Dorne burns, and in more way than one, following the steady flow of news—carried by ravens, by messengers, by orphans on their boats—from the various far reaches of the region. The occasional drifting cloud briefly shades the baked earth from the punishing sun, and most are wise enough to keep indoors where it is cooler. Yet, Prince Marence is out here, perhaps to escape the rest, looking care-worn and tired, gazing at .... well, at nothing, truly, as he sits on a bench beneath an orange tree, lost in his thoughts.
The shade in the little orange grove is pleasant enough for children of the desert bent on spending a languid afternoon in the air and the relative solitude it affords. Caitrin Blackmont, looking cool as ever in her customary white sandsilk, wanders into the grove with a light blanket over one arm and a basket dangling from her hand. “Oh, my lord,” she says in surprise, making a demure curtsy to Prince Marence. “Forgive me, please.”
She’s not normally one given to brooding, but the last ten days have settled heavily upon Elysa Dayne as well. She wanders along the walls of the courtyard, in what little shade they offer at this time of the day, and there’s a distant, distracted look on her face. As she nears the orange trees, however, her violet eyes fall upon the prince, and upon white-clad Lady Caitrin. She hesitates for a moment, then moves nearer to where they are. “Good afternoon, Prince Marence, Lady Caitrin.”
If startled, the prince does no show it; he’s slow to tear away from the welter of thoughts that are engrossing him. “Ladies,” he says distractedly. “Good day.” And then, a long silence follows before he asks with a forced civility, “How do you fare?”
“Lady Elysa,” Caitrin says smoothly, bending her head. When the Prince does not request continued solitude, she puts down her basket and spreads her blanket on the grass, there to sit. “I was a bit restive indoors, I fear,” she says, drawing the basket close. “You looked so very alone, my lord. Perhaps you will not mind our company for a very little while?”
“No better or worse than most of us, I would imagine,” replies Elysa, her eyes settling on Marence for a little, and there’s concern displayed fairly plainly on her face as she studies him. “What of yourself?” She looks to the other woman then, her expression growing a little quizzical as she watches Caitrin seat herself on her blanket.
“Marence watches, uncomprehending at first, as Caitrin sits. It takes her question to make her purpose plain, that’s clear enough from the look that crosses his face. Brow furrowed, he starts, “I would…”
He trails off, frowning, still distracted. He reaches his hands up to rub fingers at his temples, closing his eyes for a little against the strain of the bright day just beyond the shade of the orange tree. And then, “Do as you will, ladies. For a very little while. I have much to think on, as you know.”
“You -would- mind,” Caitrin says with a knowing and sympathetic smile. “I do know, my lord, that you are much occupied with the troubles beyond our walls.” She looks up at Elysa and pats the blanket where she sits, only just far enough from Marence so she cannot be said to sit at his feet. “Come and sit with me, my lady.”
Elysa hesitates, a slight frown on her face as she looks from Caitrin to Marence, and then back again. “For a little while,” she says then, accepting the invitation and moving to seat herself. She is plainly troubled still, her brow still creased in concern. “I do not imagine that there is anything we can do to help, is there?”
The prince rubs at his temples for a few more seconds, then lets his hands fall to rest in his lap, palms up. He studies them, or seems to do so; perhaps it’s merely not to meet the gazes of the two ladies. “No, thank you, Lady Elysa. There is so much to think about, that is all; it gnaws at me at every waking moment. I would say half my knights and lords urge me to throw off the king, but it would be a lie; well more than half do so…”
A short pause, and then he remarks with a sigh, “I’d suppose I’d count you ladies among them. Certainly, your father and grandfather, Lady Caitrin, are of a mind…”
“It is a hard thing to decide,” Caitrin says, her voice soothing without crossing the line into being patronizing. She pours a ruby colored liquid from a little silver flagon into tiny silvery cups shaped like slender goblets; she offers one to both Marence and Elysa. “It is sweet, but potent, so sip it carefully,” she advises.
Then she looks up at Marence from the silken blanket and smiles a bit wanly. “We only want our country returned to us, and our rightful ruler back in his place,” she says quietly. “No one means to trouble you, dear my lord, but…” she makes a helpless little gesture and takes a very small sip from the tiny goblet.
Elysa takes the offered goblet, though rather than taking a sip from it right off, she wraps both hands around it, perhaps to have something to occupy them with. “I daresay there is very little disagreement in terms of what we want, Lady Caitrin. But when it comes to what we ought to do…” Her voice trails off, and violet eyes once again look between the two. “Though I am beginning to fear that we may not have much of a choice any longer.”
Accepting the cup with a brusque, murmured thanks, Marence takes a careful sip to see what it is and how it tastes. It seems to please him, well enough, but the rest that’s said is… expected, and unwelcome. “Am I such a great lord that Dorne rues the fact that I have a king above me?” Het lets the question hang in there, and then snorts.
He does not, however, make his thoughts on the matter explicit. Instead he says, “Even the smallfolk are calling for the spears, and they are the ones who are to die in droves if I do so. A madness has swept over Dorne. We may rise, but the cost, the cost…”
Emerging from the Sept is Lysanne Caron, Lady Manwoody. The woman is something of contrasts, clad in Dornish garments, but owning unmistakingly Marcher features. Her gait is slow and heavy with dignity and the many cares on her shoulders. Today, both her maester and her sickly youngest daughter are absent and she is trailed by an aging, somewhat rotund, maid wearing the crowned skull of Kingsgrave.
Upon seeing the nobles gathered in the courtyard, the Lady of Kingsgrave dips gracefully, showing her submissions to the Prince of Dorne, even in these circumstances.
“My Prince. Ladies.” She murmurs. Lysanne has acquired a touch of a Dornish drawl with her years in-country, but she is still obviously not a native speaker. Her green eyes return to the Prince, full of sympathy for the quandry in which he lies. “And the cost for mothers, whose children are held in King’s Landing.”
“Oh, my lord,” Caitrin says sadly, shaking her head. “You are -our- lord, and all we desire in a ruler. We have no need of dragons, surely you must see that. All war has its cost, but we never did ask for the Dragon to set us aflame.”
She pauses, and does not seem quite as pleased to see Lady Manwoody, for all she smiles demurely. Even less does she welcome the woman’s words. “Stolen children who will likely never be allowed to return,” she says darkly. “How many more of Dorne’s children will feed the Dragon?”
The discomfort becomes even more plain on Elysa’s face and in her posture, even seated as she is, when Lady Manwoody joins them and the exchange between her and Lady Caitrin unfolds. “Not all of us have given up hope, Lady Caitrin. Is it foolish? I do not know, but ... do you?” A sigh then, and an apologetic glance at Marence. “But see, now we are surely making matters worse.”
“Lady Lysanne. You, as well?” Marence shakes his head, easily exasperated. “The cost is defeat. There is no reason to think—Even if every lord and knight rose, even if every garrison defeated, we are much weaker than we were to begin with, so much blood has been shed; and though the king’s men have bled,” the prince explains, almost by rote, an argument he’s long practiced in his mind, “it is but one drop in a sea for the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. With time, he could raise a host a hundred thousand strong… and where should we be?”
A pause, and then he answers his own question. “Defeated, as before; but with more dead to bury, children to mourn, husbands, brothers, fathers lost.”
Caitrin drinks down all the droplets of the ruby liquid from the tiny goblet, then puts it back into the basket with demure deliberation. “Then we are already lost,” she says quite coldly. “If our lord, to whom we look for guidance and rule, has already given up to the Dragon, there is no point in fighting after all. Perhaps we should bleach our skins and take all the peppers from our tables. Give up our silks for good wool. Pledge our lives and forsake our princes.”
She rises to her knees suddenly, and seizes one of Marence’s hands between her own soft fingers. A tear trembles on her lower lashes. “Do not surrender this way,” she says earnestly. “Not when all your people are showing you that they wish to fight. Starfall, Blackmont, Skyreach, Sandstone, Hellholt, Ghost Hill, Planky Town, the Tor… don’t you see? We are willing to run the risk of mourning for Dorne’s sake, and for yours.”
“Lady Caitrin, when you have bred a child, felt her grow in your womb and come forth from your body, then pray, come speak to me of how easy it becomes to put them out of your heart as lost, when they still live.” Lysanne’s voice is gentle, but there is no mistaking the rebuke in her words. “My Prince, I have no wish to pile my cares upon your shoulders as well. I know nothing of military matters and it may be that our children must needs be sacrificed for the freedom of Dorne. You will have my support and that of my lord husband. But I will have my grief, all the same.” She inclines her head to the Starfall lady, “And there is always hope.”
“Perhaps what we should be willing to do is support whatever decisions are made, Lady Caitrin? Surely one thing can be certain at least, that any division within Dorne will only make matters worse?” Elysa’s tone is a little more determined this time, yet her own indecision is plain enough on her face. A brother in King’s Landing, a sister in a now-free castle, and she herself quite lost as what to think or do.
“There was a time…”
Marence presses his lips together, to stifle the words, and whatever he was going to say is set aside. Instead, pulling his hands from Caitrin’s grasp, he says, “This devotion to freedom, to be ruled by our own as if it has been so from time immemorial. Who said such words? You are not the first.” He waits a moment, and then goes on inexorably. “You are _not_ the first. A thousand years ago, it was the Bloodroyal of the Yronwoods, and the Wyls, the Ullers ... the _Blackmonts_! All of them, _all_ of them, urging their people to fight against Nymeria and Mors Martell.”
Caitrin looks at Lysanne for a minute, then dismisses her without a word—she is a Caron, after all. But Elysa she seems to listen to. “How will anything get better so long as the Dragon’s foot is so firmly on our necks?” she asks the other woman. “Does not the fighting already happening convince you of what so many Dornishmen want?”
But Marence is her focus, and she looks at him, hurt to have her gesture rebuffed so surely. “We did,” she admits. “Then. But does that mean that we should just meekly submit now, simply because we did come finally to accept the Martells as our own? When we bent the knee to the first Martells, my lord, it was not conditional. It was forever. That the Targaryens now want our loyalty is not at all the same. We are -Dornish-, not Westerosi. Sharing borders…” A little cough, very like a soft sob, stifles her words, and she turns away.
Lysanne sighs inwardly, watching Caitrin for a moment, her expression not unkindly. Then she nods to the Prince’s words, “And there are those who uttered them and retained their freedom as well. There is no way to know how this will end.”
“Except that if we blindly let our tempers guide us, we are certain to fail,” interjects Elysa, still with a certain edge of determination. “If we have no idea how to win, we cannot have any hope of winning either.” She looks to Caitrin first, and then turns to Marence. There’s something vaguely ... measuring about how she watches him, and then she looks away again.
A look from Marence, to Lady Lysanne, and then he looks away. He doesn’t quite look at Caitrin, either, it must be said. “If we cannot win, then there is no purpose, but to murder ourselves out of spite.”
A grim pause at that last, and then very firmly Marence says. “I will not countenance it. My brother may wish to ride straight into the seven hells, but I will not do so. A way towards victory, or we learn to accept the yoke, as Dorne learned to accept Nymeria’s yoke. Mayhaps, in later days, it will seem wiser to have chosen peace within the bounds of all the land between the Wall and the Summer Sea, and prosperity with it.” But the prince does not sounds entirely convinced; and he is discomfited by the emotions being laid bare.
“No one could accuse us of losing our temper when it has been nearly a fortnight,” Caitrin says to Elysa, taking a scrap of linen from her pocket and dabbing at her eyes with it. Then she deliberately puts away the slender flagon and the tiny cups in the basket before turning her bright eyes back to Marence.
“I have upset you,” she says softly. “I hope you will forgive me feeling so strongly about this. I… do not know enough of the ways of war to presume so, and I ought not have spoken. May I… may I speak with you later, perhaps, to make amends?”
“It was not an accusation, Lady Caitrin. But justified or not, anger can blind.” Elysa rises then, and after smoothing over her robes, offers a curtsey. “I believe a little while has passed now. Good afternoon, my lord, my ladies.” A dip of her head, and she turns around and begins to move away.
Lysanne’s expression turns disapproving at Caitrin’s words to the Prince. But she forebears from comment. Instead, she smoothes her skirts and likewise inclines her head to Elysa, as she departs. “Good afternoon.”
There, now, Marence gives Caitrin his full attention. The prince frowns, and rubs at his beard a moment before forcing a sigh. “Perhaps, Lady Caitrin. Some other time,” he says ... without specifying that time. When Elysa prepares to depart, though, he stands up. “I’ll accompany you, my lady. A moment, please.” And then the prince dips a brief bow to Lysanne and Caitrin. “I do thank you, for your ... your company, my ladies.”