Dragons' Gifts
Seventh Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
King's Landing was cold... such an utterly insipid thought for one returning to the land of one's birth after having been exiled beyond its shores, beyond life itself, Rhaella Targaryen thought. Yet still it was the truth. She had gotten used to the sun soaking into her bones, to the bright colors and impossible sights that her eyes had once, not so long ago, slipped from in confusion. By contrast the bustle and chatter near the River Gate seemed drab and dull, like a painting that had been left too long in a dusty attic.
"The nice thing about pretending to be foreigners is we can look around as much as we like and folk will just think we are gawking like a marsh-dweller at the Moon Pool," Dany said softly.
You are
a foreigner, sweetheart, Rhaella thought to herself with a twinge of sorrow. Her daughter would never be home here, she would never cheer with innocent wonder upon seeing her first winter snow turn the city glittering white, she would never cheer at her first tourney or know the rush of handing out a favor to a knight when it is all just a great big game that grown-ups play. Now instead she is here to kill a man, and she would be insulted to be told that she aught not walk such a path.
"Come on, we need to get off the streets and get an ear out on the local doings as soon as we can," the boy Maelor spoke up. Had he sensed something of her unease or was he just anxious not to be out in the open? For all his swagger and willful irreverence she had noticed a sort of meticulous caution about him, the sort you got when the difference between a good plan and a bad one dictates whether you got to eat or not she imagined.
***
Maelor looked down at the greasy stew in his bowl, supremely glad he no longer had to eat if he didn't want to. Finding the inn had been easy enough, the place had not been built to be subtle what with the big red rooster sign hanging on rusted hooks that creaked enough to wake the dead. Getting to talk to the local gang boss without tipping their hand and starting rumors had been something else entirely. Hort Half-Ear was the sort of fellow who just didn't talk to foreigners and gentry, not for love or gold... or even love of gold for a wonder. But they needed an ear to the ground to start tracking the spider's webs.
Aradia had argued that they should just grab the fat fuck and worry about suborning his spies later, but Maelor knew that if
he were the sort of heartless son of a bitch who would cut off kid's tongues so they wouldn't tell on you he would make sure the whole thing got tangled the moment he wasn't around to guide it. They couldn't just assume everything would work out and they'd have him trussed up like a goose.
"How do you think our friend Hort would do with a prophetic dream?" Dany asked thoughtfully. "A prophecy of great wealth if he shows up in such and such place for a chat..."
"He'll think a mage is f..." Maelor cut himself off, looking towards the queen. "Screwing with his head, and if you
actually screw with his head to get him to show up he'll be worse than useless. We'd never be able to trust him. Same thing if we use glamours to talk to him I reckon. He's the kind to turn over every rock for snakes..."
"And his paranoia makes him an ideal candidate for actually learning the pulse of the city in good time,
I know. You don't have to run over the reasoning again," Dany huffed.
"Have you considered contacting him through someone he is close to? A family member or a lover?" Dany's mother cut in.
Maelor and Dany shared a look, unsure how they had missed something so obvious in hindsight.
***
"Doesn't look like the place you would find the lover of a notorious cutthroat, does it?" Dany said as she peered at the small grey stone house. The roof was properly tiled, and the chickens clucking sleepily somewhere out behind the shop made it look like just another small respectable business with the owner living above it. Of course the owner they were looking for happened to be the wife of the draper made things just a little more complicated. They set about planning what to say.
The soft tapping of her talons against the wavy glass of the window drew no attention for the longest time, enough that she was starting to get annoyed at the fact that they could not just use magic to tell if a given course of action would work, since it would mean voiding their own protections against magic. Finally someone came to investigate, a thin-faced woman in a long maroon dress that looked almost like it had been made from the very poorest offerings of her husband's stock.
Given a choice Dany would have left a note, but she was almost certain the woman would not have been able to read it in any case. So she just spoke up directly, confident that she would silence the woman with magic if she screamed and wipe away the memory of the encounter if she was uncooperative: "I need to get a message to Hort Half-Ear about an opportunity for him and for you if you would take it..." As she spun her tale perched there on the windowsill, Dany wondered not for the first time if imps felt like this as they plotted, schemed, and tempted. If so, then she might almost understand the damn things at least a little bit.
This was fun.
OOC: In the end I could not take the interlude far enough in a single day to require a vote even if I wanted to. Instead it turned into a three part character piece including the various contrasts of Rhaella, Maelor, and Dany.
