Warning: strong language by courtesy of daemon "talking shit is all im good for" targaryen
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CHAPTER TEN friction
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the clubfoot.
THE GIRL WAS THREE AND TEN, and she was not the Queen's. The Red Keep was a hornet's nest: rich in honeyed secrets, each no sweeter than the next. Listen, and you would know the ways of Court: how a man lay with a stranger, a wife unfaithful; how this one loathed she could not get into her corset, how that one wished she could not, praying nightly for a swell, a gift of the Mother; how children grew hungry and parents impatient.
Secrets were letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.
Every sea led to shore, and Larys had made the sand his spies.
"You're certain?" he asked, more firmly this time. The promise she had given him brought forth a new prospect, to which new plans should be set in motion. At the end as at the start, and through all the in-betweens, there remained work to be done.
"Yes, my Lord," said the girl. She was sweet and young, unaware of the weight of a word against another. She would learn, in time, become harder to persuade. He would have to be rid of her then. But before that time, she would be of use.
He let his fingers waver over the red-tinted flowers near the cushions. "Twins?"
He did not need to look at her to know that she gave a small nod. Children were pliant like that, always in obedience. Especially those at Court. "That is what they whisper."
Lord Larys hummed quietly, turned towards the girl, who was looking at her feet. She was otherwise such an energetic thing: now she stood straight and tense in his presence. "The Queen knows?" he asked her.
She nodded again, compliant. "Lady Irulan visited her chambers this morning."
