MYREN
The men had little and less luck asking and forcing information out of the captive girl. But then, that is all they are, thought Myren. They gave her the room alone with the maid, a small storage space above the ballast.
"Do you know who I am?" The girl shook her head.
"My name is Myren. I work for Denys Darklyn." She shuddered at the mention of his name. Perhaps there was something there, perhaps she had merely seen him for more than two heartbeats. "Don't you think it would be fair to tell me your name?" She silently stared into Myren's eyes. The child was no maester, but there was aught to be said for wit among common girls. Myren would know.
"I'm telling naught."
"Darke was cruel to you, wasn't he?" He's killed children before. You got off well.
"He tied me up and I'm not telling you aught."
"Naught save your name? I feel unkind talking without using it." The politeness was unusually difficult for her to manufacture. "I'm sure you have a pretty name."
"If I tell you my name, must needs I tell you aught else?"
"Of course not." Where would you get such an idea? This is an interrogation.
"My name is Coliete Stitch. Now let me alone."
"Very well…" For now. Myren turned, rising to full height, only to find a small crowd had gathered outside. She heard a voice from the back.
"Well?"
"Does the name 'Coliete Stitch' mean aught to any man?" she asked, sidling through the crowd. It's as if my life were a mummer's farce. With no response, Myren decided it was of naught great concern.
"Her name makes no matter. We must know about this knight." Brown Courser interjected. Darke, feeding his horse on the deck in the path of every hand, scowled.
"I killed him…or near as much as makes no matter."
"Killed and he makes no matter- near killed and he's more a problem than before. I've a mind he's alive." Darke returned to his work, accepting the chance he had not fully killed the knight with one sidelong swipe. That one's no man, thought Myren. Her master spoke to her much later when the crowd had dispersed, having ordered the men to return to their posts.
"Myren, there was a time some days ago that a merchant informed on a whore who had stolen from some dignitary. In truth, I had a mind there was some gold in it, but the trip turned out of little worth." He continued, standing stock-still next to her as she tended the ravens. "I ended up making some fool's errand out of it for Brown Courser, that the whore was some woods witch-it makes no matter. I had every man of them on death's door. There was an old man the merchant bloodied after-some knight a certain sellsword of ours decided near enough to dead- a girl I killed and the whore herself on the flood dying."
"And you think the knight is out for revenge."
"It's like as not, with most men. I saw but one maid, yet Darke described a knight travelling with a woman and three. Perhaps the old man died, perhaps not."
"We must needs ask Darke to describe the group in greater detail. If we are incorrect, there is a knight after us for another reason than revenge. It might be that the girls are catspaws of a crown." Denys visibly considered it.
"Waters is a liar. I describe the knight and he agrees, correctly or no. I ask him to describe the knight and he invents details. Has Brown Courser told him of the woods witch?"
"Like as not, he sees woods witches everywhere now. Any sellsword who tells him a story has that much more right to be cocksure, and Brown courser is surer than most men." The silence hung in the air for a few heartbeats, no more than half a hundred.
"We are not to ask Darke for further detail. What he has revealed to us suffices for me."
"Can you truly be so sure? The rational thing would be to adjust for the risk." As she spoke, the lantern on the table in the ship's ravenry shook, light oscillating on the face of Denys Darklyn, or what so ever his true name may be. He formed a deep, contemplative look, an unusual thing, as most decisions came upon him quickly.
"There is an opportunity we must take while the iron is hot." Myren thought for a moment that it might be there were different vagaries of wisdom- or perhaps, as she believed thus far- that certainty was the only option. She nodded calmly in response to the master's assertion. I shall never agree, though. Does he endeavor to ensnare me into his trappings of power? He will endeavor for naught.
"When a man strikes hot iron, he will be sure to have first a hammer lest he strike and be branded for a fool."
"Suppose a man is one part in thee certain."
"It is not aught upon which he should dare to strike."
"Suppose two parts in three are sure."
"One part is enough to be branded." A light came to his eyes.
"So, one part is like enough to not dare, but not like enough to dare? Would one part in ten yet be enough to be branded?" Here it was, the trap.
"It is, yet a chance of nine parts in ten must needs be taken." Even as she spoke, doubt crept into the edges of her mind. Did I only agree to sound a reasonable argument? What if I brand my hand all the same?
Without waiting for her to finish considering it, Denys stood.
"The day you find a grave decision to make and you have certainty of nine parts in ten, I shall tell you my true name."
With that, he was gone.
As Myren slept that night, she banished all thoughts of the conversation, having challenged and entertained to the end of her patience. She could recall decisions where there were more than ten true, possible, foreseeable choices. Was there truly no way to be sure in nine parts while one remained?
Morning came during sleep for the first time in a moon's turn. Waking, Myren decided that she would miss the whispers of Catelyn Blackwood, the uncertain truths that circulated through the old castle. On the boat there were only men apart from her, and men do not carry secrets, not even in love. Must a man promulgate all that he is? If others are, he must for love.
And then for the thought when it came again, she turned away. A man wants not love, he does not know it, not truly. A man wants naught save the carnal pleasures he can appropriate from a girl to unwise with the ways of the world to know to refuse.
"Myren, we've reached Maidenpool." Whatever man spoke behind her both turned her from her thoughts and spoke the truth. Passing through the Saltpans had been the longest and most difficult part of the course, Denys having to explain their purpose with various rotating lies or in many cases provide veiled threats to those who questioned them.
If the man had one skill, it was creating a false impression.
The hills east of Maidenpool could be seen at a distance, seeming to Myren to endeavor in vain to show how the land was before the city became a stinking hole with growing pains. To make matters worse, it would only grow into another Flea Bottom, a haven for rampant crime that smells all the worse, layers of human excrement on top of layers of death on top of layers of the sordid affairs of men.
But Thenn was no more a place where a woman could find peace. There were years' rides of trees, clean water was as abundant as a man or woman could wish, and there were naught who could not grow accustomed to the freezing wind. The trouble came with the customs.
Rather than being a high sin and punishable by death or mutilation, rape was required should a man desire a wife. Add that women were expected to become barbaric warriors, and the streets of King's Landing began to smell faintly of fair flowers.
Randyll Tarly was a hard man, Myren could see it in every aspect of him. His visage was one of strength and determination, a short grey beard and the rest a deliberate shave. In many ways, he had always reminded Myren of Tywin Lannister, whom she had seen only once. Tarly held the city and others like it with the swift sword of justice promised to killers and the killed. With his son, Dickon, married to Eleanor Mooton, he had assumed the legal role of lord, though he had truly won it by forcibly taking the city.
"Who is he that leads?" asked the lord himself.
"Denys Darke" Denys Darklyn responded at the gathering. He had paid the crew for the voyage and their silence, and assembled the small group that remained before Tarly in private appeal. "We ask only swift passage to Duskendale. Word of an associate has recently arrived." The lie was one well told, but there could be no hoodwinking Randyll Tarly. Their true purpose in the city was to recover the body of Escenane Waters, a lifetime Sword who had given his dying breath to their purpose. Denys had explained it a moon's turn previously.
"Do you know why you and I are on this mummer's farce?"
"We hunger for power."
"You do. I do. We don't. The Swords, to my knowledge, cause chaos."
"Chaos? There can be no power without order."
"Oh, but there can be. The weak hide in their order, they limit themselves. I am outside, I am capable of all manners of evil."
"And you are doomed to have only the power of fear."
"Ah, but that is the variety that lasts for all days. Kings die and lines leave, but men still speak of dragons, some even in whispers."
"That is why we recover the body of Waters, if it is all as you claim."
It all made sense to her. The bastard was infected, after all.
Randyll, staring down with a disapproving glare could not have their heads as it was clear he wished, for to his knowledge they had not violated the king's law.
"You and your wife will have four horses that I can spare, two for those killers." Tarly was not a man to mince words. Cocksure. "They will suffice for your security. Men say that if you are honest, you do not need my sword, if not, you will not want it." Moments later they were ahorse, like as not to rid Tarly of a problem. Myren understood, he was a busy man with the amount of supplicants. What irked her was the assumption that she and Denys were married-no, that she was a wife.
"Lay off. It gets a man no place better to follow up." Denys Darklyn had said as he turned her away from Randyll's steel gaze. "Should it help, you're not the first." Myren scowled. "Why did I think it would help?" He said after a pause. Yes, why did you?
As they led the beasts past the Stinking Goose, Denys had chosen a dappled mare for himself and a roan gelding for Darke. "Can't have him pulling anything on this ride." He whispered to Myren. As Brown Courser announced he had no preference, Myren led away a great gold stallion between that and a grey mare while in her mind deciding that it was more like the sellsword had no judgement of horseflesh.
The pink stone of Maidenpool darkened to grey in the evening light as Myren took the lead, as though on a vanguard of a battle that would never be. But if there were a battle presented to her, whether one of words or weapons, she would see it through.
Chaos would grip Westeros in days. She would rise.
Of these things, she was certain for nine parts in ten.