Who: The Burgomaster of Vallaki — head of the Vallakovich line, author of the mandatory festivals, proprietor of the Reformation Center. “All will be well.”
Family: The Baroness (see below), and Victor Vallakovich, the perfect son in the attic.
Status: Our employer. Also our friend’s jailer. These are the same fact.
The audience (Session 10)
He received us in a back office with festival floats going past the windows, retracted the vigilantism charge with the magnanimity of a man who had already decided to hire us, and laid out the bargain: bring him evidence that Lady Wachter consorts with the devil, and she goes to his totally impartial judges and the Reformation Center — and we get deputyship, wax-sealed writs (“my word is law”; no badges, we asked), and the Wachter residence entire.
Then, at the door, almost as an afterthought: since the vigilantism technically occurred, Fëanor stays. Perfectly safe. As long as we make progress.
The file
- He is not lying. Our best read (and we checked twice): he believes every word. He thinks he is protecting this town. Somehow that is worse.
- The Reformation Center is run by “the twins” — “experts at this sort of encouragement… either people come out thinking more appropriately, or they don’t come out at all.” He said this in the tone of a man praising a good bakery.
- Two of his three household staff have disappeared in the last couple of weeks. He mentioned it the way one complains about the servant problem.
- His eyes are everywhere. Some of them may even be metaphors. (We asked. There followed a full minute of the town’s supreme authority explaining what a metaphor is.)
The Baroness
We record her carefully, because none of us have stopped thinking about her: she stood at his shoulder for the entire audience with a fixed, unwavering grin, and said nothing that was not an echo. We have a theory about where smiles like that are manufactured, and it has twins in it. (Session 13 addendum: at the festival, in torrential rain, beside a ten-foot wicker sun, she smiled and held a wilting bouquet. The bouquet was doing the reacting for her.)
The rewrite (Session 13)
His town watched vampires run its streets in daylight; his own enforcer burned one alive. The official record, by crier, within a day: “There are no vampires in Vallaki. There have never been vampires in Vallaki.” There were seditious agitators in very obvious masks. And on the strength of the letter Izek confiscated from us — the letter that, read carefully, favors his continued rule — he has: moved the festival to the very next midday, made attendance mandatory for every soul (“Bring your sick, bring your grieving. All will be well”), sent Henrik to the Reformation Center, and scheduled Lady Wachter’s hanging on our testimony.
They will attest (mid-festival, where the record stands)
In the rain, torch in hand, beside the unlit wicker sun: “Death is meaningless, easily forgotten… We have survived. We are worthy, not they. Let us burn the unworthy… These five fine examples of heroism will attest that the Lady Wachter has been consorting with the devil. They will attest.” He has bet the scaffold on our word. We have not given it yet.
Appears in: S10 · S13. See also: Izek, Victor Vallakovich, The House of Wachter, Quests & Threads, Handouts (the letter).