Scheming

The tenor of Renard’s ghoul-slaying changes in the next months.

The first element is that he is now doing it for Isobel. Rather than acceptance, fear and worry bubble up when Renard weighs whether one ghoul or another would be in his power to slay — that is, that his life is at risk now matters, because if he dies he will die having not met that promise to Isobel. This has made him shy from pitting himself against threatening ghouls. More than once, the temptation flits to abandon ghoul-slaying entirely, and find means for money through less hazardous occupations. But when that temptation rises, a stern voice clamps it down: no. If it is Renard’s fate to ever be released from this penitence, then the world will express it, by the fulfilment of his oath to Isobel without dying to any ghouls.

So if he does die, he can figure that stepping away from this path would have brought him nothing but misery anyway.

Still — still, now that he wants to live, he wishes all this business finished and put behind him quickly, so that he can say his life as a swordsman is over and he can move on to something more joyful.

Which leads to the second element affecting Renard’s new atmosphere: money. Lords commonly place bounties on problematic ghouls, however, this is not always true, and not every slain ghoul will necessarily carry a financial reward. Living off bounties has funded Renard for most of his time as a ghoul-slayer, but even when the profit has been good, his spending has been frugal because relying on the constant availability of lucrative bounties is infeasible. In fact, embarrassingly, Renard has more than once lived off the Queen’s charity money in these dry spells. Now when he browses contracts promising 300 lucras or 150 pyrii, sums that would have supported him for months as a vagrant, he abruptly feels underwhelmed, knowing that a beautiful woman as Isobel would blow through these pittances by the purchase of a single good dress.

Isobel must have all the excellent dresses she wants, eat all the finest delicacies she wants, live in the finest estates in all the cities she wants, and never be barred from luxury! That is what he promised, and if Renard cannot deliver, he feels profoundly anxious.

Renard scans, again and again, over the contracts he has assembled. As it has been in the past weeks, none are especially lucrative. He thumbs his sweaty brow and bites his lip — it is embarrassing that he send Isobel sums withering week by week, and indeed is becoming doubtful that these meagre earnings will ever amass into a fortune that would put her in a castle.

It may be time to get more creative.

There is a principality called Fayette. Isolated upon a mountain, and ruled by only one family line with no drama around its succession, it is a quaint little place like Verdanheim. Though Renard has never visited, he has been to countries on its border, and knows Fayette owns holiday mansions in several local kingdoms. Not Lacren, but in Thresha, Poiterroi, Oppenveist — yes, quite grand estates there.

No different from many old houses. But Fayette, tantalisingly, is facing some problems.

Ghoul problems. Renard’s bread and butter.

400 lucras, the bounty-criers say, a sum most would call beyond fair. Oh, how Renard’s contemporaries must salivate over that number, pennies he would dismiss as near trash, so quick to pounce and polish their swords — but if he can get in before them, Renard Cox believes he can get more.

Renard tacks up his horse, and rushes for Fayette.