The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1661: A Royal Response (Part One)

Henri’s mind was working rapidly now, and he found himself reaching for the cup his father had poured him as his mouth went dry. The cool, crisp pear wine helped him to swallow the bitter truths he saw in the fragmented slips of paper, but they did nothing to put his heart at ease with the news.

"Who is Eleanor Blackwell?" Henri asked, frowning at one of the slips of paper. "I don’t recognize the name."

"I don’t blame you for that, I didn’t either," Thibert said, leaning back in his chair as he watched his son running through the same sets of questions he had a few hours ago. "I had to ask an archivist. She’s a cousin of Rhys Blackwell’s, not part of the direct line. By rights, she renounced her surname when she entered the Confessor’s convent in DuCoumont. Yet the person who sent the message named her ’Confessor Eleanor Blackwell’..."

"The Blackwells don’t have close ties to the Church," Henri said, parroting back a phrase he’d heard from one of his teachers years ago. "They’re still steeped in the superstitions of the sea. A Blackwell Confessor is odd, but her death at the Inquisition’s hands and Owain’s willingness to execute her murderer..." Henri said, trailing off in thought.

"I don’t understand," Henri finally said several moments later. "The reports from Blackwell said that Owain had secured the support of the Blackwell guilds for the Holy War next year. Ships, carts, armor, weapons, and even the famous engineer from the Emerald Kingdom. Everyone’s interests should be aligned," he said.

"But the Inquisition killed a Confessor," Henri said. "Is it because she backed Owain somehow while the Inquisition backed Loman? A schism between the Inquisition, the Templars, and the body of the Church?"

"Don’t try too hard to understand the motives of the Church," Thibert warned. "They find their answers written in the stars in the heavens, and even their highest priests profess to be following their Great Prophet’s ’plan.’ They think in terms of centuries and make moves inspired by prophecy... Unless you’re willing to geld yourself and don their robes, forget understanding their motives or predicting their actions."

"Focus on the timelines, son," Thibert said, pulling Henri back to the slips of paper. "What else do you see?"

"Owain is moving quickly to maintain his alliance with the Blackwells after losing his wife," Henri said. "Jocelynn will become the Marchioness when Owain takes the throne... tonight, I suppose. They’re mourning their dead and taking the throne all at once... The demon threat is real and dangerous enough that Owain can’t wait to fight it..."

"Loman may or may not have failed in his hunt," Henri said. "But Owain intends to be busy fighting a war soon. He should wait till Midsummer for his father’s memorial so that every march and duchy can send their delegation to mourn the late marquis. By the first of summer, two-thirds of the realm will have been able to send a delegation, but the Kuusik’s will be missing, and so will the Lazards and the Forbors... He’s going to offend at least two dukes with this."

"Given the choice between offending the Ruling Council and defending your realm, which would you choose?" Thibert asked lightly.

"I suppose that makes sense," Henri said as he took another sip of the crisp, refreshing wine. "But there’s still more here that I’m not seeing. If matters are that dire, why doesn’t he call for aid? Does he expect to receive all the help he needs from the Holy Warriors coming from across the sea?"

"An interesting question, isn’t it?" Thibert said. "If Owain can lay his hands on enough strength to preserve his realm without asking the Ruling Council or me for help, it sends a certain message, doesn’t it?"

"It does," Henri agreed. "Still, I feel like I’m missing something. Why was Owain’s wife somewhere that she could be killed by demons? She should have been safe in Lothian City, not somewhere vulnerable to raids, especially if she was carrying his child. This hasty marriage to Jocelynn..."

"Did Rhys Blackwell expect his eldest daughter to die and send his second daughter as a ’backup’?" Henri asked. "He never struck me as that calculating..."

"Never underestimate a Blackwell," Thibert said firmly. "You’ll understand one day when you take the throne and read the hidden histories. The waters of Blackwell Bay run deep and dark, and the Blackwells have more in common with our family than either of us will ever admit. They keep our secrets, and we keep theirs, but you should never think of a Blackwell lord as just another count."

"I don’t think of anyone as ’just another count’," Henri protested. "Barons may be as plentiful as the leaves on trees, but the counts of the kingdom have been rising to rival the marches in power and wealth."

Henri had spent years at the Royal Academy studying the history of the ruling families of the realm, and while he would never pretend to know the names of each of the more than two hundred baronies scattered across the kingdom, he made a point to know the history of every county, march and duchy as well as any scholar could.

There were some things that Henri’s teachers could never teach him, secrets known only to the royal family or the Church and sealed in vaults accessible only to the king and those who would one day rule the realm. While Henri was the Crown Prince, the succession was anything but secure when he and his brothers were still so young, and he had yet to be allowed access to the greatest secrets of their family, but he felt like his father had just lifted the veil on an important one.

"You’re saying that Count Blackwell is different from the other counts?" Henri asked, hoping to pry back the veil a little bit further. "If I shouldn’t think of him the same way I think of other counts, how should I think of him?"

"Best to think of him as an uncrowned king," Thibert said, tapping the table in irritation. "One who politely holds a knife to our throats while we hold one to his. Charles the First only narrowly managed to get the Blackwells to give up their rights to a seat on the Ruling Council and the status of a Duchy, but the concessions we granted them in exchange for accepting Trevarthan rule weren’t light..."

"Do you know how many men-at-arms the Blackwells maintain in their navy, Henri?" Thibert asked as he rolled the goblet of wine in his hand.

"A count is limited to five barons, sixty knights, and roughly a thousand men-at-arms among all his vassals," Henri answered smoothly, reciting the kingdom’s law from memory as easily as he would have for any of his teachers at the academy. "You’re saying we allowed them more?"

"The Blackwells hold dominion over the Southern Seas," Thibert replied. "A single Blackwell dromon can boast a crew of more than two hundred fighting men, and they have more than a dozen in their fleet. That doesn’t include the dozens of cogs, the countless smaller ships, or the soldiers who garrison their baronies on the mainland and their island fortresses..."

"You’re exaggerating, Father!" Henri protested. "You can’t count the rowers of a dromon as fighting men. Most of them are little better than slaves bound to their oars..."

"Not in Blackwell, they aren’t," Thibert said. "In Blackwell, every man onboard a ship is a trained fighting man. One ship, one crew. It’s the Blackwell creed, and it crops up in more places than you’d expect. The loyalty they have for each other can’t be compared to the loyalty most of our subjects have for the crown... Compared to them, we fall far behind," he admitted honestly.

"So, now that you know that Rhys commands a force as strong as our own Royal Navy, with men as fiercely loyal to him as the Templars are to the Church," Thibert said, looking his son directly in the eyes. "How do you expect such a man to respond to the death of his daughter and his cousin under mysterious circumstances in Lothian March?"

"And what do you think Rhys will do about Owain’s decision to wed his younger daughter?" Thibert asked. "Because if he didn’t send her there as a ’backup bride’, you’d best believe that Rhys will make his feelings on the matter known..."