The duke smiled coldly. “You may rest assured, I would do the academy... justice.”
The captain nodded. “But one moment, Lady Jess.”
And shortly thereafter, Jess headed to the disciplinarian's office. She had kept her mail shirt tightly secured underneath her gentleman's attire because one just never knew, and was happy to take the captain's hint and wear the title of dame, permitting her by precedent and protocol to wear the blade presently on her hip. Rulia, similarly attired, kept stride but a step behind. Duke Smida and his men kept a prudent distance away, lest they unnecessarily startle their prey.
Within moments they were before the head disciplinarian's office, where the captain had assured her Lady Grimsly was presently working, having ordered the captain to report to her throughout the night regarding the security of the gala. One look into Jess's eyes and the captain had chuckled ruefully, declaring that he would make an early night of it. Jess had called the man friend then, before she and the duke proceeded to the very rooms she stood outside of now.
Jess turned to exchange nods with the coldly smiling duke. “You understand, Jessica, this begins and ends here.”
“I do,” Jess said, both of them gazing at the sacks Jess held. “Let's see this through.”
25
With a single silent request, the door opened softly at her touch, the metal lock popping into her hand, silent as a cat's gaze. Jess quietly padded within the dim chambers that served as the head disciplinarian's office, the lady in question wearing her proctor uniform, hair coiled in a tight bun, a single silver pin giving evidence of her status within the school. She was gazing intently at a ledger as she wrote what looked to be correspondence, and Jess found herself allowing the head disciplinarian a few precious moments of peace before igniting her fury to a hot boil, knowing Lady Grimsly would never know peace again.
First though, to draw out her prey.
With but a single surge of will the banked coals in the fireplace roared to life. For though Jess had no control over the elements, she reminded the coals how good it felt to bask in the warmth before being returned to soil once more as rich ashes, the coals more than willing to blaze for the sheer joy of it, even as Jess basked in their glow.
Lady Grimsly winced in the sudden flare of light, blinking, before lurching back in her chair with a start as she caught sight of Jess, lips pursing into a furious grimace. “What are you doing here?” Words slipping from surprised lips as the lady strove to collect herself, and it was as if Jess could sense the madly spinning wheels of Grimsly's mind, even as she glared at Jess with ill-concealed hate.
Jess felt a curious roar tremble through her, even as she held her hands behind her back, as a proper student supplicant was expected to, such that contents of her hands and the shifted hilt of her sword were all out of casual sight.
“I decided, Lady Grimsly, that I have had enough of playing the workhorse. I will happily apologize for my insolence, even in front of Lady Aislin, even in front of the school entire. Just, please, Lady Grimsly, let me return to class. Let me wear dresses again and attend the dances. No noble woman should be subjected to these humiliations.”
Lady Grimsly's lips curled into a cruel smile. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you dared to challenge my staff. Before you dared to challenge my authority! You, a mere student here on probation, who has been found guilty of engaging in foul rites, partaking of the most heinous of crimes.” Grimsly's eyes gloated, even as Jess shivered, despite herself. “Oh yes, Calenbry wench. We know it, every sordid detail of your vile blasphemies. The question, mule, is no longer whether or not you can be made into a fit lady, but rather can you at least be made into a beast worthy of serving her betters, or should you simply be executed for the vile little maggot you are! You, who would dare to challenge the rightful authority of king and Crown!”
Grimsly slammed her stiffened leather baton upon the tabletop with a resounding crack, glaring at Jess once more. “I gave you an assignment, mule, and I expect you to carry it out! Why have you not left for the inn, as you were instructed to?”
Jess took a deep breath. “I thought, my lady, that since the packs were filled with simple millet, that it was just another one of your tests. Another one of your... humiliations. I thought that if I came here and simply apologized, perhaps you would forgive me and let me join the gala?”
With that Jess tossed the horse packs that had indeed been filled with millet, each sack that Vilsetch had sliced open stuffed back inside, the silken sack still held in her left hand positioned subtly below the lip of the great desk, so as to be out of Lady Grimsly's casual line of sight.
The woman paled with horrified disbelief as trembling hands pulled out the sliced open sacks of simple soldier's rations, the rich scents of the grains soon permeating the room.
Grimsly looked on the verge of collapse, even as she glared at Jess with undisguised fury. "What did you do, you bloody fool? Where are the packages you are to deliver? Do not think you will get away with this, you damned cavorting harlot!" She cracked her baton once more against the hardwood. "You will tell me what you have done with the packages you were to deliver, or I shall make sure that the Council destroys you as an unfit, unruly beast; your entire family executed for treason against the Crown!"
She seethed with outrage, her Malice hitting Jess like a wave.
It was all Jess could do to hold her trembling limbs still.
A tremor the head disciplinarian mistook for fear.
Grey eyes peered knowingly into Jess's own, lips worming into a vicious smile. "That is right, harlot. I hold the fate of your entire family in my hands. Did you forget that, you stupid little fool? Are you ready to beg, now? Beg for me to extend you the barest measure of leniency?" Her eyes flashed. "Unless you want to see your entire family on the chopping block, gazing back at you even as the headsman's axe falls, you will return to me those packages!"
Jess forced herself to make at trembling nod. “My lover and I discussed it, you know. We knew there was something to those herbs you kept hidden from everyone at the school. We know how popular tincture of poppy has become in certain circles.” She gazed coolly at the furious woman before her. “You were using us as mules, having us deliver your poppy extract and take all the risk, while you took all the profit.”
Jess let the words hang in the air, the disciplinarian trembling with renewed fury.
"We'll split it with you," Jess said, before the woman could shout her down. "We'll split the profits on the poppy fifty-fifty. Then we will deliver it."
Grimsly gazed at Jess with furious disbelief. "You stupid fool. You idiot of a girl! Your family claims you to be a gifted horticulturist? Those packets weren't poppy! And if you don't return them to me right now, I swear by all that's unholy that I will have the king's own ear by week's end, and I will see you put down!"
Jess trembled like a girl cowed and beaten at last. “All right,” she said. “All right, Lady Grimsly. I guess you win.”
Solemnly, Jess put several waxen packets of hemlock, deathweed, and widowsbane before the head disciplinarian, who gave a cool nod, clearly recognizing them, before stepping back from her table, as if to distance herself from the poison. “Very good. You can follow the simplest instructions, at least. Now complete your assignment, deliver those flower seeds to your betters, and perhaps, just perhaps, the headmistress and I will see fit to forgive you, and allow you to return to classes once more.”
Jess smiled. “Oh, I'm afraid that will be quite impossible, Grimsly.”
The noblewoman's features froze. Her face was a mixture of fear and fury. “Explain yourself at once, Jessica de Calenbry!” she snapped.
Jess's laughter was cold and dark. When the lady before her withdrew a thin wand of bone, Jess's cheeks already burned with the kiss of steel on flesh, her sword drawn with a Delver's speed, now hissing with her own hot blood upon the blade.
“I am afraid, Lady Grimsly, that I already kept that particular appoin
tment. Unfortunately for you, the captain leading the knights laying in ambush was quite happy to make alternate arrangements with me in the selling of your poisons, as I promised him and his men a far larger cut of the profits, once I took over harvesting them.”
"No!" Grimsly snarled. "There is no way he would betray a sister for one of your lot, guttersnipe. This conversation is over, Calenbry whore, and when I am done with you, you will be writhing in Hell!" With that Grimsly waved her wand as she uttered an awful curse that seemed to hover in the air, much as Vilsetch's magics had done, though magnified many times over, the wand in hand amplifying her spell.
Jess smiled coldly, understanding at once the source of Grimsly's terrible power, even as her blood covered blade cut viciously through the air.
A crimson flash of light, an agonized scream echoing through the chamber. Jess shivered with the rush of vile magics pouring into her.
"No! There is no way you could do that, I would have been told!" The head disciplinarian hissed, even as she lurched with the backlash of her magics being ruptured to ash and shattered dreams.
"There are a great many things that your masters apparently forgot to tell you, Lady Grimsly," Jess mocked. "But don't feel too bad. I will let you face your co-conspirator, and ask him whatever you like."
The noblewoman swallowed and backed away on trembling feet even as Jess, humming a happy little tune about madness and death to her enemies, slowly pulled out the final contents of her sack.
Lady Grimsly screamed.
And even as the panicked woman stumbled back, wand dropped, reflexively catching the head of the former knight Vilsetch, recognizable even with the top of his forehead neatly cleaved free, Jess had snatched up Grimsly's wand only to snap it in twain, laughing at Grimsly's horrified wail as the dark energies flooded into her, sending her senses ablaze with the sweet, forbidden power trapped within.
“By all the gods, what have you done? That artifact was priceless!”
Jess shook her head. “No, diabolist.” Grimsly paled and flinched at that. “It was delicious.”
Dark discordant laughter rang from Jess's lips, even as she slammed Grimsly back down upon her chair, pausing only to sheathe her blade before relaxing her will on the door, it flying open to disgorge Duke Smida himself, glaring furiously at a suddenly trembling Lady Grimsly, his handful of fully armed and armored knights entering but a moment later, all of them with blades drawn.
"Engaging in dark acts, Lady Grimsly? Conspiring with my own captain to butcher allies to my house, risking war with the Calenbrys and the death of my own men?" Duke Smida's gaze was hard as stone, his lips curling into a snarl of his own. "You will pay a steep price for your transgressions, woman."
Lady Grimsly shook with terror. “My lord, please, you must understand. I had no choice, Vilsetch forced by hand!”
Jess chuckled coldly. "And twice over are you the fool, Grimsly. For we never said his name aloud. The fact you that have named that battered head gazing at you even now with the horror of death is a promise of sorts, don't you think? A promise of the fate you shall soon be sharing with your former accomplice, no?"
A ghastly pallor overtook the head disciplinarian's features. She trembled so badly she could barely sit straight, let alone stand. “Please, Lady Jessica, please understand! I was wroth with you, yes, but angry words aside, I had intended no such thing. No foul play at all! You were just to be captured with poppy tincture on you, just as you had offered to profit from! No great crime that, yes? And Duke Smida, Duke Smida was in it from the very beginning, don't you see?”
Her eyes pled. Jess sensed no deception in that final statement, at least. She grimaced and looked away, recalling the absolute Malice she had sensed from her enemy, just seconds before.
Duke Smida stiffened, all the knights present gazing coolly at the trio.
“Lady Jessica,” Grimsly sobbed, her voice an anxious wail. “Please don't leave me here! I swear this is true, I swear this was all his plan, to rescue you from your own folly, his son your just resolution, and all your sins wiped away! The Council never to trouble your clan again!”
Jess's smile turned sad, even as she met the gaze of a humbled Duke Smida, who grimaced, but did not deny it. He took a deep breath, gaze almost imploring, even as his blade tip was aimed for Lady Grimsly. “I had hoped, perhaps, you might find favor with my son,” he offered at last.
Jess's smile was strangely gentle. "Johann is a fine boy. Earnest and sweet. I was quite charmed by his enthusiasm on the carriage ride back, and perhaps I shall ask him to dance with me, one day. At least now I know why he looks so familiar to me."
Duke Smida smiled grimly at that. “And to think, you were my daughter's ally in this pit of vipers, before our paths had even crossed.”
Jess nodded. "Fear not, Your Grace. It is just as you said. It begins here and it ends here, and we never mention this night ever again."
“Lady Jess, please... don't leave me,” Lady Grimsly desperately called, eyes lighting up in anxious hope as Jess looked back. “I will tell you what, my dear. Go right quick to the headmistress's office, and tell her straight away that our dear Duke Smida has arrived. She will know to set up accommodations and the choicest gifts as well, and we shall consider the slate wiped clean, young Jessica!”
Jess glared at the trembling woman. "Perhaps I would take pity on you, if your pleading eyes had shown even a glimmer of compassion for anyone besides yourself. But you didn't stuff my packs with poppy tincture so that the duke could entice me to marry his son. No, Grimsly. You were so infected with spite for me that you set me up with packages of vile toxins, and forged an alliance with Captain Vilsetch behind the duke's back, all to see me dead for poison smuggling, and my family executed for treason! And I would not put it past you, not at all past you, if your vile henchman had intended to plant those very packets on my family estates, just to see your deed fully through."
And what horrified Jess beyond all else was the way the woman flinched. Her shots in the dark had all found their marks, her worst fears confirmed. It was not enough to arrange for her own death, her enemies had intended for Jess's entire family to be executed before Council and Crown.
Jess squeezed her eyes shut, clenching her fists together even as blackest fury began to consume her. She turned her gaze to a solemn Duke Smida. “Do what you see fit, Your Grace. I think it's time I had a little chat with the headmistress of this vile den.”
Duke Smida flashed a cold smile. “Do what you must. I know nothing. And if dark rumors persist in Council, know that I will have no part in them.”
Jess nodded. "Our dear Lady Grimsly does savor beating her girls to within an inch of their lives. She tried desperately to break me with her baton, though she failed. I wonder how she will like it, when the tables are turned?"
Lady Grimsly turned to gaze imploringly at the pitiless gaze of the lord before her. “Please, Duke Smida, have mercy, I beg of you...”
With that Jess left, the duke's cold words and Grimly's increasingly desperate pleas fading to the background as Jess closed the now lockless door behind her, a solemn-faced Rulia stepping forward to clasp her hand.
“I heard every word. And don't worry, not a soul has been down these corridors, what with the gala upstairs.” Jess could feel Rulia's measuring gaze upon her. “Jess, what's our plan?”
Jess turned to her lover. "We get my sister. We confront this headmistress. It is time, dear one, that we ceased reacting to the whims of others, ceased dancing to their tune. Better by far, I think, that we seize the Vor, and claim the initiative for ourselves."
Rulia chuckled softly as they quickly made their way from the lower cellars to the gala proper, the corridors to the front entrance all but deserted. "You make it sound like it's war. And I see your sister and our dear friend Juliana gossiping just at the outskirts of the dancing. And oh, I do believe that is Johann approaching. Frankly, I'm glad to see a smiling face. I could almost grow fond of the lad."
Je
ss nodded and smiled. “The same eyes, the same shy, friendly nature, even the same hair. And here she was playing the role of lesser lady.”
Rulia sighed. “And dealing with Angelica's intolerable bile the whole time, when if she had just made her rank known...”
"It would have been worse for her. Angelica and those like her would have hated her all the more," Jess said. "Alternatively, she could have easily gotten herself a coterie of sycophants to wall off the detractors even as she learned nothing about what people really thought of her, nor learned how to stand on her own two feet." Jess sighed. "This route is harder, but assuming it doesn't break her, she is, I suspect, growing stronger for it. Even if by some crazy twist she now shares quarters with my lover at night, all for a safe place to sleep."
Rulia chuckled softly. “There is that.”
"Jess!" Apple gave a relieved smile, before seeing the expression on her sister's face. "Oh Jess, what did you do?"
Jess turned to her sister. “Come, Apple. Let us leave Juliana in the care of her more than competent brother, who I see has already caught the eye of a few hungry cats no doubt sensing the rich prize entering their territory.”
Juliana looked, if anything, utterly mortified as her brother told her in grandiose detail of his recent adventure, and for all that he said not a word as to her own station, their appearances were too similar for conclusions not to be drawn by savvy players, making it clear both that Juliana was a woman of import, and that her brother was very much available.
Jess said, "I think our friends will be quite busy, and not for want of company. Now, it is time for us to have a talk with the dear headmistress. There are some things we need to straighten out, and no better time, I think, than the present."
Faerie's Champion Page 22