Arc 5: Chapter 12: The Headsman and The Lady Dance
Some time later, I was getting ready to head out when Emma appeared at the door again.
“Someone here to see you,” she said, not bothering to hide her annoyance. “Also, I’m not your secretary. Shouldn’t we have a servant to answer the damned door?”
I gave her a steady look. “You’re my squire. I should be having you scrub my armor and dress me. Would you prefer that?”
Emma blew out a breath, sighing. “Shall I see them up?”
I waved my assent. A minute later, Faisa Dance stepped into my office.
A tall, lavishly adorned woman in her fifties, Lady Faisa was the older sister to her House’s leader and a leading name in the renaissance movement, a patron to artists and inventors. The Dance’s were powerful and wealthy, rulers of the Duchy of Mirrebel. When I’d first arrived in the capital, I’d played the role of a mercenary sleuth investigating her lover’s murder. Her cooperation had enabled me to learn that demonic activity was at work in the city.
Needless to say, I bowed my head to the noblewoman and spoke in courteous tones. “Lady Faisa. To what do I owe the honor?”
Faisa Dance didn’t reply immediately. She paced around the room, her layered skirts whispering along the freshly scrubbed stone of the floor. Bronze skinned and silver haired, Faisa had a piercing gaze shaped by a thin, elegant nose and high cheekbones. It was said by many she’d been among Urn’s greatest beauties in her youth, and I could still see it.
And I didn’t feel ready to host any one of her standing. My personal quarters were still mostly barren, and not as clean as I’d like. There was the desk, my armor stand, and a shelf I’d had brought up not two hours before to help organize some of the paperwork I’d already been inundated with.
Faisa paused by the desk, glancing over the stacks of reports. “You’ve come a long way since that day you were introduced to me as Lord Yuri’s fetch,” she said, turning to face me. “Alken of the Linden, was it?”
I kept my chin lowered, feeling very wary of this powerful woman. “I regret deceiving you, my lady, but I trust you understand the reasons.”