Iron and Magic

3

The wind died. The tree line was still, the wide leaves of sycamores and the frilly foliage of oaks hanging motionless in the fading heat of the early evening. Nothing moved.

Elara leaned on the heavy gray stones of the parapet and sent her magic forward. A sick feeling flowed back to her, a greasy nasty smear on the soothing face of the forest, like an oil spill on the surface of a crystal-clear lake. There you are.

Rook reached for his small notebook, wrote a message, and passed it to her.

Do you see it?

“Yes. It’s alone.”

The blond spy nodded, an impassive look on his tan scarred face. Logic said he must’ve felt emotions, but if so, they were buried so deep that no hint ever rose to the surface.

“Thank you,” Elara said.

The notebook disappeared into some hidden pocket of his soft leather jacket. He crossed the rampart to the inner edge of the battlements, hopped onto the parapet with the easy grace of an acrobat, jumped down, and vanished out of sight.

The vampire remained where it was, in the shadow of a sycamore, invisible from the wall. But now she knew it was there. There would be no escape.

An undead here, only a few dozen yards from the castle and the settlement on the other side. A creature piloted by a Master of the Dead, capable of carving its way through their settlement.

Next to her Dugas stirred, brushing a persistent insect away from his gray hair. The older man was very tall and lean to the point of being almost wiry. A scar crossed his face, carving its way through his forehead, his dead milky left eye, and across his cheek until it disappeared into his short beard. Both his beard and hair had gone white long ago, but his eyebrows kept a few black hairs, stubbornly refusing to age. He was wearing his white robe today. It suited him much better than his usual getup of Bermuda shorts and a T-shirt.

The druid stroked his beard. “They’re getting bolder by the day.”

“It would seem that way.” An undead so close to the castle meant a long-range navigator. Likely one of Nez’s Golden Legion Masters of the Dead.

“I’ll get the hunters,” Dugas offered.

“No. I’ll take care of it.”

“They’re due to arrive any minute.”

“All the more reason to handle it myself.” She smiled at him. “I’m faster than the hunters. We wouldn’t want the undead to frighten our delicate guests.”

The druid smiled into his beard. “I have a feeling this guest won’t scare easily.”

“I hope you’re right. Don’t worry. I’ll be back in time.”

She released her magic. It struck out like an invisible whip and splashed against the trunk of a white oak. She inhaled, took a single step toward that anchor, and let the air out.

The world moved.

She stood in the forest now. The wall of the castle lay fifty yards behind her. Massive trees spread their branches above her head. Magic waves destroyed technology, but they nourished the wilderness. The forest around her looked half-a-millennium old. A few yards to the left, and she would come across the remains of ruined houses, completely buried in the greenery.

The vampire ran.

She still didn’t see it, but she felt it scuttle through the underbrush, sprinting away.

Oh no you don’t.

Elara hurried after it, anchoring and moving, each of her steps swallowing fifteen yards. She could’ve moved faster, but expending magic came at a price. She would have to replace it. Thinking about it turned her stomach.

Thinking about their “guests” turned her stomach also. She should’ve let the hunters handle the vampire, but tension simmered in her, too close to the surface. She had to let some steam out of the pressure cooker, or she wouldn’t be able to sit through the meeting.

The undead ran for its life, bouncing off the tree trunks. The hunger inside her woke. Elara chased it, losing herself to the speed. The vampire vaulted over a huge fallen tree, and she finally caught a flash of its back, once human skin and now a thick pallid hide.

Prey.

Ahead bright red ribbons tied to the tree trunks announced the end of their land. She’d run four miles.

The undead bolted for the safety of the ribbons, aiming for the gap between two trees.

She released her magic in a cold rush, stepped in front of the vampire, and caught the abomination by its shoulders. Her power clutched it. The hunger clawed at her from the inside. She bared her teeth.

The undead’s red eyes sparked with a new, brighter fire – the navigator controlling the vampire had bailed. The sudden death of an undead could turn the navigator into a human vegetable. Those who reached the rank of Master knew when to let go.

The undead flailed, but it was too late. Elara found the small hot spark of magic within it and swallowed it. She could almost imagine tasting it on her tongue, as if it were a delicious morsel, and for a long moment she savored it.

The vampire went limp. Elara opened her arms, and the sack of dried flesh and bone that once used to be a human body, then an undead, and now was neither, collapsed to the forest floor.

Too little, the hunger howled inside her. More. More!

She chained it again with a brutal effort of will and forced it back into the dark place she kept it.

Horses.

Elara turned. She was only a few feet away from the narrow ribbon of the road that ran through the woods. Run or sneak a peek? Was there even a choice?

She stepped back a dozen yards, behind a wide old oak, climbed the low hanging branches, and settled above the ground, melting into the shadows among the foliage, as if she were one with them.

Riders approached.

The leading man was tall and dark-haired. That matched Dugas’ description.

Her magic splayed out, masking her.

Do not see me.

The man halted his big white horse and turned toward her.

She couldn’t see his face from this distance. She couldn’t feel his magic either, but he had some, she was sure of it.

Do not see me.

Elara couldn’t see his eyes, but all her senses told her he was staring straight at her. An excited shiver ran down her spine.

She was a complete and utter idiot, she decided. Sitting here, hiding like a child afraid to get caught. Well, at least it’s good to be self-aware.

He gave the forest another long look and rode on.

Elara slipped from the tree and dashed back to the castle.

A few minutes later she stepped past the gates, straightened her long green dress, and checked her hair. Something skittered under her fingers. Elara plucked it from the long braid coiled at her neck. A spider. She walked out the gates and gently set it on the grass.

The spider escaped. She wished she could too. Anxiety flooded her. It’s just nerves, she told herself.

Elara walked up the steps to the wall and touched the druid’s shoulder. He turned, his brown eyes somber.

“I told you I would make it.”

He shook his head. “I know you don’t want to do this…”

“I don’t. But I’ll do it for my people.”

Her people. She knew every single one of them. She was the reason they bounced back and forth across the country, desperately trying to find a place to call home only to be run off again and again. They deserved a home. This was their land, and she had to do everything in her power to protect it. Perhaps d’Ambray wouldn’t prove too much of a problem.

“We could…”

“Pick up and leave again? No.” She shook her head. “You said it yourself, we’ve been here too long. This is home now. I’m not going to uproot us again. Not for this.”

They were done running. She wouldn’t let Nez win.

A group of riders broke free of the canopy and rode up the road toward the gates at a canter. She clenched her hands together. This was ridiculous. She had nothing to be nervous about. She could pull the plug at any time.

The riders grew closer.

Elara nodded at the leader on the white horse. “Is that him?”

“Yes.”

Hugh d’Ambray was huge. The stallion underneath him was massive, but the man matched the horse. He had to be well over six feet tall. Wide shoulders. Long limbs. Very lean. Almost as if he should’ve been thirty pounds or so heavier. Dugas did say they were starving.

Starved or not, he looked like he could hold the drawbridge of a castle by himself.

It was suddenly very real. I don’t want to do this.

“You want me to marry Conan the Barbarian?” A drop of acid slid into her tone.

“An attractive barbarian,” Dugas pointed out.

“I suppose so, if you’re looking at it from a purely animalistic point of view.”

Dugas chuckled.

“Is his horse glowing?” She squinted at the stallion. If you looked just right, there was a hint of something protruding from its forehead, like a shimmer of hot air.

“It appears so.”

They made a striking image, she admitted. The horse that was glowing with silver and the rider, all in black, his dark hair falling to his shoulders. But she wasn’t interested in striking images.

“He’s been here two minutes, and already he’s riding like he owns everything he sees.”

“He very likely always rides that way. Men like him project confidence. It’s what makes others follow them into battle.”

“Violent others.”

“We agreed that we needed skilled violent soldiers with broad backs,” Dugas said. “His back is broad enough.”

The breadth of d’Ambray’s back wasn’t the problem.

She spared a few moments for his people. Two men rode directly behind him, one tall and black, with glasses perching on his nose, and the other athletic and white, with short brown hair and an attractive, smart face. The rider behind them was just a boy, blond and tan. Why bring a boy?

Wolves coming to her door.

The riders reached the gates. D’Ambray raised his head and looked up.

His eyes were a deep dark blue, and they stared through her. She held his stare.

Most women would find him handsome. He had a strong face, overwhelmingly masculine without a hint of the brutish thickness she’d expected. His jaw was square and strong, the lines of his face defined but not sharp or fragile, and his eyes under a sweep of thick black eyebrows were too shrewd and too cold for comfort. His eyes evaluated her with icy calculation.

She was about to share the power over her people with this man. Alarm squirmed through her. This was a bad idea. A terrible idea.

D’Ambray passed through the gate and out of her view.

“I shouldn’t do this,” Elara whispered to herself.

“Do you want me to send them off?” Dugas asked quietly.

If she said yes, he would.

She had to get a grip. She had to teach d’Ambray who she was. The White Warlock. Unclean. Cursed. An abomination. They would come to this meeting table as equals, and if they chose an alliance, she had to make sure they left as equals.

The magic escaped the world without so much as a whisper, stealing her power. That was fine. She didn’t need magic to make Hugh d’Ambray understand where they stood.

“Let’s wait to throw him out until he balks at our terms.”

“Do you want them in the great hall?” the druid asked.

“No.” She narrowed her eyes. “Put them in the green room. Next to the kitchens.”

The air smelled like fresh bread, just out of the oven, with a crisp golden crust. Hugh’s mouth watered, while his stomach begged. Clever girl.

He once starved a woman to the brink of death, trying to break her. Poetic justice, he reflected.

“The castle is in good shape,” Stoyan said softly behind him.

The castle was in excellent shape. It was built with pale grayish-brown stone. The forty-foot-high curtain wall and the massive barbican, the gatehouse protecting the entrance, were both solid, as were the two bastion towers at the corners and the two flanking towers. The bailey, the open space inside the walls, was clean and well maintained. He didn’t see a well, but they must have one. The inner structure consisted of a constellation of buildings hugging the main keep, a hundred-foot-tall square tower. He caught a glimpse of the stables and the motor pool, attached to the east wall. The electric lamps suggested they had a working generator.

The place was massive. It needed a moat. Something he would have to remedy.

A large molosser dog trotted in through the open door, wagging its shaggy white tail. He’d seen three so far as they rode up and walked through the bailey, each dog over a hundred and twenty pounds. They reminded him of Karakachan hounds he’d come across in the Balkans. The dog wandered over to him and Hugh patted its shaggy head. Karakachans were wolf killers. If Lamar was right about the size of their livestock herds, the dogs made sense. The castle and the town attached to the shore of the lake were wrapped in dense forest. There would be wolves there.

The inside of the castle was as well taken care of as the outside. The room where he now sat at a big rustic table was simple, the stone walls without any decoration, but it was clean, his chair was comfortable, and the temperature inside was at least ten degrees cooler. Nice thick walls.

All Hugh had to do now was convince the owner of the castle to let him share it. He’d gotten a glimpse of her as he rode in. Her hair was completely white. Not pale blond or bleached platinum, white. Her hazel eyes were sharp, and she looked at him like she saw a wolf at her door. He wasn’t a wolf. He was something much worse, but he needed her defendable castle and her delicious bread.

Hugh had tried to pin down her age, but the white hair threw him off. Her face looked young, but he’d barely seen anything beyond a glimpse.

Hugh leaned back. She was making him wait. That was fine. He could be patient.

Behind him someone’s stomach growled.

He’d felt something in the forest, on the way here. Something that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He’d tangled with powers across three continents, and whatever had been in the woods had tripped all of his alarms. Then it had moved toward the castle and he’d nudged Bucky into a canter, trying to follow it.

His gaze stopped on a large hand-painted map above the side door, showing Berry Hill in the center, by the edge of the Silver River Lake, with the castle on the neighboring hill. On the right and slightly above, to the northeast, lay Aberdine, another small post-Shift settlement, next to a ley point. Higher still, past the woods, directly north, spread Sanderville. Above it in the distance on the far left was Lexington.

Hugh looked at Aberdine. Post-Shift, magic streamed through the world in currents, ley lines, offering a fast way of travel and shipping. Walking into the current would get your legs cut off, so you had to put some barrier between the magic and yourself, a car, a wooden pallet, anything would do. Once in, the ley line would drag its rider off until it reached a ley point, where the magic blinked, interrupted, and the current would jettison its riders out into the real world. There was only one road connecting the castle and that ley point and it ran through Aberdine. They would have to play nice with that settlement.

The heavy wooden door opened, and she walked in, followed by a one-eyed older man in a white robe, a black woman in her late forties in a pantsuit, and a petite blonde.

Hugh tilted his head and took in his future bride.

Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty. A loose green dress fell almost to the floor, hiding most of her. Nice full breasts. Long legs. Pretty features, big eyes, small mouth, eyebrows darker than her hair, pale brown – probably drawn in or dyed. Tan skin, almost golden. Interesting face. Not exactly beautiful, but feminine and pretty.

A cold expression stamped her face, a hint of arrogance, some pride, and a lot of confidence. There was something regal about her. Queen of the castle.

She would be a massive pain in the ass.

Just get through it.

Hugh rose to his feet. She held out her hand.

“Elara Harper.” Her voice matched her, cold and precise.

He grasped her fingers in his and shook her hand. “Hugh d’Ambray.”

“Nice to meet you.” She sat in the chair opposite him.

Her advisors arranged themselves behind her.

“You already know Dugas,” she said.

He didn’t, but Lamar told him the druid was his counterpart, “a voice of reason.” Someone had sliced up the older man’s face. Hugh met his gaze. Dugas held his stare and smiled. A tough nut to crack.

“This is Savannah LeBlanc.”

The black woman nodded to him. Expensive clothes, professional, well put together, her dark natural hair pulled back from her face and twisted into an elegant bun. She looked like a lawyer. Hugh met her gaze. A witch, a powerful one. He couldn’t feel her magic with tech up, but he’d interacted with enough of them to recognize the bearing. Bad news.

“She is the head witch of our covens,” Elara continued.

Covens. Plural. Interesting.

“This is Johanna Kerry.”

The blond smiled at him. She had to be in her twenties, but to him she looked too young, almost a teenager. Barely five feet tall, slender, glasses. Petite smart blonds were Stoyan’s kryptonite.

Her hand flew up to her forehead, thumb pressed against her palm in a kind of a salute. “Hello.”

She was deaf or mute. Possibly both. His knowledge of American Sign Language was rusty. ASL had its own rules and grammar, but he remembered the basics.

He raised his hands and signed. “Lovely day.”

Johanna’s eyebrows rose. “Interesting.”

Interesting was the right word. He would have to work on his gestures.

Hugh introduced his people. “Stoyan, Centurion of the First Century. Lamar, Centurion of the Second Century. And Sam. He’s here to assess the horses.”

Savannah moved to the side, so Johanna could keep them both in her view, and signed as he spoke. Her hands moved fast. She clearly didn’t need any practice.

Another blond woman in jeans and a T-shirt slipped into the room through the side door. She was young and pretty, and she looked at him a moment too long.

“Can I get you anything?”

“Iced tea, please, Caitlyn,” Elara said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The woman ducked into the doorway.

“You need an army,” Hugh said. “We need a base.”

She nodded. “You have an army, and I have a base.”

So far they were in agreement.

“Shall we talk terms?” she asked. “What do you need from us?”

“My people will need barracks, rations, and equipment,” he said.

“That’s reasonable,” she said.

“They aren’t farmers. They won’t be tending the fields or milking your cows. They won’t assist your people in daily tasks unless it’s an emergency.”

She raised her eyebrows. “So what will they be doing all day?”

“They will patrol the grounds. They will drill, perform PT, repair and fortify the castle, and take care of any external threats we will face.”

He slipped that ‘we’ in there. The sooner she saw them as allies, the sooner he would get his people fed.

“PT?” she asked.

“Physical training. You are hiring us as employees with specific jobs. We must be free to do those jobs.”

“I’m picturing three hundred people lying about, eating my food, and drinking my beer all day,” Elara said.

“Only when they are off duty. They will patrol the castle and the outer perimeter in shifts, and if they do choose to drink beer in their off hours, they will pay for it. Which brings me to another point. They will need to be paid.”

Elara leaned back. “You expect me to feed them, clothe them, equip them, and pay them?”

“Yes. I expect them to put themselves between you and danger.”

“If we paid each of your people $500 per month, the bill would come to $150,000 per month. If we had that kind of money, I would hire mercenaries. I wouldn’t have to stoop to this farce of a marriage.”

Stoop? Oh really. “When Nez slaughters your people like cattle, and you walk among their corpses, inhaling their blood, you should tell them that.”

Elara drew back. “I’ve taken care of my people until now. I’ll take care of Nez without you.”

“I can take this castle with twenty people,” Hugh said. “I can burn it to the ground, or I can kill all of you and take it.”

She leaned forward, her eyes fixed on him, icy with rage. “Try it.”

He leaned toward her. “I can do this, because my people are professional soldiers. You will treat them like soldiers.”

“We don’t need you.”

“Yes, you do. I saw Nez a month ago. He’s coming.”

The blond Caitlyn appeared in the doorway. Savannah took the pitcher from her hands, waved her off, and set the tea on the table.

Elara’s eyes narrowed. “And I should take your word for it?”

“Yes.”

“The word of a man who betrays his friends?”

“The word of a man who is willing to marry you with all of your baggage. I don’t see a line of suitors outside this door, do you?”

She recoiled. “How do I know you’re not working for Nez?”

“He is the Preceptor of the Iron Dogs!” Stoyan snarled behind him.

Hugh raised his hand. Stoyan snapped his mouth shut.

“Nez wouldn’t bother with subterfuge,” Hugh said. “You’re not worth the trouble. You’re easy pickings.”

She opened her mouth.

“How many of your people can kill a vampire one-on-one?”

She didn’t answer.

“Each one of mine can. They’ve been trained to kill them, because Nez and I spent a decade trying to murder each other. He sent me the head of my childhood friend, and then he and I had coffee in Charlotte a week later. That’s the kind of man Nez is. So snarl all you want, princess. But you will marry me, because you have no choice. You won’t win this fight with farmers. You need a cold ruthless bastard like me, and I’m the only one here.”

They stared at each other in silence.

“It has to be food, equipment, and board for now,” she said. “Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll take it. In return, you’ll let me make modifications and repairs to this place as I see fit. You will finance it, if needed.”

“We will discuss each modification individually,” she said.

“No.”

“I may not have the money.”

“Fine. We will discuss the budget for each modification with the understanding that my requests for materials and labor are to be given first priority.”

“Fine,” she ground out. “We do not tolerate crimes here. While your people are here, they will obey the laws. If one of them murders or rapes one of my people, you will kill that soldier. If you don’t, I will, and believe me, they will wish you had done it.”

She’d caved on the upgrades. Hugh had to give her something. “Agreed. I will need fifteen horses.” They were seventeen mounts short, and horses were damn expensive.

“Done.”

Shit. Should’ve asked for twenty.

“And just to be crystal clear,” Elara said. “This marriage is in name only.”

“Sweetheart, you couldn’t pay me enough.”

Pink touched her tan cheeks. “If you betray us, I’ll make you suffer.”

“We haven’t even married yet, and I’m suffering already.”

“We have that in common,” she snapped.

They both leaned back at the same time. He was marrying an ice harpy. Fantastic. Just fantastic.

Dugas stepped forward, leaned, and spoke into Elara’s ear.

“I’ll need to inspect your troops,” Elara said, her voice precise. “We need to know exactly what we are buying with our food.”

“Fine.” He gave her a lazy smile. “My men will need to inspect your horses and our quarters in the castle.”

“Make your troops available to us first.”

Hugh poured himself a glass of tea and nodded at the doorway. “Look outside your walls.”

She would strangle that man. No, she would do worse.

Elara strode outside of the gate onto the top of the hill where the castle sat. Soldiers filed out of the forest, running three to a row. They wore black uniforms, some in armor, some without. Each carried a large backpack, a bedroll, and weapons. They moved in unison, their feet striking the ground at the same time.

She hadn’t detected them in the forest, which meant they had to have been far behind.

The soldiers began to form a block, eight soldiers in a line. All of that equipment had to weigh at least twenty pounds. Probably a lot more.

“How long have they been running?” she asked and wished she hadn’t. Any show of interest was an opening, and d’Ambray would wedge his big dumb shoulder through it and hold it open.

D’Ambray shrugged, looming next to her, a darkness shaped like a huge man. “From Aberdine.”

“Ten miles?”

“Yes.” He turned to her, his dark blue eyes calm. “Would you like them to run back and here again?”

He was completely serious, she realized.

“No.”

He turned to face the soldiers. They formed four separate blocks, each eight soldiers wide, ten lines deep and froze, like dark statues against the green grass of the lawn.

“Do you want them to rest?” she asked.

“Are you tired?” d’Ambray roared next to her, his voice carrying across the field. She almost jumped.

The three hundred and twenty people roared back in a single voice. “No, Preceptor!”

“They’re ready for your inspection,” Hugh said.

Elara had to admit, they looked impressive. Guilt pinched at her. This wasn’t about d’Ambray’s people, she reminded herself. This was about keeping her people safe. If d’Ambray put his troops in jeopardy, it was on him.

The creaking of a wagon came from behind them. Slowly, carefully, George, Saladin, and Cornwall came into view, leading Dakota, a massive Clydesdale, as he pulled the wagon forward. A brown tarp hid the contents. She knew exactly what was in the cart.

Elara stepped aside to let the wagon pass. D’Ambray didn’t appear concerned.

The three men guided the wagon down the hill, slowly, as if it were made of glass. Dugas walked behind them, silent. Each of the men carried a shotgun.

The wagon came to a stop. Saladin unhitched Dakota and the three men walked away, back toward the castle.

Elara raised her head. “You said each of your people could take a vampire.”

Dugas pulled the tarp off the wagon. An undead sat in a metal cage. The moment the tarp came off, it lunged at the metal bars, its eyes glowing with insane bloodlust.

“Prove it,” Elara said.

D’Ambray nodded at his soldiers. “Pick.”

Elara stared at the rows of soldiers. She was about to sentence one of them to death. A human, even a skilled human, had very little chance against an undead.

She had to do her job. He would put his strongest people in front and in the rear, so she had to pick from the middle. “Fourth row on my left,” she said. “Third soldier.”

“Arend Garcia,” d’Ambray ordered, his voice rolling. “Step forward.”

The third man in the fourth row took a step back, turned, and marched to the edge of the line, turned, marched toward them, turned again… Dead man walking. He was in his late twenties, dark hair cut short, light eyes. Like all of them, he was lean, almost underfed. A scar crossed his face on the right side of his nose, slanting to the side and barely missing his mouth.

He was about to die. If she showed any care at all, d’Ambray would use it to get out of this test.

Arend Garcia came to a stop.

She checked d’Ambray’s face. It might as well have been cut from a rock.

“Kill the undead,” d’Ambray ordered, his voice calm.

Garcia dropped his bedroll and backpack, stepped forward, facing the cage, reached behind his back, and pulled a brutal-looking knife free. It looked like a slimmer version of a machete, its blade black.

Dugas picked up the chain attached to a heavy metal bar securing the trap door release on the cage and backed away. Garcia watched, impassive. The undead hammered itself against the bars.

Damn it. “You’re going to let your man face an undead with a knife?”

D’Ambray glanced at her. “Did you want him to kill it with his bare hands?”

“No.” She barely knew the man, and she already hated him. “At least give him a sword.”

“He doesn’t need a sword.”

Dugas yanked the chain. The bolt slid free.

The undead tore out of the cage, lightning fast, and charged Garcia.

At the last moment, the slender man stepped aside, graceful like a matador, and brought the machete down. The blade cleaved through the undead’s neck. Its head rolled onto the grass. The body ran another ten feet and toppled forward, the stump of the neck digging into the grass.

Elara realized she was holding her breath and let it out.

Garcia pulled a cloth from the pocket of his leathers, wiped the blade, slid it back into its sheath, and stood at parade rest.

“Are you satisfied?” d’Ambray asked.

“Yes.” The word tasted bitter in her mouth. She should’ve been happy. She wanted crack troops and she got them. Elara forced a calm expression over her face like a mask. “Thank you, Preceptor.”

He smiled. He was clearly enjoying every second of this. “Anything for my betrothed.”

She almost punched him.

D’Ambray nodded to Garcia. The man pulled a small knife out of the sheath on his belt. A woman broke ranks and ran up to him. Together they knelt by the fallen undead.

“What are they doing?”

“Harvesting the blood. It stays viable for quite a while when properly stored. I’ll see those barracks now.”

“This way.” Elara turned and led him inside the castle.

“About this marriage,” he said.

“I meant what I said.”

“Good, because I liked the blond that brought us tea.”

The nerve. “My people aren’t slaves, Preceptor. If Caitlyn wants to let you climb on top of her, that’s her business.”

“Excellent. Am I going to get a bedroom, or should we come up with a rotation schedule?”

He was baiting her. He had to be.

“You’re getting your own bedroom, Preceptor.”

“Splendid.”

She couldn’t kill him. She needed his troops. But she really wanted to.

“One last thing. Does the castle have a name?”

“Baile.” She pronounced it the right way, in Irish Gaelic, Balyeh.

Hugh smiled. “Home. I think I’m going to like it here.”

“We’ll do our best to make you feel welcome, Preceptor.”