I pulled open the door from my room and headed toward the mess hall. The structure seemed as if it hadn’t changed at all since I took over. I had half expected the whole thing to just magically fall apart once it wasn’t a lair anymore. At least, I was assuming that it wasn’t a lair. After all, Blink had gotten in, and Renfry was solid.

When I walked into the mess hall, I had to laugh. Blink was sitting at the table closest to the kitchen with a pile of pancakes. Wafting out of the kitchen was a light smoke that told me something hadn’t happened correctly.

Blink smiled when she saw me and tried to shove a whole pancake in her mouth. Then she turned back to her pile of syrup-soaked goodness and kept eating. Kasidy came coughing through the kitchen door; more smoke poured out of it.

I asked. “Kasidy, are you trying to cook again?”

“Oh! Yes, Blink did hers, and they look so easy all I had to do was handle the skillet, but that didn’t even seem to work!”

Blink looked up from her plate. “Yous forgots open flue.”

I pushed past Kasidy and headed over to the stove area. The smoke was bad enough that it was hard to see. If I had been back on Earth, all the smoke detectors would have been going off throughout the whole building.

It took me just a few moments to find the flue chain and get the vent open. Once I did, the smoke started to move quickly out. I shook my head at how poorly Kasidy could cook, and then I headed back to talk with them.

When I got out of the kitchen, I saw that Renfry was sitting on the other side of the room reading a book. I felt a slight stir of anger that I still didn’t know how to read, but I pushed that down. Then went over to join him. I needed to know what was going on with him and how he would affect things moving forward.

It wasn’t till I was sitting down that Renfry looked up from the book. When he saw it was me, he jumped up from the table and bowed fully at the waist. I shook my head and waited for a moment, but he didn’t do anything but look at the ground.

I sighed. “Renfry, what are you doing?”

“Bowing, my lord.”

“I see that, but why so long you didn’t last time you bowed.”

“I was wrong, lord. I should have stayed low until you told me to rise it is my station.”

I shook my head. “Fine, rise, and what do you mean your station?”

“I am uncertain of where I am.”

“You are in the mess hall, but for some reason, I don’t think that’s what you are trying to say.”

“No, my lord. I don’t know my standing with you. I accepted a role in your Retinue, but I am not sure if you knew you were offering that to me as you passed out as it happened. I accepted the role as that was a desire of mine. However, now that I have had time to think about things, I am not sure I am worthy of the place.”

I pressed my lips together and thought for a moment. “Tell me what you know about the role that you accepted.”

Renfry made eye contact and then quickly looked down. “My lord, I was just reading about the role. As the Champion of the house, I would be the one to fight for the honor of the house if you didn’t deem it worth your time. As a member of your Retinue, I would also likely travel with you or be in your stead while you were away.”

“So you know nothing about me, yet you accepted a role in my Retinue. I also know nothing about you, so tell me why I should have a Lancer as my Champion.”

Renfry gulped. “As you said, I know nothing about you. I wasn’t fully me at the time that I accepted the role more than that, I am not sure what would have happened if I hadn’t accepted it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean if you what would have happened?”

“My lord, I think that I would have passed on. As it is, I am here because I am oathbound to your house.”

“And why do you think that matters?”

Renfry paled a bit. “My lord, the more that your lady has told me about Hauntings, the more I think that I have somehow been anchored to your house through my oath. When I saw the ring and kissed it, I promised to serve your house always. Something else happened as you fell through the doorway.”

The revenant paused and looked even more nervous than he had before. “Marquess, my lord, I umm… beg your forgiveness. I was… attacking you at the time as well. I don’t know what I did, as I never understood those powers, but I was trying to take you over, I think. Yet, somehow my lord, you did something and then offered me a place by your side. When I accepted it, I appeared on the roof. My bones were glowing, and then I felt drawn to them.”

He dropped to a knee. “Please, my lord, forgive me for attacking you, and thank you for sparing me at the time. I knew I shouldn’t have done what I did, and forgive me, please.”

I smiled. “Renfry, you are forgiven, now sit and let’s talk. I don’t know anything about your race. Nor am I sure what all being a Lancer is. I also will freely admit that I am new to being a noble, so I am not comfortable with being called by my title.”

Renfry nodded as he oddly got back on the bench. He kept his head tilted down as he tried to turn his body to me. I shook my head slightly. I didn’t need someone worried about how I was going to react to everything. I needed someone who could stand beside me.

I clapped my hands, and Renfry jerked up. “Renfry! I need you to be willing to talk with me and tell me what’s going on. If you have been reading about your new post, then you know more about it than I do. So I need you to not be scared of me, but I need to know what’s going on.”

Renfry nodded his head quickly several times. “Yes, my lord. I can try.”

“That’s all I ask. Now tell me about being a Lancer.”

He slowly smiled. “My lord, the lancers of Westiral are the best of the best at what we do. We are a light brigade that scouts and skirmishes. When armies would meet, we would be the ones that would harry the back lines riding in and taking the mages out. There is almost nothing more glorious than a full charge of a hundred lancers.”

I smiled. He had pride in what he did, and I understood the Haunting a bit more. “So you saw war?”

His shoulder drooped a bit. “No, my lord, but my father and my brother did. They told me of the ways we fought for King Bartel the Highborn when he claimed this stretch of the wide plains from Estania. My father’s unit rode down the high mages, and our lances drank their blood.”

As he said the last bit, he clenched his fist and smiled. I looked over at Kasidy and waved her over.

Then I asked. “When you say that your lances drank their blood, do you mean that they really drank the blood or just that you killed them?”

Kasidy walked up as Renfry gave me a slightly off smile. “Our lances get more powerful the more blood they have. Those that ran through the mages all became powerful weapons for the rest of the battle, taking on the most powerful of the mage’s attack spells.”

I nodded slowly. “That sounds amazingly powerful. Kasidy, do your songs tell of these weapons and the plains of Estania or of Bartel the Highborn?”

Kasidy put both her hands into her hair and scratched her head for a moment as she thought. “There’s one song I know about that talks about Estania being set ablaze. But no, I don’t know any of the rest. I have never heard of lances that drink blood, either. But I know the songs for the common man, not the ones for the knights and the nobles.”

Then she gave a big smile, winked, and said. “My lord.”

I pointed at Kasidy and shook my finger. “Don’t you start.”

I turned back to Renfry and asked. “Where are the lances kept?”

He sighed. “They were all on the walls on the first floor. However, it seems that they were all taken on patrol, which doesn’t make any sense at all. I stayed behind, which means that mine should have been left, and we normally had a few spares.”

“Anything else missing that should be here? Might give us a clue about what all happened.”

“Yes, there are a few things missing that should be here. Our rooms are all much more stripped down than I remember them being, and also, the passages to the cellar and stable are missing.”

“Wait, what? There should be a cellar and Stable passage?”

“Yes, my lord. I could understand the stable being broken down, but I am not sure what would have happened to the door and the same with the cellar. Perhaps something happened when it became a lair, but I am not sure.”

“Okay… I guess there’s nothing we can do about missing parts of the tower. Anything else you can tell me about this place?”

“Yes, my lord. The outpost, at least, was when I was alive. I mean lived here before. When I was a soldier… It wasn’t always here. It was why Marquess Nicolaus gained his nobility. This tower is cored and controlled by the marquess’s family. Since you are the new marquess, either you are of his family, or the family is no more.”

I smiled, then realized that Renfry might think I was happy that the old owners were dead. So I got rid of my smile before it became a grin. I mean, right now, I was happy they were dead because that meant that I got a cored tower that could move. But I wasn’t happy that people died. I was just glad for what I had. I shook my head and stood up.

“Okay. I have yet to sit on that chair. Let’s see what this does for us. Oh, and what do you know about Castle Westiral?”

* * *