Vero met with Iosephus in the library reading room. He wordlessly led her down to the bottom level and into his private room.

  It was filled with books over every shelf, table, chair, and even the bed. Several of them were from the library above, but a few looked like personal journals. He showed no indication of offering her any hospitality.

  “I prepared a record of all our intelligence regarding the Black Palatine.” He handed her a rough bound folio. “Some of that information is restricted. Familiarize yourself with it, but leave it here.” He said nothing more, and paid no further attention to her.

  Vero watched him pick up an astrological tome regarding eclipses, then flipped through her own book. The Black Palatine lived in the time of the old Catholic Imperium, centuries before the free successor kingdoms left the empire to forge their own destinies.

  This portion of his life was well documented, considering the age of the records. His early childhood was a mystery, but he was adopted into the emperor’s own house as a young man. The name he was adopted under was Varrus, but whatever his birthname was had been long since lost to time.

  He was a warlord for his adopted father, and was eventually granted the title of Ceaser, which was at that time the supreme head of the Imperial Legions, beneath only the emperor himself. His campaigns were well chronicled; efficient, but brutal. He ruthlessly crushed dissent on the borders and led punitive campaigns into the Pict lands and modern Teutonia.

  His wars brought the Imperium’s borders to their maximum extent, but his conquests were unstable and impractical, too expensive to maintain. Several decades after his death, the emperor-general Justinian brought the Imperium back to more defensible borders and ushered in the final Imperial golden age.

  Even before his death, Ceaser Varrus was remarkably unpopular in the Imperial City itself. Iosephus included many political tracts from his contemporary opponents. Those views were biased, so Vero didn’t trust them implicitly. She took their rumors seriously at least, if not literally.

  His foes associated him with high taxes, deliberate cruelty, and black magic. He frequently ordered his slaves executed for minor mistakes, consorted with witches, and took unseemly social habits from the barbarians he oppressed. Or so the pseudo-intellectuals of his time claimed.

  Eventually, he became so odious to the Imperial elite that the emperor was forced to strip him of his rank. Instead, he used Varrus' reputation to new advantage by making him the Imperial spymaster. It was at this time he took the name Black Palatine.

  His tactics as a spymaster relied on assassination, torture, and extortion. This also won him no friends, and he often kept himself safely away from the Imperial court. Near the end of his life, he retreated to the northwestern edge of Imperial territory. Very close to where she was presently, in the Star Mountains.

  Already he had openly disavowed all the gods, and in exile made no attempt to hid his affiliation to dark magic. Several attempts by religious authorities to sanction him were circumvented by the emperor he served.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  At last, the Black Palatine publicly announced that he had transcended humanity as a vampyre. The hows were obscure, although the Slayer Order of the time named several elder vampyres they believed could be responsible- each of those striga had since been put to the torch long before Vero’s own time.

  The Black Palatine certainly did not act like a newly spawned vampyre in a coven, and immediately set out to pursue his own personal agendas. Although, Vero thought perhaps he could still have been a pawn of a greater undead, who may or may not have been destroyed since.

  Open vampyrism was too much to be stomached, and he was at last declared apostate. There was a brief civil war over the affair, but few flocked to the Black Palatine's blood-soaked banner. In the end he retreated back across the Star Mountains, and played political games with the other vampyric voivodes there.

  Over time, he came to dominate the night side of the mountains, but his attempts to reach out to the dayside were consistently rebuffed. Slayers brought down many of his contemporaries and elders, but somehow, they never reached him.

  After studying it at length, Vero closed the folio. Iosephus had moved on to a tome on the mystic potential in borders, barriers, bridges, and portals.

  “Are you finished?” Iosephus asked, without looking up from his book.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.” He closed his book. “You should be careful, Veronique. There are many great fools in the Curia who do not wish you to return alive from this hunt.”

  “I’ve surmised that already, but thank-you for your warning. You are certain I’ll survive altering my blood into this poison, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely certain. That’s the first thing they’d try, but none of them has ever been a match for me in spellcraft. It’s important, to me, that you return here safe and well.”

  Vero had not expected such warmth from the old elf. “Thank-you. I’m glad to have at least some friends in this place.”

  “Yes… perhaps we shall have more pleasant times when you return. We can watch the eclipse together.”

  “I’d like that.” Vero reminded herself not to be too quick to trust. He was one of two men who could have left that spell in her room. “Did you know the Curia before they secluded themselves in that tower?”

  “Yes… a long time ago.”

  “What can you tell me about them?”

  “They are men and women the same as any other. They were neither the strongest, nor the wisest, nor the bravest, nor the most cunning. They merely lived the longest. Chance became experience, experience became authority, authority granted power. They’ve used that power to survive, but only by a slender thread of spider silk. Nothing matters to them any longer, except extending that life. It makes them dangerous; it also makes them blind.”

  “Do you think they could turn to vampyrism as the Black Palatine did?”

  “A few would, small minded dullards. I’m sure they’re the ones trying the hardest to have you killed. Most of them have more sense than that. They want eternal life- true eternal life. Not endless death, and that’s all the curse of the striga brings. They’re the ones we need to prove your value to. Once you come back alive, they’ll see how critical to our order you really are.”

  Vero had never heard any emotion from the librarian before this moment, and the sudden passion in his mild grandfatherly voice surprised her. It made her reweigh the balance of her suspicions.

  “Do you trust Pentarch?” she asked.

  “He’s superstitious, sanctimonious, and predictable. Unlike almost everyone else here, he’s exactly what he claims to be. I trust him in so much as I consider him a known factor. He’s with us as regards to keeping you alive, and that’s what’s salient at the moment.”

  And yet someone left that spell. If Iosephus was the liar, would he not try and turn her against Pentarch? Iosephus’ earnest defense of Pentarch only made the leader of their group seem more suspect.

  Vero moved to leave.

  “Be safe, Veronique.”

  “And you.”

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