Page 39 of Demon of the Dead


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Inglewood

Amelia was in the process of arranging chairs around the long dining table when she heard the drakes start up a glad cry in the yard. A quick test of the bond left her smiling: the other girls were arriving, which meant the humans they’d been left in charge of were as well.

By the time she made her way down the staircase into the dug-up back garden, Alpha’s other three girls were swooping down to land on the grass beside him. There was much nuzzling, and purring, and happy warbling as they all greeted one another. Then Amelia reached them, and sleek, horned heads shoved into her face; warm snouts pressed at her shoulders, and arms, until she’d given everyone a proper hello.

“Hullo, girls. How are your charges faring? No one got snapped up by lions, did they?”

The snort of a horse drew her attention to the mouth of the road, and the tunnel of interlaced branches that led out of the wood and onto the manor lands. Connor, Reginald, and Edward rode abreast, gray-cloaked Strangers walking ahead, spears on shoulders, soldiers from four duchies walking behind, morning sunlight dappling bright armor.

“They don’t look like the finest army,” she mused aloud to Alpha, who’d moved to stand at her shoulder, “but they’re ours, I suppose.”

~*~

The stables were empty, and cleaner than the house – less ransacked, at any rate – and the first hour of arrival was given over to unsaddling, rubbing down, finding oats and hauling water. Her men had brought Shadow along for her, and Amelia spent a peaceful twenty-minutes currying and loving on him, before it was time to get down to business.

“You’ve been industrious,” Reginald remarked as they entered the dining room.

“The place was a shambles, and it was too quiet to sleep.” She’d spent most of the night moving from room to room, searching for useful bits and bobs, checking the cellars to see if any food remained. She’d managed to cobble together a set of mismatched cups, some crude pewter plates that had been used by the servants, and a variety of candles and sticks on which to mount them. She’d unrolled her maps and unpacked her ledgers; shaken out the dusty curtains and gathered old furniture scraps for firewood – had turned the dining room into a war room, and then stolen outside for a few hours’ sleep tucked in the secure coil of Alpha’s tail, more comfortable against his warm side than in the cold, haunted manor house.

There was still the problem of the duchess’s remains to deal with; she planned to discreetly ask her men to handle them, without letting Connor know of the process. He’d remarried, but surely seeing one’s former spouse carried out as a mummified horror wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone.

Speaking of Connor…

She turned back toward the door, when she realized he was no longer keeping pace with them.

He’d paused in the threshold, one hand hovering along the chair rail, expression carefully, unusually neutral. She had the sense he’d caught himself in the middle of an old, familiar gesture; the faint smudges on the white paint told a story of many such touches, the trailing of fingertips along the wood. She envisioned him as he’d been when she’d last seen him in this house, when he’d been a duke with a wild reputation: tall, lean, with laugh lines and a mischievous glint in his eyes, he’d worn his hair short, in the popular style, his beard close-cropped and carefully tended.

Now, his hair lay on his shoulders, his clothes were mud-spattered roughspun, and his gaze held no sparkle, only ghosts.

Reginald cleared his throat, drawing her attention; his brow was furrowed, and he almost looked concerned. He moved to stand at the chair to the left of the head of the table, and dragged it out slow and loud.

Connor blinked, as if coming out of a trance.

“Come and sit,” Reginald said. “Amelia said something about griddle cakes, I believe?”

Connor gave a slight shake of his head, blinked again, and moved toward the table.

Amelia sat down across from Reginald, which left the head of the table for Connor – who hesitated again. “I said no such thing,” Amelia said with a wave. “I said there were sardines, salt pork, and the hardest hard tack you can imagine.”

Reginald snorted. “Delicious.”

Amelia traded a look with him as Connor settled into the chair that had once been rightly his, as lord of the manor. She lifted her brows. What’s going on?

Reginald pressed his lips together, gaze cutting toward Connor, before he shook his head. Not now.

Edward sat down beside her and reached for the tin of hard tack. “Gods,” he deadpanned when he’d popped the lid. “I think I’ll take my chances with hunger pains.”

Amelia took one of the biscuits and added three slimy sardines on top, bracing herself for the worst. “Well, I can’t. Let’s begin.”

Before they’d set out for Inglewood, they’d all agreed that the initial war effort wasn’t one that had worked, or that should be repeated. Armies from each duchy had converged on the capital, been promptly trounced, and then the survivors had been forced to flee across the rolling hills, unprotected manors, and utterly innocent countryside to return to their homes. None of the duchies were properly fortified; there were no thick walls, nor war engines, no moats or ditches or collapsible bridges that could be used as defense against the Sels’ march inland across the country. As they marched back, now, the plan was to establish home bases along the way.

“That’s the way they do it in the North,” Amelia said, dragging forward a sketch that Oliver had sent her of the various castles he’d visited on his trip to the Wastes. “Each ducal seat is a fortress, equipped to handle a siege, many with secret tunnels that lead out into the mountains where the vulnerable members of the household can escape.”

“Can any of them withstand a siege by the Sels?” Edward asked. “Oliver wrote that they smashed the walls with trebuchets.”

“The drakes were what turned the tide,” Reginald reminded. “And yours can’t be everywhere at once.”

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