Webs in Shadow Woven
Tenth Day of the Seventh Month 293 AC
Rhaella woke up with her heart racing, almost rolling onto the floor in her urgency. Though the enormous silk-bedecked bed Lady Phassen had given her could have comfortably fit her in it about five times over, she always ended up on the edge somehow, as though she wanted to escape sleep, escape her dreams. She could not really remember many of the details of this nightmare, nor did she really need to. It was always the same: her second life but a fool's dream and her first the only real truth of the world.
To think how many girls dream of being queen and I have nightmares about it, she thought, the edge of humor however grim a balm to the soul.
The night terrors had been getting less and less frequent, but it seemed as though they were not done with her yet... Briefly the woman considered trying to sleep again but thought the better of it. No sense tempting fate.
As she left the apartments unescorted, waving the maid she had been assigned off, it still felt ever so slightly strange to be able to do that, to have privacy even in the middle of the night if she so pleased. 'It is no more than you deserve, what everyone deserves,' she remembered Dany saying firmly, as though proclaiming nothing less than self evident truth to the tune of 'the sky is blue'.
***
It was quite easy to find Lady Drekelis. Unlike her nephew she was very much a creature of habit, spending hours looking at the stars from a balcony or other high places.
"Are those cooked slugs getting their revenge?" the young woman asked irrelevantly. "I
did try to warn you, and Garin too."
"It was a nightmare," the former queen replied laconically.
"Oh?" Wyla's eyes softened, her face set in lines of sympathy that Rhaella strongly suspected were genuine. "Come to look at the sky? I have often found it a balm on the weary soul"
"I would rather distract myself with more earthly matters," the older of the two mages replied, her eyes fixed on the lights of the city beyond rather than those adorning the heavens.
"So your idea of a relaxing moment is doing the job you were tasked with?" Wyla smiled. "At least now I know who Viserys inherited that
peculiarity from."
"Well it..." Rhaella swallowed, forcing the next words out in spite of years of training herself to not even think their like. "It certainly wasn't from his father."
Wyla nodded, a glint of understanding, almost of kinship in her eye before turning to other matters. "I think pursuing Magister Argolys is throwing good coin after a sunk ship, though his nephew has potential if we can get to him in a suitably delicate manner."
"The crippled one?" the former queen nodded in tentative agreement. "With the maiming being so recent he is likely quite desperate but also angry, and given who is responsible for the accident at least in his own mind..."
Of all the ways to lose a hand and an eye. Rhaella did not think much of the young man for mishandling a painted lizard, but as was often the case in the games of princes his misfortune could be their gain.
Just as long as it did not turn into a feud against the Venturer's Company.
"The Venture Captains are probably the most useful faction in all of Myr, more compatible with Imperial rule than even the Glassmakers' Guild, so we can't afford to court a land-holding lord at their expense, but maybe they would be willing to throw one captain under the keel for a good enough deal," the Braavosi sorceress mused.
"Of course we would have to see what Lady Phassen has to say on the matter, so as not to upturn her plan with ill-timed rumors..." So plotted and schemed with the envoys of the Dragon King into the hours of dawn.
OOC: Not a lot of action here, but hopefully the plans can give you guys some idea of how things are going in Myr.
