October 1070

I left for Berkhamsted after that, moving at a clip and with my eyes peeled. No one and nothing intercepted me, and I ended up making it to Berkhamsted in the early evening without incident. I stopped by the horse trader to offload the mare - I didn't bother to haggle too much, which certainly made him suspicious but not enough to pass up the mare - and then quickly popped by my house to check in on Shadowfax. He tried to bite my hand off, even after I went inside to get him an apple. Once I made sure everything was fine on the home front, I went off to Berkhamsted Castle.

Usually, I just wandered around the halls looking for whoever I wanted to meet with. This time, I skipped ahead by asking the guards if anything had happened recently, and after roughly confirming that the answer was "no" asked them to lead me to Elfleda. She turned out to be part of a small dinner party Robert was hosting, along with Tim and Lucille. It took a bit of finagling to get them out while sending Elfleda to corral Eva, but eventually we all ended up in the castle library, with everyone giving me strange looks as Guy moved from hovering over Eva to sitting on my shoulder. I noticed there was a rather significant physical divide, with Eva on the other side of Elfleda and both as far from the Renouths as they could manage.

Eva started things off. "Is my brother alright?" she asked.

I sighed. "That's a tough question to answer. Physically, he's fine. Mentally, technically, also fine. Emotionally, psychologically..." I shrugged.

"He was enthralled?" Lucille asked.

"Rather quickly and bluntly from what I saw," I said.

"What... what does that mean?" Eva asked, half to me, half to Lucille.

I was curious about that too, actually, so I looked over at Lucille. "I've only ever seen the end result," I said.

Lucille looked from me to Eva and back, gave me a slightly put-upon look, and sighed. "I never truly worked at it, as I never had the need to, but the basic idea is to feed and consume potions of another's will and lifeforce, then... reach inside the gap with the Hunger and put lust and desire back in its place. The process is not permanent, but I don't know how one recovers from it."

I nodded, then turned back to Eva. "It will take time, but he will recover. We can talk more about this later, alright?"

Eva pursed her lips and glanced fearfully between me and Lucille, then shakily nodded.

"Okay." I turned to Tim. "What about Sofia?"

"The herbalist was gone by the time Elfleda here," he nodded in her direction, "delivered word and instructions to me. I asked around, and she was seen leaving an hour or two after you did, riding south with packed bags."

"That's either an incredibly untimely coincidence or a sense of danger like a rabbit's," I said. "I'm inclined to go with the latter. Now, I recognize this is a stupid question, but neither of you have ever seen or heard of any Sofia before, right?"

Tim and Lucille both nodded. "We parted ways years ago," Tim added. "And he spent a number of years teaching us. I assume this herbalist is new."

"Safe assumption, though probably not that new," I said. "Whatever ward-charms she can put together hold up briefly against me, but they were probably part of why your father felt confident facing me. The wards didn't need to hold up for long when you have the speed of a vampire backed up by a sword like Joyeuse. And Esther?"

"I never met a cousin or aunt by that name," Tim said, looking over at his sister, who shook her head.

"She certainly looked like Blandine's daughter," I said. I then described how Esther looked, to see if she'd showed up under an assumed name, but everyone shook their heads when I asked if they'd ever seen her.

Except Elfleda, who said, "Once, in France."

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. "Great. How much interaction did you have with your aunt?" I asked the twins.

"She visited sometimes," Tim said. "Once or twice a year, always alone - well, except for her entourage. She was nice, in my opinion."

"She was as much of a bitch as father, just better at hiding it," Lucille muttered. "You think he did this?"

"I think the few facts point at him," I said. "And I'm certainly going to work under that assumption. I guess one of his rivals could have set this up, but I don't believe he's uninvolved. I just don't get how this happened, if there's anything I could have done to preempt it."

"What do you mean?" Elfleda asked.

"I just don't particularly buy that this is coincidence," I said. "A vampire just happened to be waiting on the road ahead of Cuthbert, or had somehow gotten ahead of him, with minimal notice?" I sighed and looked at Eva. "Okay. Who here knew Cuthbert was leaving?"

"You think someone here... did something?" she asked hesitantly.

"I don't know. That's the problem," I said.

Eva pursed her lips. "Well, there was me, and Elfleda, and... I think that's it. I don't even think told Marianne."

"Who?" I asked.

"The lady he's interested in," Eva said.

"Robert would have had to give permission for him to leave," Tim added. "But that's a dead end."

"Unless he told someone," I said, glancing at Lucille.

She rolled her eyes. "Even if he had told me, or anyone for that matter, which he didn't, I wouldn't have cared to spread it, and certainly not to an agent of my father's; I am well aware of how vengeful you can be, wizard. Believe me, as much as I want my father dead, I wouldn't have been party to a plan like this." She shook her head. "In any case the permission was a minor matter of protocol at best, probably asked the day before. The only possible way it could have come from Robert was if a servant was in the room, and even then the information is so irrelevant it would have to be a spy specifically looking for information about people close to you. And it is highly unlikely that any servants in the castle are spies."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because until you came they were all mine," she said bluntly. "And I've always kept a very close eye on who was in Robert's court and employ."

"Couldn't your father have gotten to some in France?" I asked.

Lucille thinned her lips in displeasure. "Perhaps. But it has been months now. Any influence except the heaviest would have long since faded, and the heaviest would have been immediately apparent. Which means the only way the influence could have been maintained was if there was another vampire nearby. So unless your wards aren't as effective against vampires as you think they are..."

"They are," I said. "I tested fairly extensively with you."

"And they didn't tell anyone," Lucille gestured at Eva and Elfleda, "then this was an unfortunate coincidence."

I looked over at Eva and Elfleda. My apprentice fervently shook her head, while Elfleda said, "No, I didn't tell anyone."

I sighed. "Great. Just great." I ran a hand down the side of my face. "Okay. Fine. I'll work under the assumption of bad luck for now. Not like it changes much regarding what I'm going to do with Gauthier."

"You're going to kill him?" Lucille asked. There was a disturbing yet entirely understandable amount of relish in her tone as she asked that.

"Well... yeah, probably," I said. "He crossed a number of lines."

"Good," she purred.

Elfleda shot Lucille a very fascinated look.

"You will include me, I hope," Lucille added.

"I... will certainly consider it," I said. "But a lot of things regarding how I'm going to deal with your father are up in the air right now. Speaking of which, I need to know where your family estates are, and anywhere else your father might spend time, preferably pointed out to me on a map."

"I'm nearly certain that the earl has a map of France somewhere," Tim said, looking over at Lucille.

"I will see," Lucille said. She then turned to face Eva. "I am sorry about your brother, for what it's worth."

Eva didn't meet her eyes, and she was silent for a few moments before she quietly and hesitantly said, "Thank you."

The meeting broke apart after that, understandably. Neither Eva nor Elfleda wanted to talk much around the Renouths, and the twins were busy with their own issues and worries. I arranged a meeting with Tim tomorrow evening regarding the maps and family estates, and then spent the rest of the evening and into the night answering Eva's questions, addressing her concerns, and generally soothing her. She seemed briefly fascinated at the mention of what Guy was, but that quickly faded under the worry she had for her brother.

Neither she nor Elfleda came by the next morning for lessons, which didn't surprise me, or for the next few days, which also didn't surprise me. As a result there isn't that much to write about regarding what happened in the days leading up to Samhain. For the most part I was cooped up in my house, brewing potions or experimenting to see what Guy was capable of. It turned out to be an eclectic mix.

There's the most obvious and immediate, phoenix tears. Immediate injuries they seem to fix up completely, though I wasn't willing to test if that applied to serious, mortal injuries for obvious reasons. Older injuries like my scars were affected to a lesser degree, and repeated applications of phoenix tears didn't seem to compound. Not that Guy really cried on demand, but he was willing to indulge me to an extent. Bottled phoenix tears were a no-go though, at least without some kind of magical preservation. Though even that I'm not sure about; I'd be pretty willing to bet that they have to come directly from the source to be useful. Maybe they could be incorporated into a potion, but I didn't get around to testing that; I had no clue what I would use for the other ingredients, after all, or even what kind of potion I'd be aiming for.

Phoenixes could be called like owls, but couldn't be summoned like spiritual beings. This didn't surprise me; Mouse had been the same way. Still, nice to confirm.

He could also fireport - that is, teleport between fires. The size of the fire didn't particularly seem to matter, though distance and knowledge of where the fire was were probably limiting factors. Guy couldn't tell me how much on account of him not speaking. Or being able to hold a quill neatly enough to write.

He was literate though, so. There's that. It makes me wonder if Mouse knew how to read as well.

Then there was his song. I couldn't exactly test it, but judging from how Rowena and Cuthbert had reacted to it, it was probably a form of emotional magic that soothed and comforted. I also asked Guy if it could have negative effects against beings like vampires, and I'm pretty sure the answer was yes, though once again the physical communication barrier was an issue to figuring out more.

Frankly, I still couldn't believe I had a phoenix. Or maybe rather, that a phoenix had me. But Guy stuck around.

He did also agree to give me one of his feathers. Not that I did anything with this just yet; I needed my blasting rod intact for what was coming, and I didn't want to risk damaging or destroying my fire magic focus and having to start all over with breaking in a new one before I'd dealt with Gauthier. My guess though was that it wouldn't make the fire any stronger, but rather more controlled.

I take this from the way Guy screwed with me by bursting into flame all over my shelf full of books, and then revealed that nothing had so much as been singed. I think he then laughed at me.

That, at least, wasn't any different than my prior animal companions.

Then, Samhain came. I had a picnic date planned for that, and by God I was going to see it through.

Author's Note: I don't have much to say here. This is, among a number of other parts I've posted, what I consider to be a "connective tissue" part - something that bridges gaps with necessary information and interactions, but that isn't necessarily the most exciting. I'm always iffy when I come up on a connective tissue part, but the nature of how I write (i.e. serially and quickly) means these tend to crop up. It's something I'm trying to work on. I'm aware not every part can be inherently exciting, but I do try to make sure every part is actually plot relevant in some way. I'll try and have the actual date part be longer. We'll see.