He ordered something from a beast-kin woman whose lower body carried the coiled structure and whose upper half was entirely human, paid in coin that the settlement accepted without comment, and settled into the particular stillness of someone who was listening to everything while appearing to be interested in nothing.
The settlement was talking about a wedding.
Not quietly, not in the guarded way that people discussed sensitive political events.
Openly, like it was an event celebrated by the whole village.
Decorations were being prepared in the market quarter. Food was being ordered in quantities that suggested a feast of significant scale.
The castle's lower halls were being cleaned and rearranged by teams of beast kin workers who moved through the settlement talking about the preparations with the pride of people contributing to something their King had declared important.
Jake listened and built the picture from fragments.
