A day and another past the race and riots, and the Secret City rests quietly again. Perhaps too quietly, by a wary few’s estimation—just another calm before another storm?
Whatever whispers through the streets finds an echo above: thunder, if yet from a distance. The clouds gather overhead, brewing a sea-swept storm in their collective.
Such a fog overtakes the sweet face of thin Merio Lostayn, the Lady’s youngest son—by seconds, only, to his elder twin. Seldom seen beyond his mother’s close grasp, or, in fact, that of his hulking brother, no doubt it is their lack he feels just now… brooding while a servant makes introductions plain to a prince of Dorne.
But on that last note of his name, a breezy smile replaces the shadowed look of his eyes, and the fair young man sweeps a bow fit for any court.
“My lord of Martell,” his tongue slips around the Westerosi words with ease, “You are kind to entertain my company.”
There are knights from Dorne standing guard over the prince, just as there are guards at the chief doors, and the gate into the courtyard, and even watching on the street outside—the prince has been attacked once, might well have been attacked a second time, and now it seems his companions and his host Yollo Estatis have determined that a vigilant guard must be ready at all times. But Prince Rhodry—a man used to such attentions—does not pay it any mind, as he uses a sharp knife to slowly peel a blood orange, unwinding the rind in a long strip; the plate before him shows he’s largely finished his breakfast.
“Yes,” the prince agrees, curtly; though he is often a man of mercurial moods, of wicked smiles and cruel jibes, he looks ... preoccupied, perhaps even annoyed, but it leads him to be to the point. “To what do I owe the imposition?”
wind blows from the northwest.
Merio’s sweet smile slips at a word from the prince, catching well the meaning lain bare. He sobers respectfully, and given the pause he takes, he regathers a plan and changes its purpose—
With one hand opening, he says, “My mother took injury in the fighting, and remains abed.”
Seemingly separate, his other hand upturning, “Lostayn’s duties would lack, if we did not support the Sealord’s wish that his guests remained in good health.” Such poetics hide a simpler meaning, and though the young man does not hide the knowing glint in his eye, he aims it skeptically at the many guards and courtiers kept in the prince’s company.
“We might be of service, in recompense.”
“And is some brother of yours at the Erosenes manse, offering the same to Aegon Targaryen?” The tone the question is put in is sharp, unimpressed by the suggestion of offering assistance. “After all, he was nearer to having his throat cut than I ever was.” The last of the peel is off, and Rhodry drops the corkscrew of material negligently on the floor; that’s for a servant to worry about. His knife cuts out a wedge of blood orange, impaling it on the point until he lifts it up and pops it into his mouth. He eats neatly enough, but his hands are stained red with the fruit’s juices.
Steady now, though a nervous moment finds his tongue wetting dry lips, Merio widens his smile. He watches the fruit find the prince’s mouth.
“No brother will offer what I can,” he says, and stops.
The prince’s chewing stops at that, for a moment. Black eyes, cruel and piercing, rest on the Lostayn scion. And then the chewing resumes, and the prince swallows the blood orange down.
“And what is that, boy?” Prince Rhodry asks, though he’s only a few bare years older. “Don’t say your arse; there’s catamites plenty and to spare in this city.” Doubtless the prince has verified this personally; at least, his reputation suggests it. But his mood here is prickly, and dangerous, and clearly not one for puzzles.
At that, Merio dares a pretty smile—a flash, there and gone. “We might be kindred spirits, after all,” Merio answers smoothly enough, proving himself familiar with certain flirtations, “But my affections are already wasted elsewhere.”
Caught in a fleeting memory by such an admission, or in a moment that decides fate, the young bravo, free of any blade, looks briefly stricken.
And dares farther, taking a step close enough that he might rest empty hands on the back of an empty chair. There is no smile, now. “Answers, my lord of Martell,” he gives in an urgent undertone, “Answers to questions none have thought to ask.”
One of the knights makes a sound, a motion, at Merio drawing closer, but Rhodry makes a dismissive motion with his blade and nothing comes of it. Then, sneering at Merio’s words, thin lips twisting, Rhodry looks down at the blood orange, and cuts away another wedge. He lifts it to his mouth, and slips it in, and starts to chew on it, taking his time.
“If I don’t ask questions,” he says, half-chewed orange making the words slur, “why would I want the answers to them?” He swallows the rest of the orange, after, and reaches for a cup of wine that sits to one side.
“You do not care for the secrets of the city?” The young man asks it innocently enough, in that soft way that comes naturally to his thin voice. His surprise looks genuine, but he recovers quickly, urgent again. “You have met my mother,” Merio goes on, quiet so that only the prince might hear, trying for quieter and thus moving to seat himself and lean across his edge of the table. “You can have no questions as to her nature—who could? But her purposes are known only to—” his hand presses against his chest, entreatingly, “—a precious few.”
“And I am now to be numbered among these precious few? For what purpose?” Rhodry asks, and the words drip with sarcasm. But… he doesn’t entirely dismiss interest, this time.
Cut from his mother’s cloth, after all, Merio relaxes by the smallest degree with the prince’s barest allowance—the first sign of a sure sale. Yet, the urgency does not quite leave his voice, nor soften the tight edge of his thin mouth.
“You would rather win than not?” What he asks he renders rhetorical in the next breath. “Upset my mother’s schemes in the Stepstones, and you will have in your hand a wedge, to fit as you see apt, my lord.”
This ... is probably not the offer the prince expected, in the end.
“You Braavosi,” Rhodry says, and makes it sound like a curse. “I’ve heard it said you would sell your own mothers for half a groat, but now I see it is true.” He swallows from his cup of wine, and sets the cup aside as he thinks on what you offer. And then ... “She has spoken effusively on the foolishness of war, and of this particular dispute between Pentos and Lys, and Dorne’s involvement in it, and the Iron Throne’s besides. Why would she have any designs on the Stepstones, then? And why come to me, and not Aegon Targaryen?”
“My mother will not sit idly by and keep her hand from moving what affairs she can reach. But… when push comes to shove,” says Merio, slackening back against the seat taken without invitation or interruption, “She will throw weight behind the Iron Throne’s intentions on the Sealord.”
“I will not pretend to care which way the Stepstones sway,” he admits, bold and raising a bitter glare that he manages to check by the time his eyes meet the prine’s. “But she must not walk away unscathed—she—” His knuckles whiten on the grips of his chair, “—she cannot just—get away with it over and again.”
The prince sits silently, considering that. He takes another wedge of blood orange, and chews on it thoughtfully. He swallows. And then, with little sign of being impressed by the flare of emotion from the younger Braavosi, he says, “And be that as it may… what am I to do with this fact? That she may support the Iron Throne is an annoyance, but if that is how it will be, that is how it will be. I have allies of my own.” Despite being the envoy from his brother, he has never seemed a man with great foresight, and this perhaps proves it.
“We are not so Secret a city now,” the Lostayn youth starts, slow and careful, watching the prince and licking his dry lips again. “And they tale tales of Prince Rhodry of Dorne, even here in our streets—”
“A man of certain tastes—blood and chaos—a pike in a king’s neck,” he says it with true wonder, a distraction enough to light a sparkle in deadening eyes, but the boy still proves himself a growing, knowing man: “And here a court ordered by the usual schemes of war, each man sure that… whatever will be,” he looks to the prince, turning over a palm, “Will be. I did not expect you would bide your time just for the predictable, my lord—not when you might slate a thirst for blood and chaos, instead.”
The prince smiles; it is not a pleasant thing to see. “An old woman’s blood interests me not at all. If you wish to put her out of the way, I am not your hireling,” Prince Rhodry says, and it doesn’t sound so much as due to a delicate sensibilities about old women, and more to do with the insinuation that Merio means to use him as a cut-throat on his behalf. “But if you have some scheme for how her influence may be brought to nothing… that, I should be willing to hear, at least. And possibly pay something for, if it proves useful to our cause.”
The young man moves swiftly now, in his words, putting aside one argument for another, moving from one angle to the next. It shows his desperation, his inexperience with weapons of any kind but a blade in the hand. “Send your trusted lord, the Little Lemon they call him, to treat with my mother and ask after making foreign investments. I will prepare him for it—and pave the way with her…”
“My prince,” he says, calming and tilting his fair head to a side, “If it were only a matter of seeing that woman dead, no hands would have it easier than mine—mine, me, who she trusts over her every meal—”
“Her blood is not enough,” he murmurs now, an afterthought that puts a dangerous gleam in his eyes, “And I would not offer such a pittance in return for your interests.”
It is, at least, something to think on. The last wedge of blood orange disappears into the prince’s mouth, and he takes the cloth covering the table to wipe at his hands, marked red as blood by the fruit’s juices. Once he swallows the last of it, he says with a deliberate lightness, “I may send Dalt to you, if it pleases me. Do you have regular haunts? Doubtless you do, and doubtless I can have Dalt find where they are… _if_ I pursue this matter.”
Hands cleaned, he rises then, and makes ready to depart—but not before taking up the cup of wine, and telling one of the knights, “Show him out.”