“Call yourself whatever you want, but when my soldiers cut you down, they won’t bother with a name. Brigands like you get no names once they’re hung in the gibbet.” The Warden tried to make that line sound as confident and bombastic as he could, but the flop sweat breaking out across his forehead ruined the effect. “As for me, I am Lord Burton, Warden of the region in which you are currently trespassing.”
“How much did you have to pay the dwarves to buy this pretty little fief, your Lordship?” Jon asked with as much insolence as he could muster. “Did they give you a good deal since there weren’t any Shaws around to complain, or did they make you pay through the nose for the privilege of being their jailer?”
“Excuse me?” The Lord asked, after almost choking on his now cold tea.
“That’s what the Warden really is? You know that right?” Jon’s questions were full of barely concealed aggression. “He doesn’t protect anything - he keeps the prisoners, I mean peasants, right where they belong: on the plantation. The dwarves and their brands handle any actual threats if one happens to arise.”
“With one hand you claim the right to my lands and with the other you declare that ownership is what… A travesty? A betrayal?” The Warden said, almost gloating. “Which is it boy? Are you the rightful Lord of the area or should no one have that right at all?” Jon flushed as his hands tightened briefly into fists. He’d let this conversation spin out of control already. This wasn’t supposed to be a philosophy debate. No one was going to convince a fat, comfortable man like this that there was anything wrong with exploiting his subjects to make himself even richer.
“All you need to know is this: You live in my father’s house, you wear his titles and chain, and you rule over his subjects while his heir lives.” Jon spat back, refocusing on the core of the conversation before this soft, clever man could dissemble any further. “You have two choices. You can flee for your life with your family and as many of your valuables as you can carry - or I can wash the blood off your chain of office after I take it from your corpse.”
The warden swallowed hard as he considered not just the words, but the coldness with which they were delivered. “If I leave, what's to stop me from going to the guard post or the garrison and coming back with a detachment to put you down like the dog you are?” He asked finally. “Shaw or no, this domain is mine legally, and—”
“You don’t know nearly enough about Dwarvish law to say such things.” Jon interrupted.
“We are talking about the laws of Men here,” The Warden shot back, letting the first signs of anger peek out from behind his carefully groomed apathy. “You’re a tough man with a sword now, but the law will be on my side when I bring back two dozen men with swords of their own to assert my own rights.”
“From the condition of the post I saw on my way in, I'd be surprised if you could rally a dozen men to your cause - even after you spread a few silver princes around,” Jon said, meeting the Lord’s gaze. “Get them killed if that’s what you want. When you’re done throwing them away I have no doubt you’ll run crying to the garrison next. All those deaths will be on your conscience, not mine. Just take your family and leave immediately.”
“Or what?” The man smiled like he still had a trump in his pocket. “A young hero like you will drag my wife and daughter out by their hair? That doesn’t seem very likely to me. I’ll bet you won’t even strike me down if I refuse to draw my sword. You believe that you’re much too honorable for that.”
“You might have been right, once upon a time. But now - you have no idea what a man like me is capable of,” Jon admitted, “but I’ll bet you all run from the building as quick as you can once I’ve lit it on fire.”
“You wouldn’t,” the Warden said, “You just said it’s your father’s house and—”
“And everything that’s important in it is already six feet under ground.” Jon finished the Lord’s sentence in a way that made his eyes bulge. “I’d rather build a hovel amongst its ashes than watch you sleep there one more night, but I’ll give you 10 minutes to clear out before I light the match.”
The Warden tried to read his inscrutable face for several long seconds before he decided that the young mongrel sitting across from him wasn’t bluffing. After that he was up like a shot and running back to the manor as fast as his short legs could carry him. Jon watched him go, and heard some muffled shouting as soon as the door slammed closed, but followed at a leisurely pace as he enjoyed the backyard. At least here, with the orchard untouched it still felt like home.
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By the time Jonathan reached the house the remaining servants were running around, packing ridiculous things that one man and a few men couldn’t hope to carry. Blankets. Bird cages. Hats and hat boxes. It was hardly what Jon would have packed if he’d been told that he only had a few minutes to take what he owned, but he enjoyed the spectacle nonetheless. “Only what is essential now Martha. You too Elise, we must take just what we need for a night or two and then we’ll be back for…” The conversation on the floor above him faded out before Jon could hear the rest. He wished that he’d been able to see just what had earned such a rebuke in the light of things they were taking that they clearly considered vital, but were anything but necessary.
When looked back from the stairs he saw the young blond woman across the parlor glaring at him. “What’s the matter Elise,” Jon guessed at her name, “Forget whether you need two parasols or three?”
“Elise is my sister, you brute,” the woman announced. “I’m Clara, and I’m here to make sure that no one needs to go anywhere.” Jon was wondering what was up with her intense look of concentration and put it together a second before she said the words. He was up and running towards her even before she started talking as he forced himself to take long deep breaths, but he was already starting to feel faint. Taking heat from the kitchen to boil her blood or pulling out his revolver would have been a quicker solution, but he couldn’t stomach it. His father was right about that much at least. Hurting a young woman more than he had to, even if she was an airblood that was foolish enough to try to steal the air from his lungs would never sit right with Jonathan.
Besides, he decided as he reached her. If she’d really been a threat then he’d already be unconscious. She was as unpracticed as most nobility, so even if she had a real talent it was underdeveloped. She was soft and spoiled as cheese, he decided as he closed his hands around her throat and started to squeeze. All she could do was make him feel light headed as long as he kept adding air to the air she was stealing, but unless she was smart enough to put that air in her own lungs she’d pass from his physical grip long before he passed out from her magical one.
For the next minute it became an endurance match. The dizziness and feelings of weakness reminded Jon of being back in the high mountains after he’d escaped from the dwarves. It was an uncomfortable sensation he’d rather not repeat, but this had become as much a struggle of wills as much as an endurance contest. After another minute though, it was one that Clara lost. Instead of driving him into unconsciousness so her father could kill him, or whatever her plan was, she was soon coughing and sputtering as her face started to turn first red and then purple. It was only then she finally released her grip on him and his heart stopped hammering in his chest.
“Do something that foolish again, and next time I won’t be so gentle,” Jon said as he released her and she fell to her knees in a pool of her own skirts.
“Gentle? Gentle?!” The woman exploded, her face twisting in outrage. “How dare you lay hands on me!”
She was up in an instant after that, holding her skirts up so she didn’t trip over them as she ran up the stairs. “Father - father that brute tried to strangle me! He manhandled me and I wish to file charges!” Jon smirked as he heard her whine and complain to a man that was powerless to stop him. What happened next was even funnier as heard her getting chastised upstairs.
“I told you,” the Warden hissed, trying to keep his voice down, but Jon still heard him from the top of the stairs. “That man is dangerous. Save your parlor tricks for someone that won’t as soon slit your throat as look at you! Show some sense and—”
“Five minutes left until I light the torch Lord Burton.” Jon yelled, picking up a candelabra and lighting all 5 candles with a thought as he sat down near the front door. “Don’t forget to give me your chain on the way out or you won’t even make it to the gate.” After that everything was a frenzy, as the Burton Family and their servants stumbled over each other on their way out the door with everything they wanted to save but very little that they probably needed. The other two ladies said nothing to him. They wouldn’t even look at him as they practically fled their own home. Clara at least looked at him in defiance before beating a hasty retreat. She might be the only one in the whole place with a little bit of spirit he thought as he watched her leave. Too bad she wasn’t his type.
“No matter what you think your grievance is boy, this isn’t justice,” Lord Burton swore as he finally came down and stopped in the entryway. He dropped his chain of office at his feet after only a moment of consideration. “So wear this for a day, or perhaps two. Soon enough you’ll be wearing a noose to replace it.”
“Less than a minute now,” was Jon’s only response to the Lord’s little speech. He could care less what the man said. He knew that things would only escalate from here. He was counting on it. He had to positively enrage the empire if he was going to get the result he was counting on.
“We’ll be back, with enough men to ensure the Shaw line is ended once and for all this time,” the Lord answered, cutting his rhetoric short at Jon’s threat once more.
Then Jon was alone. He extinguished his candles and set the candelabra down as he stood. Then he stooped to pick up his father’s chain before flopping down on a couch more comfortable that he’d ever known before. How had such a coward managed to secure the wardenship of a frontier province he wondered. What sort of fop would take a position like this so far from the capital only to act like he should spend every night dining with the upper crust. Jon suspected that Marcus could have answered that question, but he was five years dead, and he’d run out of insights long before he passed.