They were led through the city carefully by the anxious looking guard captain who had still failed to introduce himself, (probably a desperate attempt to have their earlier behaviour forgotten. No matter, in Mibbet’s eyes he would forevermore be known as Puddles, for his exclamation, and for the Chee wawa acting like their less sentient cousins when his nerves overcame him.)

“Right through here your Highnesses” He gestured. “Lady Mawri and Kawn are holding audience in here.” As soon as that was done he scuttled off, really hoping he wasn’t identified. Insulting royalty round these parts didn’t get a traditional punishment like pillorying. No the penalty for such a crime round here was THE CONE, and it was really embarrassing having others throw ky-bulee into the cone so you could eat for any length of time, especially since it was forbidden to pick out the flavours you liked for the duration of your sentence, and there’s only so much liver flavour one can take.

Once they stepped in they were confronted by a perilously precarious pupper pile of prodigious proportions. After a moment they were properly announced, and a beautiful black and tan Garuw clambered clear, and gave the traditional Garuw greeting. (Which was rather disconcerting for most of the assembled humans, who gave a yelp of shock Mibbet of course remained stoic. She was new to all this and for all she knew humans went around sniffing each other’s hind quarters all the time. It sure as hell beat drinking misery water as a method of socialising. (Then again in Mibbet’s opinion mooning a pack of feral alligators while singing a song that’ll get on your nerves for twenty minutes straight would beat booze as a medium for socialisation. She quite liked being in control of how social she got.)

“You don’t have to return our greeting,” Mawri said, “I understand that humans have a rather limited sense of smell.” She really didn’t expect what happened next, and seemed shocked when Mibbet did in fact return the greeting.

“This is your home, your rules. What kind of Princess doesn’t respect that?” (Truth was Mibbet was getting rather used to weird cultures, and after the human court? half a second to sniff a tail was infinitely preferable to being dragged into the mind numbing tedium that was the parliamentary process, or just as bad a committee meeting. If she could have escaped that she would have happily sniffed half the hind quarters in the world and considered herself to have gotten off lightly. Offending a host meant a diplomatic incidents, diplomatic incidents were brought to the court for explanation, and she remembered last time. An encore was definitely not on her to do list.)

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Mawri was quite shocked when she met The Princesses. Usually human diplomats are incredibly difficult to get along with, as they commit a terrible taboo in Garuw culture. They hide their scent behind strong smelling stuff that practically burns the sinuses out. To Garuw the smell tells one where a person has been, who they may or may not have met. How long they stuck around, it’s like a paw shake and a carefully written letter all rolled into one. Only the untrustworthy would hide such facts. It shows you have something to hide.

These humans? They seemed different. They smelled like the road, (of course the fact bathing over a long journey like that was a logistical impossibility never entered her head. The logistics of bathing were something the Garuw avoided for as long as physically possible by default, why would anybody choose to wash off a perfectly good scent?)

She could sniff out every step of their journey, and it was unbelievable. Bandits were common enough, but there was a distinct whiff of multiple types of undead, crunchy munchy spider, which she had eaten. (Humans were usually so particular about meat of most kinds, let alone Spider. That girl really could have been a Garuw.) Wait a second, was that a dragon? No not quite, it was older, smelled like stone, and undead. There were new scents too, two of them, a big squirmy tentacle thing, and some kind of reptile in brackish water. She sniffed again, that can’t possibly be right could it?

RATS, Mawri knew that smell, and her inner terrier salivated for a moment, wait, this girl had hunted rats? Lots of them by the smell of it. She remembered when she had presented a plate with freshly hunted rat to a human diplomat as a pup. Humans got really loud and screamy sometimes, her ears still rang sometimes from that day. That can’t be right surely. That can’t possibly be a Princess. Yet here she was, and it was actually satisfying to her how guileless the pair were. They weren’t hiding anything, (Though she would very much have preferred that The Princess hide the stench of cat, for the sake of the more nervous pups who had made the mistake of approaching one if nothing else.)

It seemed she could trust this human, the question was how to approach the issue. She could tell from the scent that Princess Rosalind and the others had encountered the human hordes outside. But they had clearly attacked her too, in that weird way they tended to lately. She had to prevent that happening to The Princesses, or her city was doomed.

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The town of Hawayden was nearby, and in a small bakery off the main street a hooded figure carefully pushed an unlit oven off to the side. Revealing a staircase. Fetcher had news for the boss, and going via the tunnels saved so much arguing with the guards.

He took the servants stairs (hooded figures should not use the main entrance, that way leads to trouble.) Heading to the main chambers of his employer.

A diminutive figure sat on a tall chair at the center of the room. They had noble features, (including many of the less desirable ones,) and wore what could easily have been a dead ferret atop their head.

“Report” The Boss shouted, introductions or common courtesy clearly something he was taught others do, and mere suggestions to himself.

“The Princesses are in the city, and everything is going according to plan.” Came the reply. “Soon the city will belong to you.”