The hot afternoon does not encourage anyone to spend much time out of doors, so it is no surprise to find that the Hand of the King remains in his residence, dining in his small hall with only a few of his household guards taking their ease with him. Conversation is muted, in deference to the prince, who always seems as if some weighty matter requiring his utmost concentration is being turned about in his mind. A pair of liveried servants amble about the room, delivering food and drink.
A guardsman enters then, quickly moving to the prince. The others look at him with disinterest, hurrying along with their meals, murmuring to one another. The prince, annoyance crossing his lined face, soon seems interested as the guardsman responds briefly as to the cause for the interruption. His purple gaze turns, regards his guards, and then he nods to the man who has arrived. He departs, to fetch ... whoever it is he’s fetching.
The guard may be swift to the fetching, but must be slow in returning—at least, the one fetched is. Grey-robed, he bears all the trappings of a novice of the Faith, but his features are sharp and his skin olive—
—and when his fingers brush the doorframe, he pauses at the entrance. “Is this it?” he demands of the guard, his voice quiet, even as unfocused eyes peer ahead into the chamber.
A grunt, and the remarkably articulate guardsman pushes the Dornishman through the entrance. This draws rather more interest from his fellow household guards and retainers, who pause in their meal to watch as the youth is brought before the prince. “Here is the man who wished to meet you, your grace,” the guard says, and Viserys—still seated, now slicing away at haunch of roasted beef—responds, “Thank you.”
Silence follows, for a few moments as he finishes with slicing the meat and transfers it to his trencher, where it rests in a pool of some dark sauce. “You have interrupted me at my lunch, my lord of Uller. Are you reconsidering your studies?” Viserys asks.
The Dornishman’s feet catch up with his pushed self only after a moment, and though he does not lose his balance, his entrance is less than dignified. “Not in the least, your grace,” he replies after a moment’s regaining his composure, though he speaks as though to the roast rather than to the prince.
“They suit me well and compel me to seek a moment of your attention, if you’ll spare it—and forgive me for interrupting your meal.”
The Hand is busy chewing upon that roast beef, and gives no immediate response beyond a perfunctionary nod without thinking as to whether the blind youth can actually see it or not. A wave of a ringed hand sends the guardsman away, though not very far as he stations himself against the near wall. The rest of his comrades return to their meals.
The prince takes a swallow of hippocras from the pewter goblet before him, and he asks of the blind man, “I have only a few minutes more before I must away, so whatever it is must be brief. If it is not your religious vocation that brings you here, what does?” His voice and manner are both brusque.
“Concern for my fellow man,” Serion replies, though there’s a touch of dryness in his tone—a touch of ill humor that leaks out, for all he attempts to restrain it.
“Damarya Allyrion, you grace—do you know her? The madwoman of Godsgrace? She’s mad from grief, and I fear that in her madness, she will hurt herself. Or someone of greater import.”
There’s a touch of hesitation to his manner, and a troubled look crosses his features ere he adds: “I’ve come to beg you to lock her up, your grace—in the name of the Mother’s mercy.”
“I have had reports of her. A poor, blighted woman,” Viserys says briefly, setting down his goblet again and regarding the Dornishman more closely. “But nothing more than that. We know she is given to raving, and what our maesters could do for her, they have done.” His eyes shift to his meal, and with a stab of his knife he spears another slice of the roasted beef and dips it into the trencher to coat it with the gravy there. With his hand, he tears off a portion and takes it to his mouth, chewing on it slowly. “This does not mean she is a danger to anyone. Has she made a threat, maybe? Or just more of her ravings?”
That draws a troubled look across Serion’s features, though he holds silent for a moment.
“She poisoned me,” he says finally, softly, and there’s a touch of relish in the telling. He reaches into his sleeve and draws from it a small leather sack, the size of a child’s fist, which he holds out for anyone to take for the Hand’s inspection. “With these. And she wouldn’t give me the antidote until I’d—until she—your grace, she has designs on the king’s life, and still more of this in her chambers. I fear she’ll do something rash.”
The revelation changes Viserys’s mood for the worse. He drops the knife upon the table and looks balefully on the bag. To the guardsman nearby, he gives a sharp order to take the bag and display the contents. As the man does so, spilling the mushrooms upon the tabletop, Viserys’s expression turns grim indeed.
“More of this, you say?” he asks the hostage, voice surprisingly soft. “Hidden? Do you know where she has placed them?”
“In her room, in the Fowler apartments,” replies the Uller quietly. “She keeps birds, and the stuff is in the cage—though I’m not certain where. It was—there was a clatter. She had to open the cage, I think. The birds came out, and then there was a—a clinking. Something rattling. Either there’s a box, or it comes apart, somehow. The cage,” he clarifies, lips twisting in faint frustration at the poorly-given explanation.
“You heard?” Viserys says, speaking past Serion. A moment’s pause. “Have someone fetch me a quill and sealing wax.” The guardsman, hesitating at leaving the Dornishman so close to the prince without some immediate guard about him, acknowledges the command and departs with all haste. Viserys than calls, “Ser Galbard, attend me.” A knight seated to one side of the small hall with some other companions rises, and quickly moves across the room to join the prince.
Before he arrives, Viserys says to Serion, “This shall not be popular with some of your fellow Dornishmen, I fear. I will do what I can to have your part in this obscured, my lord of Uller.”
And then Ser Galbard is there, and he receives further orders. “I would ask you to find a maester and have him brought here immediately. Tell him it is at my command.” With a bow, the knight quickly leaves.
“The Septons say a man must sometimes choose between two evils, your grace.” A hint of distaste touches Serion’s voice as he says it. “Only—it’s the madness, and she’s more likely to hurt herself than anyone else. It’s for her own good,” he explains, as though still justifying it himself.
“I trust—I trust she won’t be made uncomfortable?”
“No more so than may be necessary to put her out of harm’s way—her own, or anyone else’s,” the prince says curtly. Viserys does not like this one bit. The guard returns with a scrap of parchment, a quill and ink pot, and sealing wax. Taking these, Viserys quickly sets to writing while the guardsman heats the wax and prepares it. The written command is brief, for Viserys is soon putting his seal to it. The ink is not yet even dry when he gives it to the guard. “Take that to Ser Richard, and accompany him and his watchmen as they seize the lady and take her to a tower cell. You and three others will accompany a maester there, to search her room and seize any suspicious items found there. Under no circumstances are any of the hostages to have access to the room until it has been searched from top to bottom.”
There’s no doubt this is a trained man. The guardsman does not waste time, and quickly moves to where some of his fellows sit at their meal—now disturbed and forgotten by the activity at the prince’s table—and chooses out three other men who quickly rise, buckle on their swords, and stand ready. Viserys watches, expression dour, and says nothing as he waits for Ser Galbard to return with the maester.
Throughout this, Serion stands, and his unfocused eyes do not wander from the poor, forgotten roast. And there he waits, until—in the quiet of waiting for the maester—he speaks up: “Is there someone might show me the door?” his words are tight. “I know my way from there.”
“Of course, but you must wait here first. I would have you here for when the maester arrives, so that he may question you further on this poison,” the prince says, firmly. “I want him to identify it as swiftly as possible, and have an antidote to hand if possible. I do not know what the lady might do when the guards come ... perhaps she would try to poison herself? She will not have the opportunity, I hope, and she will not succeed even if she does. I’ll make certain of that.”
It is not long before the maester arrives with Ser Galbard, who stands to one side looking both imposing and attentive. The maester is commanded to examine the mushrooms. He indicates they could be one of several possible toxic mushrooms, and only further testing—“My lord of Uller here says he was poisoned by them,” Viserys says, cutting him off, “and then give him an antidote. Would questioning him on these details make it easier to identify? Then do so quickly, and then go with my sworn swords as I have commanded.”
The maester does as he’s told, flustered by the prince’s swift commands, but interested just the same in a report on the drug’s effects. Once he seems sure of the variety of poisonous mushroom in question, he lets Viserys know ... and then he’s hurried along with the four guards, and the command to Ser Richard.
At the maester’s request, the Uller youth describes the symptoms—the numbness and tingling of the tongue and in the stmoach. He also offers—with a wry twist to his lips, and after the maester has finished his questioning—the name of the poison, and of the antidote he was given.
“And she might, your grace,” he adds after the maester is hustled from the room. “Poison herself. She’s determined, driven by madness. The Mother have mercy on her,” he throws out, with measured propriety.
“As you say,” Viserys remarks. After that he falls into a brooding silence. A minute, two, three…. “Ser Galbard, show Serion out,” he commands, before turning heavy-lidded eyes to the youth.
“I thank you, my lord of Uller, for this information. It is best for the lady, and everyone else besides.” And with that, Viserys seems to be done with everything. He wipes his hands on the trestle table’s linen cloth, rises, and departs with little preamble. A pair of the other guards, previously seated and dining, scramble up and move after him as they buckle on their weapons.
Serion does not answer that, but cants his head in silent agreement—or silent acquiescence—in the Hand’s direction before he follows Ser Galbard from the hall.