looking over the list. "What are the things you’re most frequently traveling to market to buy for your village. And what one thing would make it easier to trade with your neighbors?"

"That’s a reasonable set of questions," Ashlynn said, seeing the shape of her sister’s thinking. Nearly every village in the Verdant Hills was dependent on things produced elsewhere. Besides the regular tithes they’d been required to send to their barons and to Lothian City, men like Carwyn still escorted caravans of goods to a larger town at least twice a month to sell their surplus at a larger market and to buy what the village couldn’t produce.

"You know, you could have asked Hugo to pull the records of past year’s tithes," Ashlynn suggested. "He’d have been happy to help you, and he’s been reviewing all the old Lothian records anyway. It would at least give you a place to start."

"I considered that," Jocelynn said. "But I got to know Bors well enough this year to know that wouldn’t work. He only lets villages pay tithe in goods with the staples he needs the most of. Milled flour, cattle, sheep and swine, hard cheese... Anything else, the villages have to sell their harvest at market and pay their tithes in gold and silver," Jocelynn said with a sigh.

"The records would help me know who’s producing the most of those staples," Jocelynn said. "But I’d miss too many details, so I started with a simple survey of the villages and towns..."

"Ah," Ashlynn said, nodding in understanding. "I guess I’m too used to Father letting people pay their tithes in whatever they had," Ashlynn said. "Since that’s how things have been, the survey is a really good idea," she said, offering genuine praise.

"I thought it was a good idea," Jocelynn said, sighing as she looked over the responses. "I thought asking for answers in writing was a good idea too. Ash... Some of these knights, um, Gardeners or Wardens now... They opened their answers with an apology because they didn’t bring the person who writes for them to Lothian and they had to hire a scribe to write for them."

"It was the frontier, Jocey," Ashlynn reminded her sister. "Reading and writing weren’t important to surviving for the frontier’s knights."

"I know, but still, Ash," Jocelynn said. "They’re lords, even if they were the most minor lords of the realm. They should be able to read and write their own messages..."

"We’ll fix that, in time," Ashlynn promised softly. "What did the messages say?" she asked. "Anything useful?"

"A little," Jocelynn said, reading from one of the pages. "’The soil is too bad here to grow anything but turnips and radishes, so we sell those, but no one buys enough so we feed them to swine. We spend our money on flour and medicine for the rainy season when the wet cough comes. We need more medicine so more people can work and not get sick each year,’" Jocelynn read before turning to another page.

"Or this one," Jocelynn said, pursing her lips before she read aloud. "’We sell demon’s paws to the Church and trinkets of silver, gold or stones the demons carried. Now we can’t do that. We bought grain, cheese, salt pork, and wool. Our demon hunters need new jobs or next winter we’ll starve."

"And then there are these," Jocelynn said, picking up a sorted stack of pages. "Scattered across half the Verdant Hills, every one of them saying they need a bridge or a better road because the rainy season makes it hard to get to market, and all of these," she said, reaching for another stack. "These ones want to know if a witch can fix their soil, stop the floods, restore wells that ran dry...."

"They don’t know," Ashlynn said gently. "But Jocey... At least they’re asking. They’re willing to accept the help of a witch if it will help their villages. That’s something. It’s a start."

"I know," Jocelynn said, dropping the pages to her writing desk in frustration. "I just... A good lord would have dealt with so much of this long ago. I don’t know how Bors ignored so much of it for things to get this bad..."

"It doesn’t matter," Ashlynn said, unwilling to make excuses for the late Marquis. There were plenty of reasons she could think of, but none of them were important. The failures of the fallen weren’t something she needed to excuse, and the honor of a dead man didn’t need protecting.

"What matters," Ashlynn said, "is that we can fix these problems. One at a time. It will take time, but we don’t need to solve it tonight. Tonight, we have something more important to talk about," she said, reaching into a pouch at her waist and pulling out a rolled up piece of parchment small enough to be tied to a pigeon’s leg.

"Take a look," Ashlynn said, handing the message over to her sister.

"Hmm? Who would be sending us a message in the depths of winter?" Jocelynn started, slowly unrolling the parchment to read. The instant her eyes landed on the neatly written letters, however, her body went completely still while her eyes flickered over the short message twice more before she slowly looked up at Ashlynn.

"Mother will be here tomorrow..."

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