12.8

Ginter ate the meat pastie of uncertain providence.

Was pretty good, meaty, greasy and even salty!

But exactly what meat in particular had been wrapped inside the baked dough was a bit of a puzzler.

Wasn't greasy like dog, not light enough for any bird or fowl Ginter ever ate, wasn’t eel or any kind of fish, not enough gristly crunch to be rat or mouse either.

Unless the enterprising pastie peddler with his little wheeled oven or whatever dubious butcher supplied him was uncharacteristically diligent. But that was an absurdity on an impossibility in Kaeketeh.

If someone was serving rat it was either whole on a stick roasted or mashed to a pulp under a butcher’s mallet and baked into a pie or pastie.

Not worth the work to butcher with something so fiddly and small as a rat unless it was some oversized lairspawn rats.

Ginter paused in his chewing to peer into the bitten through half of his pastie and get a good look at the meat, grease and pottage mix of the filling.

Maybe?

He finished off the last half and contented himself it was not close enough to pork to make one concerned of its providence.

Life was better with little mysteries anyway.

The Countess had opened up the gates all the way to her fancy keep for the festivities and Ginter was making his way through the crowd to hear and see the announcement.

He had been nursing a hangover when The Shining Wyrm came through on parade yesterday. And worse than having missed such a moment he found most of his sources were worthless to describe the event. Ginter was not going to miss the proper address from The Countess.

But it was best to get your fair eats in the outermost city. Even in the docks afore the first bridge the hawkers will charge you thrice the silver and up in the middle city or further? Ten Haepenny for the same pasty!

And Ginter knew it was the same pasties because he kept an eye on the hawkers as they made their way and it was the same faces selling from the same ovens.

Sure, a few might swap their garb. Best to look fancier when peddling to the mid-towners or higher.

But all the same meat of mysteries cooked in the same oven with the same dough.

Death and Meat Pasties united all men as one, noble as gold or common as mud was all the same as he saw it when it came to pasties.

So Ginter bought his pasties in the outermost city close to the gate when it was a festival. Then he walked to the keep.

As he walked through the open gates, he mingled in middletown. Nodding to the maids, runner boys and other such whose mothers he knew. Keeping his head low and his eyes down whenever there was a lord, lady or uppity merchant that thought themselves such.

Ginter knew the weave of the stones under his thin leather boots. They always laid them the same way and with a good ear for the water and thin boots you could orient yourself quite well anywhere in Kaekettah even in pitch black or blind drunk.

He could walk and avoid shoving youngsters fine on a clear day like today.

A quick grab at the wrist of one of the thieving waifs was common courtesy and a quick kick to the ribs a proper admonishment to better respect one’s elders or get better at thievin’.

If he’d been some noble or one of the Countess’ men that would have been a knife to the gut if the waif was lucky.

Ginter had seen what happened to girls that went after a noble in Kaeketeh. Or just were unfortunate enough to be out after dark.

In that they were bundled off to the keep and never heard from again.

Never a body found, never a word spoken of them.

Those new to the city from some hamlet or such hoped it was just traveling off elsewhere or returning home.

But Ginter had a walk off to a village once when one of the maids asked him to see where her daughter milly had gone too.

Milly never was seen again and he eventually found a good thief who was better at sneaking than that last one who spotted the maid’s girl one night.

The Countess' men cornered her and then bundled her off.

That was just Kaeketeh as long as Ginter had lived there.

It was always the girls too. The street urchins caught onto that quickly. Dressed like boys if they were savvy these days.

But all that did is that young and fair enough boys started going missing.

Only difference being they showed up again. Not even beaten.

Just confused, speaking of their heads going hot with a fever and then waking up on the street or if they were taken for a proper crime in the stocks.

Ginter slipped past a noble and tipped his hat to a footman.

The Countess’ men.

He was slipping tight in with the crowd now. Worming along with them all through the fortress wall isle that separated the keep proper of Kaeketeh from the middletown full of the rich and noble apartments.

All the barracks and such were technically in the ‘wall’. Where they kept the Gryphon feed pigs too. For when the Countess called up her Knights. Right now the clear patch of bare ground often used for mustering and training was cleared and made festive.

Dancers, performers of all kinds, even one of those clever puppet masters were in attendance.

And of course there was the very same pastie maker that had served Ginter the meat pastie of uncertain provenance two hours ago.

He nodded to the familiar face in a fancier hat and finer clothes and got a knowing grin and a dip of the head. A fresh baked pastie waved in the air. To which Ginter just laughed and shook his head.

Shouting over the murmur of the crowd.

“Not for Twelve Pfennig, ya bastard!”

Which earned him a good natured scowl and a kindly gesture to go fuck a goose.

He offered back his own gesture suggesting a ram was to the liking of the peddler and they both had a spirited laugh as Ginter swayed and slid between the crowd up to and over the bridge.

The stones under his feet were not so familiar here.

Only ever got a chance to feel them under his boots when the Countess was feeling especially good about some such thing.

But he stumbled a step on what were definitely fresh laid pavers.

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Ginter frowned and weaved and slid from one side in the crowd to another. Good and practiced as he was at the crowded streets, taverns and brothels of Kaeketeh, he could move amid his fellow men like a fish in the river.

Left and right, forward and back.

Just to assure himself that yes indeed the Countess had relaid stones for nearly the whole expanse of her keep’s courtyard. Which was an expense and effort Ginter had somehow missed despite dropping in with masons and road workers for a drink at least once a season.

Mighty peculiar that, but enough musing it was another mystery of the world.

Like the meat pasty, which Ginter was still suspicious of how well it would get along with the fish on a spit he’d had for breakfast.

Meat twice a day could disagree with him on the way out, and that sometimes even applied to fish.

But not always.

After assuring he would not need to get back through the crowd in a rush that required actually shoving, Ginter found a good spot to settle into his practiced resting stand.

Best spot for the Countess’ Festivals, this.

Not too close to the front his countenance could disturb some noble sensibilities, but close enough to see their lady and mistress of the city.

Just the right spot to blend into the crowd and still have his aged eyes able to mostly pick up on the details.

And it was much the same as a usual festival for a bit. Out came the Countess’ men.

Across the sky roared the terrible booming calls of the Gryphons that held less a fearful grasp in his spine then they once had.

Not since that day.

When the city went still.

But yes, there was the Countess and she proclaimed it was a festival for victory from some war she had been in.

Then out came some nobles to be honored, some lucky sods that got to be generals. Some lords and knights that earned a fair turn from the good fight.

A few captains offered land for their commendable acts in battle and surviving not getting a Gryphon arrow through the head.

Then some big shot Gryphon Rider Baron was getting some more land handed off to him to tax or whatever nobles did with land and the people in them.

And then at last something happened that made Ginter and all the other fools who had thought it was wise to get close up in front regret that choice.

The doors to the keep parted.

And from it emerged a beast he had seen only at a distance once before.

It emerged like a snake almost, head and then neck, scales shining like polished copper or near harvest wheat in the sun.

With a mane as black as coal and shining luxuriously radiant.

He felt a heady thing in his chest and his nose smelled rain and thunder.

The eyes were sharp and crisp and intricate with the color of honey. Their sharp focus moved over all of them in the crowd before dipping with a solemn expression to its lips.

Lowering its horns below the Countess’ head before striding, smoothly in gentle steps that yet carried it further than they should from within the Keep. and kept rolling forth in shimmering metallic scales. The tightly folded wings held close to its sides.

Emerging yard upon yard until it was all coiled up nice and proper like a well trained dog on the Countess’ right hand side.

In a space that had been cleared beforehand.

Sat and waited while considering the crowd in slow, easy sweeps of its gaze.

With eyes that made Ginter feel like a possessed thing.

A mere trinket held by one of his betters.

The Countess' words rang out in his head.

“I present to you, people of Kaeketeh and all of Viznove, Lady Jewel of Bathory and Rochford, Daughter of Jonathan the Third of House Rochford, Heir of I your Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Viznove! Newly announced Betrothed of my Son Paul Nádasdy the heir of our late count and my husband.”

There was a pause and silence descended.

Had the countess gone mad?

Marrying her son to a beast?

No matter how magnificent, that was surely the act of an addled mind.

But then a voice soft and sweet and gentle as the most refined daughter of nobility spoke.

The voice of a youthful girl better fit for Ginter’s own granddaughter shivered through the air.

The voice was so soft and yet it carried, it filled the air and beneath it was a rumble felt in the ribs and bones more than heard in the air.

“People of Viznove, I look forward to seeing to your safety and well being as your liege and countess, someday. But only after we can all enjoy the guidance and stewardship of the esteemed Countess Bathory for many more long years. I swear to you even when we must one day say farewell to our liege, I will protect you as my own for as long as I should reign.”

Along with the others, Ginter stared, stocks still.

The lips had moved, the voice had rumbled, the words had come from the beast. From Lady Jewel.

He looked between the crowd where others too had seen it and were doing much as he had.

The clap of the hands and the familiar cutting voice of command from the countess struck them like a whip and all heads snapped back to look at her.

Ginter felt a pain in his neck with the violence he had turned to attention.

“People of Kaeketeh, give welcome and promise of fealty to your Lady, The Shining Wyrm of Viznove!”

And without a word needing to be said, Ginter dropped to his knee, there was not a man un-kneeling, not a woman unbowed.

Only the nobles remained standing under that voice of command.

But Ginter kneeled for more reasons than that.

And he thought many a native to Kaeketeh did the same.

They had all heard the wyrm’s voice before.

Not dainty and soft as she spoke with it now.

But overwhelming and all consuming.

Silencing in its awe and majesty.

Terrifying in its power.

The countess might have commanded it.

But Ginter kneeled to his new liege to be.

The Tyrant Wyrm of Viznove.

The Lady Jewel.