4.7

Jewel had been coming to Kaeketeh since she was nine winters old. The first time she arrived flying over it; the second she entered with festivity and ceremony.

It had never again been quite as much a production since that victory triumph.

But still she acquired a wake when traveling through the city with her family.

Vendors trailed her with snacks for the gawkers.

People cleared the way ahead of her well before the Rochford footmen needed to prod them.

Even now there was a pressure from the crowd squeezing close to the open space that surrounded her family’s party.

Over the years Jewel had become more comfortable for the locals. Still a spectacle, but one which did not require that they close off the main street with guards to control the press of bodies.

She had even on occasion taken tours outside of the Countess’ keep and wandered down the side roads of Kaeketeh in curiosity.

She had looked at the little gardens and small orchards which riddled the city in greenery like a marbling of verdant fat in the flesh and meat of brick buildings.

She had in fact grown quite familiar with the seat of the Countess’ power.

However Jewel was never going to get used to the sound or the smell.

Villages were not without their own scents, the middens and manure of beast and men were carted to the fields often enough.

But the concentration of man and beast alike was so much greater in the city. Everything was pressed in closer.

Where the tanning and dying in Valasect or Rochford would happen well away from where anyone lived, that was not the case here.

In Kaeketeh it was just down river along the south side of Gate Town’s shores.

Jewel mostly found the smell of man and woman pleasant in their exertions. The times for harvest and tilling tended to fill the air with a fine perfume of laboring peasants and beasts.

But in the city many of those same smells grew sharper to the point of unpleasantness. The many bodies that filled the city reminded her of the war camps, all of them mired in their many strains of fear. The beggars and thieves stank of desperation and despair even if Jewel never saw them.

And then there was the withered, ill, starving and dead.

Jewel rarely saw them, but she could smell them.

She could hear the cries and the shocked gasps.

And every visit was an assault on her senses.

The city always poured over and into her.

Jewel had to strive to restrain herself and hold to the mein of grace that befit not just a Lady but the heir of Viznove.

But she was not alone as an object of spectacle.

Father rode Zephyrvam in his ceremonial armor. Although it was dustier for the grounded walk where a flight would leave it gleaming.

Mother, Alexander, Murial and Kraok.

All properly mounted on horse and dressed in either finery of armor as befit their stations.

They were all of them moving at a noble gait.

But as Jewel sought to ignore the sound and smell of the city, a sudden shout of anger and then a sound of thin soled shoes slapping hard on the pavement caught Jewel’s ear.

She turned towards it, her throat clenching slightly, her wings bracing.

Her own motion and shifting weight was only just drawing the attention of the entourage when the source of the noise slid between the pressed crowd like a snake through grass, washing past the footmen of Rochford like water in the reeds.

The figure was dressed poorly, visibly dirty, smelled like at best their last bath was in the river itself and even with the rough cut of their clothes, it was in even greater disrepair for the shredded sleeve and half torn open front.

Jewel was rearing back as a figure ran past the stunned expression of the crowds and Jewel and her father’s own footmen.

But before she could chastise or move to defend herself, the figure was already prostrate before her.

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The voice was the high lilt of what Jewel’s nose was just catching up to her to inform was a young woman.

“Sanctuary! Mercy! Shining Wyrm of Viznove! I surrender myself to your justice! I am a thief, I’ve stolen coin and food since I was two and ten winters old! You witnessed me scampering off five years ago! I admit it all and will tell you of everie silver! I surrender!”

The long dark hair was not even done spilling out onto the street as Jewel stalled to a stop by the outpouring of desperate guilt. Her coils bunching up against one another and her claws having to grip the stones tight enough to crack one of them in her stalling.

One of the cobbles came loose and Jewel had to stumble to grasp another

Her wings splayed out and flapped once to finish arresting all of her momentum. The air set the footmen of Rochford to sway on their feet and pressed the closest of the crowd into their fellows.

The unintended flaring and arching of her neck stilled the crowd and all of her party.

The only sound was the still ongoing litany of desperate confession rising in a breathless rush at the wyrm’s foreclaws.

Jewel stared down at the waif of a girl, she smelled less malnourished then the wyrm expected from her state of dress.

There was thin muscle and even a bit of fat to her.

But most of it was hidden under hair and the torn dress. Her shoes were simple leather and thin enough that the pattern of her toes was visible where they had pressed to the cobbles in her haste.

While Jewel was still trying to think of what to do about the sudden appearance of a prostrating young woman (who had just gotten to all the pies and fruit she had ‘nicked’ in her earliest years), the shouts of angry men and annoyed onlookers drew her to turn back up to the crowd. A pair of guards in heraldry of the Countess were pushing their way through.

A smell on them immediately struck Jewel.

She knew that smell.

“Ah There she is! Oh! Begging your mercy, Lady Jewel - we lost her in the alleys. But thanks for catching that lying whore.”

Jewel glanced down at the woman, the smell of fear rising off of her. This woman did not look like even the cheapest ladies who traded virtue for coin in the follower’s camp.

She didn't smell like they did either the few times Jewel had visited it.

Lying was not among the crimes she had been profusely admitting, except where it pertained to her thefts.

And Jewel could hear the truth in her words.

One of the guards stilled his approach to Jewel and the woman, staring up at the wyrm. The other however was either braver or more familiar with her from earlier visits.

He smelled like some of the soldiers did when they had gone to visit those tents Jewel actively avoided during the march.

He also smelled a bit like some of the houses and glens after a peasant’s weddings.

And occasionally Jewel’s own parent’s room.

But even he stopped before approaching Jewel. A good pace away from the woman still pleading and admitting her crimes.

As she continued he finally seemed to catch onto what was going on.

“Well, I fancy that admittance is all proper, thanks again, Lady Jewel we just be taking this thieving rat to face the Countess’ justice then the-”

Jewel knew what mortal terror smelled like.

She knew what a heart that was about to die sounded like.

She remembered the hungry emptiness of that thing from the Countess’ larder.

The woman had choked into panicked silence on hearing what her fate would be.

Jewel’s wing was between the man and the woman before he could take another step.

The fingers closed tight. But they could easily be snapped open. The angle if they did would have thrown him to the ground and likely cracked ribs.

Jewel’s voice was not constrained.

It rumbled in the air, she could hear it echoing back to her as it shook in their bones.

“No.”

She briefly saw the visage of the guards, consumed in her white flame. Blowing away as dust.

But a blink and they were simply mere men staring up at her frozen in terror.

For all that these were the appointed guard of Kaeketeh, Jewel could not find it in herself to pity them.

She was satisfied to find only two hearts were now rising to the tempo of assured death and the scent of relief pouring up from the ever so slowing panic of one at her feet.

How close had she been to killing them?

An eye's blink of lost control?

A fraction of an exhalation in anger?

What if she’d taken just that much longer to come to her senses?

Everyone was staring at her.

She needed to say something else.

Jewel pulled her neck tight again, she constrained her voice.

She eased her tension visibly and once more assumed the figure of a lady, the poise of the heir and Shining Wyrm of Viznove.

“She has surrendered to my justice, and I shall see that her crimes and trespass are seen too. Not you.”

The silence lingered long after Jewel and her family resumed their walk to the keep.

Jewel’s prisoner was lifted up by Smithson’s grip on her arm. And held firm while he followed on foot.

Leaving Oxhoof to dutifully follow without need of any further guidance.

The crowd they left behind were quiet until Jewel was out of mortal earshot.

But she could hear the rising whispers.