Otis & Blodwin d'Mourne

~ Colonel Otis d'Mourne (Ret.), Legate of Mourne ~

That monster ruined everything. If Otis had known he was bringing ruin to his house by allowing it to live, he would have killed it long before it was born. It wouldn't matter if Sybil hated him for it; at least she'd be alive. Their two older children would have had their mother. With Sybil on the battlefield, Simon would have come out of Garem-Da alive. Restoration wouldn't be lost. His lost domain of Willowrun wouldn't be neck-deep in monsters, and he wouldn't be in debt.

So much ruin. He begged her not to have that baby, and she did it anyway. She made him promise to provide for the child, no matter what. It was like she knew that baby would destroy them, but she chose to have it anyway.

Letters were scattered across his desk, but he couldn't see them beyond his clenched fists. They were addressed to Legate d'Mourne, but they were meant for someone else. They asked him to attend a "youth battle festival" in an eastern township so obscure that Otis had to look it up. They offered special bounties on winter hunts. They offered him gold to make divine figures. One was a fawning self-introduction from a magical researcher. A letter from a town in Blaxland offered him a deputy position, with "the eventual prospect of promotion to Legate." The letters were meant for the monster — that poisoned offspring who nearly killed him.

As temporary legate, the brat had made thoughtless changes in the name of progress. He'd galavanted all over the place, showing off his minuscule amount of power as if it meant something. He'd given townsfolk a twisted notion of what a legate could or should do. And he'd gone all-in on a plan to increase production, a scheme that wasted precious capital. It would be better used to pay down Otis's debts.

He was man enough to admit his failings. He had tried to kill the child on impulse, using a flimsy legal pretext and without proper preparation. He'd been warned about the little terror's precocious talent for violence, and he hadn't listened. The brat walked into his office prepared to fight, and Otis hadn't noticed: he was too busy gloating. Next time, he would treat the monster like a proper enemy and gloat after the killing was done.

"Are you brooding again?" Otis's mood eased a little when Blodwin entered the office. She wore a lightweight dress cinched close to her figure, and her purple hair was piled high off her neck against the heat. She lifted one of the letters by its corner, as if it were dirty.

"I see the problem." She scooped the loose papers into a single pile and dropped them onto the couch. "I'll vet these and give you the ones that matter. Later. Now that your desk is clear," she came around to his side and parked herself on the desk's surface and pulled him close to her. She was wearing the perfume he liked, a white linen scent paired with something rich and earthy, with hints of gray amber. Fingers in his hair smoothed away the tension he didn't know he was holding. Otis tipped his head forward until it leaned against his new wife's chest. She massaged his neck and upper back, pushing away his black mood.

Blodwin was good at smoothing things over. Somehow, she bought off the boy for a song and sent him packing. Cecilia was at a school where she could hunt for a fiancé to replace the permanently maimed Kistur. She was no replacement for Sybil, but she had her virtues.

Close like this, he was reminded of her many physical charms. He felt her body's heat through the thin summerweight dress, inviting him to touch. He was about to embrace her, but there was a sound at the door.

"Pardon the interruption, Colonel. Curator Cushway is here."

Blodwin smoothed his hair before moving to the couch, smiling coyly. By the time the new curator entered, she was busy sorting mail into piles.

Like so many of his kind, the new paper-pusher was soft and squint-eyed. Cushway handed over his letter of appointment from the governor, introduced himself, thanked the legate for the apartment that came with the new position (accommodations the township was required to provide), and promised to take up his post immediately.

Otis set aside the paper for later filing. "The highest priority is selling the new farm machinery before it loses too much of its value."

"That's an interesting move, Legate d'Mourne. Her Excellency has taken an interest in your expansion plans. What will you do with the recovered capital?"

"Pay off debts."

"I wasn't aware the township had much debt."

"The township doesn't, but the legate does."

Cushway's eyes bulged, and he stuttered his next words, caught between wanting to start their relationship well and a bean-counter's innate desire not to do anything that might prove troublesome. "T-t-that's g-g-going to be d-d-difficult to j-justify."

"Find a way. That's your job."

"N-no! It's the exact opposite of my job!" The man found his spine. "I'm supposed to keep you out of l-legal t-trouble, n-not drop you into it!" He took a deep breath to steady himself and was about to say something else, but Otis interrupted him.

"This is my township, and that's my money. The proxy robbed me and spent his ill-gotten gains on this ridiculous expansion we can't possibly sustain. Find a legal way to claw the money back."

"I'll look into it." Curator Cushway wrung his hands. "Is there anything else?"

"That'll do for now. Let's talk again when you've settled in. I'm sure there is much to go over."

When the nervous man was gone, Otis looked to his new wife. "Well?"

"He looks weak, but he's a rule-follower down to his core. Even if you find something to blackmail him with, pushing him into anything illegal is a risk. You'd have to break him gradually."

"Remind me why you won't be my curator?"

"Because curators are loyal to the governor, and my loyalty is to you. I refuse to split myself in half." She selected one letter from her pile and held it out to him. "There might be a better way to get money than bullying sad little administrators. Disford has a monster problem. It sounds big."

He read the letter about several kinds of monstrous animals roaming around Fingers Lake. They weren't coming near the town yet, but they would be a major problem if they weren't handled soon. "They want the brat."

"So? They'll get someone better. What are they going to do, turn you away? You're a hundred times the hunter he was, and you can bring a competent team. Even after the shares, it should net a decent amount. And," she said invitingly, "where there are monsters, there are vents."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

"And where there's vents, there's crystals." If he picked the right team and could find the vent, he could sell the crystal on the black market instead of handing it over to the Empire for a lousy fraction of its worth. He was drawn to the idea, but he was still unsure.

"Darling, please don't take this the wrong way, but you're not a very good behind-the-desk legate. You're more of a ride-the-countryside-and-slay-monsters legate. Now that the curator's here, you can do what you were meant to do. Go. Be in your element for a while. You'll feel better."

She put a smaller stack on his desk. "Two notices. Nothing actionable. I'll dispose of the trash." She left the room with swaying hips, taking the offensive letters with her.

~ Blodwin d'Mourne ~

Blodwin had her own office, adjacent to her bedroom on the second floor. Once the door was closed, she re-read the letters intended for the dispossessed son, made observations in a notebook, and stashed everything in her desk. It was a lady's desk of a certain vintage, pulled from the mansion's extensive attic collection of clothes and furniture from generations gone by. She selected this one in particular because, in those days, a lady's desk was not worthy of the designation without beautiful inlays and at least one secret compartment. It took her hours of searching to find the hidden compartment, but that only made the discovery that much more dear.

If Otis knew she was building a file on his disavowed son, he would get the wrong idea. Taylor, as he was now called, was both a threat and a potential ally. When Otis and his latest favorite crony, Kistur, tried to ambush Taylor, the boy crushed them both in a shocking display of ready force. Then, he used his healing skills to permanently maim Kistur. Why did he cripple the underling and leave the boss whole? Maybe because Kistur used to be his friend. That act, as much as anything else about him, made him a fascinating and fearful subject of study.

Taylor still had ties to Mourne, so he might be persuaded to help the township if it were in trouble. But if he ever decided to treat her new family as enemies, he wouldn't bother with moralizing speeches or fair fights. He would punish them as he punished Kistur: thoroughly and permanently.

She wasn't going to allow that to happen, least of all through inattention on her part. Blodwin had been IEF-adjacent for her entire life. She was an expeditionary child and had followed her parents from station to station until they died in Restoration. She knew the wives and widows of every officer in her husband's division, living and dead. And, with so many families demobilized to their home provinces, her resources were placed all over the Empire.

Blodwin wrote letters for the remainder of the day, polite and chatty things, spreading gossip about the colonel's exiled son, with a request on the side to keep a weather eye out for masked boys of unusual ability. She was concerned for her unfortunate stepson, who, through no serious fault of his own, had been cast out of his family. When she gave the pile of letters to their butler for posting, she added a new instruction. Henceforth, Blodwin would screen the master's letters and weed out anything intended for his disowned son.

The less Otis thought about Taylor, the better. The disastrous fight was a capstone on a mountain of disasters. Her husband was worse than humiliated: the incident had damaged his confidence. He hadn't been to her bed in weeks, and that made it impossible to produce a child. Blodwin had lived through one catastrophe after another and considered herself lucky to land where she was today. But her position would never be secure until she had a d'Mourne baby boy in her arms.

Otis spent the next two days gathering his forces from among his demobilized soldiers living in the area. A few were native to Mourne, while the remainder were recruited from Midway and nearby hamlets. He sent Blodwin a letter from Disford the day the hunt commenced, and she didn't hear from him again for ten days. That wasn't unusual for a monster hunt, and she was happy to have him out of the house while she oversaw repairs and the last stage of a long remodelling job. The hated proxy had done at least one thing right, and that was turning a dreary, dilapidated pile into a proper home.

What she didn't appreciate was how her husband returned. The first she heard about him was a message from Curator Cushway begging her to come to town and wrangle the colonel. He and his ex-IEF buddies had taken over one of the taverns.

She didn't wait for the carriage to be readied, but took to her saddle and rode into town to find the tavern empty except for her husband and his little hunting force. They had taken a massive taxidermied wyvern head off the wall and placed it on the ground. They took turns trying to cut it with their weapons, and every failure meant the attacker had to drink. With the men so drunk, and the giant reptilian head almost undamaged, she suspected foul play. Otis probably buffed the dead wyvern to keep everyone drinking.

"Hello, husband," she said archly.

He gave a toothy, boyish grin, much like his old self. "Am I in trouble?"

She laughed boldly, "I got impatient. There I was, in that big house, all alone, waiting for my husband, and he's been here for hours, swinging his weapon all over the place without me."

Crude laughter broke from the group. There were only seven of them, but they were rowdy enough for twenty.

She found the only employee brave enough to stick around, and that was the barkeep. He didn't seem to mind them taking swings at his mascot, but eyed the spilled ale and toppled furniture with a disgruntled frown.

She took Otis's hand in hers and pulled, while he pretended to resist. "Got any rooms here?" she asked the barman.

The barkeep threw her a key tied to a wooden dowel with a number on it, and she pulled her husband upstairs. Filled with pride in his many kills and flush with cash, he was much more willing than he had been lately. When she got him alone, she didn't tell him he'd missed her best time to get pregnant by two days, or urge him to do his best. Nothing could be worse for a man's desire.

"Welcome home," she said, while loosening his belt. "I missed you."

By the time she descended to the tavern, the party had dispersed, and two of the employees had returned. They were busy sweeping up while the barman hoisted the wyvern head aloft with a rope and pulley. It seemed this wasn't the first time it had weathered such treatment. The head was large enough to swallow a grown human whole, with enough room left over for an arc or two. The bartender held it up while his helpers pushed it back onto its mount with long poles, then tied off the rope. Blodwin wondered why he didn't hide the mechanism, since it practically invited mischief.

"What're you drinking?"

"Do you have cold tea?"

His smile was slightly lopsided. There was something familiar about him, but she couldn't remember right away where she had seen his face. "We have ice boxes in Mourne. We're not that far out in the sticks."

"Then iced tea would be perfect."

She noticed his hair color while he was bent over his work, the same dark blue as her husband's. He placed a glass filled with ice and strong tea in front of her. "This one's on the house."

Customers started coming in as fieldhands and laborers gathered for their evening drink. About the time they were finished, the shopkeepers and government workers would take their turn. For a brief half hour, the tavern would fill to capacity as the classes mingled freely. A restaurant next door had a window into the room, where food flowed one way, while coins and dirty dishes flowed the other. She watched the barman furtively over her drink as he served up porters, whiskeys, ciders, and the occasional glass of wine.

Once she saw it, she couldn't see anything else. Her husband's face on another man. The eyes were a different color, and the nose wasn't quite the same, but the resemblance was there. He was in his twenties, a few years older than Otis's favored son would have been, if the retreat from Garem-Da hadn't taken his life. What was true for most men was doubly so for men with any kind of power: they couldn't keep it in their pants, and they were too lazy to wander very far from home. He could be the colonel's son. Or his half-brother. Either way, the two men had to be closely related.

Otis came down after he had rested. Not a hair was out of place, and his clothes were neatly pressed, a product of his Commander class's Bearing skill. Most people in the room wouldn't guess he'd been sweaty and semi-comatose not half an hour ago. "For the mess we made," he said, leaving double-eagle silver coins on the bar. No light of recognition lit the colonel's face, perhaps because the barman kept his eyes down.

Otis glanced at her and offered his arm to walk her through the gathering patrons. The distance he kept was polite, but the way he looked at her was anything but genteel. This was Otis at his best: generous, fun, and passionate. It was not an everyday mood for him, and the good days had grown scarcer since Simon's death.

Blodwin would take as many good days as she could get.

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