The Vampire & Her Witch

Chapter 1570: Leverage (Part Two)

For a moment, Recared’s argument almost worked. Several heads at the High Table tilted in consideration, and a few people even clasped their hands while whispering a brief prayer.

Baron Rundle shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the reminder of all the Inquisition did to protect the people of the march. As one of the ’barons of the interior’, there was a buffer between his lands and any real threat. With Baron Aleese to the south and Baron Hanrahan to the west, his home hadn’t faced the threat of a demon raid since he’d been a young boy.

Perhaps... Perhaps the Abbot was right that men like him, men who had grown complacent about the threat beyond their city walls, needed a bit of pressure to remember that the fight wasn’t over yet.

Baron LeGleau wore an entirely different expression as he looked out over the table where his children sat under the watchful eyes of his knights. Were they enough? Could swords and armor alone really protect his family if the demons were ever at their doors? If he stood against the Inquisition now, who would come to their defense if the raids in the west grew even fiercer?

It might feel righteous to stand against the Inquisition now... What Inquisitor Percivus had done was certainly horrific, but Lord Owain had already executed him for that. Did they really need to go further to punish his teacher at a time when they might need the Inquisition the most?

As the barons pondered, Lady Ragna Fayle stood up. Since Lady Ashlynn had seen fit to give the women of the court a voice tonight, she refused to throw away the chance to use hers.

Erling’s mother was not a tall woman, but she’d spent more than a decade ruling over a barony after her husband’s death until Erling was old enough to take up his father’s throne, and she stood with the confidence of a ruler who had done more for her people with much less than any of the barons sitting at the High Table with her.

"You’re like the crime bosses of the duchies," Ragna said flatly. Her words landed on Recared like a stone dropped on a drowning man. "That’s what you are. You can dress it up in fancy robes and ’sacred’ prayers, and you can talk about your holy duty until the sun rises in the morning, but what you’ve just described is nothing more than a crime boss extorting the march for protection money."

A shocked murmur rippled across the High Table, but Lady Ragna didn’t pay it any attention as she focused on the battered Abbot.

"You collected secrets," she said sharply. "You used those secrets to force the lords of this march to do what you wanted. You sent your men to spy on our households, to rifle through our ledgers, to catalog our private lives. And when someone refused to cooperate, you sicced your attack dog on them and let him tear them apart."

For years, they’d dealt with Inquisitors sniffing about in Fayle. They’d even come to her at one point to express ’concerns’ that her son, her beloved Erling, had taken up a ’heretical’ form of archery. Of course, it would help matters if the Inquisition could spend more time with the young baron to ensure that he ’developed properly’ as he grew into his role.

Erling had handled it, and he’d done so without accepting a permanent ’advisor’ from the Inquisition, but it had been a close thing, and neither of them had slept easily for years while the Inquisition sent a seemingly endless stream of men to ’observe’ life in the weakest barony in the march.

"The things you’re doing aren’t about faith," Ragna said coldly. "They aren’t acts of service. It’s a protection racket, and you’re the man running it."

"That’s enough, my lady," Valeri Leufroy said, though his voice lacked the conviction it might have carried an hour ago. "The Abbot’s methods may have been heavy-handed, but..."

"Heavy-handed?" Ragna said, turning on Valeri with an expression that made the old war veteran flinch. "Percivus executed men who had served the Lothian family loyally for half their lives or more, and then he fed their tongues to a young girl. A Confessor died in the dungeons beneath this very manor under his hands. How much heavier does the hand need to get before you stop making excuses for it?"

"Or will you wait until it crushes your own daughter before you find a reason to complain?" Ragna said with a pointed look at Lady Adala, where she sat next to her brother at the Leufroy family’s table.

Valeri’s mouth opened and closed as he found Adala looking at him with eyes overflowing with disappointment and a measure of fear, as if she were worried that he would willingly hand her over to the Inquisition. Beside him, Betrys placed a hand on his arm, and for once, the old baron did not shake it off.

Tension built among the lords and ladies at the High Table like the rising floodwaters of the River Luath until the dam broke from an unexpected quarter.

"She’s right," Serle Otker said, though his voice cracked on the second word.

Slowly, as though he was carrying something heavy on his back, Serle pushed his chair back from the High Table and stood. He and Lady Ragna were at nearly opposite ends of the table, but he nodded respectfully to her before he turned to address the crowd.

"Lady Ragna is right about the Inquisition and Abbot Recared," he said firmly. "I, I’ve had my share of encounters with men who are... questionable in their dealings," he admitted. "So many of the goods coming into the march or flowing out of it pass through Otker Canyon, it would be impossible not to have a few, um, encounters," he said carefully.

"But compared to thieves and smugglers," Serle Otker said. "The methods used by the Inquisition are much, much worse..."