I Swear I'm Not A Dark Lord!

Col. Otis d'Mourne (ret)

The harvest was good that year. For a rural township with little in the way of industry, that was everything. The granaries were full. Carts piled high with the last fruit of the season had trundled off toward the provincial capital of Bostkirk. For once, nobody bothered him about there not being enough to eat.

A portion of the town's income went to the Legate's account. That, plus the money he earned from hunts, was more than enough to keep up with his debts. It was almost enough to make him forget about his aborted plan to sell off the new farming equipment. That fool Curator Cushway had tipped his hand to the governor somehow, and Otis had received a letter from the governor. Her Excellency demanded that he let the expansion run its course because of some kind of documented plan she had approved. Otis didn't have the wherewithal to punish or fire his curator, but he could hide his other plans from the man easily enough.

For now, Otis would have to give up on unraveling the former proxy's plans. It galled him that it seemed to be working. Even idiots got things right once in a while, and if it benefited him, then he would grimace and deposit the gold into his account.

In the month before the Governor's Winter Ball, he took Blodwin to Bostkirk for theater and new dresses. The city was cloaked in winter's gray, but indoors she was warm and gay. This was the time of year when legates, ministers, and the occasional Imperial swarmed the entertainments, vied for the best seats, and smugly ranked themselves and each other.

The new style this year was scabbards. They had to be made of monster bone, preferably from a monster killed by the scabbard's owner. They had to be visibly engraved with magical effects in large runes, the more esoteric the better. If Otis had known, he would have custom-ordered something months ago. After a day spent agonizing over the new style and debating whether to buy a ready-made piece, Blodwin convinced him not to chase the new fad. It was better to abstain from the latest style than to appear inauthentic.

The governor's guest house for legates, Legate Hotel, had barely changed over the years aside from a fresh coat of paint. She liked to pack her legates close together for a while before the ball, and make them rub shoulders. He didn't doubt for a second that every staff member of the hotel wrote daily reports about who got along and who didn't. If legates on opposite sides of the province hated each other, nothing was likely to come of it. But when neighbors didn't get along, there was reason to worry. Sometimes, the governor liked to cause the problems herself. Nobody could ever catch her stirring the pot, but the woman was a meddler if he'd ever seen one.

On their second day in the Legate Hotel, a teenage demi introduced themselves in the breakfast room and asked if Otis's son would be at the ball this year. Otis was touched that people remembered his son, even if they hadn't heard about his death.

"I'm sorry, but Simon died in the Garem-Da. But thank you for remembering him."

"I'm sorry about Simon, sir. But I was asking about Bilius."

The name was like a slap. Words froze in Otis's mouth.

"A bunch of us were looking forward to seeing him again. He owes us." For some reason, the demi flexed while he said it.

"If he owes you money, it's no business of mine."

"Oh! It's nothing like that, sir. We want to fight him. We've been looking forward to it all year."

Beastkin. Naturally, the little brute would associate with them.

"He's no son of mine. Do not mention his name to me again."

That's when things started going downhill. People came out of the woodwork to ask him questions. Where was the boy? What did he do to get disowned? A few had the nerve to praise the rat. He had fought and won against Captain Bennet. Marco recounted the times he saved Midway's wardens. People admired his divine statues, as if the minor gods actually meant anything next to Knexenk. There were rumors that the palace's crafters had done extraordinary work for him, and the fact that their lips were so tightly sealed only caused the rumors to multiply. People expected him to justify his hatred of the runt.

"You can't expect them to understand," Blodwin told him more than once. "They don't have your point of view. All they can see is a child of misfortune cast out by his father. They don't see the mother he killed."

Blodwin stepped onto the ballroom floor in fine form, glowing with health and radiant in a white, gold, and purple dress. Her purple hair shone with a circlet of gold set with cut white gems. People envied him when they danced together. When idiots tried to corner him about his humiliating offspring, she deflected their attentions with smiles and offhand remarks. Everyone wanted to please her. There were advantages to having a young, attractive wife.

They took a break from dancing to enjoy the side rooms, where the palace displayed its rarer treasures for the event. The exhibits changed for every ball, and this year's main attraction was borrowed from some temple or other. The four primary arcaic gods stood in a row. The statues were only three feet tall and stood on a platform that put them at eye level. Otis had seen better, more detailed carvings, but seldom any with such an undeniable presence. Why were they here, instead of a creche in some temple?

Blodwin smirked at him from across the room, half-ignoring the young men talking to her. A slight roll of the eyes told him what she thought of the solicitous boys around her.

"What do you think?" Enzo the catkin magician sidled up to him between drinks and nodded at the gods of the demi races. A dwarf and an arc stopped and paid brief reverence to the statues before moving on.

"I don't like them. They should go back to their home temple." He drank something bubbly from his glass. "Why are they here?"

"The governor wanted to show off a lost art form, rediscovered right here in Estfold."

"They're statues." Otis suspected he knew where this was going. "They're not even that nice."

"Do you have an appraisal skill?"

"Not for household decorations, no."

An irritated rumble crept into the magician's voice. "If you did, you would see these are divine figures blessed by the gods. I thought you'd recognize the handiwork. You have several in your township."

Otis had seen the small statues of Feythlonda in their little roadside shrines and Chowgami at the curator's office. He didn't know there were more. Damned proxy dropped the shitty little reminders everywhere. "Do you think I'll get top dori for selling them now, or should I wait a while?"

Enzo regarded him cautiously. "I'm surprised you take so little pride in your son. Anyone else …"

"He's no son of mine!" he spat at the magician. "He's a murderer and a monster! If I had a hammer, I'd break his sanctimonious statues." Otis downed most of a glass of wine in one gulp and frowned at the collected dieties.

Blodwin appeared next to him and put a hand lightly on his arm. "There's an armor display in the next room. Let's try there."

"Don't manage me!" He shook her off. "You're not her! You're a replacement!"

The air chilled around him, as if someone had left a door open and let in the winter. He had crossed a line. A husband didn't berate his wife in public. He heard somewhere that the governor hated that.

Lower, he told her, "Stay away from me."

His bad mood followed him and grew worse as the night wore on. He drank his way through the main ballroom, out to the patio where people sparred politely in the cold, and barged through a pack of children throwing around a wooden disk. He wove his way indoors and found himself in the room with the armor exhibit. Spellsteel plate. Mithril cuirass with wyvern-scale accessories. A handless shield that sounded great, but he happened to know it took a prohibitive amount of mana to use. A smallsword in a scabbard made of wyvern bone, engraved to counter enemy spells. The display placard said it was the original inspiration for the current fad.

It was the proxy's sword. Otis had sold it to Enzo for a surprising sum of money. Enzo had apparently gifted it to the governor, who had shown it around. Now it was here, under flattering light, claiming to be something clever.

That deadly child had taken everything from Otis, and now he wouldn't leave him alone.

"Are you tired of hearing about the masked wonder, yet?" A girl with pink hair and green eyes tossed him a petulant expression, "because I sure am."

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He knew this girl, had seen her running with the Augberg children at balls in years gone by. A decade had changed her, but her face was too pretty not to remember. She was a year or two older than Cecilia, with better breasts and a mouth that promised to keep secrets.

"You're one of Keeva's." It wasn't a question.

"I'm Hannah. They call me the witch." She showed her hand, but he made no move to take it. The Augbergs had long coveted his township, like they coveted everything, but Mourne was his. That would never change.

Her green eyes drifted to the far end of the room, where Blodwin was talking animatedly with one woman and three men. He didn't like the way they looked at his wife. They were too hungry and stood too close. One of them was an Augberg. That damned family attended these things in force.

"She keeps tabs on the mask, you know. She writes letters to everyone she knows, asking about him. Has anyone seen him? How is he? What is he doing? Where is he going next? They write her back, too."

"What game are you playing?" No Augberg started a conversation because they wanted to help someone. Keeva's Little Witch was up to something, probably on orders to make trouble.

"No games. I just thought you'd want to know, if you didn't already." She drank and swore sweet obscenities. "That little fuck nearly killed me last year. Did anyone tell you that? He hit me with Mana Drain, and took me down to an inch from my gods-fucking life." She drank again. "So if your sweet young wife is tracking him without telling you, maybe you should be curious about it. Just a thought."

Hannah gave him a good, long look down her neckline while she bent to trade glasses with a passing server. "If you ever get tired of the color purple, let me know." She toasted him and left the room to find someone else to bother. He imagined she had a list. At the end of the night, she'd report all her contacts to Keeva.

Whatever she had to say, it wasn't meant to help him.

She was an enemy.

She couldn't be trusted.

But the thought wouldn't leave him alone. Blodwin knew where the proxy was and hadn't told him.

Blodwin

The carriage ride from the palace to Legate Hotel was a short one, but it was long enough to ruin them. Otis was drunk and fuming, nursing that same old grievance like it was the most valuable thing in the world to him. It was obviously more dear to him than she was.

You're not her. You're a replacement.

He said it in anger, but that didn't mean it wasn't true. In Blodwin's experience, anger was honest. She hadn't helped the situation by letting the younger men flirt with her. She wanted to remind him that he was lucky to have such a young, desirable wife. But trying to teach this man anything was like yelling at a stone.

He had drunk too much and let that Hannah girl flash her tits and drop poison in his ear. Now he felt dangerous. Not in a general sense, but dangerous to her.

"Is it true?" The words smouldered.

"Is what true?"

"Is it true!?" he shouted.

"I don't know what you're talking about!" She shouted back. Stupid, stupid man! "If you're accusing me of something, you have to say what it is, or I have no idea what you're talking about!"

"Are you going behind my back?"

"Are you serious?" She was always with him when he was home. When he was away, she took extra pains to ensure the servants knew where she was at all times, without appearing to make a point of it. When she finally got a child, she didn't want any doubts about the paternity. When would she even have the time for an affair?

After all the messes she cleaned up for him. After all the times she diverted him from illegal schemes. After all the drunken nights she had to haul him home. After all the time she spent smoothing over his damaged relationships. After everything, he was questioning her loyalty?

"If I was going behind your back, I'd be pregnant." She shouldn't have said it, but she'd had her share of wine that night, and the night's humiliation stung her still.

The jab deepened his anger. He growled at her through clenched teeth. "I mean, about the proxy. You've been following him. Concerned about him. Looking out for him."

"I've been tracking him. Do you think people are going to respond to, 'Hello, we'd just as soon kill this child as look at him, so please tell us where he is'? I ask nicely because it works."

His words hammered at her, a second-tier Commanding Voice aimed at a classless civilian. "Without. Telling. Me! You know what he did to me! What he took from me!"

"Do you ever listen to yourself?" Blodwin matched his fury with scorn and calm, "You think your life is so awful, but you have everything most men could ever hope for. And you justify this ridiculous misery by blaming an infant. He didn't choose to be born. He didn't conceive himself. You brought him into the world."

She would never remember how it happened. How could she? He was a combatant, blocked at the second threshold, and she was nothing. All she knew was a world that spun without an up or down; the taste of blood and tears mingled with the boot-stained carriage floor; the grating of bone in her face; fire in her body; the bell in her head that wouldn't stop ringing; the tongue that longed to scream but couldn't.

She didn't know when they reached the hotel, or how long he left her in the carriage like something scraped from his shoe and stuck to the floor. She felt vibrations through the floor when he left, his footsteps echoing in her broken face.

When the hands came for her, she swatted at them reflexively, uselessly. She wanted to scream at the gentle voice, but all she could make were guttural animal noises. Strong fingers caught her by the wrist and held her tight. A fraction of her pain departed as her hand faded from existence. The numbness grew over her, up her arm and across her chest, hiding away the injuries behind a dark curtain. It moved down her belly, her legs, around her back, and along her other arm. She thought she was being erased, and panicked, but she was too weak to get away. The pains in her neck and head dissolved with her body, until all of her was gone.

"There she is." A woman came into focus. She was old enough to have grandchildren and dressed in a smock of healer green with the palace crest embroidered on one side.

Directions were working again. Blodwin knew she was lying down, and the healer was sitting up. Curtained windows let in a diffused light. She was thirsty.

"I'll help you sit up." The healer was unexpectedly strong, but gentle. She tilted Blodwin easily and packed pillows behind her. The cup of water she gave her wasn't nearly enough, so the healer poured a second and a third.

"Are you hungry yet?"

Blodwin shook her head slightly, surprised it didn't make the world spin.

"I'm Healer Maia. A carriage driver brought you in last night. Do you remember what happened?"

Blodwin tilted her head non-commitally. She remembered the gist of it. She remembered enough.

"Can I ask you some questions?"

The questions.

Blodwin knew every wife of every officer in Otis's division. She had been in rooms like this one. A frantic, late-night knock at the door, followed by messengers and a carriage ride to the nearest hospital or infirmary. Broken women in clean rooms. They looked whole by the time the healers were done with them, and all the bloody laundry was whisked away. They looked whole, but they weren't.

And then, the questions.

Do you know who hurt you? "My husband."

Are you safe at home? "No."

Do you want to pack some things? "Yes."

Do you want an escort? "Yes."

Do you want to forget?

Blodwin had known women who said yes to that question, and she had judged them harshly. But she had never been the one in the bed. This time, she understood. They were offering to send her back in time, to before everything shattered.

She also knew what happened to those women and to their families. In time, paladins took the husbands away, but always too late to save the wives. Dittany, fed to monsters. Vertered, buried with earth magic. Nothing of Neddy was left but ashes and a bad smell.

Do you want to forget? "No."

Do you want to accuse your assailant?

That was a joke. The women who accused received only suffering for their efforts. The real choice here wasn't to accuse her husband or not. It was whether to stay with him or not.

Do you want to accuse your assailant? "No."

The paladin's name was Briallen. She was a trainee, but that meant she was level nineteen, enough to take a few hits and buy time. More importantly, her uniform could head off trouble before it started.

Briallen opened the door first and looked inside. Otis was splayed across the bed, coat and shoes still on, snoring like a hog.

"Leave him," Blodwin said, "he won't wake up." They went through the room systematically and threw everything important into her trunk and parked it in the hallway.

Blodwin reserved a handful of papers from their search, a letter from the Vawdreys. She had found it in the pile of mail she set aside for the coach ride, something to keep her busy. When she realized what she had in her hands, she had folded the pages and used them as a bookmark.

"Get up!" She swatted Otis's face with the papers. "Stupid oaf! Get up." She swatted him again.

He blinked, half awake, at the two women looking down at him. One was wearing a paladin's uniform. The other was his wife. Blodwin glared at him until he started to remember. The light of comprehension was dim at first, and then ashamed. They always felt so sorry afterward, but they were never sorry enough.

His eyes tracked back to the paladin, and shame turned to guilt. Guilt turned to fear.

"Blodwin, I … "

"Don't talk to me! Listen!" She held up the papers. "This is a letter from the Vawdreys. The proxy is in Wokehaad for some kind of training. He plans to be there until the end of the month. That's all they know."

He reached for the letter, but she threw it at his forehead, where it burst into its separate pages. "Wokehaad," she repeated into his stunned face, "end of the month. After that, he'll disappear again. You've been informed."

Blodwin made sure to slam the door as she left.

If Otis read the letter, he would learn Cecilia adored the boy and gleefully called him her little brother. Either that would cool his hate, or stoke it. Blodwin knew which outcome to place her bets on.