The Vampire & Her Witch-Chapter 1457: A Meeting At The Market (Part One)

The morning air at the Lothian docks tasted of wet pine and old, musty earth, and Jocelynn Blackwell decided that this was a fitting combination for a woman nursing the worst hangover of her young life.

She pulled her fur-lined cloak tighter against the cold as she descended the worn stone steps that led from the city’s outer wall to the sprawling fish market below, doing her best to ignore the way the world seemed to pulse gently with each beat of her heart.

The wine from Ashlynn’s memorial had been a rich, dark Lothian red, the kind her sister used to say tasted like ’autumn in a goblet,’ and Jocelynn had consumed far too much of it in the company of ladies who seemed determined to keep her cup filled and the wine flowing no matter how much she’d tried to hold herself back.

Once the wine had begun to flow freely, the stories had flowed with it, and the tears as well, until she’d felt wrung out enough to want nothing more than to crawl into her bed and blot out the world. The last thing she wanted to do after the heartache of bidding her sister one last farewell was to rise before dawn, but the message that brought her here wasn’t one that could be ignored.

Behind her, Captain Devlin followed at a respectful distance, his black wool sailor’s coat buttoned to the throat against the cold and his weathered face betraying nothing of the previous evening’s excesses.

The man claimed to have emptied a pitcher himself yesterday, drinking with the household staff, the knights, and the Templars, raising his voice in the old shanties alongside the rest of the Blackwell household, and yet here he was, striding down the steps with the easy, rolling gait of a man who had never touched a drop in his life. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

"How," Jocelynn muttered as she paused at the bottom of the steps to steady herself against a post.

The market spread out before her in a maze of timber stalls and stone counters, already bustling despite the early hour. Fishermen hauled wicker baskets heavy with the morning’s catch from small boats tied along the quay, while merchants shouted prices and haggled with the household servants who had come to fill their masters’ larders before tomorrow’s festivities shuttered every market in the city.

"Perch! Fresh from the nets, a snip to a fish or a strip for a string!" one merchant called, his voice echoing off the cobbles in an effort to be heard over other fishermen hawking their wares.

"Feasting fish! Steelhead fit for a knight’s table!" another man called, holding up a fish as long as his arm. "Gutted, cleaned, an’ ready ta’ be yer’ lord’s breakfast!"

"Heads an’ tails, by tha bucket!" a shrill voice called, this time belonging to a woman working at a stall where half a dozen young men were rapidly gutting, cleaning, and cutting fish into smaller portions that could be sold for less than a silver penny. "A few snips ta’ fill yer’ stock pot!"

The noise of it all hit Jocelynn like a physical blow, and for a moment, she pressed her hand to her forehead, closing her eyes as she tried to shut out the clamor of the market as it warred with the beating of her own heart to be the most agonizing sound she’d ever heard.

"My lady?" Devlin asked, his voice carrying the deep, steady timbre that had once called orders across storm-swept decks.

"How are you not suffering?" Jocelynn asked, squinting at him through eyes that felt like they’d been packed with sand. "You said you drank as much as I did. More than that. I can’t possibly have had a whole pitcher of wine to myself yesterday, no matter how many times Sorcha refilled my cup," she muttered

"Blackwell sailors learn to drink before we learn to swim, my lady," Devlin said with a faint smile forming on his lips. "My father always said that if you could drink till the stones pitched like the sea, then you’d never miss the deck of your ship," he said with a chuckle that was far too loud in Jocelynn’s ears. "He wasn’t far wrong."

"I’d rather pitch the wine overboard," Jocelynn said with a grimace that she quickly smoothed into the pleasant, composed mask she’d spent months perfecting. No matter how much she wanted to wallow in her suffering, the market was full of eyes, and even in a working-class district outside the city walls, Owain’s reach extended through the doubled patrols of guards who moved in pairs among the stalls.

There were twice as many of them as she’d seen on her last visit to the docks. They wore the yellow and blue of Lothian on their tabards and carried themselves with the practiced swagger of men who had been given permission to be cruel.

As she watched, two of the guardsmen converged on a wiry fisherman near the water’s edge who had been sorting his catch into baskets. The man looked up with the startled expression of a rabbit who’d heard the snap of a branch, and before he could speak, one of the guards shoved him hard enough to scatter fish across the wet stones.

"On your feet, Cadoc," the guard said with a sneer. "You know the rules. No loitering on the quay without a market token."

"I have one, sir, I have one," the fisherman protested as he scrambled for the wooden token that proved he’d paid the fees to sell at the docks, but the second guard planted a boot on his basket, crushing several fish beneath his heel while his companion laughed.

"Looks fake to me," the guard said, not even glancing at the token the man held up. "Get up, old man," he said as he grabbed a fistful of the man’s hair. "Constable’s got a wagon waiting for folk like you. Don’t make me drag ye to it," he sneered as he hauled the gray-haired fisherman to his feet.

Jocelynn watched the exchange with a carefully neutral expression that concealed the cold knot forming in her stomach. The fisherman wasn’t a troublemaker. He was a thin, weatherbeaten man whose hands were raw from hauling nets in freezing water, and the guards had singled him out with the casual ease of men who had done the same thing many times before.

This was Owain’s city now. This was the order he was building, one boot on a fisherman’s basket at a time.