012 Your son is dead, Aden…

19.02.1624

Mallowston.

THE sky was a sickly shade of grey, a reflection of the death and despair that hung heavy in the air. Aden dreaded to imagine what cruel sights awaited him upon his arrival at Mallowston. A murder of crows flew overhead, their seemingly mocking caws grating at the duke's ears. In the dim light of dawn, the Strega appeared murky and brown, swirling with eddies and currents that pulled at the floating debris. The river's bank was dotted with the corpses of soldiers, their lifeless bodies bobbing up and down in the water; arms and legs jutting out at awkward angles; faces twisted in agony.

As the merchant sloop, the duke and his entourage travelled with passed one particularly large clump of corpses the overpowering, sickly sweet mixture of rot and decay wafted up into the air. Flies swarmed over the bloating bodies, their buzzing filling the air with an ominous hum. The once peaceful waterway had become a graveyard overridden by carrion-eaters, a place where the dead could find no rest and the living could find no solace.

Aden felt a soft palm come to rest on the small of his back. He glanced to his side, his murky gaze meeting that of a veiled Vaiu; the Matriarch remained silent, her gentle gaze consoling.

"He is going to be alright," Aden said, mostly to himself, his eyes panning back towards the deconsecrated river. Vaiu remained silent. Behind her stood the queen and princess in veils, as well as another veiled woman, who as far as the duke was concerned remained unnamed: An odd sight it was, one hooded man hunched over as he stared blankly into the river with four veiled women standing around him their gazes trained on him; sympathetic.

"Isn't that the Count's crest on that brig?" Princess Iris asked, pulling Aden's attention to a beached vessel by the northern bank. He looked around, confused, at the vessel in question, his brows furrowing as he realised it was indeed Count Hera's brig. The Dandelion, he remembered the ship was called. The vessel was riddled with holes that were obviously a result of suffering heavy cannon fire. It was only then he noticed the other vessel ahead. A sloop it was, beached as well, this time on the southern bank. The vessel was even more heavily damaged than the former; its hull was riddled with holes and its single mast completely missing. Alas, the vessel's name eluded him; Endearment? Endeavour? Ancestors only knew…

The two wrecks were crawling with men working hard at repairing the damage they sustained. Small fishing boats littered the area with men diving into the freezing waters to fish out trinkets that might have fallen out of the wrecks; one man, in particular, surfaced holding what looked like a pair of greaves or vambraces. On the northern riverbank was an array of tents, an army camp perhaps given the site was crawling with unknown men at arms.

"Harbour ahoy," the sloop's helmsman called from the quarterdeck. Aden's befuddled gaze panned over to the distant outline that was Mallowston harbour. The duke marched up the vessel's fo'c'sle, grabbing a bundle of rigging as he pulled himself up the sloop's forepeak despite Vaiu's vehement protests.

The vessel's crew skillfully brought her in and the duke bounded down into the harbour, leaving the women to make their way down themselves. "What's going on?" the duke asked, roughly grabbing a ship's boy about fourteen or fifteen years of age. Terrified by Aden's rather passionate approach, the boy tried to pull away but failed to escape the duke's firm grasp.

"Are we gonna be havin' trouble, good ser?" one burly-looking stevedore asked loudly, his reproachful gaze fixed on the scene.

***

'Shit,' Vaiu whispered to herself as the labourer loudly confronted Aden. Her panicked gaze flickered to the duke, and sure enough, his expression had grown calm. 'Shit,' she whispered again, lifting her dress in a bid to hasten her steps, 'he didn't like that…'

"Please, don't mind my husband!" Vaiu shouted, racing forward to intervene, the other women on her heels. She placed a hand on Aden's outstretched hand prodding the duke to release his grasp on the boy. "Relax, my love," she said to Aden, staring him down despite standing about a head shorter than him; the duke stared back at her for a long moment before grunting in affirmation and letting the boy go.

Vaiu exhaled a breath of relief. "Please don't mind my husband," she said again as she turned to face the stevedore. "He left some rather valuable goods in town over the winter to be shipped out this month so the damaged vessels downstream came as a major fright to him. If you don't mind, please, what happened?"

"Aye," the man replied, his stern gaze still fixated on the duke, "just don't let him go terrorising them harbour kids; folks 'round these parts don't take too kindly to people who mistreat the boys. 'Bout them ships, no need to string your breeches in line, good ser"—the man said directly to Aden; Vaiu squeezed on the duke's wrist in another desperate bid to calm him, down—" It's just the pyromaniac earl from Faywyn and the Heras duking it out again. Aye, that was wrong; there was no duking this time 'round; that sneaky earl wholly crushed Lord Josh before he could even set foot on dry land, the poor sod."

"Crushed?" Aden asked, his brows furrowing.

"Aye," the stevedore replied, his stern gaze easing up to reveal a slightly more terrified one. "Saw the whole thing from the hills behind with me own two eyes. The earl's cannons went off like fire and thunder and the next thing you know the count's entire fleet was turning around to flee. But the bloody gryphon gave no quarter, his two brigs running them down before gunning them right in the guts and boarding 'em; word is Lord Josh himself abandoned ship, fleeing north into the woods."

"…You mean to say the count was ambushed?"

"Aye. The earl's been stashing black powder, men and 'em guns here since before the first snow. Them townsfolk have taken fancy to calling the earl the bloody gryphon, but I reckon he is more of a fox; acting all sneaky and underhanded…"

***

Iris had never seen Duke Aden so agitated. To her, the man might have as well as being the definition of composure. As they rode up the elevated path to Mallowston fort, their horses having been liberated from the sloop's hold and allowed respite for a few minutes before being put to work again, the princess watched from her seat behind the duke as his visage grew ever graver as he stared at the towering structure ahead.

Unless the tall tales the townsfolk spun about how the earl conquered the fort overnight with half as many men as the enemy were true, Iris failed to comprehend how the mighty structure fell at all. If this was in fact true, an idea refused to entertain solely out of principle, then the earl was a rather ingenious man… terrifying if one considered his recently conferred moniker; the bloody gryphon.

As they got closer to the fort, Iris could visibly make out the horrid burn marks on the structure from when the earl was rumoured to set the place ablaze. The sight further dislodged the innocent, feminine image the duke painted of his son in her mind, the silhouette of a cunning tyrant quickly taking its place.

"Halt!" a spear-wielding guard called from the fort's portcullis, appearing unusually wary of their approach, "who goes there!" the man shouted. His partner rose where he sat by the gate readying his spear as if wary a single man and four women might somehow overwhelm him if he was any less cautious. Up on the wall another two pairs of men peeked from on top of the wall, aiming their arbalists at Iris' group.

"I seek an audience with your lord!" the duke shouted in response dismounting from his steed. Another man, noble given his attire, appeared peeking from the walls. "Carter!" the duke called upon seeing the man. "Come open these gates for me!"

"Y-yes, My Lord!" the older man stammered as he quickly made his way down the wall.

***

As the great doors to the Keep's main hall swung open, Iris was treated to the sight of the earl of Faywyn seated upon the edge of the hall's refectory table; by his feet knelt a battered, bound and bruised man; a knight perhaps, given the fellow still had his mail and gambeson on. The earl's soft facial features were dimly lit by the weak sunlight reflecting off the unpolished stone floor tiles. The hard lines of his lean, vaguely muscular form were discernible beneath his thin silken clothes. His icy blue-green glare peeked out from beneath the tousled mess of inky curls on his head; his soft, pinkish lips curled into a crude caricature of a smile. Levi was as beautiful as she remembered him to be from her childhood, only his eyes were now barren of the glimmer of innocence they once held; frigid with a hint of playful cunning.

Iris was not sure what to expect from the father-son reunion, but the tense stand-off between the two von Grifenburgs caught her completely off guard.

"...You are back,' the devilishly handsome son sniffed, his tone so utterly dismissive, "took you long enough."

There was a blur, and to Iris' bewilderment, the duke was across the room lifting the younger man by the collar as he pressed a dagger threateningly unto his neck. "Where is my son?" Aden growled, much to Iris' confusion. Her gaze flickered to the earl's face before flickering back to the duke; although the earl appeared somewhat less effeminate than she suspected him to be there was no mistaking the similarities between him and his father.

The hall fell silent. Then there was a small but sharply audible click. Iris glanced down to see the earl pressing a strange object—an oddly shaped, short handgonne, she realised after a momentary inspection—into the duke's cuirass. "Has fighting your beloved king's war finally turned you brain-addled, Father?" Levi asked softly, his tone weighed heavily by an undercurrent of scorn.

"You are not my son," the duke growled back before casting a suspicious glance at the Matriarch of the Creed of the Twins. "Is this another one of your games, Vaiu?" the duke asked coldly, "I do not care what well-meaning intentions you have, but I will not tolerate a skin mask of my son being paraded about like some joke."

"...I assure you, Aden, I know nothing of what you speak," the woman replied carefully.

The duke turned back to his son, pawing at the younger man's face in a vain attempt to pry it off. "Let go of me, Aden," the earl said, his voice settling into a dreadful calm. The duke dropped the earl, backing away from the younger man, his face a rictus of confusion.

The earl smoothened his rumpled clothing before turning to face the bound knight by his feet. "I am sorry, Paul," he said raising his handgonne to the man's face, "you were such a pleasant person to converse with; oh so willing to whisper secrets into my ears. How I appreciated that, alas, you've seen too much, heard too much… Goodbye, friend. Send my regards to Ser Dywn if you ever happen to meet him."

The weapon erupted in an explosion of fire and smoke and the knight's head all but disappeared, leaving behind nought but half a jaw and a bloody stump. Iris stumbled back a step and a half, her face turning green as she struggled to hold back the bile forming in the back of her throat.

"...Why?" Ser Carter asked walking forward to put himself between the terrifying earl and his silent father.

'Why not?" Levi replied, his gaze unflinching. "Anyone with half a brain and a handle on the prevalent rumours could easily put one and two together to realise that two of the four women behind the duke are the deposed queen and princess. Ser Paul was exactly the wrong kind of person to possess that kind of information; he was a cunning, but cowardly man; one who proactively sold his lord's secrets in exchange for my leniency. Might I remind you that he did this despite bearing a blood grudge against me for ordering the attack on Count Josh's ships; an attack which inadvertently led to the death of his beloved younger brother? Imagine what would happen should this information manage to leak and reach say, the Hertaleans perhaps? That's if you haven't already advertised yourselves to the entire town?" The earl's pointed stare panned across Iris and the others from across the room.

"...We were careful," the Matriarch said.

"...Make sure the men concerned know that whoever is caught spreading word of the duke's arrival would be sentenced to two weeks in the pillory with only stale bread and watered vinegar to subsist on. Also, please find someone to clean that mess before the tapestry is permanently damaged," the earl said to Ser Carter, gesturing towards the headless corpse, before turning back to face Vaiu. "Well," he said smiling, "I hope for your sake you were indeed careful. I would hate to have to send you lot back to the Hertaleans myself after everything you have gone through to make it this far."

Iris felt the blood drain from her face. "...What are you insinuating boy?" the duke growled, taking one threatening step forward. The earl in response turned the full intensity of his smile to his father. "Unlike you Aden," he said, his tone one of mock cheer, "I have no intention of risking my personal well-being or that of the people of Faywyn to continue in a vain attempt to protect your beloved king… Do you feel no shame at all, father? The gall of you, to come here and attempt to saddle me with a matter this ruinous after the numerous crimes your beloved Sean committed against me! Sentiment alone, Aden, is all that prevents me from simply putting you to the blade and resolving this debt once and for all!.. I warn you now, don't test my patience."

The earl spun around, dismissing the duke who suddenly fell silent, his gaze vacant. "Take off your veils," Levi ordered, gesturing irritably towards Iris and the others. "Which ones are their majesties?"

The princess hurriedly took off her veil, not out of fear, she convinced herself, but as a means to quickly resolve whatever misunderstanding might arise from tarrying on the matter. Her mother remained silent for a few moments more. "...Very well," Irina said finally, calmly lifting her veil.

"And you two?" Levi asked his stern gaze flickering to the veiled Matriarch and her assistant.

"...I have heard a lot about you from your father, Levi," the Matriarch said, raising her veil in response, the other woman shadowing her movements. "It saddens me to make your acquaintance under such circumstances, but we must make do. I am Vaiu of House sauhel Arundel, current Matriarch and Grand Priestess of the Creed of the Twins. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"...I don't doubt it is," the earl replied, his expression suddenly turning undiscernible. "Ser Carter would show you all to the guest quarters. We can reconvene at a later time; if you would forgive me, I have more pending matters that require my attention."

"Son! Wait!" the duke called out as the earl turned to leave.

"Your son is dead, Aden," the earl called back as he strode out of the Great hall, "Sean killed him; I am all that's left."