The Duke's Decision

Avery looked down at the city from the top of the tower. He did not notice the quiet steps of Beatrice's sandals, her presence remaining hidden from him until she spoke. She was near his side, looking toward the distant horizon.

“Are you going to marry me?” she asked softly, her voice barely audible over the blowing wind.

“Pardon?” For a moment, Avery was taken by surprise; between the sudden presence of Beatrice and her unexpected question, he was so surprised that he wasn’t sure what he had heard. His head jerked backwards as he turned to meet her determined gaze.

“Will you marry me, Lord Avery?” She repeated her question, emphasizing the title, daring him not to answer her.

He sputtered in confusion. “Why would you ask me such a thing already, Beatrice? We only met for the first time yesterday.” His tone sounded defensive even to his ears. He asked again, his voice calmer, trying not to sound too surprised or annoyed. “What makes you think I can answer you so soon, Beatrice?”

She stepped closer, craning her neck upwards to keep her gaze locked on his face. He could feel the warmth of her body against his stomach. It was obvious she had no intention of backing down from her bold attempt; rather, it seemed she was set upon getting him to say yes immediately. He swallowed and fought against the urge to turn away and flee from the small, warm, and soft being in front of him. He was beginning to wonder if she was crazy or if she was simply very clever.

“Please. Don’t call me Beatrice. Call me Bella,” she said quietly. “My family is wealthy. Our lands straddle the border of York. The family holdings have grown considerably in the last three generations. We have acquired several properties in the surrounding area with secondary industries and trades, especially related to textiles and leather goods. I'm a good match, your grace.”

Her hands slid up under his tunic, skin sliding over skin. He inhaled sharply but managed to hold his tongue. A moment later she pressed herself up tight against him. He turned his attention back to the view below, decolletage unguarded from this angle and bulging from being squeezed between them; he felt his heart pounding furiously inside his chest.

“Don't you want me, milord? I can be yours. Just say yes.” As she tilted her head upwards, her whisper tickled his earlobe deliciously.

He pushed her gently away, frowning deeply and turning to watch the horizon. The silence between them was heavy with unspoken words. “Bella, your family is well-off,” he finally answered carefully. “And you are comely. But this is quite sudden, and I am afraid I cannot accept your proposition.” The words came out more harshly than he intended them to. “At this point in time, that is. I will think on it.”

It was obviously difficult for her to accept this response. Her shoulders drooped and she turned her back on him and began walking back towards the stairs. Her footsteps echoed hollowly against the wooden floor and disappeared as she descended the stairs into the keep proper. He watched her go for a long while before returning to stand by the edge of the tower, gazing out over the landscape again.

“That was brazen,” Aunt Maude said.

Avery shrugged uncomfortably in reply; he wasn't sure how to respond.

Aunt Maude shook her head, her wrinkled brow creasing in disapproval. “From what you say, she practically threw herself at you. Highly improper. I’m glad you didn’t reward such behavior.”

“It was just surprising,” Avery said. “She looked so sad afterward that I wished I had said yes.”

“Next time, don’t tell the girl not yet, tell her no. She’ll push her luck further the next time.” Aunt Maude patted him on the shoulder sympathetically; the gesture felt awkward since he didn't know whether or not he deserved it.

“She won't be the only one,” she added. “You're just lucky she left before someone else found the two of you alone on the rooftops. She could have claimed you ruined her and tried to demand satisfaction. Her family are merchants and necroindustrialists, wizard gentry at best – wealthy but lacking rank. An unsuitable family for a match, but one well-positioned enough to cause trouble over a matter of family honor.”

Avery winced; his aunt sighed impatiently at his reaction, and then continued.

“They wouldn't be considered respectable by anyone of our class; we are the law of the land and its guardians. We don't care much about wealth,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “The old aristocrats would consider it a scandal if you married her. It could be a problem for you politically. That's probably why she resorted to such brazen tactics as seduction.”

Aunt Maude paused, seeing that her former charge was unconvinced by that line of argument; still, Avery had been her charge and was used to listening to her, and so he waited patiently with crossed arms while she took a deep breath and collected her thoughts.

“They have manor houses in both Lancaster and York, making them only partially your subjects. The most recent fete at their Lancaster estate featured some of the latest fashions in cuisine from London, and I don't mean chipped moonapples. Given your sentiments on the subject, I can't imagine you'd find them suitable in-laws,” she said pointedly.

For most purposes, necromancers preferred skeletons. They were easier to store and transport than zombies, and could hold just as much of the same basic necromantic motivating force. Maintaining them in the field only required spells specialized in repairing one type of substance, bone. Even military necromancers usually preferred skeletons. The core of the Emperor's famous Obsidian Army was skeletal, though his Scottish partisans made extensive use of something that could be described as a special type of military zombie.

One byproduct of producing animated skeletons from fresh corpses was a significant quantity of necromantically preserved flesh – flesh that would not rot under ordinary circumstances. As a material, this was too potentially useful to throw away, but large-scale production of skeletons for industrial purposes produced a surprising accumulation of it.

When the Great Famine of 1315 hit, the taboo against eating necromantically preserved human flesh did not last for long. After the end of the famine and the introduction of the moonapple, the substance remained something of a delicacy in places with early necroindustrial activity – London in particular, though not York. The old duke had strongly disapproved.

With the rise in rates of vampirism among the aristocracy and the rising demand for skeleton production, some parts of England were struggling with population declines. A dead peasant could work twenty-four hours a day in a manufactory, with a single industrial necromancer seeing to the maintenance of a hundred skeletons; additionally, peasants drained to the point of chronic anemia were less likely to produce large families, or to have children at all.

The latest fashions in London were all about conspicuous displays of wealth. Using expensively maintained zombies as footmen, instead of more intelligent living humans or more efficient skeletons. Callously purchasing the death of a healthy peasant for a fresher and more exciting version of what had become a traditional London delicacy was a conspicuous display of wealth and influence.

Avery found it disturbing enough that Beatrice's necroindustrialist family probably regularly dined on the byproduct of their industrial activities. The idea of them making a show out of the death of a peasant to impress some Lancastrian aristocrats was worse. His vivid imagination painted a picture of Beatrice cheerfully chewing a bloody mouthful of raw human flesh as she flirted with him, and he shuddered.

“I suppose you're right,” he told Maude. “You should probably cross her off the list.”

Maude raised an eyebrow and looked at Avery. “The list?” she asked, her tone one of bland innocence.

“Yes, the list. I'm sure between you, Marcus, and James, someone is keeping a list of all the prospective brides who've dropped in to visit,” Avery said. “In fact, I would be surprised if only one of you was keeping a list, the only question is whether or not you’ve been comparing notes with James when deciding who to cross off the list.”

“Well, yes, sort of. I have been keeping a list, but I haven’t actually crossed out anybody. Dividing the list into suitable and unsuitable prospects is wholly up to you. I wouldn't tell you who to pick,” Aunt Maude said, as if she hadn’t just laid out a firm and detailed argument against Beatrice. “I doubt you'd listen to me if I did. Have any of the others caught your eye yet?”

“You might be surprised,” Avery retorted, heat entering his voice. Briefly, in reflexive response to her question, Avery's thoughts flashed back to the poor embarrassed girl in the lavender dress, staring at her feet. What had her name been? Charlotte? No, that was her mother, her name had started with a J. Josephine? Jane? No, it was something else. And he couldn't even remember what her face looked like, anyway, just the top of her head. He shook his head. “Look, I value your advice. I don’t always follow it, but I know what I don’t know.”

“So. Are there any that stand out?” Maude asked. “Because if you’ve got your eye on one, I can tell you if she’s suitable or not and why, but I know young men, and any young man in your position is going to end up indulging his preferences with his choice.”

Avery let out a heavy sigh, pushing away the vague memory of the unidentifiable girl in the lavender dress. “Bella – Beatrice, I mean – is the only one who's left a real impression on me so far. She stood out with her boldness. And also, if I'm to be quite frank, frightened me a little bit with her intensity even before you told me about her family. So yes. I want you and James to take your list – all the women who’ve been in to see me, plus any of the other ones lying in wait on Isolde’s social calendar – and cut it down to the suitable ones.”

Maude nodded, looking at the wolfhound in the corner. “James is busy these days, but his network is without peer. I'll put together my list and pass him a message.”

James's voice sounded in Avery's head. Not so busy that I can't keep tabs on the old bat. I've been listening in through the hound. She probably knows that.

“Let's iron out a few particulars,” Maude continued. “I know you've just said you value my advice, but I don't want there to be any surprises. I have three particular requirements in mind.”

Avery crossed his arms, leaning against the stone wall, its surface cool against his skin. “I imagine that the first one will be about suitable breeding. Something more than mere wizard gentry? No wizards at all?”

Maude frowned. “We don’t have to be quite that picky. Some of the nobility are wizards, especially those in knightly orders, and archmages are uncontroversially accounted nobles of the realm even if they haven’t inherited a proper title. Those wizards are respectable, just not mere industrial necromancers and wizards of the commercial classes, even the landed ones.” Maude shook her head. “Remember, half of our aristocratic allies sided with Richard and we don't need to strain those relationships further. But we don’t have to go into the upper ranks of the nobility; the daughter of a respectable landed knight would do just fine, though I’d strongly prefer she had some kind of familial connection with someone titled.”

Avery matched Maude’s frown and nodded. “What about an archmage? Would that be snubbing the aristocracy?”

Maude screwed up her mouth in thought. “Not that we have any resident archmages in York, but even the stodgiest of old aristocrats would want to account an archmage a peer noble.”

“There’s one visiting in town,” Avery said. “He’s been petitioning for an audience, and I was wondering where they stood in the social hierarchy. So, first is good breeding. What’s second? Fertility?”

“Yes, that’s also important,” Maude said. “She needs to be able to have children. Which can be difficult to tell ahead of time, but at the least she can’t have the aristocratic disease. And as far as I’m concerned, her immediate family should also be clear of vampirism. If her immediate family has started to fall to the aristocratic disease, there becomes entirely too much of a risk she will become one soon, and a legitimate blood heir becomes an impossibility after that point.”

“Fair enough,” Avery said, then sighed. “We’ve talked about satisfying the aristocracy and getting an heir. What else is there?”

“You have the undivided support of the common people,” Maude said. “And you had better try to keep it. You’ve got their support because they hoped you would be like the old Silver Duke in his prime. And you’ve delivered their hopes so far. You've enforced his old laws vigorously and shown no tolerance for those who want to 'harvest' our growing peasant population to fuel the growth of necroindustrial manufacturing and agriculture. If you marry a necroindustrialist, or anyone whose family is invested heavily in necroindustry, you'll lose that trust.”

Avery cleared his throat. “Another strike against Bella, in other words,” he said, feeling a little guilty. Beatrice had clearly wanted to be with him, and she'd clearly felt terrible when he'd put her off. She would probably feel even worse once she learned she was out of consideration entirely.

“Yes. Nobody like Beatrice in any way at all,” Aunt Maude said. “The one thing in Beatrice’s favor is that she does look to be healthy enough to bear multiple children well. The most difficult part of your marriage is that if your wife proves unable to bear children, you have to either look for an illegitimate heir with a mistress or put her aside entirely, and those options usually come with quite a bit of trouble."

She paused, holding up a hand for a long minute while she thought about something, then continued. “Speaking of which… no cousins. Too much inbreeding makes it hard to have healthy children. Your parents were second cousins once removed, and that wasn't the only cousin marriage in your family tree. Your mother miscarried twice before she had you and the twins.”

Avery was secretly relieved. He’d been worried his aunt would try to push her own daughter on him; cousin marriage was not uncommon among the aristocracy, but his cousin Isolde was like a sister to him. “This all sounds perfectly sensible,” he said. “But how can you tell a woman is healthy and likely to bear multiple children well?"

Maude frowned. “It's not easy. The best I can do is look for signs that there's something wrong. A diviner could detect problems, but childbirth is always a chancy thing. I nearly died when I had Isolde.”

“Got it,” Avery said. “Maybe I should grant the archmage an audience, after all; he’s supposed to be a master of divination. In the mean time, though – the basic list is suitable breeding, no vampires or vampires-in-law, and no necroindustrialists. Anything else?”

Maude shrugged. “That's all I can help you with. Love is nice to have and loyalty is crucially important, but I don't have any way to tell what's in a girl’s heart. I could try to get you the first version of the list of suitable prospects by the end of the day.”

James’s voice chimed in, ringing in Avery’s head. I can tell what’s in a girl’s heart, but I’d need to be close for it to work, and it’s far from easy. It’s not practical to probe the minds of every eligible woman in York. I might have another way to help you, though.

Avery shook his head. “Don't give it to me yet,” he said aloud to Maude. “Just sit down with Marcus, hammer out the list with him, and have him bring it to me. He may know some of the families you don’t. Do send a copy of it to James, but… I don't want to see the list yet, I have some thinking to do first and I don't want it clouded by any foolish reactions like the one I nearly had to Beatrice.”