Chapter 330 — Patti

"Mama says she doesn't like drowning in dreams, but I don't understand what that means," Patti said, and hopped up onto the curb beside them again, wobbling forward. "Mama is a very formidable person! Everyone in the castle listens to her!"

Gaoyang's steps could not help but pause. "The castle? You live in a castle?"

"Yes! A great big castle!" Patti said happily. "And my room has great big windows!"

A castle with big windows? That style of building was hardly common in this age...

Gaoyang swiftly speculated about the girl's identity in the real world: she was probably a noble, though from her manner of speaking and behavior, probably not the child of a very high-ranking noble. She lived in a castle with big windows—but in this era, the castles of Ansuth's nobility all served also as military fortresses, with basically only narrow windows and very high skylights. So perhaps she was not from Ansuth... though not necessarily, since the newer, more comfortable styles of castle and manor had begun to spread around the Holy Spirit Plains of late, and some southern nobles were imitating such architecture as well...

With this thought in mind, Gaoyang seized the moment and said, "That sounds wonderful. By the way, are there any tall mountains near your castle? Or rivers and forests?"

He wanted to sound her out about the features of the landscape around the castle where Patty lived, so as to judge which country the little girl was likely from. Though it was quite possible he would be able to determine nothing at all, he still wanted to try.

But the little girl shook her head after hearing these questions. "I don't remember very well... Mama wouldn't let me leave the castle from the time I was very small, saying it was dangerous outside. But Uncle, let me tell you something—this morning I secretly had the maid take me up to the terrace! I could see a huge stretch of snow below the castle! You mustn't tell anyone, all right? Mama usually hardly even lets me go up to the terrace... Though Mama went out a few days ago."

Gao Cen's thoughts wandered while Gao Heng gave a perfunctory reply: "Oh, your mother's gone out, has she."

"Yes. Mama said she was going to visit Count Horsman's house. She's been gone for several days now..."

"Oh, Count Horsman... Count Horsman?!"

Gao Heng repeated it absently, but the instant the words left his mouth he reacted, his eyes going wide.

He had heard that name before!

Not long ago, in Amber's report!

"Yes, Count Horsman," Patty said, seeming a little startled by Gao Song's reaction. "Uncle... do you know His Lordship the Count?"

"...No, I was just surprised that the person your mother was going to see was such a great personage. The word 'Count' caught me off guard." Gao Lan made up a reason on the spot—children wouldn't think too much of it anyway—but inwardly his thoughts were churning.

Could there be another Count Horsman in this world? This, Gao Heng dared to guarantee—perhaps there was. After all, the four human nations were separated at the four corners of the continent, and each nation had its own independent yet vast aristocratic system, with landowning nobles great and small beyond counting. It was hard to say whether somewhere in the north or south of the continent there might be a few nobles who shared both a name and a title. But rather than believe in such a groundless possibility, he was more inclined to believe that the Count "Horsman" Patty mentioned was the very one he knew of!

A landowning noble of Ansouth's southern borderlands—Karlov Horsman.

Then Patty was in fact the offspring of some southern-border noble?

Her surname seemed to be Grant... Among the southern-border nobles there did seem to be a family by the name of Grant!

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