[ the following is fashioned more like a letter than a conversation. composed in the solitude of her solar, completed between one task and another -- and its text poured over a dozen times before she dictated it aloud to the locket. it would have been more ideal to send a raven, but she did not trust the lord of mair with her half-brother's gift. the as-yet unnamed gift.
so instead: ]
LORD GANONDORF of CASTLE MAIR,
You bid me reach out to you when the fires cooled and when the Cothromach still stood. And so now I reach, eager to resume the familiar gestures of trade your lands and my lands have known for centuries. Our siege brought disruptions: the collection of lumber slowed; our forges turned their embers to more pressing matters.
But do please let me know what trade the people of Mair miss and desire. I am certain we can come to some agreement.
SANSA of HOUSE STARK, LADY KEEPER OF THE COTHROMACH
[His answer does not come swiftly, but it is returned hours later on that same day. His message is a brief answer, but positive. With that delay comes the arrogance of a man far too busy to speed off with an immediate reply, yet willing to sacrifice his own time to make this visit.]
LADY KEEPER,
I am well pleased to learn of your survival. Word of your victory has begun to reach even the streets of Mair. It would please me greatly to resume that ancient trade.
Such an agreement is deserving of a written accord, agreed upon in person. I shall make my arrival by mid-day tomorrow.
GANONDORF DRAGMIRE LORD OF MAIR, LORD OF MAUPERTIUS
[ so soon? no. it's not the soonness that troubles her. it's how she knows the appearance will be questionable -- to repel an unseelie attack in one week and invite an unseelie lord to treat with her in the next. and yet she can't deny him his face-to-face agreement.
though, having never met the man in person, she doesn't feel keen. doubly so when she sees the growth of his titles. and yet she can only see opportunity! what, she wonders, might maupertius need? perhaps nothing that the cothromach offers. but hope prevails. ]
LORD GANONDORF,
[ tomorrow is sooner than she would like but there is no means by which to refuse him without undermining her first letter. but she can perhaps try and keep him from seeing the ramshackle state of her city's gates.] It is the Cothromach who comes seeking your business, my lord. Permit instead me and my Trade Minister to travel to you. You ought not be so inconvenienced -- you sign your name with a pair of titles, and so I must imagine you are a busy administrator.
LADY SANSA STARK
[ this letter she dispatches in the evening, and upon its heel a note to minister tzilan requesting his company for an appointment yet to be finalized. ]
Tomorrow will suffice, in either city. If you lack swift transport, means can be granted to facilitate your arrival.
LORD GANONDORF DRAGMIRE
[Her desire to avoid him in her city is well understood - but he wishes to see it himself, from inside and out. But if she will accept flight upon the Helmaroc King instead, then so be it. This message is dispatched not long before midnight.]
[ tellingly, her response comes in the wee hours of the morning. that is -- she is awake. doubtless refusing sleep for the sake of this protracted conversation. ]
[Whether by going to see for herself or being alerted by it, his answer should become obvious. Landing outside of Cothromach and from just out of range of archers was a massive bird. Its tail showed a brilliant array of colored feathers, but the rest of it was an inky blue with a great and majestic helmet atop its head. The Helmaroc King had come to Cothromach and waited patiently and elegantly. All who came near it was beneath his interest, for only Sansa Stark was of concern to him. But for those who walked beside the bird, they did so bravely because the creature was so large that it could have devoured a man in two mouthfuls and a child in one. But it made no threat, but kept its eyes fixed on the Cothromach's gates.]
The trip -- made in the early hours of the day -- was more thrilling than Sansa felt she had any right to experience. For years, she'd dreamed of flying. A hundred thousand things terrified her, but not heights. The man himself will frighten her more than the Helmaroc King did. And so, when she and her Minister touched ground in Mair, she was sad to be once again reserved to walking on the ground. At least the trip had the unintended outcome of making her feel more bright-eyed. Her blood pumped with excitement instead of pure fear. And when she tried to tidy her windswept braids on the ground, she turned to Minister Tzilan in the wee still-yet-dark morning.
"Does the Cothromach have singers, dear Minister?" Of course it had singers. All decent cities had singers. But she asked out of a necessary segue more than a genuine concern. She spoke only to him as they were ushered out of a courtyard and behind stone walls. "It's been suggested we ought to commission songs of the battle. Slow and moving tales."
Yet another attempt on public opinion. She brought it up now so sweetly and so casually while they waited for a far more integral appointment.
The minister slithered off first, as if glad to touch back to solid ground, and reached up a dark-skinned hand to help the Lady to her own feet. He looked to the horizon, tense, and knotted his hands together behind his back.
"If you desire such a commission, we should look to properly trained bards for the writing of it. Singers alone may hold pleasant notes, but not all have the skill to craft a moving song from nothing. You need only say the word." He followed, beside and slightly behind, watching the servants who ushered them.
Sansa Stark bundled her cloak tighter about her body. One hand pinned it shut, closing gently over the proud wolf's head broach. And the other hand! Well. She did not like putting it in Tzilan's, but she did it all the same. Because he had offered her a polite disembarkation and she would be crass not to accept it. After all that had passed between them -- the ducking and the dodging and the omissions and the lies -- she did not feel capable of resenting him. He wanted to protect a city. She wanted to protect a name. Their dreams (unmocked, as they'd promised) were coincidentally lofty. Only their means were different. Or so she understood, based on what he'd dare tell her. Or, she supposed, lied to her. She could not believe him out of hand.
Once upon the ground, she reclaimed her fingers and stood tall. "Of course," she nodded. "Consider it said." The word. Let Cothromach be refashioned and then ring with song. Not jangling patriotic marches, but sweeping pretty lines that honoured its loss.
"Did you know," she tilted her head and dared to walk so near to Tzilan only so she could whisper with him, "that the Lord of Mair now signs his letters with a second title?"
"As you will, Lady Keeper." His gestures and words of obeisance were peerless in their perfection, and he walked beside her, smaller somehow, fretful-seeming, and made himself a part of the shadow she cast.
"I am well informed of it. In fact, I funded a part of the effort through the use of personal accounts. The prior lord was... is... a greater threat to all than the Lord of Mair shall ever be."
Her steps were light. Small. She noticed the difference in the Minister, but was too polite to draw attention to it. But an oft-cornered bird could too quickly recognize the signs of fretting and the marks of diminishment. What happened to him--
But the mystery would wait. Reynard took precedence.
"Reynard the Fox, Lady Keeper. It was he who had long hunted in private, and at last slew, the Lady of Redgate." His voice was tight when he said it, but his posture remained impeccable; there was not so much a twitch in his carefully blank expression.
She did not need a twitch to tell her the topic mattered. She could sense it already -- having witnessed some seeming affection for that Lady of Redgate already expressed. So her nod was a solemn one.
"And left three corpses behind in the Cothromach. Did you know he was there, dear Minister?"
Her voice was silk soft (though uncertain) -- playing the game of what Tzilan did and did not know was ever a tricky one, and she'd not yet quite got the drop on him. And this morning! Well. This morning she thought she did not want to flout her knowledge. Not on this matter, where the Fox had not only hurt someone Tzilan cared for but had also attacked Sansa's father, her siblings, and her friend. Her opinion of the Fox was sharp and frosted.
His head snapped around, staring, studying her profile. "Three? The Cothromach? When?!" Clearly, he had not known.
He balked as the next door was cast open before them, as if this new information might send him racing back the way they'd come. "In what state? Where!? Lady, my... Lady Keeper," Rat-a-tat quick, voice hushed with what must have been real fear.
But he halted himself there, looking over her features, searching for something he did not seem to find. His eyes were wide, shocky-seeming. "The battle. It could only have been during the battle." He wore the expression of a man for whom much that had been beyond him was clicking together.
"The news reached me earlier in the day--" A scant handful of hours, all things considered: she could not be accused of dragging her heels alerting Tzilan to this matter. Though her manner of bringing it into the conversation had been round-about and cultivated. Sansa had not had to conjure the figure of the Fox first. Merely mention Lord Ganondorf's acquiring of that other lord's title. It was unfair of her, perhaps, but she felt an inchoate spark of pride. It was a rare feeling, but she had no time to see it kindled. Her pride was less a priority than her city.
"Another shardbearer took stock of the...place." Sansa was steeled but she was not prepared to put to words the utter horror of carnage Renly had come face-to-face with. "The top floor of a well-appointed inn near the city's centre -- the Fox's seal was found on a full complement of letters left burning in the fire. He was already gone."
She stopped when he stopped. And she very nearly wanted to reach for his arm -- steady him who seemed so flapped, now, when he was so unflappable before. She frowned; she felt guilt. "I think you're right. I think it was during the battle."
"During the battle, when I was too pressed to be properly vigilant. I suspect Morla knew she would find him there. She has been training soldiers to hunt him, Lady Keeper." He said this all heavily, and touched his mouth, just briefly.
Morla knew she would find him there. Her very soul recoiled. All she knew, in that deft admission, was that it would not have made a difference whose offer she'd accepted or rejected. It would not have mattered whose lie she'd told. The realization fell so heavily upon her shoulders that she didn't even have the time nor the spirit remaining to grimace at the Minister's strong language.
"So now we stand upon the new Lord of Maupertius's stones." Sansa exhaled. Perhaps this meeting managed to be more than a simple talk on trade and money. "A man, I imagine, who is also not a proponent of the Fox's."
And in her quiet careful way, Sansa had carved a path to take two problems (her city's need of funds and its sudden rash of grisly murders) and crystallize them into a single appointment.
"A man who is a declared enemy of the Fox, now with the authority to do more to hound him to his heart's content," murmured Tzilan, recovering quickly from the lapse of formality, shoulders stiffening. His look to his Lady informed her that they shared the same notion.
Petyr's lessons clung to her like perfume on the skin: a song, selected carefully and sung feelingly at a feast could one day lead to a toppled king; a man, affectionately moved, might secure a gate. Sansa nodded -- left (as she often did) so many pieces of their conversation unspoken.
But one matter needed words. Sansa paused in the doorway while servants ushered ahead. They were early, yet, and would likely be kept waiting. But once they crossed too far into the castle their conversation would no longer be there own. Before that happened, she had to tell him.
"They would have had shards, wouldn't they?" Her blue eyes were veiled. Sad. "Lord Renly said their chests were cut open." Sansa's own hand touched her beaded bodice. She remembered what had been told her about the attack on the party come to Reynard to learn from him. "He took them."
She said cut open and he could not even pretend surprise, only looking briefly away, expression blank. It might be becoming clear to her that this was a defense mechanism with multiple applications.
"I see. I likely know them, if they were from the old guard. I might be able to identify the bodies, if the faces are....intact." Even more likely, if they were in the Cothromach, that they had been friends or more."
It did not need to become clear. Somewhere, in the pit of her heart, she knew it already. After all, wasn't it the very same defence mechanism that had seen her through a dozen beatings? Sansa had learned to powder her bruises and wear them with a blank face. She had learned to slander her father -- her own brothers and her mother -- and betray not an ounce of that pain. She had learned how to announce to a whole court that she loved a monster without a shiver to her voice.
But these days! Strange, really, how being around the people who loved her seemed to weaken her. Erode her mask. It was just as the beautiful queen had said. Love was a poison.
But Tzilan wore his blankness well and so she did not belittle it by offering her sympathies. And instead of giving him an order, she asked him a question: "Ought I arrange such a viewing, dear Minister?"
"As soon as we return," he agreed, impassive, voice without inflection.
"For now, I'll follow the lead and pace you set in the meeting. Events, I find, are cowards: they don't attack singly, but wait and come all together. Let us hope this news is the last of our untoward events."
At long last, they were meeting with Ganondorf. The Helmaroc King had deposited them just below the ridge that led up into the Castle of Mair. Up there on this high hill they were awarded a view that would have been breathtakingly beautiful under a rising sun, but was still doused in shadows. Inside the castle's gates and in the courtyard where they had emerged, they could see the high ramparts about, the bright torches that illuminated the walls, and above it all a monstrously huge tower that was foreboding in appearance.
But beneath that dim light of early dusk, Ganondorf came. He was a tall man, seven and a half feet in height, and built as solid and thickly as the tower he'd emerged from. With his olive green skin and thick red man of hair he was made to look strange even by this world's standards. There was something both wild yet controlled and intentional in his appearance. He might have been only a lord in this land, but his demeanor made it obvious he as a king not just by title, but by his very soul. This was a man bred for no other purpose but to lead and wage war.
"Lady Keeper," he said in his deep yet grim voice. "Ah, and your Trade Minister. Welcome to Mair. I hope the Helmaroc King provided you comfortable transport."
Lady Sansa was careful in her greeting. She curtseyed (because she always curtseyed) but she was careful to only bob as low as one city's leader might dare bob out of respect for someone closer to an equal than a sovereign. Ah, she did not feel equal -- how could she, when met with this mass of man and solidity? But she had already begun to practise at behaving as though she was far less cowed in her heart. Thank the Gods, she thought, that she had some height to her. Craning her neck to watch the Lord of Mair's eyes was just at the very edge of uncomfortable.
I wonder if he is taller than the Mountain. But then that thought brought dread into her heart and she banished it immediately. For her part, Sansa was dressed less like a warlord and more like a proper lady. Pale pink silk wrapped about her body, covered by a cloak trimmed in fox fur. A thoughtful purposeful choice, really. And her Tully red hair was pulled back and fixed into a long single braid that would have been common and unremarkable except that it had been woven into place with thick strands of gold silk. The effect achieved by the use of a gleaming hair net gifted to her by a sweet and loyal girl.
"Lord Ganondorf," she met him with her own even tones. Once, her voice would have shivered and shaken but she had met with too many dangerous strangers now to let the old fear rise to the surface. Doubtless, she felt it deep in her heart. And doubtless she would do what she could to hide it. "He is a remarkable creature. Beautiful. Awe-inspiring." At least she did not have to lie when she heaped praise upon the bird. "I've never travelled by such means before. It was an unexpected treat. Thank you for such a first glimpse upon hospitality."
More, she prayed, would soon follow. Perhaps others did not trust in the guest right as she did -- but she could not help but feel anxious until the proper gestures were made.
Tzilan's cream-and-gold tunic and leggings were tailored well to his figure, making him look lean and reedy; nearly of a height with the lady he followed in. He bowed at the address to him, deeply, dark eyes low.
"My Lady Keeper speaks truth with more poetry than I. It was an uncommon and unexpected pleasure to be afforded such a courtesy."
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OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
so instead: ]
LORD GANONDORF of CASTLE MAIR,
You bid me reach out to you when the fires cooled and when the Cothromach still stood. And so now I reach, eager to resume the familiar gestures of trade your lands and my lands have known for centuries. Our siege brought disruptions: the collection of lumber slowed; our forges turned their embers to more pressing matters.
But do please let me know what trade the people of Mair miss and desire. I am certain we can come to some agreement.
SANSA of HOUSE STARK,
LADY KEEPER OF THE COTHROMACH
OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
LADY KEEPER,
I am well pleased to learn of your survival. Word of your victory has begun to reach even the streets of Mair. It would please me greatly to resume that ancient trade.
Such an agreement is deserving of a written accord, agreed upon in person. I shall make my arrival by mid-day tomorrow.
GANONDORF DRAGMIRE
LORD OF MAIR, LORD OF MAUPERTIUS
OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
though, having never met the man in person, she doesn't feel keen. doubly so when she sees the growth of his titles. and yet she can only see opportunity! what, she wonders, might maupertius need? perhaps nothing that the cothromach offers. but hope prevails. ]
LORD GANONDORF,
[ tomorrow is sooner than she would like but there is no means by which to refuse him without undermining her first letter. but she can perhaps try and keep him from seeing the ramshackle state of her city's gates.] It is the Cothromach who comes seeking your business, my lord. Permit instead me and my Trade Minister to travel to you. You ought not be so inconvenienced -- you sign your name with a pair of titles, and so I must imagine you are a busy administrator.
LADY SANSA STARK
[ this letter she dispatches in the evening, and upon its heel a note to minister tzilan requesting his company for an appointment yet to be finalized. ]
OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
LADY KEEPER,
Tomorrow will suffice, in either city. If you lack swift transport, means can be granted to facilitate your arrival.
LORD GANONDORF DRAGMIRE
[Her desire to avoid him in her city is well understood - but he wishes to see it himself, from inside and out. But if she will accept flight upon the Helmaroc King instead, then so be it. This message is dispatched not long before midnight.]
OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
LORD GANONDORF,
Pray tell -- by what means are you proposing?
[ she does not sign her name. ]
OCTOBER 13 PRIVATE TEXT »
LADY KEEPER,
It should be well evident.
[Whether by going to see for herself or being alerted by it, his answer should become obvious. Landing outside of Cothromach and from just out of range of archers was a massive bird. Its tail showed a brilliant array of colored feathers, but the rest of it was an inky blue with a great and majestic helmet atop its head. The Helmaroc King had come to Cothromach and waited patiently and elegantly. All who came near it was beneath his interest, for only Sansa Stark was of concern to him. But for those who walked beside the bird, they did so bravely because the creature was so large that it could have devoured a man in two mouthfuls and a child in one. But it made no threat, but kept its eyes fixed on the Cothromach's gates.]
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"Does the Cothromach have singers, dear Minister?" Of course it had singers. All decent cities had singers. But she asked out of a necessary segue more than a genuine concern. She spoke only to him as they were ushered out of a courtyard and behind stone walls. "It's been suggested we ought to commission songs of the battle. Slow and moving tales."
Yet another attempt on public opinion. She brought it up now so sweetly and so casually while they waited for a far more integral appointment.
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"If you desire such a commission, we should look to properly trained bards for the writing of it. Singers alone may hold pleasant notes, but not all have the skill to craft a moving song from nothing. You need only say the word." He followed, beside and slightly behind, watching the servants who ushered them.
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Once upon the ground, she reclaimed her fingers and stood tall. "Of course," she nodded. "Consider it said." The word. Let Cothromach be refashioned and then ring with song. Not jangling patriotic marches, but sweeping pretty lines that honoured its loss.
"Did you know," she tilted her head and dared to walk so near to Tzilan only so she could whisper with him, "that the Lord of Mair now signs his letters with a second title?"
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"I am well informed of it. In fact, I funded a part of the effort through the use of personal accounts. The prior lord was... is... a greater threat to all than the Lord of Mair shall ever be."
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Her steps were light. Small. She noticed the difference in the Minister, but was too polite to draw attention to it. But an oft-cornered bird could too quickly recognize the signs of fretting and the marks of diminishment. What happened to him--
But the mystery would wait. Reynard took precedence.
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"And left three corpses behind in the Cothromach. Did you know he was there, dear Minister?"
Her voice was silk soft (though uncertain) -- playing the game of what Tzilan did and did not know was ever a tricky one, and she'd not yet quite got the drop on him. And this morning! Well. This morning she thought she did not want to flout her knowledge. Not on this matter, where the Fox had not only hurt someone Tzilan cared for but had also attacked Sansa's father, her siblings, and her friend. Her opinion of the Fox was sharp and frosted.
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He balked as the next door was cast open before them, as if this new information might send him racing back the way they'd come. "In what state? Where!? Lady, my... Lady Keeper," Rat-a-tat quick, voice hushed with what must have been real fear.
But he halted himself there, looking over her features, searching for something he did not seem to find. His eyes were wide, shocky-seeming. "The battle. It could only have been during the battle." He wore the expression of a man for whom much that had been beyond him was clicking together.
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"Another shardbearer took stock of the...place." Sansa was steeled but she was not prepared to put to words the utter horror of carnage Renly had come face-to-face with. "The top floor of a well-appointed inn near the city's centre -- the Fox's seal was found on a full complement of letters left burning in the fire. He was already gone."
She stopped when he stopped. And she very nearly wanted to reach for his arm -- steady him who seemed so flapped, now, when he was so unflappable before. She frowned; she felt guilt. "I think you're right. I think it was during the battle."
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"Shit."
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"So now we stand upon the new Lord of Maupertius's stones." Sansa exhaled. Perhaps this meeting managed to be more than a simple talk on trade and money. "A man, I imagine, who is also not a proponent of the Fox's."
And in her quiet careful way, Sansa had carved a path to take two problems (her city's need of funds and its sudden rash of grisly murders) and crystallize them into a single appointment.
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But one matter needed words. Sansa paused in the doorway while servants ushered ahead. They were early, yet, and would likely be kept waiting. But once they crossed too far into the castle their conversation would no longer be there own. Before that happened, she had to tell him.
"They would have had shards, wouldn't they?" Her blue eyes were veiled. Sad. "Lord Renly said their chests were cut open." Sansa's own hand touched her beaded bodice. She remembered what had been told her about the attack on the party come to Reynard to learn from him. "He took them."
She sought confirmation on his face.
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"I see. I likely know them, if they were from the old guard. I might be able to identify the bodies, if the faces are....intact." Even more likely, if they were in the Cothromach, that they had been friends or more."
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But these days! Strange, really, how being around the people who loved her seemed to weaken her. Erode her mask. It was just as the beautiful queen had said. Love was a poison.
But Tzilan wore his blankness well and so she did not belittle it by offering her sympathies. And instead of giving him an order, she asked him a question: "Ought I arrange such a viewing, dear Minister?"
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"For now, I'll follow the lead and pace you set in the meeting. Events, I find, are cowards: they don't attack singly, but wait and come all together. Let us hope this news is the last of our untoward events."
no subject
But beneath that dim light of early dusk, Ganondorf came. He was a tall man, seven and a half feet in height, and built as solid and thickly as the tower he'd emerged from. With his olive green skin and thick red man of hair he was made to look strange even by this world's standards. There was something both wild yet controlled and intentional in his appearance. He might have been only a lord in this land, but his demeanor made it obvious he as a king not just by title, but by his very soul. This was a man bred for no other purpose but to lead and wage war.
"Lady Keeper," he said in his deep yet grim voice. "Ah, and your Trade Minister. Welcome to Mair. I hope the Helmaroc King provided you comfortable transport."
no subject
I wonder if he is taller than the Mountain. But then that thought brought dread into her heart and she banished it immediately. For her part, Sansa was dressed less like a warlord and more like a proper lady. Pale pink silk wrapped about her body, covered by a cloak trimmed in fox fur. A thoughtful purposeful choice, really. And her Tully red hair was pulled back and fixed into a long single braid that would have been common and unremarkable except that it had been woven into place with thick strands of gold silk. The effect achieved by the use of a gleaming hair net gifted to her by a sweet and loyal girl.
"Lord Ganondorf," she met him with her own even tones. Once, her voice would have shivered and shaken but she had met with too many dangerous strangers now to let the old fear rise to the surface. Doubtless, she felt it deep in her heart. And doubtless she would do what she could to hide it. "He is a remarkable creature. Beautiful. Awe-inspiring." At least she did not have to lie when she heaped praise upon the bird. "I've never travelled by such means before. It was an unexpected treat. Thank you for such a first glimpse upon hospitality."
More, she prayed, would soon follow. Perhaps others did not trust in the guest right as she did -- but she could not help but feel anxious until the proper gestures were made.
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"My Lady Keeper speaks truth with more poetry than I. It was an uncommon and unexpected pleasure to be afforded such a courtesy."
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