The Yawning Mastiff is not merely an inn; it is the village's evening grammar, where disparate clauses of the day find their conjunctions. Timbers low enough to feel honest hold smoke the way a good cloak holds weather. The hearth throws a reliable square of orange on the floorboards, and in that square stories take off their boots and behave. On wet nights, laughter tries on bravery and finds that it fits. The stew smells of onions coaxed sweet and a bone that has been telling the pot the same story since morning. Music earns its keep here-fiddle when the room needs sharpness, drum when it needs to remember its feet.
Baptiste runs the place like a steward of tides. He lets conversations flood to the door and then quietly draws them back to their tables with a word, a raised chin, the placement of a fresh loaf. He remembers who needs the corner and who must not be left alone with their temper. Gossip arrives in this room wearing a taller hat than it deserves; by the time it leaves, the hat has been hung on a peg and the person beneath it has decided to tell the truth instead. This is the gift of the Mastiff: it lets fear ferment into talk, and then it lets talk evaporate until what remains can be used.
Rowan trusts inns more than he trusts councils, and this one justifies the preference. A village will not bring its rawest worries to a meeting; it will bring them to a table when the second mug arrives. The inn does not fix anything, but it teaches people the trick of sitting near one another long enough for their certainty to soften. In such softened places, the useful details float to the surface: who saw Pierre last, which lane holds fog like a pocket, which window shows candlelight when all others are dim.
If answers gather anywhere in Gascar, they will gather here first, not because the room is sacred but because it is ordinary in the right way. Baptiste keeps it that way by refusing the stage and offering the hearth. Rowan steps across the threshold knowing he will have to deserve what the inn knows. That is a fair bargain in a season when nothing comes cheap.