A man was waiting for David as he left his family’s home in Deva. He had a pencil in one hand and a notebook in the other, which he was waving wildly.

“Lord Feleke!” he yelled. “Lord Feleke, just a word!”

David pretend not to hear or see the man while he walked over to the cab waiting to pick him up. Journalists. They were almost annoying enough to make him consider staying at Deva Castle.

Almost.

“Just one of them this morning, Milord?” Antonio, the driver asked, grinning.

“Looks like it,” David replied gloomily.

“Might have more at the castle, of course,” the driver went on, prompting the horse with a flick of the whip.

David just grimaced. He had given up on trying to brave the catastrophe that was traffic in Deva’s inner city within his first week of returning, especially in the early morning darkness. Now he had to deal with his way-too-awake driver who picked him up every day. Antonio was a chatterbox, too, but he did get David through the worst of the mayhem with a minimum of delay. Mostly he did so by swearing and liberally using his whip against any obstacle that might be moved by it, though he only ever used the crack to spur on his own, very fine stallion.

Antonio yelled at the driver of a heavy cart full of what looked like un-tanned leather. It certainly smelled of old blood and blocked the whole street because it sat diagonally across.

David breathed flatly through his teeth until they had managed their way around the team of oxen.

Just as Antonio had predicted, there were more reporters hoping for a good story waiting for his cab to stop on the parade-grounds of Deva Castle. It was easy to waylay David, since he was following the same routine since he had arrived at Deva a month ago, which was similar to his routine in Eoforwic: First, he went to the Castle’s garrison, which included the underground cells where the newest group of freshly-bitten werewolves was being kept.

Before David’s arrival, they had been kept in the much larger city jail. Luckily, Duke Desmarais had given in to his insistence that he didn’t want to travel across the city twice every day.

“You Lordship!” one of the men yelled. “Your Lordship, for the Deva Gazette, just a quick question!”

“I’m busy,” David gave back. “You can come downstairs with me, if you absolutely have to.”

The man who had yelled after him backed away quickly, but there were some less experienced journalists who went the other direction.

“We can see the downstairs?” one young man asked.

“If you don’t get in the way.”

David didn’t slow down on the stairs. Just like in Eoforwic, the werewolves were kept on the lowest level of the prison. Here in Deva, there was no guards’ station, though. The stairs led directly onto the hallway with the cells.

As soon as the group of journalists followed David to the dimly lit lower levels, two werewolves, one on each side of the corridor, smashed into the bars of their cells, howling and snarling and reaching for them by sticking their huge paws out between the steel.

David grinned to himself when the reporters screamed and raced back up the stairs. The giant wolves stared after them, silently, and then started howling again, tongues hanging out. Just a few months ago, David would have worried about their sanity, but now he knew: they were howling with laughter.

“Thanks, guys,” David called over.

“Was – did you make them do that?” a shrill voice asked.

David spun around to see a terrified young woman sitting on the stairs, clutching her purse. She wore a very prim black dress, but looked a little dishevelled as if the mad stampede had knocked her over.

“What, you didn’t think it was funny?” David asked.

“No!”

Several werewolves laughed about her indignant tone, not just the two involved in the jump-scare.

David offered the woman a hand. She glared at him, but accepted after a couple of seconds.

“This is a very dangerous trick you taught them!” she informed him.

“Not at all, Miss, your life was never in danger.”

“Not for me! For them! You can’t go teaching them that it’s okay to scare decent folk like that! They’ll get killed once they’re out of here!”

David blinked, and then smiled. Before he could say anything, the werewolf to their right growled: “Thanks, missy, but we ain’t stupid. We know we can only do that while we’re under his lordship’s protection.”

Her jaw dropped when she heard the voice and she looked around questioningly. Then she quickly covered her face with her hands.

“He’s – he’s naked!”

“Well, obviously. Their clothes don’t transform with them,” David explained. “Put something on, will you, Matt?”

Matt obligingly grabbed his pants.

David threw another look at the young woman and moved on through the prison. There were more than twenty werewolves down here – Matt was obviously still fine, but some of the others took longer to assess. The woman followed him, which was not helping. Her presence made the more skittish werewolves even more nervous.

David sighed and turned back towards her. “All right, fine, Miss. I’ll answer one question.”

“Question?” she asked back blankly. “Oh, yes! I mean – I’d really just like to see how you do this? It’s very fascinating!”

“You’re making them nervous.”

“I – I am making them nervous? What could I possibly do to them? They’re the monsters!”

“They’re no monsters,” David gave back. “And this attitude is why they’re wary of strangers. Just stay back here, please.”

She actually did as he had told her, waiting the whole time until he had finished his round. It took him nearly two hours, since several of the werewolves were too agitated to communicate at all. It was hard to ascertain their state of mind while they wouldn’t even nod or shake their head for him. At least one of them had either taken a rapid turn for the worse, or she was just terrified out of her mind. He’d see tomorrow.

“Lord Feleke, may I ask what exactly you are trying to accomplish by talking to them like this? You treated them as if they were human?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Some of them are essentially human,” David gave back. “Twenty-eight days out of twenty-nine. Some of them are pretty much human while there’s a crescent moon in the sky. All the sane ones are entirely human on new moon.”

“So what if one of them isn’t sane?”

“Do you mean how I can tell?”

“No, I mean – what if you waste your time on them?” she challenged. "What if they do go mad?”

David shrugged. “I will not treat them all like animals just because there’s a chance that some might change. Because that would make me the monster.”

The young journalist noted that down. “Innocent until proven guilty?” she asked.

“Quite so.”

“Why are you taking notes on everything they say and do?”

“There is still a lot we don’t know about werewolves.”

“But you’ve been hunting them for how many years?”

“Fifteen years,” David said. “More than half my life.”

“So what are you learning after all this time?”

David sighed. “Everything, pretty much. All I know about them is how they react when they’re hunted, scared senseless and half starved. We’re just starting to understand about the changes they go through right after they’ve been bitten. If you want to know more about this, you could contact the new chair of magi-zoology at Deva University, Prof. Audenne.”

“Thank you, I will do so.”

“If you would excuse me now,” David went on. “I have a busy schedule.”

He waited until she nodded and walked ahead, back up the stairs. She smiled when he held the door for her, though he mostly wanted to make sure she really left. He did lock up behind himself and then tipped his hat at her, before he hurried across the parade grounds to the main entrance of the castle.

He had an office there now, a small room on the same hallway where the larger rooms for the duke’s war council and offices were. A stack of letters was waiting for him. The longest was the daily report from Lieutenant Fletcher, who was overseeing the werewolves who were still healing at Oldstone Castle. The weekly report from First Camp wasn’t due until tomorrow. Some of the other places where werewolves had been stationed filed reports, too, though not nearly as regularly. Also, one of the werewolves who fought with Rust against the Rot wrote to him, though his messages reached David with more than a week of delay. They were also by far the most interesting.

Rust and his group were actually making good progress in driving the Rot from the Stour valley. The reports did mention that it might partly be the frost that was keeping the ugly bastards underground, but David still filed it away as good news.

David rubbed his face, struggling to concentrate on a mind-numbing report about everything the two werewolves he had placed at King’s Haven did. Whoever had written it had just barely stopped short or mentioning every time one of them took a dump. It ended with a nervous request for him to confirm that this was all normal behaviour and that the two continued to pose no danger.

He should have a secretary to pre-read this crap and craft a politer version of “yes, for flame’s sake, they’re four years old, they’re not going to turn mad!” which he then only had to sign.

But how to find someone for that job? Someone who, ideally, knew how to deal with the bureaucracy of Deva Castle, but also knew how to spot if there really was an issue with a werewolf?

He should probably just find some regular secretary with some experience, and teach them what they needed to know about werewolves. He could also try to talk Nathan into helping him, like Andrew had suggested, but then there’d just be two country bumpkins with no real idea how to navigate the niceties of Deva Castle.

David sighed and did his best to fashion an answer to the writer from King’s Haven, trying not to sound too annoyed, though this was the third time in as many weeks he told them that all was well.

David jumped and nearly spilled ink all over the paper when the door smashed open and Lord Clermont walked in.

“Lord Feleke, you’re late!” the old general greeted him.

David looked up and blinked in confusion. He had no meeting scheduled with the old general today?

“To your ‘working lunch’ with the dukes,” Clermont clarified.

“Of – which you are not generally part?” David asked.

“Nah. No work gets done while Desmarais is stuffing his face. You missed my report on the state of the Loegrian troops, though.”

“My apologies. I was quite busy,” David replied. He didn’t ask how it had gone – Lord Clermont had kept him from his work for more than an hour a few days ago, complaining about the low standards for Loegrian soldiers compared to the Empire’s elites.

“Checking on your werewolves, yes, yes. What’s this?”

Clermont had grabbed the report from King’s Haven. “Good grief,” he added, before David could say anything. “That’s the sort of crap you’re wasting your time on? Even I can tell this guy is jumping at shadows! Get a clerk to deal with them! Or even better, have them replaced by someone who’s got some balls!”

“Do you see any clerks around here?” David gave back.

Clermont stared at him with his one, dark eye. After a few seconds he shook his head. “You really are terribly inexperienced, aren’t you? I’ll have the steward send you someone this afternoon.”

He put the letter back and turned towards the door. “You better get going now, too.”

David stared at the closing door, both relieved and annoyed. He often felt that way after a conversation with Clermont. He tended to get even more annoyed because it was clear that the old general was doing it on purpose.

David sighed and glanced at the clock at the wall. Ten minutes past one. How on earth had he missed the tolling of the palace’s bells?

“You’re late, Lord Feleke!” Desmarais greeted him.

David had no idea why the duke would even be bothered by his tardiness. It wasn’t like they had waited for him to start their meal. When David looked over, George Louis smiled and made a show of licking his spoon.

David glared at him, which only made George Louis grin wider.

“My apologies, Your Highness,” David said through gritted teeth.

“Have a seat,” George Louis said. “What happened? Another issue with the werewolves?”

“Not so much the wolves.”

David took his seat and told them how the werewolves had tried to scare the journalists and failed in case of the young woman.

Both dukes seemed to find that quite funny, but George Louis asked: “Is it safe, though? You said they reached through the bars for them?”

“It’s perfectly safe,” David sighed, filling his plate. “Matt and Edwin are perfectly sane, and even if they weren’t – there’s no danger, unless someone is silly enough to stand within arm’s reach of the cells before they’re sure what state of mind the inmate is in. And since the scientists and I are the only ones who go down there, usually, you really don’t need to worry.”

“The scientists had to learn those lessons the hard way,” Duke Desmarais noted. “Though I suppose they have all internalized it by now.”

David nodded slowly. The students and professors he had met so far were all very diligent in their care. He’d have to ask about the earlier blunders.

“Anyway,” he asked. “Anything noteworthy happening this morning?”

“You missed Lord Clermont,” George Louis replied. “He was here to give an in-person report on what he thinks of the troops he has at his disposal.”

“He was kind enough to share his detailed opinion on the state of training of our men with me two days ago, so I think I’m already quite well informed.”

Desmarais laughed as if David’s words had been inordinately funny.

“Did you hear anything from the Stour?”

“Rust and his group are still making good progress,” David relayed. “They’re not entirely sure how much influence the weather has on the Rot, though. Could be they’re not seeing much of it because the ground is frozen solid. They’ll have to go along the river again in spring to make sure they didn’t miss anything.”

“Well, damn,” George Louis muttered. “I’d hoped they could get it done during the winter. But fine. We can’t take a risk there. Heard anything from Gregory?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean much.”

Duke Desmarais grimaced. “So, to sum up the news of the day: We have soldiers that can’t match the elites of the Empire, we may be wasting our time with the Stour valley, and we may not get any reinforcements, either. On the other hand, the alliance of imperialist nobles is growing every day.”

David looked up from his plate. “Someone else jumped ships? Who?”

“Theodore de Cauchy.”

It wasn’t a name David recognized. Since neither duke looked like they were going to say more, he asked: “How badly will that hurt us?”

“It’s – Baron de Cauchy has fought for the Empire as a young man. But it’s less that his defection will hurt us, and more worrying in that the de Cauchy holdings lay north of the White Torrent,” Desmarais said.

“I’m surprised you haven’t heard about this,” George Louis added. “At least one of the daughters has fled to Wardshire? Your fiancée’s steward there was the one who informed us?”

David paused when he finally recognized the name. “Theresa de Cauchy?” he asked.

“I believe so.”

David nodded. He’d have to send a telegram to Brines right away, let Lane know what was going on, in case she didn’t already.

Baron the Cauchy was the fourteenth lord to throw in with the Valoise, as far as David knew. The de Clares, unsurprisingly, were part of the group as well. The defectors had an army amassed around the city of Port Neath and a firm grip on the surrounding country side. They would likely take the city, which would give them a large, fortified harbour. Which meant that George Louis and his allies needed to take it back before the winter storms were over and the Valoise could send reinforcements.

It was a huge headache, but one David didn’t feel he could contribute much to solve. Indeed, as soon as the plates were cleared away, George Louis turned towards him and told him to get back to “his” werewolves. David wasn’t sure if George Louis was trying to be funny or insult him, but he was happy to do so either way.