A fine, bright day with a breeze taking the worst edge off the humidity makes it ideal for courtiers to laze about in courtyard gardens or manses, or just as readily to spend their time in the city, carousing or exploring the wares on sale. Many, doubtless, are down at the docks, reviewing what the tide has brought in from across the narrow sea. Others still, with liveried guards and richly dressed companions, patronize this particular square in the city, with its rich trinkets of gold and silver and jewels available for those who can afford it.
And, standing out, there’s a robed Dornishman with a pair of gold cloaks near at hand, keeping a bored eye on him, as he moves from one shop to the next, occasionally pausing to talk with an apprentice or even a silversmith.
“Here, do not run, sirrah!” a voice calls, hard on the heels of a small, trotting boy. “If Ser hears that you disobeyed…” The lad skids to a halt very near to Aidan, and runs a hand through his tousled sandy hair.
A moment later, the lady who was calling after him comes along at a far more sedate pace. “Whatever has gotten into you, Andrys? Running about like a perfect heathen in this heat. Hallo, Ser Aidan,
A moment later, the lady who was calling after him comes along at a far more sedate pace. “Whatever has gotten into you, Andrys? Running about like a perfect heathen in this heat. Hallo, Ser Aidan. I hope this little ruffian hasn’t collided with you,” says Reyna Saltcliffe with an easy smile.
Distracted by his thoughts, Ser Aidan turns his head sharply at the call, and then looks down to look at the lad. It takes a moment, but he grins down at him. “Not at all, Lady Reyna, not at all, and a good day to you both,” the knight says, bowing with a courtly grace that makes the wide, striped sleeves of his robe flap slightly. “Which son of yours is this? Not Ser Dagur’s, I’m sure, for he’d be small and this young man certainly isn’t.”
“This is Andrys Rowan,” Reyna replies with a note of pride in her voice. She bobs a curtsy while the lad makes a seemly bow in return, watching Aidan with grave eyes.
“Thoryn falls down still. He can’t come out with us,” he volunteers after a moment, his small hand going toward the hilt of the wooden sword he wears on his belt.
“None of that, sirrah,” his mother remonstrates, then she smiles apologetically at Aidan. “He thinks I need a great deal of protection, and has assigned himself the duty of doing it.”
Aidan’s smile grows easier at that, and Andrys’s remark. “A brave son, my lady,” he tells the mother, before turning his gaze to the boy. “I can see why your little brother could not come, young knight. But what do you guard your mother from, eh? Isn’t the king’s city safe enough, especially with the Iron Serpent and his guardsmen to watch over it?” He speaks with a certain gravity, the accent of Dorne lending a certain melody to it, but the smile doesn’t fade as he does so.
“Ser does very well,” Andrys admits, with all the gravity a four-year-old can muster. “But he is not here, you know. I am to look out for very small dangers. You are maybe too big. I would have had to call the Smiler if you were bad.”
Behind him, Reyna’s face undergoes a remarkable series of contortions while she attempts to remain as solemn as her son. “He once gave Dagur a rap on the knuckles when he came in late and Andrys mistook him for a villain,” she says after a moment, allowing herself a smile.
“The Smiler? A dangerous man, I’ve heard,” the famed Knight of the Twilight, who once fought the Dragonknight to a draw, says. “I’ll have to be on my best behavior.” He turns then, and gestures with a light hand at his escorts, two bored gold cloaks who knuckle their foreheads at Lady Reyna. “In any case, Ser Dagur’s men are here to make sure of _my_ safety,” he adds, “so I expect we’ll all be quite safe together.”
Ser Aidan turns his attention to little Andrys’s lady mother. “It seems a popular day for examining what the goldsmith’s have to offer. I thought, perhaps, to have a look myself, not having visited this quarter before. I hadn’t known there could be so many goldsmiths in one place; the shadow city has but two, and a third that the Prince keeps in the palace.”
“It’s rather mad that there are so many here,” Reyna replies, stoking the boy’s curls with her hand and then letting him go. The aforementioned Smiler steps up to take him in hand, walking a little way along the road and letting him look about him.
“But where there is money and power, there are bound to be those who will take advantage. Those of us who attend court must be bejewelled, or so someone decided once upon a time. I came to have a clasp repaired on a chain.” She gestures to a shop further up the street.
“As you say, my lady,” Ser Aidan responds, looking down the crowded street. “Might I accompany you there? I’ve no pressing errand, and it’s a pleasure to see a friendly face and converse, even a little while.” A reminder of how isolated the Dornish hostages still are from much of the rest of the court, no doubt, even after so long. He looks towards Andrys and the Smiler, the blue-shaded violet eyes regarding the sworn sword with a practiced, professional candor, but when he speaks again he just asks, “How fares your newest son, Thoryn? As robust as his father’s lineage would suggest, I imagine.”
“Do, please,” Reyna says, indicating assent with a tilt of her head. “Thoryn thrives, as one might suspect; he walked in his ninth month and takes every opportunity of attempting to loose his father’s sword from its scabbard, which pleases my lord no end.”
Just beyond her, the Smiler meets the Dayne knight’s gaze openly, his face settled into lines of bland threat, which is normal for the man. His mistress does not notice this, for she is a mother given voice to her pride in her offspring. “Precocious, though. He is the terror of the household. We do hope,” Reyna goes on, lowering her voice, “to present him with a healthy brother soon.”
The Smiler’s expression is met with a brief nod from the knight, who doesn’t seem intimidated. As he walks with Reyna, and is entrusted with a confidence, Ser Aidan replies with an effusive, “Indeed, my lady? My best wishes to you and Ser Dagur. I shall remember to give the Mother a prayer, this evening.” Yet thoughts of motherhood have a darker edge, it seems, and after that he falls silent for a little while as he strolls along. Occasionally, some goldsmith’s wares on display—with scowling guards always looming near them—catches his attention, but for some reason they’re often items suited for a woman, rather than a man. “I gather my sister’s son, your brother’s namesake, is a robust child. Lady Alia said little, otherwise, but it’s her way to keep her own counsel.”
“Thank you, Ser Aidan. It is not widely known yet, but I could not resist letting you have a secret of mine,” Reyna says, her voice gentle as they walk slowly along. Ahead of them, the Smiler has left off observing the Knight and is instead watching his small charge—who is not really in need of watching. Occasionally he addresses the tall man, but he receives no spoken replies.
“It seems cruel,” Reyna says eventually, pausing beneath the shade of a large awning, “to have named the poor lad for my brother. It must be difficult,” she goes on, speaking slowly and choosing her words carefully, “to feel any love for a child gotten as this one was.”
“I am sure Ser Wallace meant no cruelty by it,” Ser Aidan says, in tones unconvinced and unconvincing. He glances away, uncertainy plain in the set of his shoulders and the rigidness of his back. A long moment passes, there in the shade, before at last he admits, “I have prayed to the Mother that Alia comes to love her son… but I do not think she ever shall. She loved our father, and our uncle, but otherwise…” He shrugs those tense shoulders, and offers a sad smile. “It pays little to worry about such things, and to darken a bright day with such matters. My apologies.”
“Do not apologize, Ser Aidan,” Reyna says, shaking her head emphatically. “It is a cruel situation, and you need not be sorry for wishing it otherwise.” She lets that hang in the air a moment, then resumes walking and gives him a smile. “What of you, ser? Have none of our beauties turned your head?”
That question . . . is unexpected. And the Dornishman colors to a surprising degree, despite his olive skin. With his face hot, he manages a weak bit of gallantry: “With so many lovely maidens and ladies, it’s a surprise my head has not turned off my shoulders, my lady?” He clears his throat, then, and then remarks, “In the Dornish tower, too, of course. I was not surprised when Ser Almer was betrothed to Lady Liane, for example, though it was a surprise to hear that it was dissolved. And my cousin Tanyth, of course. Black of hair and black of eye ... and black of temper, too.” A rueful smile, but an unsteady one, too. He doesn’t quite meet Reyna’s eyes, for that matter.
“I am only surprised that you all have remained unwed so long,” Reyna returns, tactfully ignoring the man’s apparent discomfiture. “As for Ser Almer… well. He has a prickly sense of honor, my cousin. He did not feel he would make a good husband for the lady when his devotion lay elsewhere.” More tact, though this has the smell of long practice about it—and neither does she quite meet Aidan’s eyes.
The matter of marriage seems slightly easier terrain for Aidan, it seems, then the question of who’s turned his head. “I do not think there is much to wonder, my lady. The king seems uninterested in seeing any of us married off, while we’re in his charge,” he states more firmly, moving along again nearer to Reyna’s destination. “As to why I’m not betrothed…” He pauses, considering how to put it, and finally he just says, “Lord Aeron made a policy of not arranging betrothals before we were of age, so that we might have the same choice he had.” He turns thoughtful, then, looking at the boy Andrys and the tall Smiler.
“I fear that it was not the best decision for my sisters,” the Dornishman says.
The grave-eyed boy comes to stand beside his mother again, though he doesn’t speak. “I would argue again that arranged matches often come out all right, but no, I fear you are right.” She hesitates, then shakes her head, her hand on her son’s sandy curls, so much lighter than her own brown hair. “We none of us planned for things to happen as they have these last few years. Would that foresight had the clarity of hindsight. Perhaps you would have your Black Tempest in your future, at the very least.” She shoots him a teasing smile then, as they stop at the door of her goldsmith.
“Wise words, Lady Reyna,” the knight says, pausing there before the goldsmith’s door. “But as to Lady Tanyth, if she’ll ever come to speak to me again, it will likely be to remind me that I’m a lout. I love my cousin well, but not well enough for her liking.” He chuckles then, at that, used to his cousin’s tantrums and ways . . . but hardly greatly upset; more bemused, than anything. “My thanks for the company, my lady.” A bow, then ... and then, before turning, he adds to Andrys, “You do your mother very proudly, my lord of Rowan. Keep at it, and you’ll be a knight soon enough.” And with that, he makes his way back up the street a ways, and is soon lost in the crowd.