Chapter 15

Baroness Alina Morton was furious.

Robina had not sent new orders for more silk in the last month, and neither had Vasari. The rumour was that the war was off. The price of her silk had dropped dramatically. That damn foreigner had put the wind up both of them, and her schemes had been squashed.

It was probably just as well, as she was having trouble supplying the orders she did have. The damn aracnzi were still playing up and were attacking her people even more than they had in the past. Several of them had been bitten and while they lived, they been out of action for a week while the bites healed.

She’d had four of her collectors die, and others had left to work elsewhere. When she investigated why some hadn’t died, she learned they had been immunised at the Clinic at the Pass. When she went to see the doctor there, she was told that the new Duchess of Renee was paying them to immunise anyone who went through the Pass or turned up requesting it.

Further investigation also turned up that Renee did have a new Duke and Duchess. Not only had Jean lived, but she was married to the foreigner. She had also developed the immunisations. Alina learnt that they weren’t having the same troubles with the aracnzi and people who had left her estates were now working in Renee Province.

Now the Queens had back peddled and halted the war. She had been stirring the two Queens along for years, so they paid her prices for the silk. A war would have also been profitable for her other businesses as well. Previously, she had been one of the largest producers of iron and steel, but now she had competition.

The new mine was cutting deeply into her profits. She had all but stopped making wire. She couldn’t compete with the prices for the new wire. Plus it was far superior to any that she could produce. If strung correctly it would also keep the aracnzi in the exclusion zone and out of farmer’s paddocks.

Major Tomas Millan had also reported that the spells on the exclusion zone seemed to have been strengthened since the long winter. His people, who in the past, had been harrying travellers in the sections of the Pass that were not patrolled as frequently, on her orders, had found they couldn’t stay in the hidden camps anymore.

He had said that the damn aracnzi descended on them whenever they went to occupy the hides, after the spring thaw. He had lost five men in as many weeks. They didn’t have time to harry travellers due to being under attack themselves.

His men were so jittery that he had to bring them back to town. They had been back in Morton for more than two months as the men refused to go back to the Pass, so she had reassigned them.

Tomas was outliving his usefulness.

Tomas was also thinking of his latest reports.

He had learnt, on his last trip into the Pass, that in some places new fences had been erected and land bridges had been built so the wildlife could pass over the travellers without bothering them. Other areas that were once treacherous and excellent for waylaying travellers were now replaced with high, wide tunnels that made the trips safer and faster.

The new safe mid-point shield had also reduced their opportunities. With Vasari’s men patrolling one end and Robina’s the other, many of their favourite places for ambush had been discovered and altered so they couldn’t use them anymore.

There were also a lot more people using the Pass now that it was easier to traverse and this also reduced opportunities. The Pass was not a good place for bandits anymore. Tomas missed the excitement a little and the free booty, but he had also felt the spells in the Pass were much stronger.

Tomas didn’t let his men kill the Merchants and frowned on them attempting to rape women. They were innocent as far as he was concerned. He was a soldier following orders, not a defiler of blameless civilians. Personally, it hadn’t been his favourite assignment, as he didn’t feel it was what he was supposed to do.

He had damn near shit his britches when he was close to one of the fences that blocked him from one of his old camps, and a huge aracnzi sprang at the fence. That big bitch had shaken the fence and hissed at him. He had backed away so fast he fell on his arse.

He decided that he wasn’t welcome in the Exclusion Zone anymore.

Alina had one other problem she wasn’t sure how to deal with, her daughter.

Part of the reason she hadn’t been to Villas or even Riverview since late autumn was her daughter. Most people believed Alina was a Shifter. However, she wasn’t. She had a healthy dose of Burgis in her system, and she couldn’t change form.

When she was younger, she had tried to join the Guild, but they said she didn’t have enough magic for even a novice ring to accept her. She was furious when they told her this. After her mother died in childbirth, having her younger sister Anika, she did get her mother’s old medallion to accept her when she was just twenty-four.

Her mother, Helen, had been a daughter of Vasari’s younger sister. They had different fathers. Helen’s father had been half Burgis and half Genteli. Her father had been from a Burgis and a Shifter. Both of her older brothers had long since departed.

In her seventy-four years, she had only given birth to Bria. Bria had been able to shift gender and had been taken from her by Jean when she smashed the Auto. True, Bria had been a bit wild, but she refused to believe that she battered Jean as she had heard people say.

When she met Mark, she had been fascinated with him. She became frustrated that she couldn’t entice him to mate with her no matter what she tried. For a woman used to men fawning over her, this was a situation she was unsure how to handle. He didn’t even seem to like her company and refused to be alone with her in any situation.

At first, she thought it was just her until she realised he never left a gathering with anyone but Vasari. She suspected Vasari had spelled him to only accept whom she wanted him to screw. Then she heard about the tantrum he threw when he found out about her receiving his sperm. That had really upset her.

She had hoped that when he learnt about her wanting to have his child, he would spend more time with her as he did those sluts in the Palace that bore his children. Then he disappeared after she had to return home for winter.

It had not been a good winter. Even with the medallion, she’d had a terrible pregnancy. She was sick every day of it. Believing Mark had died, as the Major had informed her, made her heart sick as well. Every day was a struggle. She had even fancied that she had seen him one day in a market but then realised the man only had a passing resemblance.

She had taken a month longer than a Magical-Shifter normally would, but since no one at home knew exactly when she fell, she had little trouble hiding the fact she had been pregnant longer. Then she had her next problem. She didn’t produce milk.

The healer said the baby had taken more out of her and that she hadn’t eaten enough while pregnant. The delivery had been a breech, so it had been longer labour than Bria’s and had totally exhausted her, and she had bled.

She took much longer to heal and regain her health than she and the healer felt was normal. The healer gave her all sorts of concoctions to boost her system. The healer mentioned her age probably also had a lot to do with why she recovered slowly and had so many difficulties.

The medallion didn’t seem to heal her as fast as it had in the past. It was a very old medallion, and she had heard about how the other old items were failing, and now had this worry as well. Being sick for so long had not agreed with her at all.

As a result of her illness, she hadn’t spent much time with Brianna. She couldn’t handle her crying. She had never liked the noises babies made. She didn’t feed her as the wet nurse took care of that. She didn’t get up to her during the night, and she didn’t bathe or change her.

To be honest, her interest in Brianna was superficial at best. She’d spend days without even seeing the child, and then the brat would cry when she held her so she would hand it back to the nurse and get on sorting out her other problems.

Then Alina heard that Mark had turned up and handed Vasari her contract ring back. She had been planning on attending that Ball, but her other problems had been plaguing her. She also had a new lover that was distracting her.

She was shocked to learn why Mark had disappeared. It was so he could get Jean pregnant. Jean, who killed her beloved Bria now laid claim to Mark. She was his Duchess, and they ruled Renee province. She knew Jean had turned up, but the Major hadn’t mentioned Mark being with her. He was even useless as a spy, no wonder she had ditched him.

The Renee Province had been a thorn in Alina’s side for decades. It had always been profitable. She had never understood how Janet and her mother had accumulated so much land. She may have a city and two small towns in her province, but Janet had spread her people out into smaller towns as she acquired more land as her mother had.

They had diversified far more than she and her mother had. Janet had fewer problems with crime and unruly behaviour, with unemployment and even sickness in her people due to overcrowding and unemployment. The merchants heading to Villas passed through Janet’s province and not hers.

Some didn’t even bother to stop in Morton to rest, only those merchants going to Milton, it wasn’t any bigger than Alina’s city and it had the port. Quite a few only went as far as Reno to trade. It was reputed Janet’s weaving machines produced finer cloth than hers did, no matter what material they used as thread.

Seven years before, Alina had encouraged Bria to pursue Jean so she could get her hands on that province. Bria had been ten years older than the girl, and preferred her male persona, so she had no issue with eventually become the Duke of Renee as she also expected to inherit Morton as its Duchess.

Bria had often complained to Alina that if Jean wasn’t so damn rich, she wouldn’t have bothered. Jean was boring to talk to and just as boring in bed. Bria had liked to live the high life, and a studious girlfriend wasn’t her ideal mate. At least Jean would run things while Bria had fun.

So she had put on her best, loving boyfriend persona and used the influence of Vasari to help her catch the naive young woman. The problem with naive, but very smart young women is that they eventually learn the way of the world.