Interlude DCXCIX: Seeking Allegiance
Seeking Allegiance
Third Day of the Twelfth Month 293 AC
The Lucky Horseshore, Sweetgrove, the Reach
Hopefully they will be back in some semblance of order before nightfall, Rhaella thought as she watched Glyra and her diminutive army of mischief-makers vanish into the crowd. Sweetgrove was had lived up to its name, the people of the small port had been welcoming but not overly curious about the pair of noble ladies and their three knights visiting the town, even when one 'knight' proved to be a taciturn man who sat morosely in a corner nursing an untouched drink.
There was only so much one could do to make the ancient Seeker construct lose itself in a crowd. No glamour could entirely veil the way it sat a little too motionless, its arcane muscles tense in a way that would leave any mortal man sweating and wracked with pain, the way its searching gaze would send a chill even down her spine when it fell upon her, though Rhaella knew the servitor would die protecting her without flinching or hesitation. Maybe that was part of the reason she found it so unnerving, the thing was not loyal it was... programed. The word did not exist in Common, nor even in the dialects of Low Valyrian that had grown after the Doom, only in High Valyrian, the tongue of the dragon lords, of the flesh-smiths of old.
Willfully she wretched her gaze from the silent servitor and on to her other companions, Ser Willem, a touch surprised to have been assigned to spy's work, but a solid presence just the same, one that should hopefully help calm any lingering concerns about foreign ways or sorcery any of the lords they were to visit might have. Rhaella herself knew he would make a poor example of such, a sorceress and one risen from the dead both she was likely to cause quite a bit of disquiet of her own. Oddly enough, not something I mind at all, she thought. Truth be told there was a part of her whose origins she could well guess that took a certain amount of pride in the fact. From girlhood she had been taught to be the gentle one, the voice of mercy and kindness so that the king could be the one who bore the sword of justice and wrath, and while she certainly valued these virtues now there was a certain freedom in knowing she had other options.
"What are you thinking of?" Galferyx, or Gaela to use the name they had given the innkeeper, asked with a smile that hinted she might have guessed at least a little of the answer. Unlike the knights the mind dragon left no awkward pauses where Rhaella's title would otherwise have been. To the newly awakened wyrm she had never been Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, just an interesting companion on the road and that both played into the lie that they were two noblewomen of independent means traveling the Reach ostensibly on a pilgrimage to holy shrines, and in supposed fact simply to see the the wider kingdom for the pleasure of it. A good lie should have layers.
"How pleasing it is to be able to freely choose out one's own path as we travel," Rhaella replied and that was not a lie.
"I think that is our invitation to the keep," Kennos interjected, motioning to a footman wearing the crimson ants on gold of House Ambrose accompanied by a trio of armsmen.
Rhaella sighed, Lord Baelor's letter to his goodbrother had specifically asked not to extend too formal an invitation to the envoys that were to arrive at Sweetgrove. Granted, sphe had known lords who did not consider ten armsmen and the village crier too formal, but it was still frustrating.
The Seeker's gaze snapped to the footmen so swiftly one would almost expect to hear its neck pop. "Report," Rhaella whispered upon a flicker of petty magic.
"The unarmed individual, exhibiting signs of ascendancy over his armed peers, is bound by an enchantment of the Fifth Circle, his will is fully compromised and his controller cannot be confirmed to be non-hostile," the Seeker's faintly buzzing voice reached her ear in return.
Ladies of good breeding do not curse, of course, much less queens, but in the silence of one's own thoughts at least one is granted a certain lenience for exceptional circumstances. What the Hell is going on here?
OOC: Well, that was certainly an interesting set of rolls to start off the action with.
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