Jean had two sets of problems on his return to Velois. The first, and outwardly the most important, was securing the county of Red Rock and making it economically viable again.

  The former dynasty was in decline for several decades- which he now knew with some certainty must have been the result of vampyric influence over them. They were given to overindulgence and overtaxed their peasants. The same land had been worked too hard for years, and now the soil was exhausted.

  The soldiers were lax in their training, and their equipment was decades old, both of which proved a boon to Jean’s conquest of the territory. There was only a single cannon in the castle, and not one more across the entire county. However, this also meant the rural areas were rife with banditry.

  There were still some good metal workers and gem cutters in the townships. Although they had also recently been extorted to feed their lord’s unabated desire for finery, which went undimmed by his mounting debts.

  The first thing Jean did after taking power was to abolish all tax collecting on the peasants, at least until they were growing enough food to reasonably feed themselves again. It would give the farmers breathing space to allow the most impoverished fields to lie fallow for a time. This also had the added benefit of making him extremely popular, and assured that he would face no local revolts to his new administration of the province. Then his forces pursued and routed the largest bandit gangs, and he put forth a generous bounty for outlaws to keep them from reorganizing.

  He wrote off the county’s debts to himself, and personally paid off all the foreign creditors out of his own coffers. Combined with the swiftness of the victory, this meant there was very little external opposition to the annexation. The Margrave had no true allies in Teutonia, only fellow pawns to undead masters, and those were presently arming themselves against the civil disorder everyone was worried would soon develop into all-out war.

  The King of Velois was outraged. But as he was always outraged by everything Jean did, and as it was already much too late to prevent anything, that outrage meant little.

  Added to everything else, he was also financing a major road and bridge building campaign to connect these new lands with his old demesne, and keep excess labor occupied while the soil recovered. All this meant Jean was spending money in the endeavor hand over fist so far.

  In the long term though, he expected future profits would well outweigh his present expenses. In fact, he found that the most deprived regions often experienced the greatest economic boons when flooded with gold.

  For decades, some reckless merchants had taken the long northern route through the foothills of the Star Mountains, risking the poor roads and highwaymen, seeking to skirt his territory and thus avoid his tolls. With this fortress in his possession and the surrounding communities garrisoned, Jean now completed his control of the entire Umbrian gap between the Star and Ruby Mountains, and that was no longer an option.

  There was a lot of virgin land for farms going untilled because the taxation had been too high for farmers to afford expanding. He intended to use the new roads to make those places more accessible. The Fer-Mark was already self-sufficient in food, with the expansion of agriculture here he hoped to provide enough for substantial exports.

  The existing jewelry makers would be a good outlet for the raw product of his own copper mines. The metal working shops could be expanded to work more practical iron goods; swords, plow sheers, and that sort of thing.

  Jean was not the only one who saw things that way. Representatives from the Landtag were only too eager to join him as co-investors. For as much fuss as they put up over accepting the Lord-Mayor of Hollowstone as one of their number several years ago—another military protectorate of the Fer-Mark—they were now very eager to repeat the procedure with a new Lord-Mayor of Red Rock.

  Merchants were always quick to be self-satisfied in the knowledge that one must possess finances to forge cannons. They were prone to forget that cannons held a gravity to them, and that a sufficient critical mass of them eventually becomes strong enough to seek out alternative routes of financing, even were the first to fail.

  Everything worked out almost perfectly on that front. Soon he would have two members of the Landtag voluntarily trading their gold for the protection of his cannons, while thinking they had come away with the better deal, because they were not the ones responsible for firing the cannons themselves.

  Jean never let himself forget that the hands firing the cannons were also those that aimed them.

  The second matter on his mind, and personally the most distressing to him, was that Vero had been very sullen and withdrawn. She was almost always lingering very near to him, although she refused to speak about anything that was really bothering her, the way she always did when she was melancholic.

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  For the first few weeks, she needed time for her contraceptives to reassert themselves on her humors. Then, the night they spent at the residence of the Lord-Mayor of Hollowstone, they made love together for the first time since they last parted.

  Vero turned away from him and he mounted her from behind. That was always the way she preferred it, but it hurt Jean that she refused to look at him.

  They continued to fornicate frequently from that time on, at morning, and night, and also more often than that. But she was always holding something back from him, even when they were alone together. Even reunited at last, he could feel the void between them. The way she clung to him, Jean was certain Vero felt it as well, yet neither of them had yet found a means to bridge it.

  He suspected she was using sex to protect herself when they came too near to her real feelings about something. He hoped that all she needed was time and some affection. She resented being confined as much as he did, so he was careful not to press her too hard.

  Jean was certain that was the mistake he had made before, and he never allowed himself to make the same mistake more than once.

  Her appetite was at least returned, and she was filling out again after her prison emaciation. He considered that a positive development. A fit body was the first step to a fit mind.

  Once she regained her healthy weight, Jean expected she would have added roughly two stone since she left him. It was all, or nearly all, muscle- though she was also more top-heavy in other ways. He thought she was even more beautiful than he remembered, and told her so as frequently as he could.

  There was always some anxiety looming when two people were apart for so long. Would it really be the same? Had one, or both, of them changed too much for that old fire to burn the same as it once did?

  She was so frail and dirty when he first saw her, but he knew that his feelings were still there, just as they had always been. Now that she was recovering, he was finding her becoming ever more alluring to him as the days passed.

  Did she still feel the same for him? They lay together more than once throughout each day, but she never looked into his eyes.

  Jean learned something more about Vero’s companions as they traveled. Fra Heward was already familiar to him, and the church-knight confirmed everything Vero told him occurred in the north, at least so far as he was able. Jean knew Vero would only tell him the truth, but the templar’s openness made him the next-most trustworthy, in Jean’s opinion.

  Heward was hard at work trying to decipher those journals Vero was so eager to protect. They were written in a strange archaic Imperial-Sylvan crossbreed language. Vero recovered them from vampyres on her hunt in the north, and they were written by a vampyre who was once part of the conspiracy hunting her, in their insane quest for immortality centuries ago.

  Jean instructed Aeolus and Mother Sarah to give them every assistance possible in the translation. He expected that, and access to his robust library, would be enough for a quick resolution, but this was a long dead dialect and to date, it still defied them all.

  Vero was very fond of both the girl Theodora and the boy Conner. The two were recovering only slowly from their imprisonment, and Jean could understand her concern for them. Doctors looked after them every day though, and they were gradually getting their strength back.

  Theodora’s adopted mother owned the most famous brothel in the Republic of Whitegate. Jean visited the establishment in the past, but Theodora would have only been a child then and he did not remember seeing her. She possessed all the refinements of a very expensive courtesan, but Jean had no notion why she was traveling the north with Vero. Most women at her level of the profession never went to a latitude farther than Emmoi.

  The boy Conner was another slayer, and Vero had adopted him as her younger brother. The lad was still a gangly and awkward youth, but Jean thought he was growing into a well-built sort of man. He had been badly abused though during his imprisonment though, and was even more withdrawn than Vero, who was the only one he seemed to speak with any longer.

  The priest Alexius was like a man whose spirit had left him. Whatever powers he once possessed, and according to Vero he once possessed very many, it seemed they had abandoned him. Now he was listless and despondent, although the physicians assured Jean, he was physically fit. He was completely blind, and no doctor could find any cause. There was an aura of despair about him that kept all away, Jean included.

  Ramiro claimed to be a student, but Vero informed Jean that his true occupation was as a drunkard and a gambler. When Jean asked why she continued to travel with him if he was such a degenerate, she only said that he was, at least, a true expert in his profession.

  The last of her companions, and the one Jean himself trusted least, was Pentarch. The old man kept to himself, and nursed a palpable sense of resentment toward everything and everyone. Based on what Vero told Jean; the fellow recently faced a shattering realization that he never held half the control over anything he once believed he did.

  Jean well knew the toll that kind of knowledge could lay on a man, it was a cruel ignorance to have stripped away from one. There was no telling how a man like that would react. Jean kept a firm eye on him.

  Their company traveled wearily on the road south. Jean took time to meet with the local officials and left garrisons behind him everywhere he passed. His troops were under orders to watch for any sign of the conspirators hunting Vero traveling after them, and to keep guard for any spillover from the Teutonian chaos. Any suspected spies were to be seized and held for interrogation.

  He ensured that their route would avoid the ruined tower of Kaer Longus by several miles. Vero needed no more reminders of other unpleasant memories.

  She was so hesitant to be away from him, and he constantly told her how he loved her; Vero rarely said anything in return. She only leaned against his shoulder and looked off into the distance thinking- brooding more like.

  Jean would tell her again that he loved her.

  They would go to bed together that night, but he already knew she would not look into his eyes. He wished that he knew what to say to her, and wondered how two people could be so near to one another, and yet remain so distant from each other.

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