You at last learn why Count Mace plotted a war against you with Irene and the Circle of Mages

You look Aurora up and down. She is clearly quite nervous, which seems to be her default state of affairs. But otherwise, she seems no worse for the wear despite this siege. "That was stimulating listening, Aurora. You have a talent as a bawdy minstrel."

That comment makes Count Mace grit his teeth, but he says nothing. You continue. "I don't see how it's relevant though. At least, I hope I don't. Do you REALLY mean to tell me," you turn to give Mace a witheringly contemptuous glare, "that you started a war which got gods know how many people killed just because some knight from my domain plowed your sister's fields?"

"That you'd keep vicious, honorless mongrels like that man around you...! Why should you be surprised it caused a war betwixt you and your neighbors? I can only imagine what else you were letting them get away with!" Mace protests. "I know that my sister has a certain... naivete. But for a visitor to take advantage of her in such a way and conceal it from me...!"

"Oh, so what?" you say acidly. "You stupid, pretty fool. You, I'm speaking to you, Mace, not your sister, though she merits such a title as well. What did you expect, cooping a young woman in the prime of her life up in a tower like this and never letting her leave or see anyone but you? Of course she's going to flop onto the bed in front of the first halfway attractive man who pays attention to her."

"I didn't...! I told him no! I also t-t-told him yes, but the no was first!" Aurora pleads, clasping her hands and hanging her head.

"And you!" you point at Aurora. "Knowing what a hidebound fool of a brother fate had cursed you with, why in all the hells did you TELL him?!"

Aurora gulps heavily and visibly struggles to make herself meet your gaze. "I'm... I thought I was... a certain private thing didn't come in the regular way after Sir Ivo left, and I t-t-thought I was going to have his child. I sent Sir Ivo a letter but received no reply after a month. I was scared, and I didn't know what to do, so I told mama, and she told Mace... I didn't think it was so terrible."

You give your own best 'haughty noblewoman's sigh'. "My dear count. How could you possibly have thought this was needed for her protection?"

"As if you wouldn't have used it against me first!" Count Mace spits at you. "My father told me all about it, before he died! Your scheming house, with their necromancers and monsters and alchemists and every other vile creature under the sun gathering around them, has been planning to take my county for generations, now! My father, and now I in turn, have had to keep my poor sister confined to the tower for all her life, not only to defend her honor from jackals like Baroness Tula's vile, lecherous vassal Ivo, but from your corrupt courts! And now she was going to be dragged out into the open, and condemned!"

"What? What are you talking about?" you screw your face up and look at him. "Where to start with that nonsense you just spewed... Firstly, if there were any plan or scheme to take Aldergrove, don't you think I, as Countess, would have known about it? There WAS no such plot, fool! All my mother and I wanted was for our lands to be left in peace to ply our trades and grow wealthy through commerce!"

"And prostitution." Marzena throws in matter-of-factly.

"And black magic. Just... for the record." Elena the habit-clad priestess says, looking nervous and seeming to regret her brief moment of indignant defiance immediately.

"And selling arms to thieves and bandits, and helping them fence their loot." Rima the poofy-blue-pigtailed ice witch says in an annoyed tone.

"Don't tempt me to withdraw my generous offer, Rima, you brat!" you snap at her. "Don't tell our enemies about that, damn your eyes!" you sigh. "But still - Mace, for the life of me I do not understand what you mean about your sis-"

You pause, looking at Aurora. Although having you make eye contact makes the skittish blonde teenager nervous enough to look down again, you get a good look at her bizarre, unnatural yellow eye, contrasting so sharply to her normal one. And then you look back over to Elena. Elena... who, legally, has been found guilty of witchcraft by your compliant magistrate and imprisoned in the tower.

"Oh. Ohhhhhhh." you say, following it with an amused giggle. "Now I see! You thought I was going to take the scandal drawing attention to Aurora for being pregnant out of wedlock and try and get her accused of witchcraft.... which would make her MY prisoner. Which she would certainly be condemned of, if I commanded it... since I send expensive gifts to every magistrate in the region. Most especially since Ivo could have been instructed to claim he was hexed by her."

Count Mace stares at you defiantly, his jaw set. You smile and run a hand sensually down the curves of your body, which your thin white dress shows off quite nicely. "Alas, when I say you were wrong, Mace, I do so with no small degree of regret. That is indeed an absolutely brilliant plan. I wish I'd thought of it. Why, perhaps I would have, if I'd traveled down here more often and gotten to know your sister better. I would've enjoyed leading her into trouble. Though it seems she didn't need my help." you giggle again.

"So, Aurora," you say, "You said you 'thought'? You are with child, are you not?" Looking at her, she seems rather slim for something from a visit almost five months ago, but she might be (unwisely) wearing a girdle.

"Um..." Aurora visibly starts to sweat and her lip trembles. "I'm sorry... but... not long after the siege began, t-t-there was... a little bleeding. As much as I had missed the two months before, and then some. I went to talk to the apothecary and he said Sir Ivo's child probably wasn't coming..."

"FUCK!" A strikingly crude word erupts from Rima the ice witch. Her pretty blue-painted lips pull back into an angry snarl. "Are you jesting? Are you a jester? Are you telling me that I'm going to be giving birth to some unwashed barbarian's spawn, truly, just because you had a month of light bleeding and THOUGHT you were pregnant?!" Rima grits her teeth. "AND Hannah, and Olivia, and... probably like a hundred other girls! Anyone else in the room?"

"Ah... ah... HRRRAAAUGGHHH!!" Elena the red-haired priestess suddenly doubles over and vomits on the stone tile floor, looking unsteady on her feet. You and several others look in shock and wrinkle your nose at the smell. "Agh... ugh, not again... I apologize, Countess Zoe. It must have been the incense smoke from the censer, though it never gave me problems in the past..." Elena says.

Rima glares at Aurora, then looks at you. "Zoe, if you won't let me freeze the elf mage bitch solid," she points a finger to where Vessa is kneeling in surrender, "can I PLEASE at least give this idiotic, stuttering wreck a decent case of frostbite?!" she points at Aurora.

Of course, Aurora takes that completely seriously, and drops to her knees. "EEEEEE!!! N-n-n-n-no, please, I didn't mean it!"

You shove Rima aside with one hand. "Do not forget your place, Rima! If I have to remind you a third time it will be with something sharper than words!" You harumph and run a hand through your silken blonde hair. "Very well then. I can see how this all got started. I'll admit, I would not have been above such a scheme, Mace. But, as it so happens, Sir Ivo was struck down in valiant combat before your Gaelican mercenaries even started their march, in the course of defending some innocent prostitutes from violent foreign thugs."

"What?!" Aurora gasps. "Nooooooo! Oh no!" she waits, putting her face in her hands and sobbing. "This is ah...ah...all my fault!"

Mace kneels down beside her, his face a grimace of pain. "No, Aurora, no! You must never think that. You must never think that. It was... if I'd left well enough alone, then..."

You smirk down at him, as he is finally how you wanted to see him to begin with: On his knees. "You would still be a Count. And Aurora probably would've learned her lesson from her brush with danger and been more cautious around strange men... for a little while, at least. Now, you won't be able to protect her. She'll be brought to my city, as a courtier. And the next time some lout tries to get under her petticoat, I'm not going to lift a finger to stop him. Perhaps I'll even go to the whitesmith and commission some nice little tokens as a prize to every man who manages to bed her. Perhaps the experience will be so fine that they'll spread word that awkward, stuttering girls with a strange eye are NOT witches. That's a foolish fishwive's tale just like a third nipple."

You pause for a second. You feel like you were setting up that particular strawman for Marzena to make a heckling comment about it. But instead Marzena is just patting the distraught Aurora on the shoulder and whispering comforting words to her.

"Oh, what are you crying about?" you huff. "Some man you knew for a few days earned himself an early grave through recklessness? You'll get over it. There's plenty more where he came from. And aside from the, ah, little accidents that Rima just mentioned, do you know how many people your brother got killed? Even I don't know the true figure!" you pause. "I'm sure Johari is busy with her abacus getting an exact figure right now..."

"Did I hear you right, Countess Zoe?" Mace's voice is strained but has a note of hope. "You will not condemn my sister for her mark of the otherworld? You... you won't **** her into the Crooked Tower?"

"Of course not!" you say. "Perish the thought. She is little to blame for all this." you pause. "Now, you, on the other hand," you point to the dignified half-even mage, Vessa, advisor of the king and liason to the Circle of Mages. "You're going to earn handsomely in that Crooked Tower. Try to thrust a knife in my back, will you? You're going to be getting stabbed from behind every day now, Vessa. But it will be knaves rather than knives plunging into your flesh, if you take my meaning."

"Wait, wait a moment!" Vessa's eyes widen. "Not that the poet in my cannot appreciate a good turn of phrase, but... Countess! Surely I am worth more to you to be traded back to the Circle of Mages! They will make a deal with you!"

"I don't want to make a deal with them." you say. "I want to send them a message. And that high-handed king, too. After this vile business you've done with Mace and Irene, they won't dare protest it. You should be ecstatic that I'm letting you live, you damned skulking knife-eared hypocrite." you say cuttingly to her.

Then you turn to Irene. "Now, as for YOU, Irene. You, on the other hand, shall not be taken to the tower. After all, you are still Count Mace's beloved." you say, your voice softening... you pause for effect for a minute, like an archer letting his bowstring go slack for just a moment as he waits for his quarry to relax before he transfixes their heart: "...being put into the Crooked Tower is FAR too good for you. It's a nice and comfortable place, after all, with many privileges. You, I'm going to put to work in the absolute cheapest, bottom-of-the-barrel whorehouse in all Undrek. The one where the dwarfen and beastfolk women work, and where the customers are allowed to smoke indoors, and where every last single bed smells forever of piss. THAT is going to be your future, Irene - unless your father can truly impress me with a ransom offer. And I mean a KING'S ransom."

"Countess Zoe... No... I beseech you, no... I ask none for myself, but have mercy on Irene..." Count Mace says, looking haplessly at the red-haired Irene.

"Mercy?!" Hannah breaks in, still seething. "It's far TOO merciful, Zoe! If you were to put that false friend, that betrayer, in a hanging cage until she dies and rots, I would say it is such as she deserves!"

"Hmmm, you're right." you say, nodding to Hannah, and Irene visibly staggers against the wall, while Mace clutches his fists helplessly. You continue: "But that would be a waste of her beauty, no less than that acid. Hannah, take no offense by this, but you have a softness in you. I think you would regret it if I gave Irene a grim demise just because you think you want it. See what you think of it in a year's time. If you're still angry... well, we can discuss it then."

You smile down at Mace. "Please, noble count... rise to your feet. It's time to celebrate. Your treacherous mage advisor and conniving lover will have their lives spared, you shouldn't be greedy. And there's another boon coming to you as well."

You bend over and put your hands on his shoulders, starting to softly massage them. "You fought so hard these last months... tried your hardest. And I beat you. In every way, at every turn, I've humiliated you. But even though you're useless as a ruler, I still have a use for you. You're going to join me in bed now."

Count Mace apparently hadn't taken the boast that you'd send back with Lady Rella seriously - either that, or she didn't tell him. He is visibly shocked. "Wh-what?!" his jaw drops open.

"Not because you have anything to recommend you." you say to him. "Only because you have a handsome face, and a good family name. That's all you need to be a good consort to me. Come now, stand up. Show me upstairs to where you sleep. I am very much in a celebratory mood." you smirk at him, giving your flowing blonde hair an elegant toss. "Oh, and Marzena? Bring that heathen amazon wench Rella up, as well. I'm feeling adventurous."