The days that followed confirmed Lys as by far the best choice of temporary base from which to set my greater plans in motion. The hot baths, subsequent massages by very talented and highly trained experts, the highest-quality cosmetics in the world and a very varied cuisine prepared on demand by experts "imported" from all over Essos and Westeros did play a part. After six years living in the wilderness, I would not say no to a slice of civilization even if it was built on the backs of slaves. But what all those recreational activities offered was the opportunity to engage in a more modern endeavor and work remotely.
When one was enjoying fried shrimp and a plate of cheeses in one of the more expensive eateries in the city, nobody suspected them to be gathering information on the many sellsword companies of the island through a network of winged spies. When relaxing under the hands of a skilled masseuse seconded from the Temple of Beauty, nobody knew you were building a mental list of merchants and their wares, artisans and the quality of their work, of visiting ships and their crew and cargo. And when one had reserved a private bath for the afternoon, they could be reasonably sure they would remain unobserved and undisturbed for hours in the least flammable environment to be found in a medieval city.
Lys being home to many tropical birds, singing or otherwise, made the work so much easier and almost completely eliminated suspicion. Every pleasure garden and most taverns had one or more of the things as decorations but furthermore, it was tradition among successful merchants and ship captains of renown to have them as pets. So taking a page out of Brynden Rivers' book, I went around either personally or, more often, using Featherball to piggyback a link and used the magic of Greensight to push at the minds of such birds. There were limits to how many such spies I could control at once or bind to me, but the secret was that I did not have to control them all the time or even bind them.
Once an animal was "broken in" by receiving a mental link, any warg could slip into it much more easily and I was more than just a warg. Returning to an animal I'd previously melded with was a simple matter of focus as long as they were within a few miles of me. Moreover, animals had memories and birds had better memories than most. The slight mental boost they got from melding with my mind-shadow added to that, and with my experience with Featherball plus some experimentation I was able to access some of their memories to roughly review either very recent events or very unusual ones. In short, I was slowly building up a network of living, breathing spy cameras across the city, points of view I could tap for information at far greater speed and reliability than human informants without anyone being the wiser.
I might not have a vast network across a continent or the ability to see in the past and future at will, but for my purposes it would suffice. Being armed with the right information, the following steps in my plans would be so much easier.
xxxxIn contrast to the open stalls and loud shouts of other merchants, the building before me was built of solid stone, with windows too narrow for a man to go through even if they cut through the metal bars, and with a heavy, iron-bound oaken door flanked by no less than four guards on the inside. The interior was full of dozens, possibly hundreds, of displays, each no larger than a small shoebox with five sides of metal-bound wood with glass panes on their lids thick enough to visibly distort the contents at least a little.
Said contents were art pieces in gold, silver, gems and pearls of all types, amber and ivory, even weirwood. An extravagant collection for any common merchant... then again this place was owned by someone far richer, more powerful and, more importantly, vain than any mere peddler of goods. But not careless. I'd thought of robbing the place the moment one of my flying spies first noticed it, but couldn't come up with a plan that would work. The four guards by the gate and the dozen others hidden deeper in the building were no obstacle, of course, but the barracks for the owner's private army was just next door and their fortress-mansion not much further. The building itself was not flammable or easily breached and forcing the issue would only bring the city's authorities down on any attacker's heads. House Ormollen certainly bribed them enough for that.
The whole point of this... jewel dealership was not so much profit as to trumpet House Ormollen's prestige, power and influence in a way anyone could see by just walking through the open door, as well as a dare to their rivals to rob or raid it if they thought they were clever or tough enough. So far nobody had taken them up on it. Admitting that, for the time being, it was a too tough and too obvious a target, I decided on another approach; on the morning of my fifth day in Lys, I wore my newly bought silk dress of purple and black, my new red belt and purse with an elegant little dagger strapped to it, perfumed my hair and pampered myself with scented oils... then walked up to Ormollen's House of Jewels and walked in like any other visitor.
"Ah, a young lady of great beauty and exquisite taste," the proprietor greeted me in a tastefully flattering tone that somehow managed to sound neither patronizing nor oily like I'd half expected. He was a sharp-eyed, grey-haired, neatly coiffed man with a pointy beard and an easy smile, but while his leather suit was elegant and very well-cut, his hands were worn and calloused but very dextrous. Excellent. "What can the House of Jewels offer such a guest? May I suggest an amulet in amethysts over white gold? It would highlight your hair and eyes nicely."
"I'm afraid my usual endeavors are too rough for conventional finery," I demurred and the man's eyes flickered to my hands. For a split second his practiced smile was replaced by confusion, for unlike him I lacked callouses due to magical healing. On the other hand I was tall, broad of shoulder and not delicate by any measure, and my hands were more solidly built than most women's. Something seemed to click in the proprietor's mind and his entire demeanor shifted to become more professional.
"I see, I see," he hummed as he further took in my bearing, gait... and probably my slight awkwardness at wearing a dress for the first time in forever. "You have business with the House of Jewels, my lady?"
"Potential business," I told him with a smile before reaching into my purse. "One of my overseas endeavors recently produced an unusual find. Could you appraise this for me?" And with that, I set a vitreous, olive green gem as thick as my thumb before him.
"An unusual find indeed," he muttered, picking the stone up and running it along his fingers. "Are you by any chance Westerosi, my lady?" he asked. Then he started retrieving various tools from nearby drawers; a tiny set of brass scales, a jeweller's eyes, a set of spikes ranging from copper to bronze, to steel, to a series of crystals in white, green, brown, purple, black and transparent coloration, several tiny bottles of pungent liquid and a few other odds and ends.
"The accent gave me away, didn't it?" I nodded. While spying from multiple perspectives for weeks had let me pick up the corrupted Valyrian of the Free Cities with surprising ease, mimicking a proper accent was beyond me. "I am recently of Westeros, where I spent my formative years, but not originally Westerosi. Does that answer your question?"
"Well enough," he hummed, more interested in the gem than me now. "...its clarity is near-perfect and its color is pure, dark and intense despite being uncut. My first guess would be glass but..." he tried to scratch the gem with a bronze spike, then a steel one, failing both times. "No, not glass at all. Not quartz or emerald either. Perhaps..." he tried and set aside the white and green crystal spikes. Next he tried the brown crystal but that, too, failed to scratch the olive green stone. "Oh, now things are getting interesting; it's not some type of topaz or beryl either!"
He grew more and more excited as he worked. First managing a tiny scratch with the black crystal spike, then carefully weighing the gem in the tiny scales, next putting it in a graded glass cylinder filled with water to measure its volume. Then came exposure to those pungent fluids I was certain were solvents, to no effect. He carefully took notes and by the end he was looking at the pebble-sized gem I'd handed over with considerable reverence.
"My lady, what you have here is a rare green sapphire..." he trailed off for a moment. "With its clarity and color while uncut and given its size... it truly is a rare find."
"Indeed?" I said, feigning surprise but with very real excitement. Of course I knew it was a sapphire, I'd made the thing. Had nearly knocked myself out trying to make a larger one, refining corundum out of porcelain had been no easy feat. As for its color it was due to iron, the only "impurity" I had easy access to. I'd need Titanium for blue sapphires and Chromium to make rubies, which weren't going to be easy to get. Fortunately, the green stone had passed muster. "At what price would the House of Jewels be willing to buy it?"
"For a stone like this? For a lady like you?" the proprietor's eyes gleamed with greed mixed with mischief. "Two thousand golden ladies would be my offer," he said, referring the largest golden coin of Lys, the one stamped with a naked woman's image.
"Not bad. Not bad at all," I told him agreeably. I did not need Greensight and close proximity to notice he was obviously lowballing me here but the joke was on him; the gem had cost me maybe one silver in materials. "And if there are more such finds from my overseas endeavors?"
"The House of Jewels would be happy to buy them from you, my lady," he said eagerly. "Pending an honest appraisal, of course."
"Naturally," I agreed. "Should we put this into a contract then?"
He was happy to do that, too. Free of charge, even. He signed for House Ormollen, I signed as Flann of House Belaerys, and he had a local scribe copy that in triplicate for us and stamp it with several official-looking seals. One copy he kept, one copy I would keep, the third was delivered by runner to the Temple of Trade so it would be binding in the eyes of both gods and men - and there would be a third, independent party to weigh on disputes in case one of our copes was "lost" or "discrepancies" somehow appeared.
I busied myself looking over some nice rings and bracelets while said delivery was made while keeping the runner under Featherball surveillance. It took the runner only a quarter hour to get to the Temple that wasn't actually a temple and a tiny little parrot let me confirm the contract was delivered in the scribe's name and properly deposited. That done, it was time to complete my job here.
"Have you decided on further purchases, my lady?" the proprietor asked me as I approached him again. "We do have some very nice pieces."
"They are, indeed, very nice," I returned his wide smile with my own. "But first, I'd like you to evaluate a few more of my acquisitions."
"Oh?" he asked almost eagerly. "You have more odd finds from your trip to Westeros? The House of Jewels would be happy to purchase them at similar prices if they are of similar quality."
"Of that I am certain," I retorted with a smirk and emptied the rest of my purse on the counter. Nearly a hundred more stones in greens and yellows made a glittering pile on it, most every bit the equal of the one he'd just bought. "Similar prices, didn't you say?"
I laughed as the guy gaped at the pile. Those stones? They were the product of a few hours of stoneshaping practice every evening over the past few days. Now that we had a contract, I would be making more. That would teach him not to be so eager to swindle the next "obviously clueless" girl to come by.
The last of the three men gave a wet gurgle, feebly tried to keep crawling, then became still. I stood up and glanced through the eyes of the sleepy songbird on the nearby palm tree, checking that nobody nearby was looking towards the alley with too much interest. Nobody was and since proper guard patrols would interfere with all the plotting between Lysene Houses and Merchant Prince business, the bodies shouldn't be found till dawn. No longer fretting about discovery, I started looting.
In a port city like Lys where slavery had been made into an art form, finding slavers was as easy as taking a stroll around the waterfront. Tracking their movements was even easier with my growing number of winged spies, and since any sailor was prone to drinking and carousing and wandering the streets of the island paradise at night, ambushing them was only a matter of timing and presentation. It wasn't as if beautiful Valyrian girls in dresses were suspicious in this place. I cut through the third money pouch with my knife, added its significant contents to my own, then frowned at the mouth of the alley again. The last slaver had been smart enough to run instead of thinking the pretty girl wasn't a threat. Another second or two and he'd have burst into the main street, and that would have been trouble.
The blood on my blade and dress blackened and flaked away at the barest touch of sorcery and I walked out to the main street, just another local enjoying a late night walk. I needed to find a better way to handle the slavers. This had only been my second hunt in as many nights and I'd very nearly botched it despite having all the advantages. The slavers had powerful backers I could not deal with, nobles and merchants that not just bankrolled but organized the slavery ring not just for profit but to get manual labor and new blood for their breeding experiments. Hunting slavers might be a quick, convenient and ethical way to build up power and wealth but it wasn't worth drawing that kind of attention.
Despite not having a good answer to the issue, I strolled down the waterfront with a jaunt in my step, the world feeling as light as a feather from all the stolen vitality. My well of power felt just a bit deeper, the power itself just a bit weightier in the grand scheme of things, but the next vision from the Flames was still distant. After the battle with the Ironborn, a few slavers here and there just weren't very significant in comparison. It'd take a shipload for meaningful progress.
I chuckled as I reached the alehouse I'd visited once before, a bawdy song and the laughter of both men and women coming through the door. When had progressing the equivalent of years become a frequent expectation? Most sorcerers, my visions had shown, mostly worked with animal offerings and the occasional blood donation as part of their deals. Burning the filth out of the human gene pool simply wasn't something they could afford and many of them might not even want to. Murder was still murder, and all that.
Within the alehouse the air was heavy with perfume, cheap booze and human sweat. Despite the lateness of the hour, over a dozen men in cheap, worn or dirty clothing attempted to drown their sorrows in what would have been average quality wine back in Westeros but was no more than swill by Lysene standards. A moderately pretty woman with golden hair, golden eyes and lots of freckles fiddled with a harp with middling skill as she soldiered on through the bawdy song while the men shot occasional glances at her Quartheen-style dress and what it didn't cover, but otherwise ignored the show. Not every tavern in Lys was a highly expensive place of exquisite quality. In fact, most of them weren't. They couldn't be, not when the rich remained the vast minority of the population even here.
I walked towards the table in the corner where a short, broad-shouldered, grey-haired man in his early thirties was staring at the wall, a carafe of beer held in one hand but half forgotten. He had been strong and fit once, iron-hard muscles still visible under his skin, but the fat was slowly creeping in as discipline and health were slowly worn away. I pulled back the chair across from him, sat down, and looked straight at those once-sharp black eyes of his.
"...told ya to go away," he muttered after a good five minutes of impromptu staring contest that was obviously ruining his brooding time.
"No, you proposed a tumble in the hay," I countered cheerfully. "Those were your exact words, in case too much of that swill you're drinking washed away the memory." I smirked, showing off perfectly white teeth. "Then when that oh so amazing pickup line fell flat you told me to stop wasting your time."
"Then why are ye still wassing it?" he slurred, tried to point at me, then noticed he was still holding the carafe of beer he'd totally forgotten. Awkward.
"Because I'm still looking for sell-swords to hire," I told the guy who only a few months back had been a pretty decent one from what my little birds had overheard.
"And me arm's still worth shit," he shot back, his face flushing with more than beer now. "Ye think it's easy to relearn the blade with me off-hand? I can't swing for shit so I'm worth shit. Save your coin, stupid girl."
"Who said anything about coin?" I asked, then leaned over the table and snatched at the arm he'd been hiding under it. A brief struggle followed but he was drunk and I was as strong as any woman could normally be so the twisted limb ended flat upon the table. The radius and ulna had been obviously broken and half-healed the wrong way, the wrist was a broken mess, the fingers stiff and halfway clenched into a fist. A warhammer or mace must have messed him up through his armor while on campaign a year, maybe a year and a half before. Too big to fix properly with just my own power after it healed wrong but with generously donated slaver life-force... "By the way, this is going to hurt."
"Wha-"
I interrupted his angry question by shoving a human sacrifice's worth of power through my grip in his arm, into his flesh and bone, then into a supercharged flesh-shaping. Messily fused bone came apart, twisted ligaments straightened, muscle and blood vessels were pulled around and rewoven. Scar tissue shifted like runny clay, its internal structure shifting into something more complex. Even without growing flesh anew the drain on the available vitality was enormous, magnified to both work faster and bridge the gap in skill.
It was nothing like working with stone and glass and metal. There I could visualize things, direct the material, fine-tune the results as I wished for I knew what I was doing. Here, working with the human body, the details were beyond any human mind, or even all the minds and analytical engines of humanity put together. The spell worked because it worked; it didn't seem to need information or pull it out of anywhere, it was just less efficient the less precisely I could tell it what to do. Much of the magic dispersed into the man's body in undirected pulses of healing but that was a useful side effect as it'd jump-start his return to fighting fitness... probably. On second thought, I should give him a couple of check-ups after a week or two to catch any unforeseen problems brewing down the line.
In only a minute and with the man only just coming out of his drunken funk, it was done. Just how much beer had he downed not to scream his lungs off? Bother... there went the free advertising.
"What..." he pulled his arm with greater strength and I let go his wrist so he could gape at what I'd wrought in wonder. He clenched and opened no longer stiff fingers, rotated a wrist no longer shattered, flexed an arm that was straight and strong and not a broken mess. "How is this possible?!"
"Magic, obviously," I quipped. "Let's start again, shall we?" I said and extended my hand for him to shake. "I am Flann of House Belaerys, and I'd like to recruit you into my new sellsword company." He stared at me in shock and fear and confusion and dawning hope, his hand reaching out to mine almost out of its own accord. "And if you have friends with injuries like yours, maybe I could help them too."
Around us, none of the patrons had enough clarity to grasp what had just occured, but the singer's harp had dropped from her now loose fingers as she stared. Amateurs, am I right?
xxxx
The air was heavy with smoke, the tang of metal and almost as much sweat as the other shops had been. Walking in, the temperature went from tropical paradise to sweltering heat, not much of a problem for someone who could shape red-hot glass with her bare hands but probably uncomfortable for normal people. Deeper into the building several youths were hard at work under the instructions and curses of an older, pale-skinned man whose tangle of gold-white might have made a serious fire hazard by itself if I hadn't seen several errant sparks burning out against them without leaving a mark.
"Can we help you, lass?" an identical man grunted as he heaved a barrel full of freshly made spears aside so he could set pieces of silvery steel plate on display.
"Silver plated armor?" I asked, sidestepping his question to sate my curiosity. "Won't it flake off in two to four years?"
"Hah, the guy will be lucky if it lasts eight months," the smith snorted derisively. "Armor isn't jewelry, it sees actual work. But do the nobles ever listen?" He shook his head, his tangled white mop dancing. "Far be it for us to refuse repeat business. But what about you, my lady? Something in our smithy caught your eye? Your kind usually go for the more ladylike pieces sold on the waterfront."
"Those flimsy things they call daggers? They'd probably snap at first use." Well, probably not. Lysene smithies had as much quality as anything else on the island and the more expensive pieces I'd seen were some fine blades, but daggers and dueling swords weren't what I had in mind. "I'd rather have a proper weapon." The battle with the Ironborn had been hell on my equipment. Half my arrows were gone, thrown overboard along with the corpses by sailors who didn't know better. My leathers had not been proper armor to begin with and a dip in saltwater without immediate rinsing had left them stiff. My spare knife had been lost at sea when I'd been hurled overboard. That left me with a bow too large and powerful to use most normal arrows, a spear with too much sentimental value to risk damaging in a major battle, and my ritual knife.
"Proper weapons we have, but are you sure you want them, young lady?" the older man asked me with the air of an adult trying to steer a teenager away from an obviously dumb decision. "We at Florian and Florian usually cater to those who think themselves as warriors and knights." He waved his arm at the armors, shields, polearms and other serious instruments of war that looked more Westerosi in style than any product of the Free Cities.
"And fools, too?" I asked him with a smile, referring to the story of Florian the Fool, a famous knight of the Age of Heroes. "Maybe I'm feeling particularly foolish. It wouldn't be the first time."
"As you wish, my lady," he told me, meaning 'gods save me from teenage idiots'. "We have a nice collection of swords and daggers even if they're not as elaborate as young women usually go for. A dueling blade would be a good fit for you, I think."
"I'm sure it would," I countered before picking up one of the heftier spears. The shaft was narrow but dense and hard but flexible, a polished dark brown wood that looked expensive. The spearhead though... it was quite a bit wider than normal for a spear and solidly built, in a style halfway between an infantry weapon and a knight's lance. I'd had my eye on it ever since one of my birds had found this smithy far from the busy harbor, almost inside the forest at the city's South.
I twirled the almost seven-foot-long weapon with practiced ease, its greater length, weight and stiffness fitting in my hands as well as my own first spear had back during my training with Keera. I'd shot up quite a bit in both height and reach since then, not to mention weight and muscle mass, so the Crannogman's hunting spear felt a little too small and light... but this? I went through several quick jabs, a reverse block with the butt of the spear that flowed into a skewering thrust, a rotating sweep of an enemy polearm shifting into an upwards thrust as soon as it alinged with an imaginary helmet's eyehole, a low sweep of an enemy's legs turned around into a thrust at the base of his neck as he fell.
"You know your way around polearms, I see," the smith noted, taking in my practiced stance with a new eye.
"It's what I was trained in when I was younger," I replied to his unasked question. "Strange as it might seem now, I was not always as tall and against some enemies keeping your distance matters."
"Too true," he nodded in agreement. "This is your choice then? I can't say the weapon doesn't fit you, even if it doesn't go with your dress as well as a dueling sword might?"
"This painted on thing?" I dissed my too revealing dress, a low-necked green thing with too much thread of silver and embedded gems. "That's just social camouflage meant to deflect attention, rumours, and human idiocy. I need something more physically protective for actual battle."
"Why is a young lady planning to be anywhere near actual battles?" the kindly smith demanded a bit more intensely than a total stranger should have but I just shrugged.
"Because young ladies have enemies too." I crossed my arms and scowled. "In fact, we have more and fouler enemies than most." It wasn't quite the truth, not in the way that I meant the older man to take it, but my activities would certainly make me loads of enemies.
"...fair enough." He sighed tiredly. "I see that trying to dissuade you is not going to work and just denying service will see you going to some lesser smith that would take advantage."
"Do you always offer unsolicited advice to your customers?" I quipped again.
"...just tell me what you have in mind," he groaned, admitting defeat. "You seem to have put some thought into this."
"I was thinking a combination of scale and plate over chain mail over a gambeson for a balance of rigidity and ease of movement," I started explaining the ideas I'd come up with. "Weight is not an issue. In fact, I want to be wearing eighty to a hundred pounds of metal as I'm finding it harder to put all my strength behind my blows lately. Oh, and it'll need to account for future growth as much as possible. I'm only three and ten, what if I have another growth spurt?"
We went on in that tune for the rest of the evening...
"Hey, stop that!"
Featherball gave me a glare and then made to bite the tightly wound roll of parchment strapped to her leg.
"If you tear it up I'll solder it with bronze and Keera will need to use a hacksaw to remove it," I told the recalcitrant mutant owl. "And then she might miss and hack your leg off. I don't think she's used a hacksaw before."
She squawked indignantly then clicked her beak in obvious threat.
"On second thought, better use a parrot," I mused out loud and Featherball bristled. "Yes, no need to write a letter at all, just speak it through the bird like the Greenseers of old." Except for the minor problem of the parrot having no knowledge of the world beyond the island. I'd probably need to puppet the thing all the way through the trip and my sense of aerial navigation was horrible compared to Featherball's - not that I was about to admit that. "We could even have conversations in real time... yes, a parrot would be the superio-OUCH!"
Featherball bit me and then gave me a look of murderous smugness, which meant her usual expression with maybe ten percent more intensity.
"Fine, fine! You can deliver the letter yourself," I feigned annoyance while throttling any of my true feelings out of our mutual bond. The little feathery miscreant preened and flapped her wings, already preparing to depart.
"Not so fast! I still need to cast the anti-fatigue spell," I told her. "It's a three-day flight. Even with all the stops it will be very tiring."
She turned her head to stare straight back at me - and upside down too. Then she clicked her beak derisively.
"Yes, yes, you're a mighty huntress, you don't get tired." I rolled my eyes at her. "Don't come back whining to me if you sprain something important."
She hooted in denial.
"And remember, if a fish is larger than a boat then it is too large for you to catch." Honestly, the little murder-bird behaved like a honey badger at times. Annoying a leviathan was definitely something she'd do. "Especially if it has tentacles!"
She flew off and I stood by the window to watch until she vanished from sight. I really needed a better way to send long-distance messages...
xxxx
The building where the old Rogare bank had once been was a veritable palace of white marble and grey granite on the outside, its columned front akin to an ancient Roman temple. A gate of polished bronze thrice the height of a man and almost as wide stood open and unguarded now, the old inscription above it gleaming in polished gold.
Se qeldlie kiōs hen Lys
Inviting smells and tantalizing aromas wafted out of the entrance, growing more complex and entrancing the closer we were. It was rather funny, in a way. When the building had been a bank in truth and the Rogare family had all but ruled the city and beyond, it had been a sterile place of metal and stone despite that whole generation being declared the Lysene Spring. But when the bank had failed and Lysaro Rogare was scourged to death before the Temple of Trade, the building had passed into the hands of his rivals and now that they had turned it into one of the finest dining establishments in the city it truly did make the inscription true from a certain point of view; a golden spring for Lys, indeed.
The entrance led to an atrium of green and red marble and polished bronze mirrors where men and women in exquisitely tailored dresses laughed, bantered and engaged in subtle contests of fashion, looks and influence. Two dozen measuring glances came my way as I walked through, only from behind my back while those at the front feigned indifference. My silver hair and amethyst eyes, the sheerness and cut of my blue dress and the gems adorning it, my slippers of gleaming crystal; all these they noted and measured, appreciated or envied or saw as threat, never noticing the bird preceding me inside was now watching them from above, or how the flames in the chamber's lanterns swayed ever so slightly in time with my steps.
In many ways, these nobles and merchant princes with their wealth and connections and armies both secret and overt were deadly threats hidden behind a veneer of politeness and sophistication. In others though they were blind, unaware of how vulnerable that made them even in the safety of their private strongholds. Unfortunately, trying to get rid of them directly would cause more problems than it would solve. Thus I ignored the measuring stares, pretended not to notice all the men undressing me in their minds, and marched deeper into the closest to a proper restaurant this world had ever seen. Thanks to prior spying I knew exactly where to go, after all.
The atrium opened into an inner courtyard and garden where several dozen tables awaited guests that had come as much to socialize as sample the exquisite food. Those too I ignored, moving into the building's second floor and the private dining suits. Polished bronze-plated oaken doors, miniatures of the main gate one and all, lined the corridor, the discussions and other festivities almost completely drowned out by the doors' thickness. Catering almost exclusively to high class visitors and local nobility, the Golden Spring provided privacy and discretion for clandestine meetings both for less than legal business and pleasure. I was here for the former, though at least one of the people behind the door I now stood before was hoping for the latter.
A harried blonde servant girl tried to reach and stop me, but I just ignored her calls and pushed my way inside. Inside the private chamber was a place of red velvet, softly glowing lamps and several very opulent armchairs loosely arranged around an oval table of laquered oak heavy with the establishment's more expensive dishes. The three people lounging around it looked up as I got in, their discussion interrupted by my arrival. Two men in their late thirties, one with the white-gold hair, bright blue eyes and carefully cultivated elegance of the Lyseni, the other a burly, thickset man with coarse black hair, a short but thick beard, bearing the first signs of age and baldness but still stout and strong. The woman on the other hand was a decade and a half younger than either of the men, though both looked and was older than me still. She was tall and beautiful, with golden hair, flawless skin the color of cream, soft delicate hands, and blue almond shaped eyes with a hint of purple.
"Excellent, we're all here already," I pretended to be pleasantly surprised then shut the room's door in the face of the harried servant girl and filled its keyhole and lock with as dim a fire construct as I could make while still having it solid enough to hold significant weight. In the relatively dim light of the lamps nobody should notice without specifically looking and it would do to keep our meeting without further interruptions.
"Ah, Lady Belaerys," the Lyseni man greeted me, eyes gleaming nearly as much as the topaz and diamond adornments on his elaborate silken robes as he took me in. "I was just telling Lord Mormont about you."
"Nothing too terrible, I hope?" Both I and the guy laughed at my joke and so did the woman, but the guy who had to be Jorah Mormont did not. It might have something to do with how he was sweating into his armor, attire entirely inappropriate for both the climate and a high class establishment such as this. "My thanks for the introduction, Prince Ormollen. I've known many Westerosi nobles over the years but I've never personally met the latest Lord of Bear Island."
"You know of my home, my lady?" the not-so-gallant knight queried in surprise. "Lys is so very far from Bear Island."
"And I came from much further than that originally myself, yet spent the last few years in Westeros," I responded while nodding in thanks to Tregar Ormollen for the glass of wine he personally served me. Yet another gallant guy to keep an eye on. "You might be happy to know, my lord, that your aunt Maege was confirmed as Lady of Bear Island in your stead. She sent your ancestral blade to your father in Castle Black, where it will do the most good," I added and sipped at my wine while both Jorah and his pretty girl winced.
"Oh? Some family drama back home?" Tregar asked with a smile of his own.
"In a manner of speaking. It's up to Lord Mormont if he wants to share," I told the merchant prince then winked.
"I see, I see. Onwards to happier matters then." Tregar rubbed his hands together and beamed at us. "Over the past few days, Lord Mormont approached several Lysene factors with the aim to sell his ship and offer his services as a sell-sword. When Houses Saan and Pendaerys expressed no interest, I decided to approach him myself before the Magpies got involed and I immediately thought of you, my lady."
"You flatter me, prince Tregar," I giggled. Salahdor Saan had done me a small favor here and his allies had followed his example. The Magpies were the Golden Company, of course, and no other faction in Lys wanted them to grow more powerful except possibly House Maar.
"Is it true?" Jorah asked rather brusquely. "You are interested in buying my ship and services?" The golden-haired woman all but groaned at his directness and subtly signaled me to please not take offense at the big lout. I nodded to them both, though Jorah missed the byplay.
"A ship would be useful to my plans." It was very early but better to have strategic mobility now regardless of the cost, than need it later and scramble to purchase it then. "As for what those plans would be, I am forming a mercenary company. Sellswords are a dime a dozen especially in Lys, but someone trained in organizing and leading an army? Now that is a far rarer talent - one Westerosi lords are trained at from a young age."
"You want me as a field commander?" As expected, Jorah expressed immediate interest. "What kind of force are we talking about?"
"A brand new one," I told him drily. "As in, I'm still recruiting people. They will be individually experienced but this will be the first time they'll work together. While there's some ideas and stipulations I will not compromise on, I have little experience in organizing an army so finding one to do it for me would be for the best." Plus I had no desire to handle the details in the first place. "For someone that could handle the position, I am willing to pay several times more than you could ever make as a sellsword."
"That sounds like... a very generous offer," Jorah said with a frown. "You will give me command of your company and pay me on top of it?"
"You misunderstand," I said, trying not to laugh. "The men would never follow you over me." The combination of awe, gratitude and fear would ensure it. "I will pick our goals and decide on our overall direction, your job will be to think of how to accomplish them," I shrugged "Or tell me when I'm being stupid if, given our capabilities, those goals are unrealistic."
"You want to hire someone to argue against your decisions?" the woman spoke up for the first time, her crystal clear voice full of incredulity.
"Lynesse Hightower, right?" I asked and she nodded. "If you were about to make a serious mistake, one that you'd pay for years in the future, wouldn't you want a more experienced, or at least specifically trained individual to tell you about it? Isn't this why you Westerosi lords have Maesters?"
"You'd be surprised how many Lords ignore good advice," Lynesse said, completely missing what I'd been referring to. Then again, if either she or her husband had been capable of either taking advice or critical thinking in the first place, neither of them would be in exile on penalty of death.
"I'll do it," Jorah agreed, showing the same impulsiveness he had in both the books and the television show. He was staring at me oddly now, and his exact reasons for accepting were dubious at best, but that did not matter. I needed someone to organize a bunch of sellswords into a proper fighting unit with discipline but more than that I needed someone who already was a good warrior, with nothing to lose, who'd grasp at every advantage now that he had wasted his honor, his position and all his previous connections. Last but definitely not least, I needed someone to perform unethical experiments in human augmentation on, and a honorless dog who'd been condemned to death for slavery and in the canon timeline would have gone on to spy on, betray, and try to force himself on a young woman who'd taken him in and promised to give him way more than he deserved made for the perfect test subject.
"Excellent!" Tregar Ormollen interjected happily. "We can make our dealings official and sealed in triplicate later but since we're here on the Spring, whily not eat, drink and be merry?"
We readily agreed with the Merchant Prince's suggestion and did just that for several hours. Finely sliced and fried fish, sauteed seafoods fresh from the nearby waters accompanied by spicy sauces from as far as Yi-Ti, tropical fruits glazed in sugar from the Summer Isles, it might not be a proper multi-course meal but I frankly preferred the mix-and-match style over separate dishes. And the drinks? The drinks were truly to die for.
"Well?" Tregar asked us girls expectantly. "How does the best Lysene white whine compare to Westeros' famous Arbor Gold?"
"Fruity, rich and sweet," Lynesse said a bit too loudly, her pale cheeks sporting a touch of red, then giggled. "A match for any the Tyrells will sell outside the Reach. Among the best I've ever had."
"I'll tell the vineyard their new efforts are much appreciated," the Merchant Prince told her warmly. "And to think that even some among my family thought we should just continue with reds and pinks rather than branching out. Trade venues favor the bold."
"It leaves the barest hint of spiciness and puts some warmth in one's belly" I added with a smirk, sloshing the golden liquid in my glass. "But that's probably the Tears of Lys." Tregar froze.
"The Tears of Lys?" Jorah asked with a frown. "That's an odd name for a wine."
"But not for a tasteless, odorless, colorless, usually undetectable alchemical poison that slowly dissolves the imbiber's bowels over the course of a day." I sipped from my glass while the three of them stared speechless. "It is rather popular among Maesters and the more knowledgeable nobles of Westeros due to how its symptoms resemble some of the worst diseases of the belly."
"This is a poor joke," Lynesse hissed, more fearful than angry. As a Hightower brat, she had probably heard of the poison herself.
"I assure you it is no joke," I told the older woman. "But since I'm pretty sure I was the only target and I rendered myself immune to the Tears long ago, no harm done."
"I'm not feeling hungry any more," Lynesse muttered. "Jorry, can we leave now?" Her husband agreed and after they'd hastily agreed to a more official meeting in a few days they retreated as quickly as dignity would allow. The door rammed closed behind them seemingly by itself, the bit of solid flame in the keyhole still under my control.
xxxx
"Their loss," I said to nobody in particular then turned to a very uneasy looking Tregar. "You know, the new wine gets even better with the addition of the Tears. Makes you wonder if the Alchemists could find a way to deliberately improve it. There must be much profit to be made in having the best wine in the world."
"I... deeply apologize my lady," the merchant prince said just a bit stiffly. "I'll find the culprits for this dreadful breach of hospitality as soon as possible."
"Nice. Let me give you something to help in your search." My empty glass became red hot in my fingers and the honey-like mass reshaped itself to a cellphone-sized disc. The silver knife that had come with the octopus and lime dish melted next, the molten metal forming a ring around the glass, then a thin back and a smaller handle, before both of them cooling as I leached the heat away. "Here," I said, holding the small mirror before Tregar's face. "Can you see the culprit now?"
"M-my l-lady-" the rich man stammered, face pale and hands shaking, but he was interrupted by every light in the chamber growing dim. The lanterns were all tiny blue flames flickering in the gloom, the room seemingly swallowed by my rapidly expanding shadow.
"I am no conjurer of cheap tricks," I boomed, doing my best to make my voice deeper and echoing and getting pretty close. "I gave you a chance to deal with me fairly and you rejected it. I gave you a second chance to make profit, if with some temporary setbacks, yet here we are." I narrowed my eyes at him. "Annoy me again and you'll suffer worse than you could possibly imagine."
"You're a... a s-sorceress!" he gibbered, trying to get away from me by pressing himself deeper into his seat.
"Yes? I thought that was a given when I introduced myself as Flann Belaerys," I easily admitted. "What did you think I was, as a member of a Valyrian High House? Why even try to poison me?"
"A fraud?" he half-asked in a tinny voice. "We could pick up your Westerosi contacts after the... obvious and...clueless middlewoman was out of the way, get our hands on the newly discovered gem mine."
"Ugh, greed. The bane of men now as it was before the Doom." I thought about my options. Ignoring the poisoning attempt wouldn't have worked. Contrary to his current showing, Tregar was not an idiot; as soon as I failed to expire he'd put all of his attention into finding out how because there was no mundane antidote to the Tears of Lys. With the resources of a major House behind the investigation, all my covert plans would be ruined. Getting rid of him right now wouldn't have worked either; he had backers and allies that knew of this meeting. Missing the meeting entirely to a fabricated delay would have been best... but I didn't think of it back then. Which left only one option.
"W-what are you d-doing?" he fearfully demanded as I pulled his belt off him, ripped it in two pieces, then started tying his arms to his seat.
"Unnatural and very wild sex, obviously." The moment his mouth gaped open at my comment I rammed one of the still mostly full wine bottles in and forced him to drink it. When the empty bottle was thrown aside and he gasped for air I rammed in the next one and the next until he was so drunk he could barely stay awake.
By then quite a bit of blood had pulled into a cup from the cut I'd made under his left wrist so I healed it and cut open my own wrist to fill up the other half before mixing them together and starting to paint in a circle around me, Tregar and the chair. Not a line, not a simple circle, but in the glyphs of High Valyrian and one of the two most frequently used for such purposes.
Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon, Udrāzma, Letagon
Three times three pairs of glyphs as was right and proper, nine for me, nine for him. Then I reached out with my magic and the glyphs flared with green flame. Udrāzma, Rule. Letagon, Bind. And as the blood magic flared high, I lashed out with Greensight. The two spheres of power entwined and mixed before ramming into Tregar Ormollen's mind along with my own.
Had he been sober, or braver, or less compromised by a sorcery built upon his own blood mixed with my own, had he not forfeited the protections of hospitality and personally tried to kill me while I was his guest, he might have been able to resist. As things stood he shook and tried to rise, whining and biting down at the rug I'd stuffed into his mind while my mental shadow burst into his mindscape like a battering ram. His spirit resisted instinctively, but I was mentally older, more used to hardship and backed by magic while he could hardly think straight. With red shadowy tendrils of sorcery I bound him, while mental spikes glowing with the sacrifice of the target's own blood were hammered in, fixing the mental link through which I would rule him. The more of his own effort and will were expended to fight the spell, the stronger the spell became for the sacrifice.
Finally, his mind did not merely retreat like a beaten dog as would have probably happened had I overwhelmed him normally, but was completely bound. A bundle of sensations formed in the back of my mind, similar to Featherball's but more constant. Tremar Ormollen, when he finally recovered from his overdrinking, would always be able to feel my presence as I now felt his, both of us having a vague awareness of what the other was doing. And when it was needed I could always share in his senses or puppet him like a mere animal, struggle as he might.
The connection did have certain drawbacks. The link would be a constant annoyance, for once; how many girls wanted to be even vaguely aware of a guy's thoughts all the time? It fed on vitality, for another; the price of not shattering Tregar's mind and leaving him a vegetable was that he'd not live more than a decade. And unlike with animals where I could shift the link around, this one would occupy a portion of my attention for as long as Tregar lived.
Yet for the possibilities it opened up, I could live with that... and Tregar would not, so it was good.