Jade Mouse

Chapter 1

What this meant, however, was that I now had several misguided Lords attempting to steal stuff from me on a weekly basis, trying to balance the scales so that the Prince would not see them as weak, or otherwise reconsider the amount of territory they had been assigned to govern.

I'd spent several thousand gold on upgrades to my security in the past month alone, and lately it seemed that not a morning went by where I didn't get to hear from Cyrus about how well one of my new alarms had performed the night before, how yet another attempt to steal from me had been thwarted. With the dwindling tribute being collected from various shopkeepers, it was getting too expensive to maintain.

None of these assorted problems could hold a candle to the headache whose name was Freyla.

I don't recall exactly when I'd hired her on as keepmistress for Greybridge Keep, but it was probably during the first month I'd taken possession of my new territory, back when I'd tripled my staffing levels out of sheer desperation. I'd been tipped off to her various shenanigans anonymously via written note, though I'd figured it was Cyrus's doing. Sometimes he simply doesn't wish his name attached to certain sensitive scraps of information.

Somehow in the past five months Freyla had managed to arrange it so that every decision being made inside of Greybridge Keep, where most of my new knights and other staff were sheltered, now appeared to require her approval. She had no real authority to speak of - I'd not given anyone a promotion these past several months that I could recall - but she had this way of making things more difficult if they weren't okayed with her first. And if other staff attempted something that she didn't agree with, she would become so abrasive and difficult that they often found it was easier to drop the matter entirely, just in order not to have to deal with her.

And she was trying to vamp me, of course. Not very subtly, either.

Freyla was somewhat attractive, but in a way that suggested that everything you saw was either oiled down, painted over, or held up by something. When she walked it was as if the slightest wrong move might accidentally cause her carefully maintained facade to explode in a shower of makeup and satin, revealing a dreadfully tired-looking, homely woman beneath.

What was worse was the fact that she had a good portion of the staff already convinced that we were involved, romantically. When she referred to me in the presence of other staff members she would do so with a very sly grin, arch her painted-on eyebrows, use not-so-subtle innuendo, all manner of things to suggest what might exist between her and myself.

She was trying very hard to manufacture situations where these sorts of things could come about, too. I would arrange for a carriage to take me to Greybridge Keep to take care of some lordly detail or other situation, and find that Freyla had somehow arranged to be on that same carriage with me, just the two of us, alone. There were a good half dozen of these little tricks that she'd tried, the latest of which involved creating emergencies at hours that would force me to spend the night at Greybridge Keep . . . in a room she had made up for me, just down the hall from the room she'd claimed as her own. (She'd pointed out this fact many times, just in case there was anything . . . anything . . . that I required)

The less said about her "sleepwalking", the better.

Avoiding her was exhausting. It seemed like her strategy when it came to seducing me was much like her strategy with everything else - to make the alternatives such a hassle that I might simply give in because it seemed the easiest thing to do. I wasn't even certain I could outright dismiss her from my staff either. She was a vicious gossip, and I had no doubt she could inflict a great deal of damage to staff morale (or my reputation . . . or both) if she felt jilted and wished to exact revenge upon me for firing her.