Chapter 411: Chapter 395 – Growth

 

“It’s a bit amusing now that I think back upon it, but it was always the well-established nations which had been safe behind their walls and had time to think on more than just survival that often had all sorts of odd rules about all sorts of things, from the sort of clothing it was deemed indecent to wear in public to minding who their people shared a bed with.

 

People who lacked such safety and had to struggle just to make sure that they and their families had a tomorrow to look forward to rarely bothered thinking about such things. They were unnecessary thoughts, irrelevant to survival, or as I liked to call them these days, the luxury of the idle mind.” - Aideen deVreys, the Silver Maiden, circa 518 VA.

Walking around the city of Gulski, Aideen couldn’t help but shake her head at how fast things developed in what felt – to her – like a short time. The last time she visited the city itself was during her travels after Artair’s passing, and before that, she also visited together with him and his little sister Maria, when Maria’s grandfather – the old Jarl of the time – held the succession ceremony as he passed the title to his son, Maria’s uncle.

 

Back then, the “city” of Gulski was more like a collection of longhouses – the traditional kind of house of the region, where often multiple families lived together under one roof, partly because building material often tended to be scarce – surrounded by palisades. They even had to trek a couple days from the western port of the Jarldom to the city itself by carriage or sled.

 

At the present day, the city still retained some of its old stylings – many of the longhouses showed their age, yet was also meticulously cared for – but also showed the development it has had over the century and a half since her last visit. Many of the new houses were built of sturdier material, while the palisades had been replaced with a rather low stone wall that encompassed the now much larger city.

 

The city itself was at the very least four to five times as large as back then, with the Jarl’s mansion at the center of the old city having been rebuilt to a grander and more suitable one, if still in the style of the traditional longhouse.

 

Aideen allowed her legs to take her randomly through the streets of the town, as she surveyed the situation of the city and kept her ears open to the small talk of the folk that passed her by. Most of them spoke in the local tongue, but it was one she was fluent in, so she had no issues understanding their chatter.

 

From her eavesdropping – if it could be called that – Aideen gathered that the current Jarl of Gulski was pretty well-loved by the populace, since she had opened up trade even further and even used a good bit of her family’s personal wealth to fund the construction of the port near the capital city, which turned out to be a rather recent thing, only built two decades ago.

 

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The increased trade brought a good bit of prosperity to the region, doubly so since they were militarily still in the same defensive alliance that they had joined generations ago – another event Aideen was there to witness – which meant that their neighbors were either their allies or lacked the strength to act upon their envy of the Jarldom’s prosperity.

 

Aideen gave a satisfied sigh when she saw the place prosper. To call the Jarldom completely unrelated to her would not be right, since one of Maria’s descendants had married back to the main family by the time of her last visit, and apparently fathered the current main line of Jarls. That would make her a great-aunt many times removed to the current Jarl by marriage she guessed? Familial relationships become complicated to track after centuries.

 

Eventually, the sun started to set after she walked around the city for a few hours, and Aideen followed her nose in search of an eatery that sold something good to eat. Even when it became less necessary due to her unliving physique, eating good food was one enjoyment she was loath to give up, much less when that very same physique meant that she could pretty much eat as much as she liked without any detrimental effects whatsoever.

 

As she followed a fragrance she caught while walking around, her footsteps led her to an eatery on the east side of town – in the direction of the port – as she followed the scent. A young waitress quickly arrived at her table once she seated herself, and enthusiastically replied that their establishment specialized in fresh seafood, delivered straight from the port twice a day.

 

They apparently just had a fresh shipment come in, judging from the tantalizing looking crustaceans that were being set on a large grill by the place’s matron, who deftly turned them around as one side cooked up properly.

 

Naturally, Aideen had not hesitated to place a large – enough food to feed three people, that is – order to the waitress on top of asking her to bring over a pitcher of their best alcohol and a tankard to drink with as well. The waitress took her order with a smile and quickly relayed it to the matron, who only grunted and picked up some large and delicious-looking sea creatures with one meaty hand, right out from the large tub of iced water they were stored in.

 

The seafood were still very much alive and wiggling in her hand, until she slapped them down onto a cutting board and killed them swiftly with a tool that looked like a thin icepick, quick stabs at precise spots ending the lives of the creatures. The fish was rapidly gutted and cleaned by one of the younger staff, though the crustaceans hit the grill whole and uncut.

By that time, the waitress had returned with an icy pitcher of slightly brownish ale as well as a large tankard. When Aideen laid a hand on the pitcher’s handle she realized that it wasn’t icy, but was actually made of ice, probably by an ice affinity mage amongst the staff of the eatery. It definitely did its job at keeping the ale ice-cold, though that wouldn’t have been a difficult endeavor in the Jarldom’s climate.

 

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