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While Ashlynn made preparations to welcome Ollie and Virve into her coven, a very different welcome was taking place outside the Vale of Mists.

At Young Lord Owain’s insistence, Masters Isabell and Tiernan had accompanied the young lord and Lady Jocelynn all the way to the Town of Hanrahan, the seat of Baron Hanrahan’s power and the center of Hanrahan Barony.

The journey took three days by carriage and they’d spent the previous evening in a tiny village at the eastern edge of the barony where the sheep outnumbered people by at least five to one.

To hear Owain tell it, the lands they’d passed on their way to the very edge of the frontier were filled with untapped potential, but all the Masters saw when they gazed at the rolling hills studded by ancient rock formations was an endless array of challenges that would make taming the land difficult even for the most ambitious frontiersman.

The Town of Hanrahan was significantly better off, situated in a hollow where several streams drained into a deep lake, the farms and orchards outside the town’s impressive stone walls were clearly a jewel to be treasured by any lord and generations of Hanrahans had clearly worked hard to see to the prosperity of the town they oversaw.

In the guest rooms of Hanrahan manor, Master Isabell studied her reflection in the room’s polished bronze mirror, ensuring that nothing was out of place.

Silver rimmed spectacles perched on her slender nose and she’d pulled her steel gray hair into a tight braid that hung half way down her back, standing out in sharp contrast to the severe black dress she wore for the evening’s banquet.

Some would say that she looked more like a tutor or school mistress than a future knight, but to her, this was no different than a suit of armor.

On her chest, the crest of Blackwell City’s Illustrious Comapny of Engineers, a lighthouse shining on a mason’s level, had been embroidered in glittering silver thread.

The emblem served as both a badge of her office and the only ornamentation she chose to wear on occasions as formal as this one.

Earning the right to wear that emblem, and to wear it in silver no less, had taken a lifetime of effort and study, including ten long years spent traveling the universities and libraries of the old countries before she returned to her native Blackwell City to take over the Illustrious Comapny of Engineers.

In those years, she’d received offers from countless lords to join their houses and even a king had offered her a place in his court along with the chance to replace her silver emblem with gold and the title of Royal Engineer.

It was an offer that few people in her profession could resist, but despite the wonders of the old countries and their institutions of learning, she never felt like she belonged to that world.

Or, perhaps it wasn’t that she had never belonged in the old world as much as she hadn’t been comfortable with the woman she was starting to become the longer she spent there.

The recognition of lords and kings hadn’t come to her because of the bridges she designed or even the acquaducts that opened up new farmland.

Rather, it had been her ability to tear things down that won her the most praise and recognition in countries where men still warred on one another over lines on a map and control of wealth and resources.

Now that she had reached the frontier, even though her age was growing closer to fifty than it was to forty, she felt like she had finally found the place where she belonged. Somewhere that needed to be built up and pulled into the modern age in a way that would benefit everyone living here.

The previous Barons Hanrahan had done well to construct a fortified town in one of the only places in the western hills that could easily sustain a growing population, but they’d clearly exhausted their ability to reap easy rewards within the first two generations since the barony was established.

Now, everywhere Master Isabell looked, she saw challenges that were difficult to solve and a barony that was ill equipped to solve them.

A pair of ancient roads, built centuries ago by demons served as the town’s primary connections to Lothian City in the east or Dunn Barony to the north, but the roads that connected to these ancient relics of the land’s previous inhabitants were poorly constructed with deep ruts and pot holes that made navigating them treacherous even in broad daylight.

The glimpses she’d seen of the town itself revealed it to be in much the same shape.

From the outside, it looked like a prosperous, glistening jewel, but one walk through the quarter of town where the weavers, dyers, tanners and other tradesmen gathered revealed a town struggling for self sufficiency.

They were rugged and determined frontiersmen to be sure, but compared to their counterparts in Blackwell City, their facilities were sadly lacking and their skills lagged decades behind the latest innovations making their way across the sea from the old countries.

Lothian City wasn’t in as poor of shape, comparatively.

As the seat of power for the Marquis, he couldn’t afford to lag too far behind the dukes to the east. And even if Marquis Bors and his family hadn’t constantly reinvested in elevating the standards of their home city, the most powerful temple of the Church in the entire frontier would doubtless have made contributions of their own in order to ensure that their crown jewel of the frontier didn’t loose it’s luster because of its poor surroundings.

"Blackwell City hardly needs me anymore," Isabell said with a heavy sigh as she looked out the window of her room at the setting sun far to the west. "But these people... They make me feel like I wasted my years on the guild in Blackwell when I could have been out here making a real difference."

The statement wasn’t entirely true. The knowledge she’d gained as the Master of one of Blackwell City’s most influential guilds had shaped her into a woman who understood that even the most brilliant of designs was worthless without the ability to gather the support from powerful lords, suppliers of goods and all of the other parties involved in bringing grand ambitions to fruition.

And, if she was truly honest with herself, while the thrill of the frontier’s challenges called out to her, she would never have chosen a place like this to raise her children.

The walls of Lothian City or even Hanrahan Town might never have been breached by demon attacks in her lifetime, but neither town could have given her darlings the opportunities that they’d found in Blackwell City.

Now that they were old enough to begin their own apprenticeships, however, Isabell found her hands itching for the drafting board in a way they hadn’t for several years, and the town outside the window seemed filled with opportunities to satisfy that itch.

As tempting as it was, however, she firmly reminded herself that there were larger problems demanding her attention, and Marcel’s warnings about Owain’s attempt to murder Lady Ashlynn still echoed in her ears, even days after their meeting in Lothian City.

Tonight, she would meet with Baron Ian Hanrahan and his heir Bastian, but she couldn’t allow herself to be drawn into the tempting array of problems awaiting someone with an analytical mind like hers to solve.

Tonight, the dress she wore to display her profession was her suit of armor, and her battle was one that required her to deny the opportunities in front of her in order to secure an even more important objective.

Somewhere out there, Lady Ashlynn was preparing her counterattack against the man who had nearly destroyed her, and if Isabell wanted to win a place at her lady’s side in the battles to come, she had to secure an arrangement that would place her at the edge of the Vale of Mists rather than here in the comparatively safe jewel of Hanrahan barony.

"It will be better this way anyway," Isabell said as she prepared to leave her room to join the banquet that was being prepared to welcome her and Master Tiernan to the barony. "Fixing the problems here would be a worthy challenge... but given the chance, I’d rather start from nothing."

Marcel had described the area along the river Luath at the edge of the Vale of Mists. Compared to the empty hills filled with nothing but sheep that she had seen in Hanrahan barony, it sounded like a place just waiting for someone with a keen mind to tame the land’s rich potential.

"A future that I design for myself," she said with a faint smile on her thin lips. "And one that can become a source of strength for Lady Ashlynn at the edge of civilization. Mister Marcel certainly knows the sort of carrot he needs to dangle in front of me to secure my cooperation."

Now, all she had to do was thread her way through the schemes of Owain Lothian and the againg Baron Hanrahan to seize the opportunity.

It should have been easy, given how amateurish the Lothian heir had been in their negotiations so far, but strangely, she seemed to have gained an additional adversary on this journey.

"Lady Jocelynn," she said quietly as she prepared to enter the banquet hall. "Just what has happened to place you on the same side as the man who tried to kill your sister?"