The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1034: What Percivus Wants (Part Two)

"I’m sorry to have kept you waiting," Percivus said when he strode into Eleanor’s cell with a pair of acolytes who quickly set up a chair and small table for the Inquisitor to sit at. "Public executions are time-consuming spectacles, and this one required... Special arrangements," he said, choosing his words with care as he opened the top of his leather case and began meticulously setting the small table in front of him with a plate and utensils for a meal.

"Execution?" Eleanor said as her eyes widened in surprise. "Who...?" Eleanor asked, leaving the question at a single word as she was unable to make herself fully form the question that was trapped by the formation of a lump in her throat. Please, she prayed, not Jocelynn.

She was the daughter of a count... it was impossible to move against her lady so quickly, even if there had been abundant evidence of crimes, which Eleanor knew there wasn’t. And yet, as soon as Percivus mentioned executions, the very first thought that flashed through her mind was an image of Lady Jocelynn, bound and chained while a headsman sharpened his axe.

Her heart hammered in her chest, and her throat grew so tight that it was hard to draw breath until her rational mind caught up with her irrational fears, but when it did, it only brought more questions.

The Inquisitor had been in Lothian City for less than two days; how could he have found someone whose crimes were so obvious and easily proven that they merited public execution already? Or had he skipped over the investigation entirely, moving directly from accusation to execution?

"No one of importance," Percivus said as he carefully filled his plate with slices of roasted beef, a simple salad of thinly sliced carrots and parsnips, and a plain roll of crusty bread. "The Master of the Kitchens was more than willing to confess to the crime of adding poison to Marquis Bors Lothian’s meals."

"Or, at least he was willing once I explained to him that his cooperation would protect his family from sharing his guilt," Percivus explained, as though he was giving a lesson to a junior acolyte. "Even the most vile of heretics may still hold some love and affection for the pure and good people in their lives."

"A man who was willing to forsake the Light for worldly wealth may be motivated by a genuine desire to provide for his wife and children," Percivus said simply, in the same tones a person would use to speak of a man caring for his livestock. "Saving them from the hangman’s noose is enticement enough to secure a confession from simple men who have done vile things when they buckle under the strain of the struggle the Holy Lord of Light has given them in this life," he concluded, as though he hadn’t just admitted to threatening to hand a man’s entire family in order to secure the confession he wanted.

Eleanor’s mind reeled as she listened to Percivus’s calm, detached voice describing the Master of Kitchens as though he were some kind of dangerous heretic. Master Baden might not be a kind man; his tongue was as sharp as a knife when he spoke to his staff, and his hand flew freely when someone failed to meet his high standards, but he was a loyal, dedicated servant of the Lothian family who had spent decades rising through the ranks of the kitchens to reach his current position.

"That’s... that’s not possible," Eleanor stammered. "Master Baden was only preparing the meals that the physician ordered for the Marquis. Light foods, easy to digest, nothing that would aggravate his cough or..."

"The physician confessed as well," Percivus interrupted smoothly, beginning to slice his roast into small, bite-sized pieces. He worked methodically, cutting each piece into smaller bite-sized morsels that were nearly identical in size before setting down the knife.

"Master Hess admitted to concocting the poison that caused Bors’ illness," he said as he took his first bite of the roast. The flavor was simple and pure, lacking any of the expensive spices or fussy techniques that Master Baden would have used to cook for someone as important as an Inquisitor.

The new Master of the Kitchens, an army cook named Turin whom Bors trusted from the War of Inches, wasn’t a man who knew how to make refined dishes, but Percivus preferred food this way. It was honest, pure, with nothing to season it beyond salt and basting in its own juices as it spun on the spit. It was already a luxury to be a piece of fine beef that wasn’t tough and full of sinew, and the common farmer would still envy the meal on Percivus’s plate.

Anything more than this would have been an insult to the people who did the real work of taming the frontier and bringing prosperity to Lothian March, and Percivus was glad to see the Marquis’ kitchen turning out such ordinary dishes now that the heretical Baden had been dealt with.

"Master Hess was quite forthcoming once I assured him that his daughter would be spared if he took full responsibility," Percivus explained, using a handkerchief to delicately dab away the meat juices that had become trapped in his neatly trimmed beard and mustache.

"The poor thing was beside herself with tears when she saw her father swinging from the neck, but I’m as good as my word. She’ll be given a place at the temple in Maeril. Perhaps one day she’ll join you in the ranks of the Confessors to atone for her father’s sins," he suggested.

Across the tiny cell from him, Eleanor’s hands had trembled in their chains. She remembered Master Hess as a dedicated healer who’d spent hours at Bors’ bedside, trying every remedy he knew to restore his strength and ease the coughing.

More than anything, she remembered the man’s exhaustion, his frustration at his inability to cure his lord, and his genuine anguish at Bors’ deteriorating condition. He kept his lips tightly sealed about his lord’s prognosis, but Eleanor had seen more than enough healers over the years to recognize the look of a man who was rapidly losing hope for his patient.

Both Masters were loyal, dedicated servants of the Lothian family who any lord would be lucky to count among their retainers... But within mere days of Percivus’s arrival, both men had been hanged for conspiring against the lord they so diligently served.

And the Inquisitor was only just beginning.