One For Sorrow - Benjicot Blackwood

16- creatures of habit

"The bluegill's pearlish Bones.
He longs to be An orange,
to feel fingernails
Run a seam through him."
- Yusef Komunyakka

"That is not your sword," Ser Oscar deduces as I enter the war room at Riverrun. Too early for preparations, far too late to hear what was said in the afternoon's meeting. If I hadn't been lying in a hot bath for the majority of the day, I may have learned of our next moves. Instead, I rose in the evening covered in lavender and sage.

"I stole it," I tell him, pulling it from the sheath and laying it on the table. Oscar sulks around the chairs. He too, has seen the brunt of battle and wears it across his bruised temple. At least, I do not look worse. "From a Lannister, I think. I don't actually recall taking it."

"Dawn," he says, slowly, carefully tracing the imbued image of a star that rises from the hilt. "Ancestral sword of house Dayne, only wielded by a Sword of the Morning."

"Why would a Lannister have it?"

Oscar huffs, pouting his lips, "Stolen, certainly, not won. A fantastical feat for anyone. Surely, you know the story; it was forged when the head of the house followed a shooting to Torrentine where he constructed it from the embers. It must have been some fearsome bastard you pulled it from to take it from a Dayne."

The word bastard causes him to tighten his lips in sudden apology, as if he has referred to me as a bawdy whore with a slap across my face. He couldn't know that I wear it like a charm these days.

"I will return it," I muse, finger sliding over the slick Valyrian steel that sheens paler than milkglass.

"After war," Oscar chimes, "You can march right up to Starfall. They'll probably forge you a crown in thanks."

I sigh as the footsteps of men entering the chamber resounds over the trout adorned walls. "I think there is already an excess of my family members vying for crowns these days."

Tully and Blackwood as well as three lords from the vassal houses take their seats. I have become the voice of bastard dragonseeds. Karrin has taken full run of the training grounds and Jalen pouts in his chamber, chest wrapped in plaster to cover the wounds that Tessarion leveled upon him. He is lucky to be alive; Silverwing, is luckier.

"Is that? How?" Tully asks, stopping at the sword and running a finger over it in the same manner as his brother. Occasionally, they mirror each other perfectly, these two young men and their soft pouts. It is only in hardship that I see the cracks in fraternity. Tully wears war planning like a shroud, Oscar dons it like a shield.

"She pulled it out of a Lannister and put it in another," Blackwood remarks as he takes a seat at the furthest end of the table. Notably, as far away from me as he can sit without melting the black leather that covers his back into the wall.

I cast him a glare for stealing my words before turning back to Tully. "I stole it. I'll give it back."

"It sounds like you won it," he returns.

"Semantics, I suppose."

The commencement of the meeting is shared cups of diluted wine, fingers tapping the hardwood in alternating patterns and seven sets of glazed eyes pretending they are not aching for sleep. Tully talks, Oscar chimes and the Vassal houses nod their heads as if they are being paid to do so. Blackwood yawns into his hand. I try not to do the same.

Talk is boring. It is repetitive and vacant. All around me, all of the time, every afternoon and night there are men speaking. I might enjoy some of this if I knew that it was pertinent. However, we often dive right past the importance of matters and into the outside significance of it very quickly. There are problems, of course. How to keep the dragons fed; which men must heal at home and who should continue to march. What do we offer the houses on the crownlands in exchange for their fealty; what makes a traitor a traitor and not a product of their own stupid illusions.