The Dragon's Clause

Chapter 2: Word About Town

Approaching the capital city of the Goa Kingdom was a relief for several reasons. It was good to be done with your long journey, but also the state of the infrastructure leading up to the city was remarkably well cared for.

Some kingdoms didn't have the capacity to maintain their roadways, and some kingdoms let them rot unless they were paths commonly traveled by nobility or the Empire. Oftentimes the maintenance of such farm roads and trade routes fell to the people who needed them the most.

Between merchant-maintained and farmer-maintained, you found you preferred the latter over the former. Merchants would often opt to set up informal checkpoints, and while the fees could be manageable, sometimes the enforcers were not. Farmer maintained roads were often of better quality, since farmers would simply walk their livestock over the roads.

Repeatedly.

This made for remarkably smooth and wide roadways. The only downside being that these paths often reeked. But the stench of manure tended to be less headache than dealing with those who were full of it.

You hadn't traveled all the roads between Lulusia and Goa, but the roads between any two kingdoms were rarely traveled by nobility. As a rule, anything more than three days was worth the cost of magic, so any nobles who traveled by carriage further than that were either poor, miserly, or trying to win the favor of the masses.

Technically, you fell into none of the three categories, because you were neither important enough, nor powerful enough, to command the wealth that was associated with your name. But more to the point, a good infrastructure was a good sign.

You had no care for useless opulence, and no desire to deal with vapid royals. A functional kingdom was the sign of functional royalty, and that was the bare minimum you had hoped for. Most nobility married for politics, so you'd long since set aside the ideal of love, even more so when your father died. Your Uncle might not have loved you as warmly as your father had, but if this was how you could repay him then so be it.

None of this sat in your heart as malcontent. It was what it was, and you had only to make the best of what you could within those lines. It was far easier to find joy when those around you were competent.

Just inside the main city proper you found an inn. You had funds enough to put yourself and your small retinue up for a month of days, so it wasn't an issue to get everyone rooms and get them settled. Everyone was road-weary, your coachman and knights more so than yourself, you were sure. You provide each with ample funds to eat as they pleased, and to drink with consideration toward your destination the next day.

Small in number, but your Uncle did not send you to a new country with fools, and you were grateful for their collective competence. Something you would miss after tomorrow, since all four would take the long journey back to Lulusia. Another kingdom's knights would not be provided entry into Goa's castle, unless they were your own personal guards, and even then the King could deny them if he so desired.

Such an action would cause strain between the two lands, but as you did not have personal knights, it wasn't something for you to be worried about right now.

You paid handsomely for a hot bath to be brought up to your room and prepared. It wasn't an easy process, and an inn just inside the city gates wouldn't have many who would request it, but it was worth the cost. You cleaned most of the muck and grime of the last week off before even getting in the bath, making use of it to soak for a long while until you caved in and washed your hair.

Basic cantrips had kept you and your small entourage mostly clean during the long travel between Capital cities, but they had limits. Cantrips couldn't clean as well as proper baths, and the longer you went between one the harder it was to get accumulated grit and grim free. The week and change wasn't too terribly long, but you were used to bathing far more regularly, and could