§
A party of royal knights departed the camp in Langram headed for Atius along with a Royal Army coach, the sort used for transporting officers and specialist personnel. Its curtains were drawn, and its crew consisted only of a driver and brakeman. If any enemy spies were observing, they would probably assume it was transporting some of the weary extra medical personnel who had come in response to the great attack a few days prior, returning to the city for much needed rest and recuperation.
The knights did not appear to be escorting it. They were guarding a prison wagon probably loaded with higher-ranking POWs. The coach was simply tagging along, taking advantage of their trip to the city for some added security.
After traveling down the road about a mile though, knights, coach and wagon stopped in the woods, out of sight of onlookers. No curious eyes looked out through the bars of the prison wagon, because it did not actually contain any passengers. Rather than medical personnel, we five ladies exited the coach and thanked the knights for helping with our little subterfuge.
Ladies Dilorè and Serera and Aunt Elianora grew their wings. Dilorè’s beautiful blue monarch wings, Serera’s gray dove wings and Elianora’s black bat wings made quite a spectacle, but the knights showed no particular surprise. These were members of the royal protection unit. They had ample experience working with non-mortals.
Serera swept Mireia off her feet in rather dashing fashion, then Elianora hefted me rather like a large sack of rice. I suppose I should say she lifted me into the same princess carry as Serera used with Mireia, but the manner was somehow completely different. I felt oddly wronged.
After casting their respective stealth techniques, the two fairies broke directly into the air, while Elianora took off by making a high-speed dash down the road, rather like a bird-kin would do. No bird-kin could lift my weight though. I weigh far less than a human my size would weigh, but even my weight would be too much for a mortal flier. A mature vampire, however, is quite capable of carrying a passenger, even up to the weight of a large human male.
Behind us, the royal knight decoy group continued toward Atius, while we flew to our true destination, western Atianus and the Pendor Estate.
Serera and Dilorè were simply along as transport and guard. Dilorè’s role was to take on any surprise attackers while Serera carried Mireia. Dilorè would return to Langram once we were safely inside Mother’s impregnable shield. It was currently a secret that Serera and Dilorè had left the camp, and Dilorè needed to get back and demonstrate her presence as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Serera would head to the city to escort a certain group of callers that Elianora had arranged to visit the estate.
They had insisted that I go to Pendor Estate to recuperate, rather than any location inside Atius. Mother’s shield did not vanish with her death, being a device crafted with her magical engineering skills rather than a spell-casting. As long as Pendor could afford to hire mana-suppliers to recharge it, it would remain the estate’s solid defense for centuries to come as a bona fide fairy treasure.
Rod agreed, and it would be nice to think he was worried for my safety as always, but he could well only be concerned about losing any more war potential. The loss of Mother remained a closely-held secret, but it was an enormous problem for the Loyalist side. Regardless of what his personal feelings for me now were, he could not risk also losing a fairy knight who had proven herself capable of taking on high-level demons and dragons.
Aunt Elianora was of course acting as my personal physician. Mireia… is a bit trickier to explain, but the short answer is, we were going to let a vampire with questionable control of her feeding nosh on multiple prostitutes. Elianora had a method to prevent me from accidentally bonding with them, but there was still the danger of adverse feeding reactions and putting them into some level of charm condition. So it was best to have a healer right there on the spot to deal with it. Mireia, already familiar with my vampirism, was the ideal choice. Pendor Estate also made a nice safe place to stash her so that Rod didn’t have to worry about protecting her while he concentrated on finishing his work at Langram.
§
Even though she had already seen it once, Mireia was again astonished at the classic receiving line that my household staff put on for us. I could understand her surprise, though. We had arrived at the gate and entered the grounds without warning, so they were pulling this off with only the alert that someone was coming through the front gate as their only forewarning. Despite it, here was a double lineup of maids, footmen and others, with Carson and Benedetta standing at the end, greeting the “Young Mistress” warmly as we landed.
It does take a little bit of time to open the shield at the gate, but that delay is mere minutes. I was also impressed.
After notifying the butler that the fairy knight Lady Serera would be showing up with some guests from the city, to whom the staff should provide hospitality until I sent for them, I asked for Mother’s lady’s maid Terese to attend me in Genette’s absence. I had left Genette in the army camp for the moment to leave the impression I was still there. Garen the Pendor House knight would escort her and my luggage home later, when Serera could get free to fly escort for our carriages.
Carson showed no reaction to my unorthodox request to bring my guests and I directly to the sitting room of my suite, rather than entertaining them in the receiving room. I’m sure he understood I wanted a more private location, and I underscored that idea when I told him to join us and bring Benedetta when Serera arrived.
So, for the moment, Mother’s lady’s maid Terese was preparing tea for us. The slender, raven-haired maid didn’t know yet that I had requested her presence for another reason.
“I need to explain something to you two about Carson and Benedetta before they arrive,” I told Elianora and Mireia. “I would like you to keep it confidential, if you would, please. You, as well, Terese.”
“If it is about those two, I more than likely know it already, My Lady,” Terese replied. “I’m their daughter, after all.”
That caught me seriously by surprise. Carson and Benedetta somehow manage to hide their magic nature from my fairy sight. As Elementals, they are magical beings just like fairies, only having a single element physique, so they ought to be obvious to us, but Dark magic is adept at stealth, and those two somehow have the skill to make themselves appear entirely mortal, even to fairies.
“Are you… of the same kind?” I wondered.
“Naturally,” she stated. “With both my parents being such, I couldn’t be otherwise.”
So she, too, could hide her magic physique?
It had thrown me for a moment, but I got my composure back on track so I could continue. “Mireia, you don’t particularly need to know, and due to my status, secrets of this house are royal secrets. If you don’t wish to bear the responsibility, we can send you to another room, but I would rather have you stay. I have a reason, but I don’t want to try to explain it yet.”
My reasons were complicated, so I simply rolled the dice and asked her to trust me.
“If you wish me to stay, I will stay, My Lady,” she replied. “You are my master’s fiancée. I won’t betray any of your secrets.”
Her reason frustrated me . It was a reminder of her slavery, and the slave conditioning the Parnas had inflicted on her. She had probably freed herself at least partially of the conditioning, thanks to her previous life’s training, but she was still falling back on slave reasoning as the motive for her discretion.
Dark magic is often used in the mental health field, so I made a note to consult Elianora and Benedetta about whether they could help her undo that conditioning.
“Please consider the information that the butler and the head maid of this household are Dark elementals, as, it seems, is Mother’s lady’s maid, to be included in the secrets to keep confidential.”
Aunt Elianora nodded. “I was already aware, My Lady.”
“Dark…?” Mireia looked confused.
“You may have heard of ‘Shades’ or ‘Shadowmen’, instead. At any rate, they are a category of magical being rather than being mortals. But Mother is their contractor, as the Duchess of Pendor.”
I looked over to Therese, who was just finishing with tea brewing at that moment. “What about you, Terese? Are you also contracted to Mother?”
“I simply work for Her Grace, My lady,” she stated. “I’ve not yet developed the desire to contract with anyone. I have not even reached fifty years old, so I am too young for that.”
As I am completely clueless as to why Elementals make contracts, or what her age has to do with it, I simply feigned understanding.
I couldn’t feign vigor, though. The trip had taken its toll on my nearly non-existent stamina. During lunch, Elianora saw something in me and grew concerned for my health. She made me lay down on the couch and had Mireia treat me with [Restoration] again. Then I moved to my bathtub and spent the entire afternoon napping there, while a couple housemaids watched over me and the other two passed the time quietly.
§
Lacking any better way to do things, once Serera arrived, I simply had her tell Carson and Benedetta her personal eyewitness of their mistress’s death. I was still fatigued, so she ended up doing almost all the talking.
It didn’t help that we couldn’t say for certain for whom they would serve their contract next.
Their contractor is the Duke of Pendor, for ten generations. It might seem like an odd contract for an Elemental to make when their original contractor was a non-mortal who had survived since the Elder Age, but they and he believed at the time they made it that he would pass his dukedom to a mortal heir after a few centuries.
It seems the few centuries had stretched to nearly a millennium before he died, and Mother became only the second generation. But with eight generations to go, they now faced a strange uncertainty.
“If he agrees and the Privy Council consents, the next duke will be Prince Roderick,” I told them. “He would take the title upon marrying me. But since he is currently first in line for the crown, they may choose instead to only make him regent and allow me to be the non-regnant duchess. That way, in the event he became king, they could replace him with a different regent. Or they could make him regent and appoint an heir for him to raise, which would cut me out of the picture entirely.”
Benedetta looked angry at the thought that I wasn’t the heir. Hadn’t she been told it would never happen? Carson placed his hand over hers and counseled her gently.
“Dear, it is not our decision as to who inherits.”
“I know that,” she answered, a bit testy. “But Her Grace always told us to consider the Young Mistress the heir until she told us otherwise. As far as I am concerned, she still is!”
Serera wondered, “Doesn’t your connection to your mistress end at death? Why would you still be bound by her orders?”
“She isn’t quite dead yet,” I noted, tapping the amulet which I was wearing. I had taken it out during Serera’s explanation to show the two Elementals. They, too, could see Mother’s aura in it. “While Gaia keeps her mind in the Lotus Pavilion, her mind and memories continue. That state might be preventing these two from letting go of her.”
I had already concluded that this was the reason for their inability to detect that she had died. In a sense, her life was still dangling at the end of an extremely thin thread thanks to the amulet, even though her body had long since mummified.
Once her soul left the amulet, Gaia would pass it through the Spirit Realm to wash the memories loose and grant it the same oblivion that a trip to Samsara should have given it. Those memories could come back to her eventually, since no memory is ever truly lost, but they had to be hidden out of reach of her Mortal Realm self, at least until her brain was again mature enough to process them.
That oblivion should also finally break Mother’s hold on the spirit contract holding the Elementals bound to her and allow them to move on to the next heir… whoever that was.
“Well, I’ve informed you now,” I concluded, “and I’m under the impression you would continue to serve this house until its heir and your new contractor are decided. Am I mistaken in any way about that?”
“Of course not, Young Mistress,” Benedetta declared. “We remain your loyal servants.”
I noticed Terese looking troubled, and remembered that lady’s maids work directly for their mistresses, not the house steward. She had just lost her employer.
“Terese, you have a job at Pendor Estate. I would never abandon my mother’s lady’s maid.”
She looked confused, then comprehension dawned in her eyes, and she nodded. “I thank you for that, Young Mistress.”
Her reaction told me I had missed the mark, then I recognized my mistake. I nodded. “That doesn’t change the fact that your beloved friend has died.”
Tears began flowing. Benedetta muttered, “If you will excuse me, Young Mistress.”
I gave her a nod, and she got up to go comfort her daughter.
