He hadn’t seen anyone else on the street, but he could make some guesses in that regard. “Only the regular watch patrols are visible then,” he observed out loud. The Driven would be hidden.
“Yes, milord.”
“Sir is good enough for me, Lieutenant,” Will informed him. “My last official rank was ‘corporal’ and these days I’m just a royal-in-law. I don’t hold any titles.”
“Very good, sir. Where are we heading?”
“Just get me to the gates of Wurthaven. You can return here after that.” Lifting one crutch, he pointed in the direction he was going, then began to move. The men fell in around him. As they walked, he asked, “Tell me about last night. Something bad must have happened for His Majesty to have put a curfew in place.” Of course, he had been in the middle of his own struggle to survive, but he didn’t know what might have happened elsewhere in the city.
“Felt like the whole damn city went mad,” said one of the watch patrollers. A second later the man added a belated, “Sir.”
“I’ll tell it, Sims,” said the lieutenant. “Three homes were burned, and Father Latimer was found brutally murdered.”
Father Latimer was the high priest for the Church of the Holy Mother, the man who had performed Will’s own wedding ceremony. He could hardly believe his ears. “Was he?”
“All I know is hearsay,” admitted the officer. “But his body was cremated, on the spot, if that’s any clue for you.”
“And the homes?”
“They wasn’t random,” said Dan. “One was the high priest’s house, but the other two belonged to high ranking nobles. Lord Tintabel’s home was ransacked and his family murdered before the house was set afire. And Lord Nerrow’s place was—”
“Excuse me, did you say Lord Nerrow?” Will’s heart had frozen in his chest.
“Yes sir, the baron, Mark Nerrow. His home was vandalized and set on fire. Apparently, he put up a fight first, though. It wasn’t the first attempt, so he was ready for them. Still, it didn’t keep them from burning the place down around his ears.”
Will felt as if he was walking through a tunnel, for the officer’s words sounded as though they were echoing from miles away. “Did his family…?”
“Oh, they was all fine, sir. Do you know them? I should have said that first. Apparently, he held them off for a while, then they retreated inside. He had some sort of fortified basement ready. The fiends couldn’t get to him. After the fire burned out, they all emerged safe and sound this morning.”
The heavy lump in his chest eased slightly. “Where are they now?”
“I dunno, sir. Wherever rich people go when their houses burn down, I suppose. They might be at the palace.”
That made sense to Will, though he wished he could have offered his own home to them. But he’d been too busy nearly being murdered himself, and then he’d spent the day traveling through Hell and drinking with trolls. My life is beyond weird, he thought. “Any idea why those people in particular were targeted?”
“Nothing official,” said the lieutenant. “But my personal theory is that the Prophet is trying to destroy our morale.”
“The Prophet? He’s in no position to start a war. He lost most of his army recently. It will take years before he can afford to antagonize Terabinia,” argued Will. If anything, Lognion was preparing to attack Darrow soon.
“Maybe the Shimerans then?” suggested the officer. “Demons and vampires are about the same thing, aren’t they?”
Clearly, he wasn’t one of Wurthaven’s brightest graduates, thought Will, then he shook his head. “No, they’re entirely different.”
“Well, anyway, whoever it is that started all this, it seems to me they want to demoralize the people. That’s why they’ve gone after popular figures, well, except for Lord Tintabel. He wasn’t known for much aside from his paintings, but the priest and Lady Nerrow were obvious targets.”
That caught his attention. “Lady Nerrow? Is the baroness popular?”
“Not the baroness, sir, her daughter Laina. She’s probably the most popular person in all of Cerria right now. If something happened to her, I don’t know what people would do.”
That was news to him. “I don’t understand.”
“Have you been living under a rock, sir? Lady Nerrow championed the Mother’s Widows and Orphans charity after the Prophet attacked, and she was only a girl then. She’s just barely reached her majority but she’s already famous. She’s out at every event in the city, shaming the rich into paying up to provide for the poor and disadvantaged. If it weren’t for her, a lot of people would have starved, and I don’t just mean those in the city. Hell, she was in Branscombe not long after the Darrowans attacked, bringing supplies and aid for the citizens of Barrowden and Branscombe.”
Will was flabbergasted, but there was no mistaking the tone of reverence in Dan Ramfeld’s voice. The man truly believed that Laina Nerrow was some sort of merciful lady sent to rescue the people from misery and squalor. Will remembered Laina’s visit to Branscombe, and as far as he knew her part of the trip had merely been as company for her father. How could he have been so completely unaware?
I was a little focused on not dying in the war, thought Will. Still, he hadn’t seen anything but a spoiled nobleman’s brat. Was it really possible that his half-sister was more than that? It was hard for him to credit, but it did explain why Laina had been a target for the vampires. She was sixteen when the Prophet’s army invaded Barrowden. How could she possibly have become a public figure and a driving force behind a widow’s charity?
Then again, maybe she had been Selene’s best friend for more reasons than the fact that they grew up together. Maybe his wife had known a different Laina than the spoiled asshole that Will had always interacted with. As far as he knew, Selene had always been big on helping people—was that trait what had connected the two women?
“Well fuck me sideways,” muttered Will. “It turns out I’m the judgmental asshole.”
“Beg your pardon, sir?” asked the lieutenant.
It was pure chance that Will happened to look over at the man at just that moment. Otherwise things might have gone very differently. They were walking along a dark portion of road, with barely enough light to see where to put their feet. Naturally, that wasn’t a problem for Will, but the lighting made it impossible for the men to see what was racing toward them from a side alley.
The vampire was mere feet from where the sorcerer stood to Will’s right, and it was moving at full speed, rushing toward the man like an evil wind. Will didn’t even have time to blink. His point-defense shield stopped the fiend in its tracks with the crack of bones breaking. His shield vanished, and a force-lance removed the creature’s head.