The Vampire & Her Witch

The sun climbed higher in the sky as the unadorned carriage continued its journey toward Lothian City. The cooper had been the first person Maela and Micheline saw on the road but he wasn’t the last.

After seeing a third cart filled to overflowing, this time with a small family walking beside it, Micheline finally broke the heavy silence that had filled the carriage since they spoke with the cooper.

"Aunt Maela, do you think it’s true?" Micheline asked hesitantly.

"Do I think what’s true?" Maela asked, sighing as she turned away from the window, watching the family shrinking in the distance. There had been two young boys following their father on the road while their mother rode in the cart, and Maela had been trying to see if their shoes were sound enough for the walk when she heard her niece’s question.

"Do you think Ashlynn really killed a man and brought him back to life?" Micheline asked directly. "Has she... Has she become that ruthless? And that powerful?"

"No one can bring the dead back to life," Maela said firmly. "Not the Mother Superior in the convent, not the Saint in the Holy City, and not even the Great Prophet himself," she said. "The dead have left us to make their way to the Heavenly Shores or to their next life, and no one can snatch them back from that."

"More likely," Maela said with more confidence than she truly felt. "Ashlynn fought a duel with a man, wounded him, and healed that wound. How bad the wound was is hard to say from one man’s view," Maela said. "It may only have been a wound that bled fiercely but didn’t threaten his life."

"But you still think she fought a duel and wounded a man to teach him a lesson?" Micheline pressed. "Did Ashlynn learn to fight in Blackwell, and she just kept it a secret?"

"If she did, she kept a secret from me," Maela said. "I doubt it’s something her father taught her either. Your father knows how poor a duelist Rhys was when he challenged Huchon, and Rhys swore he’d never take those risks again. If Ashlynn is dueling in the streets and winning, it’s something she learned here in the frontier," Maela said confidently.

"Set the duel aside for a moment," Maela said, shifting in her seat as she regarded her niece. "What else did we learn from our friend the cooper?"

"You were right about the countryside," Micheline started. "If one of Ashlynn’s barons has gone missing and his son isn’t certain to inherit, it proves that Ashlynn doesn’t have control of all of the local lords. She seized Lothian City, but her actual power may not extend much beyond its walls."

"Are you certain of that?" Maela asked.

"Clearly, some of the lords support her," Micheline said as she worked to recall everything the man had said. "The cooper mentioned Lord Loghlan, but it sounds like his support came in exchange for a new title of some sort. I don’t know what a Lord Governor is supposed to be; it sounds like an appointment outside of the responsibilities of a baron... The cooper mentioned Lord Erling too, and that he’d had an alliance with the demons before."

"I know you learned more than how to repeat what you’ve heard in the academy," Maela said. "Just meeting him on the road tells us as much as the words he said. Put it together. What do we know now that we didn’t know before?"

"Micheline," Maela said, her voice turning grave. "This is important now. It’s not just a quiz. Once we reach Lothian, once I see Ash and Jocey... I won’t notice as much around us. I’m a countess, but I’m a mother too, and of the two, I care far more about my daughters than Ash’s empire or the kingdom’s response to it."

"I can’t ignore those things, not for long," Maela said, taking Micheline’s hands in hers and looking directly into the young woman’s eyes as she pleaded. "They’re going to be important soon, but right now, I don’t trust myself to notice what’s important. So I need you to keep your eyes open and your mind sharp, and I need you to talk to me about what you notice because I," she said before her voice got caught in her throat.

"I understand," Micheline said, nodding and squeezing her aunt’s hands reassuringly. "Give me a moment to think," she said.

Maela nodded, giving Micheline the time she needed while she clung to her niece’s soft hands and tried very hard not to think about how much her niece resembled her youngest daughter. Several minutes later, Micheline nodded to herself, checking and double-checking her reasoning before giving her answer.

"Ashlynn is putting her trust in Father," Micheline started confidently. "Mister Marcel told us in the beginning that Ashlynn was stopping word from getting out, as much as she could. Last night, Mister Marcel said he’d sent word that we would arrive today. This whole time we’ve been on the road, we haven’t seen anyone fleeing Lothian until now," she said, putting the pieces together for her aunt to examine.

"If we assume that Ashlynn was keeping the gates of Lothian sealed," Micheline continued. "But she opened them today; we have to consider what changed... And what changed is that we’re arriving. That I’m arriving with you, which means my father has given some amount of support to her cause. Marcel may even have told him that Father agreed to carry her message," she said.

"So you think that seeing the cooper on the road means that Ashlynn trusts the message she gave your father to reach Duke Argidir first," Maela said, smiling as she watched her niece put things together.

"But there are other explanations for what’s happening right now. I’m sure you’ve thought it through," Maela said. "So what other possibilities have you reasoned out? Remember, the ability to make snap decisions in a crisis comes from having done the thinking beforehand, so what else should we be prepared for?"

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