The Vampire & Her Witch

When Maela entered the hallway, she was greeted by a young woman dressed in fine wool that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any of the modestly successful merchants of Blackwell city. Her bearing, however, from her proud, straight spine to the polished curtsy she offered, marked her as someone of more aristocratic origins, even though she displayed none of the wealth that Maela was accustomed to from ladies in the Kingdom of Gaal’s interior.

"Countess Maela," the young woman said as she straightened. "My name is Eira Wyndan. For as long as you have need of me, it’s my pleasure to serve as your handmaiden," she said politely.

"That’s a very thankless job, you know," Maela said with a wry twist to her lips as she compared this bold-looking woman from the frontier to her considerably more mild-mannered attendant in Blackwell.

It had hurt, after more than ten years of service, to dismiss Sainni, but when Maela had left her family for the convent, she’d left everything and everyone behind, intending to start life anew. It wouldn’t have been right to hold on to Sainni’s service when she had no intention or returning, even if Rhys would have happily paid her wages in the hopes that Maela would need her support once again.

"You’re much too young to spend very long following an old hag of the sea like me," Maela said lightly as she followed the young lady down the narrow corridor. "I’m sure you have your own plans and adventures to have in my daughter’s new empire, so you needn’t treat this like an audition for a permanent place in my retinue."

"Just having your support for the next few days while I settle in will be more than enough," Maela said kindly, hoping the young woman wouldn’t be too disappointed at the loss of an opportunity to follow not only a countess, but the mother of the Empress as well.

"If that’s all the help you need, of course, I’m happy to provide it," Lady Eira replied mildly as she opened the door to a small room. "For now, I serve at Empress Ashlynn’s pleasure, wherever she requires me, until her academy opens in the fall. Then I plan to make my studies my priority for a time," she said, leading Maela into the room.

The room itself had clearly been repurposed from its usual role as a dining room for parties of two to four. It was barely three paces on a side, and a third of that was occupied by the table that had been pushed into one corner.

Rather than food, however, the table held an assortment of luxuries that sent Maela’s heart aflutter after so many days spent on the road. A porcelain washbasin sat next to three pitchers of hot, steaming water, and the air was filled with the scent of fine lavender and jasmine soap. A polished silver stand mirror sat next to an equally elegant silver hand mirror, and both were flanked by small jewelry boxes holding everything from intricately carved hair-combs to strands of finely cut garnet and topaz.

Tension melted from Maela’s shoulders as soon as she entered the room, and Eira moved quickly to help Maela out of the dress she’d worn for at least two of the past six days without an opportunity to launder it on the journey.

"I’m sorry," Maela told Eira as she slid her dress over her head. "I must sound like an arrogant fool to assume you’d have had interest in entering my service permanently. Clearly you have your own plans for your future."

"Not exactly," Eira said while she helped Maela into a low-backed chair so she could lean back while Eira took down her braids to wash her hair. "Very few people have plans right now. There are too many options that didn’t exist before for anyone to have decided yet."

"Lady Ashlynn agreed to let me follow her until school starts in the fall," Eira said. "After that, I’ll have my studies and at least a year or two to make decisions about what it is that I truly desire," she said with a slightly wistful air to her tone.

"What you desire? Or whom?" Maela asked, relaxing into the young woman’s touch and the feeling of warm water pouring over her hair and scalp. "Is there someone special you have your eyes on? The knight who follows my daughter, Sir Ollie, seemed fairly charming," she said, more to test the waters than because she expected that there was truly something there.

"I don’t have my sights set that high," Eira said with a light laugh. "It took a little doing to convince Sir Ollie’s mother that she’d mistaken my intentions," she added, grateful that Maela couldn’t see how much her face heated when she recalled the way Sir Ollie’s mother had told her that she could just refer to her and her husband as ’Ma and Pa’ the way Ollie did.

"I don’t know if I have any chance of catching the person I was chasing anymore," Eira added with a small sigh. "Until recently, he was heir to a barony, and I was the daughter of one of his father’s vassals. My parents approved of the match, and his parents were encouraging of it too..."

"So what happened?" Maela asked, closing her eyes and luxuriating in the scent and feel of a higher quality soap than she’d expected to find in the frontier. "If your families were aligned, what stopped you from moving forward?"

"The world changed," Eira said, as though it were obvious. "Lord Liam, the man I favored, was appointed as the Lord Commander for the Protectorate of Dunn," she said before pausing, realizing that Lady Maela might not understand what that meant.

"He’s supposed to assemble an army of five hundred soldiers to guard the northern border and protect an area nearly as large as DuCoumont County," Eira explained. "He’s responsible for brokering a peace between the Eldritch and the Dunns, and his star is rising so fast, it’s like a falling star in reverse," Eira said.

"At first, my only thought was about how I was going to keep up with him," Eira said. "I was determined to follow your daughter, or Lady Nyrielle, or anyone else who could open the doors I needed in order to hold a position high enough for a man like him to court me."

"And now?" Maela asked mildly, finding herself drawn into the young woman’s tale.

"Now, I see the world differently," Eira said. "And I have Empress Ashlynn to thank for that. The doors she’s opened are wide enough to ride wagons through, and they’re numerous enough that it’s hard to choose."

"The one thing I do know," she said, giving Maela a considerable shock. "Is that I don’t need to let Liam’s station be the limit of my ambitions. And if I work hard enough, then in a year or two, he might be the one who needs to measure up to me..."

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