September 1069

What you see in a soulgaze varies from person to person – in both directions. When I soulgazed Marcone, I didn't see a person, or a scene. I just saw a map of sorts, an outline of his personality. When I soulgazed Molly, I saw possibilities, ways her life could go. In the case of my brother, him grappling with his Hunger through a mirror. For others, it was their history, or a room important to them, or some other metaphor for their mind. There was never any real consistency.

In Lucille's case, I saw a corpse.

He was young, male, late teens, seventeen by my guess. He was handsome, for the most part. Not a visage I'd see on a marble statue, but definitely on the upper end of attractive. Short blond hair, brown eyes, the musculature of someone that physically labored or fought. His expression was one of ecstasy blending with horror, his eyes cold and empty.

I followed his dead-eyed gaze and found basically what I was expecting: a younger Lucille, maybe a year older than Eva at best. She had a similar expression to the dead teenager, more intense in both respects, ecstatic and hungry and horrified and panicked. Her eyes, vibrant and bright, gleamed silver. But where the dead guy was, well, colored like a person, with pale skin, red lips, bloodshot eyes, and so on, Lucille was monochrome, dim, gray. But I could see something lurk behind her eyes, something cold and sullen and bitter.

I could also see the faint outline of a figure over her, with bright silver eyes, and there was something there, an emotional connection. Fear, hatred, loathing, love. I couldn't make out any features, but by the build of it I guessed it was a man. Family.

Then the soulgaze ended, and I was back in the booth. On my end, I felt a resigned frown settle over my face from what I'd seen. Lucille…

Terrified would be underselling it.

Her eyes were completely silver, to the point that even her sclera had changed color, and I could feel her Hunger lashing out at me. But it wasn't coordinated, wasn't sensual. It wasn't a seduction; it was a mad attempt by a predator that found itself hunted and was trying to distract the other by any and all means available to it. She started shaking a moment later.

"We're leaving. Now," she said, her tone of voice barely under control.

"What?" Tim asked, looking her way and pausing at the crazed gleam in her eyes.

"Now!" she yelled, throwing him out of his seat and bursting out of the booth. Tim actually tore and took the curtain off in his accidental flight, and landed, tangled in the fabric. Renault, Lucille's knightly thrall, started to turn, but she grabbed his hand and started pulling him with force a woman like her should be completely incapable of, his eyes glazing over in the process. She left through the front door, not even sparing a glance for her brother.

After a few moments, Tim managed to disentangle himself, getting clear of the curtain and up onto his knees. He looked around, at the door, at me.

I just sat in my seat and drank.

Tim got up then, his eyes slowly turning more gray than blue. He eyed me warily as he moved, and glanced towards the bartender, who was frozen in shock. He almost took a step towards her, then looked back at me and stopped. He stood there for a few seconds, obviously tense, then slowly closed his eyes and breathed deeply. When he opened his eyes again, they were mostly blue.

"I need to go see to my sister," he said tersely. "You can… see to this." Then he turned around and stalked out of the tavern. Literally stalked, almost like a cat. If he had a tail I'm sure it would have been swishing around in agitation.

Once he left, I sighed, finished my drink, and got up. I could guess part of what Tim had wanted to do. While the bartender was probably someone Tim fed on, to get preferential treatment and because she was, admittedly, fairly attractive, I doubted she was clued in. And she'd just seen Tim fly out of a booth, followed by a plump young woman dragging an armored knight out of the tavern with one hand. Weird shit had definitely gone down.

Thing is, I didn't really need to do anything. Even if I knew a handy memory-removal spell, and was willing to use it, I wouldn't. This occurrence would be filed under 'Strange and Bizarre Incidents' in the bartender's mind, and after a while she'd just never really think of it again.

Though, if it made her hesitant about Tim, that was a bonus.

Now, the curtain, that was another matter.

"I'm sorry about that," I said, speaking to her in a polite and calm tone, trying English first. That grabbed her attention and seemed to shake her out of whatever state she'd been in, and she focused on me. I pulled back on my emotions and magic, consciously leashing it, and the temperature, which had been rising, instead fell back down to a little above room temperature. "How much to replace the curtain?"

She blinked, inspected my face, then looked past me at the fallen and torn curtain. After a few seconds, she named a price which made me wince. I really didn't have much left after my London shopping spree, and the curtain, judging by the price, wasn't just some minor thing. I was half-tempted to say screw it to using magic in public and just mend the damn thing. But I didn't. Instead, I sighed, dug around in one of my pockets, and withdrew the rough sum she'd requested. I put it down on the counter, and went back to the now exposed booth, dragging the other two flagons over to my side.

Then I sat down to think.

Physical appearance was deceptive when it came to placing the age of a vampire, one of the perks of that brand of immortality, but when combined with the missteps, I felt comfortable placing them roughly around what their looks suggested: early twenties, maybe late at a stretch. They were here alone, at least so far as I knew. Lucille had ingratiated herself into the local power structure, but she wasn't able to wield total control over Robert; John was a check against her when it came to Robert, and Elfleda an opponent when it came to the wider court. And Tim was, what, the agent? The troublestabber, to borrow my earlier words? Not an ironclad position by any means.

And Lucille, well, sucker's bet what had happened there. I didn't know how the Skavis and Malvora manifested their Hungers, but the Raiths just seemed to love their cycle of murderous parental abuse. She'd probably been infatuated with a young and dashing knight, maybe the start of love, and instead things had gone terribly wrong. Then she'd been inducted into the White Court, all its secrets, all its intrigues, and told that this was her new normal.

At a guess, once she'd heard that William was gearing up for an invasion of England, she'd leaped at the chance, ingratiated herself with one of the players, and now was separated from continental, family intrigues by the English Channel. There wasn't some grand plan, at least one that she was aware of; she'd just run away.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was some misandry there too. If her early life had been anything like Inari or Connie's, she'd grown up with little idea of the truth of her family and a perhaps idealized view of the world. Then that had been violently torn away and her vampire parent told her that violent trauma was just business as usual. As for Tim, well, if his Hunger had manifested before hers had, and he'd never told her… well.

And in the span of a few short conversations, I managed to press just about every single 'powerful man gives her an unpleasant ultimatum as to how to live her life' button possible. By accident.

I drank some more.

Part of me wanted to just leave things as they were. With Lucille apparently experiencing some existential terror towards me, the odds were pretty high she might just pack up and leave entirely, more so if I made some vaguely threatening gestures. Then I wouldn't have to worry about vampires anymore, wouldn't have to worry about them preying on Elfleda or Eva or anyone else. And it wasn't like Lucille was an especially good or warm person; the soulgaze had shown me that. Everything about her was a mask built up around a frozen core of bitterness.

But. But. I don't think she's a bad person either, just someone the world broke. And if I drove her off, that bitterness would just fester. Now, it's not my job to fix her.

But she's a young, beautiful woman that maybe, maybe, could recover if given the opportunity. And for whatever unknowable reason, that's just catnip to my brain.

"Hell's bells," I sighed, and drank.

On my way back to the castle, I stopped by to pick up a sizable wooden board, the kind you might hang in front of a shop or a house. Then I tentatively proceeded back to the castle, one hand on my staff the entire time just in case something happened. I continued in that fashion all the way to the room in which I had currently piled my stuff and that I had magically locked. I only relaxed once I was inside, and then I sat down on the bed.

There wasn't much point in following up with the vampires, Lucille was probably still freaking out. Eva was probably still with her father, and it'd take me a few days to figure out how I could give her lessons without arousing suspicion, so she was out. Elfleda was around, probably. I could go to her. On the other hand, I hadn't apologized to John for reading from his collection. A minor thing, all things considered, but still.

Also, if I could get his help in teaching Eva Latin, that would simplify things for me greatly. If, though. Figuring out that if would take a while. Oh, and if the vampires did overreact, I could hopefully use John as a metaphorical shield against Robert. So, that decided, I locked the door again, doing the window this time as well just to be safe, and went looking for the castle chapel, which took me about ten minutes of wandering and asking.

The castle chapel was nicely plain. Almost quaint, really. Large glass windows at one end, clear, not stained, a few supporting columns, an altar at the far end, a wooden door off to a side room, and about six pews, all in rows, three to a side, wide enough to fit maybe five to six people at once. I didn't see any finery, any statuary, anything remotely expensive. Grand public cathedral, this was not.

John was alone in the chapel, sitting in one of the front pews, reading a book by the sunlight. He looked up and turned his head as I walked in, and squinted. "Ah, Harry," he said after a few moments. "Welcome back."

"Thank you… father?" I asked hesitantly.

"Father or John, either is acceptable," he said, closing the book and setting it aside. "Was there something you needed?"

"Not in particular. To talk, and to apologize for reading your books last time I was here," I said.

"Hmm? Oh. Well, since I didn't notice anything, I suppose you were careful. That's fine," he said dismissively. "Come, take a seat. What did you read?"

"Your copy of the Aeneid," I said, moving to sit at the edge of the opposite pew. "I notice you have a rather old copy."

"You did, did you? Yes, that was… an insistent gift from the earl, along with some of my other texts."

"Has he been to see you yet, incidentally?" I asked.

John frowned thoughtfully. "As I can't think of anything you may be referring to, I am going to say no. Why are you asking?"

"About… two hours ago now Robert and I had a talk about me working for him. I quoted Exodus twenty-two-eighteen at him and said he could corroborate my translation with you," I said.

"That passage is… not one I have memorized," he said after a few seconds of thought. "What does it say?"

"Maleficos non patieries vivere."

"Ah. That one. No, he hasn't come to see me about that yet. He did ask me about what the Bible said about magic, and I remember that passage now, but that was some time ago, so." He shrugged. "Why did you bring it up, however? I know some among the church who would translate that passage in a… less than favorable way."

"'Do not suffer the witch to live'?" I asked, half-dryly.

"In essence."

"I was explaining to Robert what I wouldn't do, and why."

"There are other passages you could have used, are there not?" he asked.

"I suppose, but I don't remember the Bible in its entirety either, and that line sticks with me for, well, obvious reasons. And I think it helped Robert appreciate how serious I was being."

"I see," he said.

We lapsed into silence for a bit, and then I asked, "Actually, now that I think about it, could I copy some of your books for my own use?"

John, who had just picked up his book again, set it down in his lap and hummed thoughtfully. "As long as you're careful, and you make a few extra copies," he said. "I imagine it will be part of your duties in any case, if you're going to work for the earl."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

John looked at me, took in my semi-confused expression, and chuckled. "Harry, you are the only person in the court that is bi-lingual in both French and English, in both the spoken and the written word." He paused momentarily, and frowned thoughtfully. "I assume you are literate in the English language, yes?"

"Yes," I said slowly.

He shrugged. "That makes you unique, so far at least. I wouldn't be surprised if your role ends up being less… mystical, and more mundane, a personal interpreter and court scribe."

I blinked a few times. "…huh."

Repetitive labor. My absolute favorite.

Author's Note: Something that I think needs to be remembered is that every Raith was put through horrendous parental abuse and emotional trauma. Maybe every whampire.