The Unseen Cage
Thirty-First Day of the Eighth Month 293 AC
Lynesse Mormont is quite pleased to speak to you, a touch
too pleased to tell the truth. Flattery in a king's ear is as cheep as Drowned Town swill, and hers becomes grating quickly, given her seeming fascination with pageantry for its own sake and not what it can ultimately achieve. You would have likely been shorter with her were it not for one fact about her Elia had missed, or perhaps simply not mentioned, thinking it obvious. Lynesse is utterly terrified at the situation she finds herself in, alone in a city in some ways as strange as Bear Island had been with nothing to her name, beyond clothes and jewels that seem quite drab compared to the fashions of the court, and silver that she does not even know how to
spend.
With that realization your annoyance melts away almost entirely. One can fairly call the woman a spendthrift, but how can one blame her when no one has truly impressed upon her the value of a gold dragon? The things she desires exist in some nebulous state wherein she can either get them or not, measured more by the identity and perceived power and influence of the one offering her the gift than in any objective scale. Thus the idea that she might have to fend for herself financially is as frightening as if you had set her down in the middle of Sothoryos with a bow and arrows and told her to hunt her own food.
The bitterest part of the irony is that your goodsister was right, she
does have a head for numbers. When you discuss last night's feast and the seating arrangements in particular she is able to go through permutations of the almost a hundred guests with startling swiftness as she builds up an image of the room from your shared anecdotes, such that when you 'misremember' two people you had not directly mentioned at all she seems briefly bemused. She does not correct you of course, having taken it to heart that one does not directly contradict those in authority.
All things told Lynesse Mormont reminds you of nothing so much as the mask of perfect propriety Tyene used to wear when you first met her, one she rarely dusts off these days unless she is somehow disguised in full. But where for Tyene it was always a shield to be taken up when she entered 'battle,' Lynesse bears it like a suit of plate, one she does not even dare raise the visor to.
And so you talk of Baelor, of what overtures he might take and which he would reject, of what his hopes were for his House and how his character could best be summarized. All questions that need asking and you mark the answers well. Few could have told you that he is interested in expanding the circuit of Oldtown's city walls or that he has ambitions to be Master of Laws and help untangle what he sees as the hopeless mare's nest of rules and exceptions that grew from King Jaehaerys' law.
In the process of recounting familial anecdotes you also finally begin to glimpse something of who Lynesse is and what she wants rather than just trying to answer whatever she thinks you might want to hear. "When I was about Princess Daenerys' age I used to love painting, I did it practically all day. My lady mother was afraid I was going to look more ghost than girl from all the time spent indoors with the canvas getting more light than me, but Baelor would cover for me. He even got me a new set of pigments from the market, more hues than I had ever seen. I think those might still be home somewhere..."
"You did not take them with you when you went north?" you ask, not bothering to make a note of that fact that Bear Island was never home.
"No, I just didn't remember them... I, well, I suppose I set them aside when Septa Maer died of the summer fever. It just wasn't the same after that, and of course I had so many things to do. I was getting old enough to make my debut properly, for father to consider offers for my hand. I only wish he had considered it more carefully, or that
I had come to that." She sighs, the sound quite genuine rather than being meant to draw sympathy as so many others had been. As she looks out the window to the west you suspect she might have briefly forgotten you were here to begin with. For certain her next whispered words were not ones you had been meant to hear. "I can never really go back even if he will take me."
What do you do?
[] Suggest that there are other paths she could take in this new world, particularly as a lady of independent means, such as enrollment at the university or studies at the Scholarum
-[] Write in
[] Ask Elia to keep an eye on her, and keep her away from the most troublesome parts of the court
[] Write in
OOC: I know this is short and I did consider putting in a break and continuing to the award ceremony, but that just felt jarring. That will be the next one with the tree afterwards.
