The day is hot, and most of the court will have whiled away the hours ‘till dark in the cool chambers of the Old Palace. Yet here they are, the glittering court with so much bright, colorful finery. All gathered, for Prince Marence has called a gathering at the throne room, to discuss matters of import. News of Oakenfist attacking the Planky Town, perhaps? The king’s decision to send the forces he has gathered west, against Oakenfist and Salt Shore? Or to reinforce the Planky Town against Velaryon’s expected attack? Victory, or defeat, up at the upper waters of the Greenblood, and the Scourge that feeds it?
Into this, Prince Marence ... does not stride. No, he’s right outside the chamber, before the shut doors. On his brow, a little sweat, but not from the heat; he seems nervous, in fact, and strokes at his beard. “Ser Emeric, Ser Lancelyn,” the prince says to his escorts, nodding to them, a command to ope the doors—and then he says, “Wait.” Yes, the nerves have the better of him, the Lord of Sunspear. He starts to pace…
“Would I were one of the blessed, who had the gods speak to them,” says Prince Marence suddenly, as he paces. “Then I’d know what to do.”
The rather short guard bows his head in deep respect to the Prince and takes a post by the door, feet planted firmly into the ground, his long tipped spear held firmly, as his dark eyes shine on his tanned face. He watches his Prince pace, and a tinge of disquiet comes to his heart. But his faith in the Martells is unshaken and Lancelyn’s head stand sup proud.
Pausing with his hand still perched on the handle of the door, Ser Emeric turns slightly and steps away from the door, putting his back to it instead—facing the pacing Prince. The sweat that beads on his forehead and around his throat is dense and heavy, and he, like so many other guards in the palace. The spear in the one hand, his eyes moving with the man opposite him. “My prince, if I might interject, I find that the clearest answers always come when I am in the fire.”
“By that I mean, delay will not solve something you have spent so long already debating in yourself, perhaps you just need to thrust yourself into the fire, and let the answer be what it is,” his counsel being at, best a rather untempered wisdom. As yet incomplete, but it has its strengths. “But as my lord commands,” he adds and resumes his silence, a hand resting on the door, waiting for the word to open it.
“There was a septa at the Motherhouse in Oldtown who claimed she had heard the voice of the Maiden on several occasions. But I am not sure it did her much good, for all she did was spend her time praying that she might hear it again.” The remark is made by Lady Elysa, returned from that very Motherhouse not so many months ago. She was, it would appear, not overly stricken with piety during her time there. “But whether or not the gods have had a say, I think we know what comes next.” It is a rather familiar way that she addresses the prince in, but then again, she has been something of a regular companion since her return to Sunspear.
In the corridor outsider the chamber in which the Martell throne sits, the buzz of talk can be heard through the shut door. It seems to exacerbate Marence’s uncertain mood. Ser Emeric and Elysa do what they can to allay it, but the prince is less than assured. He grimaces beneath his beard. His hands meet, and the fingers of the right turn and turn the heavy signet ring upon his left, twisting it back and forth, when he stops pacing. “And you, Ser Lancelyn?” he asks, his mood leading him to pick on the one person who has been reticent to offer an opinion. “What advice do you have to offer?” His mood is not a happy one, clearly enough.
Lancelyn seems surprised at the question, then he shakes his head. “Your Grace….What advice is there to give? I shall follow you to death!” he says, his eyes shining fiercely. “I am your man, and what can I say more than you must have already thought?” He asks. “But is the situation so desperate, my Lord? Is there nothing we can do?”
Seeing as her words hardly did much to improve on the situation, Elysa refrains from immediately offering further advice to the prince. Instead she tilts her head slightly, seemingly listening in on some of the sounds from the other side of the door. It brings a slight frown to her face, though she straightens herself up and brushes her hands down over her skirt to smooth out the silk. It is not like they won’t be going through that door, eventually.
The other guard, Ser Emeric Santagar, retains his silence. Pressing his back to the door while he waits for the order from the prince. A knight he may be, but a counsellor and advisor on matters of state, he is not. Straightening out his spine slowly, he edges the blunt end of his spear to the outside edge of his foot and continues to watch the Prince as he paces, a glance going either way past him from time to time.
“Desperate?” Marence asks the young knight. A shake of his head, his long, dark brown curls brushing his shoulder at the rejection. “No… no. But as to what we can do—there is _too much_ that can be done.” Ah. The ever-present problem for this most cautious of princes. So unlike his mother, they say, who ruled decisively. So unlike his brothers, for that matter. “Too much that might be done, but only one choice can be taken. Which to choose? I thought ...” He turns his dark gaze towards Elysa, and then shakes his head again. He sighs, and turns his ring, and then resumes pacing.
The Wyl knight looks down. If it were him he’d fight to the last drop of blood, but he’s just a knight among so many. He watches Marence and he asks a question that must have been asked along these halls before. “Your Grace…what of the hostages in the Red Keep? Do we have word of them?” He doesn’t know if the prince takes those ito his account before his final decision…
“Attempting to do more than one thing would not be wise, no. But neither would doing nothing at all, my prince.” Elysa speaks again, the faint hint of disarming humour gone from her voice as it grows firmer and more decisive. “The only bad decision would be no decision.” And then she looks at the knight who spoke up last, the lines on her brow deepening again.
Hostages. His brother, Cadan. His young, maiden sister, Ariana. Marence frowns at the reminder. His choice will have consequences, whatever it is. “Nothing,” he says, and there’s a scintilla of bitterness in his voice. “Nothing of them. I would not expect it. There is no news from King’s Landing, now. Preston the Lame’s feretted out our informants among the merchant guilds.” The prince stops. He turns his ring again, pensive. Elysa’s words, perhaps, are being turned in his mind, in time with the ring.
“If I send our spears to fight against the Young Dragon,” he says suddenly, “his Hand might ... execute them. The hostages. Every one. Man, woman. Child.”
Lancelyn frowns a little. “The spears have met their Young Dragon already..If he hasn’t hurt them, maybe he will never do so, Your Grace?” he smiles a little wanly. “He fancies himself a hero out of legend and ..it would be blood that would taint his hands, Your grace.” he laughs a little, even though it is a bitter laugh. “No Dornishman would make such a mistake.”
Marence’s response is the expected, but even so a little colour fades from Elysa’s face, making the freckles dusted across her skin stand out a little more than normal. And then, as Ser Lancelyn speaks again, she arches one pale brow, “If we had hostages here in Sunspear, you do not believe they would be safe in Prince Marence’s hands?” She doesn’t add, however, that it might be a different matter with other hands. Like his brother’s. The other brother.
“Would they be?” Marence asks. “If a man rebelled against me, slew my loyal men, burned my people’s farms—would the hostages he had given me be safe?” His question is challenging—and almost immediately, he backs away. “I am no man for the Age of Heroes,” he says then, shaking his head. “But ... innocent blood? I could not. You are right, my lady.”
There’s a sharp laugh, full of bitterness, from the other end of the corridor. Those who trn would see that other prince, the brother: Rhodry Nymeros Martell. “Shall I give you a kerchief, Marence, to dry away your woman’s tears?” he asks, speaking to the Prince of Dorne with a brother’s familiarity, but mocking him with the words, regardless of the present company.
Lancelyn nods towards his Prince. “That’s what hostages are for, Your Highness, and the blood of Dorne has never been merciful. The sea and the sand have cleansed that from us.” His eyes turn darker Prince Rhodry’s words.
Elysa looks to Marence, studying him thoughtfully for a moment, and then nods. She does not, one might note, turn to look over at the late arrival, but keeps her eyes on the Prince of Dorne, even as she responds to Lancelyn, “Too much mercy may serve poorly, but so may too little. But at least this decision is not about innocent blood.”
Stiffening at his brother’s words, Marence’s expression turns angry. “Are you reduced to lurking around corners, my lord?” he demands of Rhodry.
“I hardly needed to lurk, dear brother,” says Rhodry, straightening from where he leans against a wall. He walks forward, dark eyes taking in Elysa, and the two palace guards. He gestures towards Ser Lancelyn. “Perhaps you should give that one your signet, and let him command what you’re unwilling to command,” he says to him, before adding with a thin smile, “since you seem reticent to give the throne to me.”
“And if it condemns Cadan to death?” Marence demands of him, again. “And if it condemns Ariana to death?”
And ... Rhodry shrugs. “They’ll be in the bosom of the gods,” he says, simply.
“Have you ever considered that perhaps your…reckless nature contributes to your brother’s caution?” Not, perhaps, a fair or even reasonable accusation, as Prince Marence has always shown himself very capable of being cautious all on his own. However, Lady Elysa’s patience with Prince Rhodry is, it would appear, worn quite thin. “You will, no doubt, have the blood you are after, but take care not to push too hard.” It sounds all too much like a family quarrel that ought to be kept behind closed doors, not conducted out in the open.
“Perhaps his old woman’s caution,” Rhodry says primly to Elysa, “contributes to my reckless nature.” A flutter of dark lashes, a false smile ... and then a truer smile, the knife-sharp expression that always seems to be promising bloodshed. He turns it on his brother, then. A long silence, and then: “Well, brother?”
Perhaps the black-hearted prince calculated this all. Perhaps the gods have spoken at last to Marence. Perhaps ... perhaps he merely accepts defeat in his heart, and does not care any more. Whatever the truth, Marence looks with tired eyes on Rhodry, on Elysa. And then, a last shake of his head, he turns, and pushes through the doors into the throne room. He does not wait for the others to follow.
The shorter guardsman shakes his head at this exchange between brothers, but i is not for him to sya anything. Instead he lifts his spear and follows the Prince, his gaze still steafast no matter what might come.
For a moment, as Rhodry passes her by, Elysa seems to consider a response…but in the end thinks better of it. So she merely falls in line after the two brothers, stepping through the doors and into the throne room where the court already waits.
Ser Emeric steps aside and follows the Prince into the awaiting chamber, his spear kept balanced at his side as he moves as quickly as he can to get into position. Snapping down the tip of his heavy spear of the stone in the chamber, he announces, albeit somewhat hastily, “Now entering, the Prince of Dorne, Lord of Sunspear!” in a booming voice and then moves to stand in position, doing his best to assert the need for silence on the room. He looks somewhat relieved to have managed to get it out before the entrance was blown.
Prince Marence marches through the chamber beneath the great, golden dome. The room is awash with light, and with a sea of nobility. They bow like a wave as the prince passes them, but he does not acknowledge them. He reaches the dais with its two seats beneath the sun and the spear—the Consort’s seat, empty since Cordelia Yronwood died four years before, and the Prince’s. He stops.
Rhodry takes a more leisurely course nearer. There are those who perform courtesies to him, as well. He ignores them, as well, his gaze fixed on his brother.
Marence hesitates. He mounts a step, two. A pause. He turns, not sitting, and looks out at the crowd. “I have decided,” he says into the now-vast silence of the throne room.
Once inside the chamber, Lady Elysa moves to the side, joining the waiting ranks of nobles. Though, she does not remain at the back of the room, but moves herself up along the line. Her position allows that, after all. And then she, like everyone else, becomes very still and very silent for a few moments following the prince’s announcement.
The crowd in the chamber grows expectant. They wait, as the prince seems to draw out the time, gaze turning back and forth, sweeping the crowd ... and resting, in the end, on Rhodry.
“Lord Davit. Ser Perrin.” Two names, the Lord of Salt Shore—exiled from his own seat—and the Blackmont knight who serves as Keeper of the Sandship, charged with the organization of the Martell spears. The two worthies come forward. And then he adds one more name to the list. “Prince Rhodry.”
The infamous prince seems, somehow, to expected that. The smile on his lips fades, however, as he draws nearer.
“My brother shall command all but five hundred spears,” Marence says suddenly. “West. To Godsgrace, and the army raised by Lady Uller and Lords Qorgyle and Blackmont. As soon as may be.”
An eruption of sound at that, exclaimations, shock, an undercurrent of concern and fear ... but that’s drowned out, by relief, a rising tide of expectation. “Dorne and Prince Marence!” someone shouts, and a few take it up.
Lady Elysa does not join in with those shouting their support for the prince’s decision, but she does incline her head in Marence’s direction, more quitely signalling her support for the decision, as undesireable as unavoidable. And then her eyes wander over the crowd nearest to the throne, and they settle for a time on Ser Quinlan, father of the two princes, and not very like either of them.
And with that, Marence suddenly departs the dais, and indeed the hall, with the sounds of jubilation ringing in his ears. They quiet, for a time, with that departure—a last sign of unease. But Rhodry’s there to take things in hand. “My lords and ladies!” he calls, and with a nod to the guardsmen, they thump their spears and call for silence. “You’ve heard my brother,” he says, when they fall quiet. “We’re off to war. Who’s with me?” A viper’s smile from the dark, lean prince.
He turns, eyeing the dais so recently vacated, and mounts it. A hand brushes the high back of the Prince’s chair ... but he doesn’t sit. Merely smile, as there’s a fresh clamor of voices, as almost every knight in the hall offers their sword.
Ser Quinlan, face a mask, leaves shortly after Marence does. So, too, does old Ser Perros, the Seneschal.