October 1070

I asked Rowena for a piece of parchment to write on and penned a quick letter for Eva and Elfleda. Once I was done, I thanked Rowena and led Cuthbert out of the tower. Seconds after she closed the door, I felt the wards come back up and the tower started thrumming with energy once again.

"Guy, how good are you at carrying messages?" I asked. "I mean obviously you can fly, and I assume you can hold a piece of parchment without damaging it, but can you… target-locate like an owl?"

Guy looked at me for a few moments as if considering how to respond, then shook his head. It looked a little silly on a phoenix, but I got the message.

"Okay. Can you intercept or follow an owl, though? Communicate with it and get it to turn back around?" I asked.

Guy crooned in the affirmative.

"Then here's what we'll do," I said, handing him the rolled-up parchment which he took in one talon. "I'm going to call an owl. You're going to fly off, intercept it, do whatever it is you need to do to get it to turn around and go back, and deliver the message. Then you're going to stick around and protect Eva – " I noticed that got a slight reaction out of Cuthbert " – my apprentice, the one who the owl belongs to, until I get back. Can you manage that?"

Guy crooned again.

"Alright." I called Elric's name a few times to make sure the owl got the point, and when I was done Guy trilled and launched off my shoulder, shooting off to the south-east – at a faster pace than he'd flown in on, I noticed.

Once we were alone outside Rowena's tower, I turned to look at Cuthbert. He was still studiously avoiding looking at me, or anything else.

"Is the guard that went with you to Berkhamsted still alive?" I asked.

Cuthbert was silent for a few moments, and then slowly shook his head. "Figured," I sighed. "Did the vampire come with you on her own horse, or did she ride with you? There's no way we're both going to fit on one horse."

Cuthbert nodded, and went to unhook his own horse. I didn't get quite what his nod meant until he led me to the south, past the small grove of trees and to the other side, where a smaller yet very well-groomed horse was nervously grazing. A mare, by my guess.

"Oh, this is going to be a pain," I muttered. At least it had saddlebags.

Getting the mare calm enough to accept me as a new rider was a trial almost worthy of Hercules, and even once I did manage that the saddle chafed, feeling a bit too small for me. At least the saddlebags were packed with road supplies, along with a light sword that looked like a cavalry saber. Well, the sword wasn't in the saddlebags themselves, but you get the point.

In any case about an hour later we set off, following a trail I hadn't used in over a year but still remembered fairly well. I set a faster pace than I usually would have, keenly aware that time was definitely at a premium and that now wasn't the time to worry about a horse's health or energy.

Our trip took two days in all, though it was more a half day, then a full day, and then another half day to reach Dorham. I tried to engage Cuthbert in conversation, but throughout the first two days he just refused to speak. It was only on the third day, or the second half day, however you want to look at it, that he started responding.

We were a few hours out from Dorham, riding through a stretch of lightly forested, gently sloped hills when Cuthbert, in a quiet tone, said, "I met her a week ago."

I turned my head and looked at him. I'd been gently poking him with questions about Esther, trying to figure out how much of the story she sold me was true and how much was bullshit and how everything fit into this now-active feud with Gauthier. How much influence Esther had had over Cuthbert was something I really needed to know.

"On the way to Dorham?" I guessed.

Cuthbert nodded. "She was standing on the side of the road, alone, with torn and dirty clothes. Claimed wolves had savaged her horse and forced her to run. We stopped to help her and then…"

Cuthbert fell silent, and I didn't push him. It took a few minutes for him to continue.

"She didn't kill Edric. She bewitched both of us. I don't remember much, but I remember killing him and being… being happy about it, that I'd pleased–"

"You don't need to say more," I said. "Did she know about Rowena to begin with, or did you tell her? I'm not blaming you if you did."

Another period of silence, and then, "I think I told her. I can't remember. I think I told her about Eva too. She's fine, right?" There was a pleading note on those last few words.

"Last I saw her, which was… two hours before I dealt with the vampire, about. She's safe in the castle," I said.

"How can you be sure? If someone like her entered the castle–"

"If someone like her entered the castle, she'd quickly be found out and killed, trust me," I said. "Berkhamsted is pretty well defended against her kind. I just hadn't expected someone to ambush you on the road." I frowned. "And that part still confuses me. You didn't make a show of leaving for Dorham, right? You just packed and grabbed Edric and left."

"Yes. I told my sister and…"

"No one outside the castle?" I asked.

"No."

"So someone saw you on the street, probably, or maybe overheard it from inside the castle, somehow passed a message to the vampire, and she got ahead of you. Not impossible, but… improbable," I said, letting go of the reins with one hand so I could scratch my chin. "And then she just attacked and abducted you in broad daylight and went straight for Rowena."

This didn't feel like Gauthier to me, or at least not entirely. Ambushing Cuthbert? I could see that. Enthralling him to use against me? I could also see that. But going after Rowena instead, rather than trying to kill me and then taking his kids back, with the added benefit of Eva? That felt more impulsive, probably Esther's idea. Not that I was going to cut Gauthier any slack. Whether he gave the order or not, he still sent an agent here. Whether she went rogue or not was irrelevant. Still, things didn't feel right.

And the attack itself was just so damn bold. Esther didn't seem like a novice; in fact, excluding the frankly unpredictable stroke of luck that was the Archive showing up with Guy in tow, her plan would've worked. Which I guess was one point in her favor, but the fact that the attack was so direct, so blunt, just felt off for someone of the White Court. Gauthier sending a patsy made sense, but Esther going straight for the throat felt off.

Maybe some of my assumptions regarding the White Court were off. There was about a thousand-year gap between the White Court of my time and the current White Court; maybe they had changed as much as the White Council. For instance, the White Council had initially been formed as a literal advisory council to the Romans, wizards in general had been more in the open – hell, Merlin had just done away with any kind of secrecy and openly attached himself to Arthur and Camelot. Except then the Inquisition and the witch burnings had happened, and the White Council closed themselves off.

Was the White Court tendency to work through as many patsies and cutouts as possible a similar kind of change? A kind of "once burned, twice shy" habit that got turned into a cultural more and tradition? Maybe. And if I was right, then I'd misread the White Court, assumed they'd be more hesitant and distant when really, they weren't.

And even if that wasn't a general White Court thing, then it might be a quirk of Gauthier and his immediate family. The man had decided to become Constable of France, one of the most powerful and more importantly public positions one could attain. I couldn't imagine someone like Lara ever getting that bold.

If that was the case, and the White Court or at least Gauthier were willing to be a lot more direct and violent than I anticipated, then I needed to rethink my strategy.

Our arrival at Dorham and Eadric's manor caused quite a stir. For one we arrived from the opposite direction one would expect, for another I came in on a horse that wasn't mine, and for a third Cuthbert was unusually subdued.

We were quickly separated, and Cuthbert bundled off by a worried Hilda, leaving me alone in a room with an agitated, bulky Eadric.

"What happened?" he asked.

"The short version is that he was on his way to see you when he got ambushed and abducted," I said. "The long story involves the trip to France."

"How so?" Eadric asked.

I sighed and looked around the courtyard. "I think we should go inside and have this talk somewhere more private."

Eadric eadriced at me for a few seconds, then grunted and went inside, bidding me to follow. He led me to the small dining room again and took a seat. I did the same, settled my staff against the table, and stretched my arms.

"This goes all the way back to Tim," I said.

"The vampire," Eadric said darkly.

"Yeah. As you know, he has a sister. For a good while we had an arrangement where they didn't bother me or do anything objectionable, and I left them alone. I wasn't looking forward to dealing with the hassle of getting Robert to ditch his mistress," I said. "And fairly early on I got a very good sense of Lucille's character, and determined that what she really needed was help. I'm not going to get into that argument with you right now.

"The point is that as a result of the event that made her a vampire, she loathes her father. And I mean loathes. However much you may hate the Normans, trust me, she hates her father more. She was utterly terrified her father might call her back and force her to do what he wanted, and before you get into any kind of response involving the rights of the father, the vampire method of doing that usually involves repeated rape."

Eadric made an eadricy face.

"Yeah. So I agreed to help her, so long as she and her brother abided by my rules, which they have, diligently. Which brings me to her father. Gauthier Renouth, the Constable of France."

"Constable?" Eadric asked.

"The guy in charge of the armies of France in the King's stead," I said.

Eadric eadriced. "And you met with him?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you kill him?" he asked.

"Because I didn't want to start a shadow war across Europe between vampires and wizards that would leave hundreds dead at a conservative estimate, probably closer to thousands," I said. "At the time, at least.

"What I did do was threaten him and tell him to leave his children alone. I didn't exactly expect that to be the end of it, but I did expect Gauthier to try and keep any feud centered on me like a sensible person. Which he hasn't, at all."

Eadric grunted darkly. "What happens now?"

"I go and put my boot up his shiny white ass," I said.

Eadric stared at me eadricly for a long while, then slowly nodded his head. "What about my son?"

I sighed. "That's a tougher question. I am not a healer by any metric. The best I can recommend is to give him time and love. To listen to him and help him. The vampire that abducted him is dead now, but before she died, she unnaturally inflamed his lust and used it to make him do terrible things. He is not going to get over that easily. But so long as he stays here, he'll be safe. I took precautions, and I'll step them up before I leave.

"And Eva?"

"I made Berkhamsted into a veritable fortress against vampires, and if there's one thing I can be sure of, it's that Lucille definitely does not want anything to do with her father. If Gauthier tries anything, it'll have to be with an army," I said. "It's the safest place for her to be right now."

Eadric took a deep breath and looked away, his hands clenched. I understood the feeling. He really, truly wanted to do something, but he didn't see how. And unlike me, he didn't have people lining up to offer him temptation.

"I give you my word Eadric," I said. "Gauthier is going to regret not accepting peace when I offered it."