The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 728: Family Planning (Part One)

Loman frowned at the intense look in his father’s eyes, wishing the aging Marquis would worry more about his health and less about the romantic affairs of his children. The way his father reacted when he palpated his old wounds was deeply disturbing and at the moment, Loman wanted nothing more than to perform additional tests so he could determine how he should treat his father.

Yet, no matter how much he wanted to continue the examination, he knew better than to press his luck with the aging Marquis. Loman had already learned a few things from the impromptu exam that he’d insisted on. He would just have to wait for his father to give him another opportunity to continue. And in the meantime, he’d entertain Bors’s insistence on discussing possible marriage partners.

Loman had resigned himself to some form of arranged marriage when he told his father that he intended to contend for the right to inherit the throne. Even though he’d spent most of his adult life assuming that his only partner in life would be the Church, he had resigned himself to renouncing many of his vows in order to inherit the throne, and that included his vow to give all of his love in this life to the Holy Lord of Light.

While Loman had no illusions that he would find true love in the span of time he would be left with if he was going to inherit, he hoped that he could find a partner with whom he could build an enduring love in the many years they would share after the wedding. After all, his father’s marriage had been arranged, and he had found great happiness with Loman’s mother, even if they had been little more than strangers on the day of their wedding.

Still, it was one thing to accept that he would need to find a marriage partner within the next year or so and another thing entirely to have his father playing matchmaker at every available opportunity! And the women he’d met so far had some questionable characteristics to say the least.

"I thought young lady Adala Leufroy was pleasant company," Loman said politely as he helped his father to move to a more comfortable, overstuffed armchair next to a window that overlooked Lothian City. Loman took a seat in the opposite, matching chair, gazing out the window at the rain rather than looking into his father’s intense gaze as he gave his honest opinion of the young lady he’d just met.

"Her ideas are a bit... strange," Loman admitted, shifting uncomfortably in his chair as he recalled some of the questions Lady Adala had asked about the possibility of capturing demons in the upcoming war. "You said that she spent several years in the old countries, attending one of the finishing schools there?"

"After the last war," Bors said in acknowledgement. "Baron Leufroy used a sizable portion of his spoils from raiding Airgead Mountain to finance his children’s education abroad in the hopes that they could raise their stations or make valuable connections from across the sea. If I remember correctly, Lady Adala and her siblings were educated in the Kingdom of Iron," Bors acknowledged, frowning as he guessed at the topic his son had seized on.

Most of the conversation between his son and the young lady had been little more than pleasantries, or polite comments about hobbies and interests. When the topic had moved to school and her experiences abroad however, the ideas she expressed after spending several years overseas were the ones that could be considered almost heretical in the Kingdom of Gaal.

"I understand that the use of slave labor is common in the Kingdom of Iron," Bors said, trying to smooth over the potential pitfalls of the topic by reminding his son that the Church hadn’t rooted the practice out of the Kingdom of Iron, even after hundreds of years, and it was practiced to this day. "In fact, the kingdom’s wealth is built on the backs of men who wear the iron collars of bondage."

"The Church teaches that a life spent in chains is penance for a life filled with refusal to meet one’s struggle," Loman acknowledged with a nod, even though the doctrine had seen little use on this side of the sea. "It is considered a method of cleansing the soul of great sins and preparing to return to the struggle to reach the Heavenly Shores after turning away from Holy Light."

On the surface, the practice of owning slaves the way the people of the Iron Kingdom did wasn’t much different from the custom of taking in bondsmen in the Kingdom of Gaal. The reality, however, was very, very different, and it was one that Loman took very seriously, given how many of the people who reached the frontier arrived as bondsmen.

The biggest difference between a bondsman and a slave was that a bondsman owed a debt to his lord, and while he had no freedom to leave his lord’s service without repaying that debt, he was still a person. A bondsman could own property, labor for himself when he wasn’t laboring for his lord, spend or save his wages as he pleased, and when his debt was paid, he would become a freeman again.

A slave, however, was less than a person. They were property. The place a slave slept, the food they ate, the tools they used... all of it was the property of their owner. They were never paid wages and could never again become freemen. The only virtue that could be ascribed to enslaving a man was that it forced him to meet his struggle in this life so that he could once again strive to reach the Heavenly Shores in his next one.

"You do realize the implications of her suggestion to enslave demons as laborers, don’t you, Father?" Loman said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. "If an enslaved man is purifying his soul through a lifetime spent as property, then enslaving demons would be granting them the same opportunity. It would be as good as opening a path for demons to reach the Heavenly Shores!"

The thought of it shook the young priest to his core. Living in the frontier, the High Priest and the Inquisition frequently gave sermons on the dangers of trying to interact with demons as though they were people.

The Church taught that demons were manifestations of darkness and wickedness and that all someone had to do was look at their twisted, beastly features to know the truth of their corruption. Even though they were intelligent and could speak, could even learn to imitate humans, they were never to be treated the same as human beings, even if the humans they were given the same status as were slaves.

It was one of the very oldest teachings of the Great Prophet after all, that the day man forgot the wickedness of demons would be the day that the Church and by extension, all mankind, would lose the protection of the Holy Lord of Light.

"She’s only recently returned from her schooling," Bors said, attempting to plaster over the issue. "I’m sure she wasn’t serious when she suggested that we should break demons to the collar instead of cleansing the lands of their influence. The old countries are less devout because they’ve never seen a demon or the damage even one of them can inflict on a village or its people."

"She probably didn’t even realize she’d run afoul of a sacred tenet," Bors said, waving the issue aside as though it was of no great consequence. "She wasn’t trained in the Church the way you were, after all. Who could expect a young girl to master the scriptures as well as you have?"

"But, if you fancy her, you could show her the error of her ways," Bors suggested. "It isn’t a bad thing to be able to show the depths of your knowledge and wisdom to the woman you’ll wed. She might even respect you for that."

"Perhaps," Loman said with a heavy sigh. It wasn’t just the heretical notion of enslaving demons that bothered him, however. His father was right. Lady Adala hadn’t grown up in the Church the way she had. If she had, or even if someone had told her that her idea would provoke the ire of the church, she never would have expressed it. No, it wasn’t the idea that was the problem. It was the warm, almost bubbly, and excited tone of her voice when she made the suggestion that truly bothered him.

It was the very same tone with which she’d suggested taking dog sleds out to visit the Diamond Lakes in her father’s territory once they’d frozen over for the winter, or any of the half dozen other topics she’d brought up during their lunch. There was no denying that Lady Adala was charming and pleasant, but there was something... off about the young woman’s ability to remain cheerful even when discussing things as dark and dire as enslaving demons that left Loman recoiling in revulsion.

There were many sacrifices that Loman was prepared to make in order to keep his murderous brother Owain off of the throne, but if it came to marrying a woman like Lady Adala... He had to find a way to say no!

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