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interlude.
⠀ ⠀ THE RED KEEP AT SUNRISE was the kind of palace other castles dreamt: sepia tinted, skies strung with nimbostrati, the viciousness of empire acknowledged only as a rosy backdrop glow redolent of spice and petalled sugar. Mannered as a novel, filthy only where story required it, all silk and monarchy.
The hearth breathed a woodsy, sulfuric aroma, smoke in the nostrils; something to choke on.
"There's that doubt again," Lord Larys Strong said, ostensibly delighted by whatever he could read from Maester Caelan's expression. "It's refreshing, truly. Everyone else has this irritating frequency, full of jolts and jerks, but then there's you. A steady, pleasant base."
"And that's a good thing?" Caelan questioned.
"It's like meditation." The Clubfoot closed his eyes, sinking lower in the chair. He inhaled deeply, and then, slowly, opened them. "Absolutely resplendent."
Because he could not resist, Maester Caelan asked, "What if she's tougher than you think she is?"
Lord Strong raised a brow, dismissive.
"I'm just curious," he clarified, "whether that would please you or send you into a spiral of existential despair."
"Me? I never despair," said Strong. "I am only ever patently unsurprised."
Not for the first time, Maester Caelan considered how the ability to estimate people to the precise degree of what they were must be a dangerous quality to have. The gift of understanding a person's reality — or thinking he did — both their lightness and darkness was... unsettling.
A blessing, or a curse.
"And if I disappoint you?" he prompted.
"You disappoint me all the time, good Maester. It's why I'm so very fond of you," the Clubfoot mused, beckoning Caelan toward the library and its finer bottles of Arbor gold.
nesmyra.
⠀ ⠀ THE BIRD IN THE CAGE fluttered its wings, too dull to fly even with the doors waved open. Pale grey light — the first signs of dawn — filtered down though the diamond-shaped panes of stained glass set within the stone walls of Driftmark, and a breeze was blowing gently through the terrace doors, carrying the scent of salt and sand from the beaches beyond. Spices still clung to the air like mud on riverbanks, and left Nesmyra's stomach empty and forsaken. She did not think she could eat, regardless.
