8.1

Adelyne could make a run for it.

Duck into the crowd and slip between the kneeling figures and bowed heads and be off down a familiar alley in a moment.

They were walking down streets she had grown up on. Cobbles familiar to her toes even through the thicker shoes. She’d not even been gone a full year. She recognized the crowd, even with their faces lowered. Although she was not sure how many would recognize her.

Adelyne was no longer thinned by hunger, she was now dressed in better cloth than ever before in her life. Supposedly these were servant garments but they were spun and woven by the Shining Wyrm of Viznove herself! Adelyne had heard how much of a price that went for in Kaeketeh even before she was taken as bondage.

She could make a run for it and live for a good while by selling the clothes off her back.

Her simple dress with its house Rochford colors was probably worth more than most of the finery the nobles wore in midtown. With how hard Wyrmspun cloth was to come by. The villagers in Rochford and Valasek were loath to give up on what skeins and bolts they had of it.

It was honestly one of the unstated benefits of the Lady Jewel’s household. Everyone who served her had just that much more comfort.

Coddling warmth in winter’s chill and cool breath in summer’s heat. A ransom in treasured cloth given to a criminal held in servile bondage. Adelyne could try to flee the duty and obligation she had found herself in.

But only if she was a complete and total idiot!

Her lady and bond owner was a Dragon. The Shining Wyrm of Viznove and by the feel in the air here on the street of the neighborhood she had grown up already the countess of Kaeketeh. People now knelt as Jewel passed, like they had when that fiend of a woman first introduced the Shining Wyrm of Viznove to the city. But unlike how they did to the bloody countess the people of Kaeketeh now knelt with smiles! At least here in gate town she was already their lady and liege.

Adelyne would be the first to admit she made for an awful maid. She could see the looks the others gave her when she struggled at things even the looming dragon could manage! A beast so large as the Lady Jewel had no business having so fine and delicate a touch with thread and wool as she did!

But if that was the work set too her Adelyne would do it. Her mistress was a terrifying beast with a voice that sank into your bones and declared all it touched as belonging to her. Adelyne would be an absolute idiot to try and flee.

Nevermind that she knew it would be hopeless, Jewel could smell her out from the air and skip and bound for longer than Adelyne could run.

“Who told them to bow to me like this?”

Yet for all the absolute dominance Jewel had over her the Lady of Valasect and now assuredly Kaeketeh was the softest and gentlest creature Adelyne had ever met!

And with the question open in the air like that from her lady the once thief could not stop herself from answering, voice only steady for the practice she had with speaking to the dragon. The tremble had finally come loose even if the primal impulse for it remained.

“I don’t think there is a soul born of Kaeketeh that would need to be told to bow to you today, Lady Jewel.”

Adelyne had learned to tell when Jewel was exasperated, even when she was wearing her ‘noble mask’ the trick was to look at how the scales along her neck shifted, the subtle tension of muscles underneath them and precisely how stiff the hairs of her mane were. It was amusing to comment with the other staff of the manor how much their lady resembled a cat. But such words were only ever dared when said wyrm was well and truly outside of the manor, preferably on those days she flew to visit her family in Rochford.

“I see”

Said the wyrm who Adelyne was only half sure had not somehow enchanted her and everyone else in the city. The terrifying Weird Tsulogothulan said things that suggested it could have happened after all!

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“Well as this is liable to be the day I claim my title as Countess of Viznove I cannot argue their showing of fealty is unwelcome. Smithson?”

The Nurse Knight straightened in his saddle with the dragon’s daughter settled in front of him. Already attentive and ready to receive another order from his liege. Adelyne tried not to think of how such an obvious crossing of man and beast had occurred.

“Please see to it that the city knows that such a display is not required of them except when they are presenting themselves to me in court. Have criers sent after we settle into the manor.”

The man that Adelyne was almost certain had the absolutely most impossibly massive balls in the realm acted incredibly differential. She was pretty sure his gonads were wrought of the hardest iron. And for it she could hold nothing but respect for Smithson and his bravery, it was one thing to be a dragon slayer. But the Nurse Knight had obviously bedded one considering the way he dotted on the lady’s so-called-immaculate daughter.

And there Adelyen went, failing to avoid thinking about the providence of the wyrm child again she was absolutely shit at that.

Still it was hard to not have one's mind wander to try and ignore the way that people she had shared a fish stinking alley with were kneeling down at her feet. Men she knew were too old to be prostrated like that with their knees still doing it gladly with quaking calves.

And worst of all, like it had when Jewel had first come to Kaeketeh the voice of the city had been silenced. Not by a roar, not even by an utterance, but the heavy sensation of Jewel’s mere presence settling over the city and its populace. The simple arrival of their countess had rippled from the gates and the news alone had stilled every voice. Adelyen saw a babe who should have been squalling, silent and wide eyed in awe at the wyrm.

Held by a mother kneeling with her head bowed.

Adelyne could not help but stare as they walked past the all too quiet crowds of a Kaeketeh in reverence to its new liege and lady. To a countess that most assuredly was welcomed. The way the babe silently stared with wide eyes at a dragon that by looks of it had never once been seen in this one's memory.

But somehow even the babies knew to be still and attentive.

The river lapping at the docks and the slight rattle of boats and creaking ropes felt far too loud as they made their way through a city that was so incredibly familiar and yet so utterly and disturbingly quiet.

Adelyne could remember the last time such a stillness had fallen.

A roar had sounded out from the sky and sunk deep into all of their hearts. A sound which blood and bone seemed to recognize as assured doom.

Adelyne remembered where she was.

How both her and the man she had just relieved of his coin purse were frozen together that day. How when the stillness and quiet that followed finally broke she had simply handed the purse back to him and he had just nodded to her.

And now here the silence came again, she had heard there had been celebrating before their arrival. There had absolutely been some looting. Adelyne knew for sure there were some fat fucks she would have turned over if she was still here when the Countess’ dead body had been torn apart and burnt.

But by the time that Jewel and her party were through the gates the city was silent.

It felt like some terrible sorcery had been cast. Even the midtown fops in their finery were not even whispering. Some of them looked rougher for wear than usual. There were black eyes, split lips and soot and blood in their clothes. But even here a stillness followed Jewel.

Over the next bridge came the first sign of noise and movement and something other than kneeling difference. The gate was closed, and one of the Countess’ former men was standing on the wall above.

They were still dressed in her colors and the bathory banners still hung high.

But Adelyne saw the wood of the gate had dents from heavy impacts. There was char on it and chips in the stone and even blood on the bridge. Soot and char from fires that had been set at its base.

The rest of the city had looked more or less the same for its quiet, maybe some missing windows.

But here at the gate it looks like some terrible fury had been unleashed.

Adelyne came to a stop beside her Lady.

The combined footmen of Rochford were arrayed behind them.

A gryphon lord, two apparent knights, two captains of the guard and a sizable portion of the staff of two households.

The Shining Wyrm of Viznove and her husband.

And Adelyne.

The voice that still rang in the hearts of a city called out to the guard of the gate.

“Open the gates for your countess, For Jewel of Rochford, Valasect, Kaeketeh and Viznove”

For just a moment Adelyne thought they would refuse. The pause was long enough.

But wisdom won that day.

The Gates Opened.