Chương 236: 10.3

The day before the longest night broke. With song and music and a suffusing cloud of spices. Jewel was only required to be present for the commoners during a mid afternoon speech and an evening feast which had grown out of any sensible meaning of the word. The Courts were forbidden from operation today alongside every other place of labor beyond the kitchens. So Smithson, Muriel and Paul would actually be attending with her.

The entire keep was awash in signs of festivities, the smell of the cooking filling all the halls with the scent of sweet breads and festival cakes. Already candied treats were scattered all around and the animals that had been kept and fattened up on fruits and cream were slaughtered last night. The scent of fruit, meat and spices billowed through every room. This night was going to be an event that in some ways felt larger to Jewel than her own wedding.

She was thankful at least her vassals and their households were not going to be in attendance, not even Kliatbatrn! Each lord and lady had an obligation to their own rites over winter. Or according to Paul, local festivals that had their own attendance and honors to give. Jewel missed the solemnity of the day in Rochford. Even the children dressing up as winter monsters were softer than this city. In Kaeketeh their rites were always done with an almost feral amount of revelry.

To feast and dance and be merry in the darkest hour was their way. And no matter how much it discomforted her Jewel promised herself that she would be a better liege than Bathory. If Kaeketeh fought the dark with revelry then revelry they would have! At Muriel's recommendation all the men of the nascent Kaeketeh guard were invited to the keep to attend with honor for a meal. The plan was that this would turn into a tradition for the new guard and a sign of openness and favor towards the city and the commoners.

When the Guildmasters heard of it they had insisted on all of them attending the prestigious and now far more open event. Apparently the late Countess Bathory had selectively used a single seat at her table to offer to her 'favorite' guild of the year. And then after the word spread the guilds would be attending the heads of the dozen temples of Kaeketeh had insisted on being present as well!

Then the nobles (cousins, sons and otherwise of lords) from middletown complained there would not be room for the seats they had expected to receive as a matter of course. Which was apparently vitally important representation for Jewel's vassals and their houses. By the time everyone who needed to be honored were invited it was shaping up to be less of a feast and more a fair all of its own!

And when word of this had reached gate town Jewel would have probably had to fly over the city and roar with the full force of her lungs to stop the new festivities! Kaeketeh had always practiced a festive air for the last half of the season of winter. But the massive party of the noble, rich and honored that had brewed up around Jewel was now being matched and mirrored by an uproarious surge of revelry as if somehow gate town had been offended by the impression of there being a celebration without them.

For days merchants were sprouting up from the countryside like mushrooms! The surrounding villages had trickled and then poured into Kaeketeh in a torrent. Jewel was left baffled as to where all the strange mass of entertainers even came from! She certainly didn't hire them. A crazed wildness seemed to have taken over the entire city. And it was all coming to a frothing head this morning. What had been mostly an event for the children in Rochford apparently took up everyone in the entire city of Kaeketeh.

Young and Elder. Man and Woman. Jewel could already hear the songs and cheering in far older voices than she expected. Murmuring noise just barely past dawn! The wall fort would be opened up as a space for the commoner's revelry, the act this time at the recommendation of the guilds. The 'high winter fair' would be attended in the courtyard and rooms of Kaeketeh Keep itself. With the bridge acting as a minor impediment although no heavy guard was posted to block passage to commoners. All of that awaited her.

But for this brief moment she had breakfast with her close council. With a nice and simple porridge! Jewel ate a whole pot herself. Paul took his with a few choice cuts of smoked and seared pig back. The fat dripping off crisped skin. Smithson had mirrored her husband, although he had also gotten some honey and cinnamon for his. Muriel was the only one that actually matched Jewel in having a sensible porridge. Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Yet even the captain of Jewel's footmen took some butter in the boiled barley. Jewel pointedly did not bring it up. Muriel, Smithson and Paul had been working so incredibly hard in the common law courts and training up the new guard. They deserved some seasoning over breakfast if they wanted it. Besides Gem's stomach and tongue preferred the crisp pork cuts over boiled oats.

There had been far too many memories of the awful sensation of throwing up (or worse) and terrible pain in her middle for Jewel to ever try again at eating boiled oats, grains or bread with little Gem's mouth. Jewel however enjoyed the hearty elegance of barley boiled soft and spongy. The flavor of the grain settled with all its tones and delights on her tongue, slipping back and down her throat hot from the fires of the kitchen.

She drank her breakfast like she was back on the march, savoring it for the simple joy it was not watery bone broth with milk. The iron of the pot was still heated enough that two men from the kitchen staff had to heft it with clever wooden grips to shield them from the metal. And an extra board of wood was on the table to prevent it charring the fine cloth. After the entire cauldron had been drained she set it aside gently upon the stone so the metal could cool before the staff retrieved it.

Jewel then politely belched, making sure to echo it through her throat so that all the staff could hear, then gently wiped her lips (which were still perfectly clean. Jewel had plenty of practice). Once fully settled she glanced around at her closest friends and confidants. Those she would share a table with this supper before the darkest night of the year.

"Are the kitchens fully stocked? I don't want to hear come evening that we run out of anything. Tomorrow's gift of feast leavings to the commoners should be as bountiful as we can manage." Smithson nodded at that while Paul helped Gem to cut her particularly large slab of crisp pork back. Holding the knife was still a bit too tricky for her smaller self some mornings. But today Jewel mostly let him because he seemed almost as delighted as Jewel to have Gem fed a tiny piece at a time.

"There should be enough for at least a hundred households to eat well tomorrow, even if we had twice the number attending the midnight feast." Good, Gem snatched up a bite of meat out of the air. She waited until Paul tossed another piece before turning to him with her larger face.

"Paul, are you sure that the courts will be fine? A whole season won't be a problem?" He nodded to her.

"Yes, all the worst cases were put ahead of anything without blood spilled or serious violation. It's all disputed fines for bakers and the like that we will need to bring the guilds into anyway." Jewel nodded to him and let her husband get back to entertaining her smaller self. She had no idea why but snatching meat in her mouth tossed through the air was one of the most enthralling ways to eat breakfast her smaller self had ever tried. The rush of a tiny heart beating so joyously was enough to warm her flame.

"Then that should keep fine until the end of winter. Muriel, how fares the training of the City Guard?" Her captain considered Jewel, before nodding. Whatever sums and memories had been going through her once governess' head settled before she spoke.

"Jakub and five of the more veteran footmen are good enough at warcraft now to train others in combat, proper mustering, managing their gear and marching." Her captain sighed heavily though and stared at her half finished porridge.

"But I need scribes and lawyers to assist me in getting them to match the duties that the old footmen were assigned. She had her men doing far more than just breaking up fights among peasants and holding troublemakers for a headman to judge them later." Jewel sighed but nodded.

"I'll check if the keep has any staff who at least know their letters well enough to teach. But for the lawyer?" Paul huffed and turned to Jewel after tossing the last of Gem's meal into her waiting mouth.

"That will be trouble, we probably would be best to check in with the guilds. The only men left in the city versed in common and court law well enough are either bound by oath to one of the houses or paid in full to serve one of the Guilds." Smithson nodded along, offering his own view. It was always the same since Jewel's curse.

"That would be for the best, I don't want to say I miss the cowards but..." Not a single trustworthy person versed in law and uncursed was willing to even entertain the journey to Kaeketeh. A few of the waifs probably would have qualified but she had already openly declared them unfit to serve Viznove and it was all far too soon for her to try to even bend that proclamation. Jewel huffed and looked around before finally nodding.

"Then I think it best we try and make inquiries to the guilds and the nobles attending tonight's feast?" Paul was nodding at that but Muriel and Smithson shared Jewel's frown at the thought. To enact law and order in Kaeketeh Jewel needed those at the root of it to be trustworthy. To be sound of judgment and aligned with her. And Jewel had yet to find a single one of those in the teeming pit of schemers and liars that populated half of middle town.

Muriel broke the tension that had settled over breakfast with an exhausted sigh.

"After the seasons I've had trying to manage these green boys and girls? I'll take that." Jewel frowned harder but Muriel fixed a tired glare on her.

"Don't you frown at me little lady! If some lord's bastard or their sworn lawmen are teaching the basics of common law and I drill the recruits on it afterwards?" She gestured to one of the footmen.

"I think we could just spare that trust to a guild or scheming noble. Otherwise I'm going to go gray, shriveled and frail before we have even a bare minimum of a core in the Kaeketeh guard to be self-sustaining." Jewel nodded, which meant that there was going to be more work for all of them, but Jewel especially in the midnight feast to come.

"I'll seek out the least dishonest of the guests tonight. How many lawyers do you need?" Muriel huffed.

"If they were honest and trustworthy? I'd say ten minimum... But with me needing to keep an eye on them scheming something with the recruits? No more than four. I don't have enough hours in the day to check more than that." Jewel sighed and nodded. She focused hard on the warm joyous feeling of a full belly that was nearly making Gem glow with satisfaction. The Countess of Viznove really needed the simple pleasures of her smaller self right now. Even in a festival a Lady's work was never done.