Part MMCMXXXIX: Of Swords and Oaths
Of Swords and Oaths
Ninth Day of the Tenth Month 293 AC
The smallfolk of the Sapphire Island prove to be a good bit more talkative than the nearby Pointsmen, particularly over a jug of wine someone else is paying for. Merchants sailing to King's Landing from the south are just common enough in Tarth to be a familiar sight while being rare enough to rouse interest. It does not take you long at all to turn the conversion to rumors of the Conclave to tales of Tarth. After all, do they not have among them one of the Chosen, one whom the Warrior guides?
"I say it was ill luck when young Galladon died eight years back," one fisherman proclaims from the back of the tavern with the air of someone expounding upon a favored notion. "He was supposed to be the Warrior's knight you see, but he drowned, whether by ill luck or ill will I can't say, and now the girl has to shoulder the burden. It will break her, mark my words..."
"Shut your mouth, Lorm!" an older man a few seats to the left snaps. "If it weren't for Lady Brienne my son would be dead twice over, once fer finding where he'd been magicked to and twice for thinking to take 'im in gently and fixing his curse, and she's been healing folk when she can even though that's not where the Warrior's strongest."
"The Gods are stronger than you'll ever know, Harry Halfhand..." Lorm answers, seemingly poised to ignite some old quarrel.
"Peace, good men," you interject with a smile. "I only wish to know of the miracles of this fair island of yours and the disposition of its lord, the better to share my wares."
"Lord Selwyn is as good a lord as you will ever find, even with all the woe and suffering that's been heaped on 'im," a woman in a muted green headscarf spoke up. From the way the rest of the room quieted you guess she might have more to say on the matter than most, and indeed she proves to be the village midwife who even served as a wetnurse in Evenfall Hall.
She still had relatives up at the keep, and fortunately for you they are not shy about gossip. "The Lady Brienne took up with two of the Lord's armsmen who were bolder in the face of strange doings, that Torfin fellow who wanted to become a maester and Sly Sawane..." She trails off with a shake of the head. "Why she trusts that ne'er-do-well I'll never know. Mark my word there's the reason he was the only one that came back alive besides the Lady. Probably ran at the first sign of trouble."
The midwife goes on to expound on the general uselessness and weaselly character of Sawane, seemingly unaware of the irony of doing so while heaping praise on the other survivor of whatever the ambush had been. You do manage to pick out among the complaints that whatever had cost Brienne her friends and nearly her life did not happen on Tarth but on the mainland, and that it had left the girl's clothes so stained with black bile or slime that they had to be burned rather than washed.
That had not, however, been the only thing the Chosen had brought forth from the depths of the Rainwood. "The sword shines like the sun when she holds it I tells you, and it's light as a feather, too. Belonged to Aemon the Dragonknight, or maybe even Galladon of Morne," one man declares, speaking of the weapon Brienne now bears. "I heard that when she points it at a man's heart he can't speak no words but the Gods' honest truth. That will be a great use to her when she's Lady of Evenfall."
"She can't be Lady," Halfhand says with a sad shake of his grizzled head. "She's been called to the Warrior's service, not the King's. A man can't have two masters, nor a woman neither."
"What's gonna happen to us, then?" another man asks. "Some damn cousin no one's seen nor heard of and whose never been in charge of so much as a goat herd takes over and squeezes us dry, eh?" From the worried whispers and denials that follow in the wake of the declaration, you suspect this worry has been long gnawing on the smallfolk of Tarth. They had been blessed with a champion of the Seven to guard them in dark times, but now they worry that she might abandon them for some far off battle beyond the island's shores.
The concern is no less real for you than for them. Tarth is one of the principal vassals of Storm's End, and whatever understanding you come to with Lord Selwyn of the matter of his inheritance looms large. Eight-and-forty is still young enough to sire another heir and see him or her grown, but only if Lord Tarth is of a mind to do so, and from the sound of things he loved his late wife fiercely and never had eyes for another woman since her passing. Cassana Bolling had been far from the match Selwyn's own father had hoped for from his heir, their courtship almost scandalously short and began with a tourney and a crown of flowers, the older folk present recount. "The sort of thing singers love and father's hate," an old farmer who had been dozing off by the fire proclaims sagely before nodding off to sleep.
What do you do next?
[] Meet with Brienne first
-[] Write in
[] Meet with Selwyn Tarth first
-[] Write in
[] Write in
OOC: This took a lot longer than I thought it would for such a short update. I had to delete the first draft entirely for being too much exposition and too little character. Hopefully this manages to bring across the sense of the scene better.
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