CAT AMONGST THE (MESSENGER) PIGEONS.

The entire city was abuzz with activity between the festival of lights that was coming up and the impending departure of the Berserker Queen back to the capital. One of those things alone would have been a big thing, the second? Well, it sent messengers scarpering back to the capital like pheasants when the bush rustles. Mostly heading back to the city to ensure their bosses were prepared properly for the coming storm, though some headed to estates their bosses were staying at for plausible deniability.

Unfortunately for their employers, and even more unfortunately for the messengers, they would all meet with poorly timed accidents along the road, delaying their arrival. A broken leg here, a ransom there, and some of the more corrupt ones just vanished. Some more creative individuals tried messenger birds, seemingly forgetting for a little while that in the city if it moved, it was probably on the menu, and if it didn’t, it would likely be poked to make sure, then added to the menu anyway.

At the centre of this grand web of deception and interception sat Gidea. It seemed that due to how rarely she used them, everybody had forgotten about her hidden guards, and due to a lack of remaining witnesses, word was not getting out. Of course, eventually, word would get through to their enemies through the traders, but by the time they got there, she could probably have been back in the capital setting things up for about a week. Her ability to appear unannounced was rather notorious, and almost in law like in how sudden it could be. If in-laws could arrange for you to be beheaded, bankrupted, or worse... disgraced, that is.

Around the city, lanterns were set up on a timer setup, and when the moment came, they would light up one by one until the entire city was aglow. Of course, usually, with the entire city being built around gargantuan waterfalls, the display was a tad more impressive than this year. But a generous layer of settled snow and the occasional flurry to top it off, there had been a consistent fresh layer for literally days now, so frequently added to the roads hadn’t even turned to black slushy slop. (The frost giants party was still ongoing since apparently nobody had ever taught the majority of the frost giants the significance of bringing out the pudding. Of course, it was slacking off a bit now due to half the guests being in a stupor, but nobody had yet got the unspoken cues to bloody well go home, and due to them being unspoken and all, they weren’t allowed to just out and say it. It was messy and complicated, and like most messy complicated things, it would be solved easily if somebody just bothered to open their gobs and communicate properly, but getting that to happen was like pulling teeth. Eventually, of course, some brave soul would go nova and just say it, but they would then be considered rude and never invited to another event ever unless it was in a deliberate attempt to piss somebody off. In that case, all bets were well and truly off.)

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Some food stalls were being set up, to the delight of Alba and Rascal, who had taken up the ancient pet hobby of scrounging every scrap of leftovers they could. There was a fancy chocolatier (one Millicent Bonker, or Billie to her friends. Which is to say anybody else who was not a chocolatier but was likely to spend money on her products. She had a real businesswoman’s sense of friendship, and the way to her heart was well and truly through her purse-strings.) A number of games at stalls so rigged as to only be beatable by a wizard (who, by the way, were not allowed to compete, or they would be accused of cheating.) There was a crossbow target range, occupied by crossbows that looked almost military-grade but were a few millimetres off, that fired bolts with carefully disarrayed fletchings and lightly blunted tips. Only shots that stuck counting and rubberised boards added to the challenge rating, as did the barely perceptible bend in the shaft of each bolt. But if you somehow managed to win that, you got a pet sqwoomphette. (They were, of course, produced for free, screwing up spells wasn’t hard, but nor was convincing people it was worth a silver a shot to play to win something that cost nothing to produce because regardless of origins, they were cute.)

There was, of course, a stall for an eating contest, pretty much the only thing in the entire place not rigged. Mainly because people screw up in these things often enough, there’s no point in rigging it, and it drew enough of a crowd from the hold my beer crew’s entries alone to pay for the food fifty times over.

There was some kind of a fairground set up, but the odds were rather good that unless they were pressed, Mibbet would not be going there for long. Mainly because fairgrounds meant clowns and Rosalind and clowns, as we’ve previously discussed, got along like a house on fire. (Screams, people fleeing in terror, a few collapsed buildings, high potential for carnage, and impending chaos, so pretty much exactly like a house on fire, except that the bucket chain at the end is more likely with clowns to be full of tinsel and confetti.)

There was some kind of game involving throwing darts at balloons (it remains a mystery to most people why fairgrounds, when confronted by children and toddlers, insist that what is needed is firearms, darts, breakable bottles, and pets; nobody is prepared for that unless a miracle (or doting grandparent who prepared a least two weeks in advance in case of goldfish) happens are unlikely to last a week due to the fact.... well ... nobody prepared for them. But apparently, despite this, people flock back every single year without fail, so clearly they must be doing something right; otherwise, they wouldn’t be getting quite so many return visitors. Either that or parents are desperate enough for a day off to brace for potential injuries or a dead goldfish incident. Hard to say for sure.

Soon enough, everything was prepared, and in a few short hours, the festival of lights would begin.