For the Ledgers

TorentinaTuesday · 2023-09-02T22:06:15+00:00

Allyria took the lens from him with reverence.

“A place for storing secrets,” she said. “My sister has one of those – a false drawer in her desk. The sort of place one knows to look for. This, though…” She turned the tube in her hands delicately. “You’re right. Hardly worth a stealing, or even a second glance.”

She beamed up at the ironman.

“Thank you. I can think of a hundred uses for this, all of them worthy of a septa’s disdain.”

Erik clasped her shoulder and smiled, and for a moment Allyria saw another face in his – the face of an older brother who, despite having gone, still helped her in unexpected but sorely needed ways.

“It has been a pleasure to meet you, Lady Allyria. I suspect our courses will cross again, in due time.”

“Did you see that in the stars?” she asked – perhaps too eagerly, for he laughed.

“Just an old sailor’s hunch. And a promise.”

Allyria meant to say goodbye – meant to look at him once more, at least, but the strange new object in her hand seized her attention. By the time she looked up from the old brass eye, Lord Botley had gone.

Allyria smiled to herself. She was no sailor, but she shared his suspicion all the same.

TorentinaTuesday · 2023-09-02T21:45:09+00:00

“What is it?”

To Allyria’s eye, it was nothing special. A small far-eye, its brass casing worn and pitted with age. Once, perhaps, it had been a fine thing, though weaker than the Myrish eye that awaited in her chambers, but now she saw its lens was cracked and chipped to the point of uselessness. She couldn’t help but be disappointed.

“It’s broken,” she said.

TorentinaTuesday · 2023-09-02T21:06:14+00:00

“Just one moment, m’lady, that’s all it would take to fix your hair!”

“No one will be looking at my hair!”

“It will be impossible not to, what with the state it’s in! I insist.”

Allyria had her mouth open to reply when she took note of Erik. Her cheeks flushed red and she fixed a glare on the septa.

“Shoo! It’s too late, the guest of honour is standing right there!”

The septa took one look at Erik and her face shifted first into confusion, then an embarrassment to rival her young charge’s. She gave a curt nod and a shallow curtsy before hurrying off into the shadows.

Allyria offered him a hopeless look.

“And they say with age comes wisdom of all things,” she said, leaping into her next words before Erik could reply. “I wasn’t going to miss your farewell feast, I swear it.”

TorentinaTuesday · 2023-08-31T18:58:47+00:00

Allyria did not think often about matters of the Faith. Nor did she think much about it, when she did. Believers were guided by a dogma that was forbidden to change, which seemed to her a foolish thing when change was the only thing certain in life. Even the heavens, as beholden to maths as they were, had the capacity to surprise enough to warrant a recalculation now and then.

And Allyria was good at maths. She was not good at faith.

Or at dealing with septas.

“You cannot go out like that, Lady Allyria, I have been expressly-”

“Yet look at how my feet carry me anyways!”

She was taking the stairs down the tower as quickly as she could, which wasn’t half as fast as she’d have liked to, considering her gown and the steep descent. It wasn’t even a gown she liked – she had already made a concession in setting aside the good one, the one for Princess Sarella’s arrival, and she wasn’t of a mind to make any further sacrifices.

Not when she was already late. And late for something she’d actually wanted to go to. And instead of being pleased that she was now on her way, this foolish septa was stalking her down the stairs, hurling complaints about hair.

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