13.1

That morning Jewel found the corpse that had been Franziska in the gardens of the palace.

And she was struck with stillness at the sight.

The thing that only looked like a woman was beaming, smiling with seeming delight. Fussing over a toddling child in an infant’s smock.

Her voice sounded animated, alive, gentle.

Her touch was careful.

But Jewel could see the way her eyes, nostrils and lips still trembled with a sucking hunger.

She could smell and feel the pit in the world inside her chest.

Yet there was not a single sign of any of the monosyllabic flatness to the figure before her.

She watched the pair of them wander through the gardens until some matter had them leave further into the palace.

Another monster in the High King’s collection.

Held by its own form of leash.

The business for the Countess of Viznove in the Capital was done, the year was growing late and autumn would soon be fully arrived. There was at present no further business for her here and Kaeketeh despite assurances sent by bird to the contrary probably was secretly on fire.

They would need to depart if they did not want to risk the sky way in full winter. Although Thurzó assured that the seasons had little sway on the temperature at such heights.

So depart soon Jewel would.

But they still had one more day before leaving for home.

And she had found exploring the gardens which hosted the more ‘tame’ members of Mathias’ menagerie equal parts soothing and disquieting. All the more for just how many of them could speak. Although most Jewel found were rather simple.

When she had heard and thought of the menagerie before Jewel had imagined pens, cages, like some dogs or chickens were kept in.

She had imagined dungeons and pits and chains.

But what she found in the capital was gardens, open skies, attendants.

Even the war beasts who could not be allowed free roam were carefully given guidance under open sky.

The thing which Countess Bathory had threatened Jewel and her family with was a disturbingly peaceful place. A seeming paradise full of beings that while not precisely Wyrms were inhuman and different while still able to speak.

It began to paint a picture of perhaps why simply being able to converse did not in fact garner respect from all the strangers she met.

If the world had such creatures as these in it?

A family of foxes with human faces that only sang in meandering and incomprehensible rhymes. Laughed and danced, but otherwise happily and bloodily ate mice like any hunting dog.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Something blinding white with solid violet eyes and a mane which never was still, four-legged and so saturated in divine intervention its every single hair and prominent horn cut the air itself apart in its passing.

That utterly blinding white blade jutting from its brow seemed always just barely on the verge of calling the sky itself down.

The cloven hoofed steps dragging flowers and ferns into bloom from its footprints.

And speaking in a language only the small crowd of scholars that followed it could understand.

The stink of dung and compost was almost chokingly thick in the grounds where it was allowed to roam. And the soil after its passing left a taste like old dry ash under fresh burgeoning life whenever it was moved elsewhere.

Jewel had watched a wizened old woman and the white creature have an incomprehensible argument along one of the foot paths. She was not entirely sure of the providence of it but she thought it might be an attempt to stop it from stepping on the stones and damaging them with spontaneous plant growth.

She did not know what words were spoken but there were far too many repetitions of the same utterances for her to judge this was a particularly complex discussion.

The Sphinx was perhaps one of the cleverest beasts in the entire menagerie that Jewel had met. But even then after dealing with it a few evenings she was left somewhat disappointed. Speaking to the overly large cat with diminutive black wings made Jewel think more of what Zephyrvam might say if he had the throat and words for it.

All of the beasts in the menagerie, whether dangerous or tame. All had in them a character that left Jewel disquieted.

Bethica could argue circles around those scholars from what she had learned speaking to them.

Celsus?

Jewel actually might have to offer an invitation for some of them to try and match wits with the bull.

No.

There was nothing here like what Jewel expected.

Neither fully simple beasts.

But also not something she could say were her peers. Jewel felt more in common with peasants than these wards of the high king.

Despite the insistence of the sphinx to refer to Jewel like she was somehow related to it.

No.

The gardens were pleasant but they were as much a cage and a dungeon as Jewel’s nightmares had conjured.

The shackles were not obvious but there were still chains.

Jewel was troubled however by just how many of those restraints seemed to be the simple fact of making those in the High King’s collection comfortable and happy.

If Bathory had not intervened to keep her with her family and Jewel had grown up here instead of Rochford?

Would she be so simple and content as the Sphinx?

Perhaps able to speak, reason and so much more, but trapped by her own ignorance and complacency?

Or perhaps like the terrible living corpse would Mathias have used her family and her love for them?

Given them finery and opulence so they would act as the bars and chains for Jewel’s imprisonment?

Invisible fetters to placate her except for an occasional call to war?

Would Jewel raised in the beauty and peace of this menagerie ever have chosen to live as she did now?

Would she have even cared about the men she was called to destroy?

A shudder ran up and down her coils at the thought of it. Her inner flame flared higher at the intangible threat. It reminded her of Tsulogothulan’s words of Jewel’s elder ‘sister’.

The nameless Rat Wyrm who still lived content with her family of vermin.

Kept small and happy and simple as any beast by circumstance.

Jewel shivered again, felt the ripples of her scales rattling cross past one another up and down then ruffled her wings and shook her head.

She could not wait to return home.