"Welcome though you always are at Ten Towers, niece, I do wonder what has kept you here so long on this visit."
Asha lifted her head from the book she had chosen from the Reader's library, a little ashamed at having been called on what felt like cowardice.
"There's madness afoot on Pyke, nuncle," she said, closing her book but keeping it in her hand - a book on dragonlore, in a time of dragons, if the rumours she had heard during her stop in Volantis were to be believed - as she rose to speak with Rodrick, eye to eye. He was not a tall man, her mother's brother, and she was a tall woman, so they were matched, more or less. "I worry, and wish to spy it from afar - I was too close when I docked to see my father, but from here, I think I can see the shape of it."
"And is that shape a black ship with a red deck?" he asked, "captained by a dangerous fool?"
The most scandalous of her father's brothers had visited the Isles for the first time in years not long before Asha's departure, The Crow's Eye was a fascinating man, but a terrible one, and Asha had not trusted a word from his blued lips - the Reader had shared her doubts, as had no few of her friends among her father's bannermen.
"What fools he thinks us," she said, looking away to hide her rage. The Reader did not approve of such extremes as she sometimes felt, but that did not make her feel them any less. "Expecting us to believe that he has journeyed to Valyria of old, as though it is not known the world over that such a journey guarantees death!"
"Mayhaps he has been to Valyria," the Reader said, surprising her - he had been more sceptical of Euron's wild claims than anyone! "But I know for certain that he has dabbled in sorcery. I have looked into him quite closely in your absence, and have heard… Disquieting things in response to my enquiries."
"What enquiries are these?"
"A reader may find friends all across the known world, niece," he said, eyes twinkling in amusement, "and am I not the Reader?"
"Tell me of these enquiries," Asha pressed. "Will your revelations keep the Crow's Eye from my father if shared with our people?"
The sway Euron exercised over her father frightened Asha, particularly now that she had seen her father for herself - it seemed to her that they were in genuine danger, that he would return them all to the Old Way if given a weak leader to guide.
A weak leader like her long-missing baby brother, for example.
"He will remain at your father's side for as long as your father will have him, regardless of what the people think," the Reader said, all laughter gone from his sharp eyes. "He must have a worthy opponent, an alternative more enticing than Victarion or the Damphair."
Victarion would never entice anyone to anything, save his men to their deaths in battle - he was a fanatic, just as deep in lunacy as Aeron, but directed differently. Victarion believed in the Old Way as some men believed in gods, and was dangerous for his close-mindedness, his certainty.
Aeron was something else altogether, a zealot but a peaceful man, a man not given to excess in anything save his devotion to the Drowned God. His fear had sparked something in Asha's heart, a fear of her own, a fear that followed the same shape as the shadow looming over Pyke.
All of it came down to the Crow's Eye. She wondered how much of their fears Euron saw, with his bright blue eye, and with the black.
"Whatever nonsense my fool brother has put in your head of being his heir, you can forget it!" Gwynesse said, imperious and proud, as she poured tea into delicate cups. "I am the rightful ruler of Ten Towers, and I will have my rights!"
"I'm sure you think so, sister," the Reader said, rolling his eyes to Asha over Gwynesse's shoulder. "But that is not for you to decide - now pour the tea, and show Asha some affection, hmm?"
Asha smiled, accepting Gwynesse's scowling offer of tea, and glanced about.
Her mother was absent again. Unsurprising, but no less worrying for it. Alannys Harlaw was absent as much from the real world as from meal times, and Asha worried constantly for her mother - in that, at least, she was not concerned for her father. He still loved his wife deeply, even if he did seem to resent Asha for reminding him of her mother's plight, and that boded well for Asha's hopes to lever herself between him and the Crow's Eye.
"And that boy of yours," Gwynesse said, staring harder at Asha now. "He flirted with me! How dare he! I am his host!"
"I think you'll find that I am his host, sister," Lord Rodrick said cheerfully, sipping at his tea and smiling. Asha had gifted him with a pair of Myrish seeing-glasses, found on her travels, and he wore them constantly - they made him look an owl, his eyes huge and staring behind them, but he loved them, so Asha hid her laughter. "And our niece has her crew well in hand - I am sure no harm will come to anyone as a result of their presence here."
Asha knew that for a fact, because her crew knew the penalty for causing harm - there had been incidents, early in their long journey, when some of her men had tried to take women who were less than willing, or to pillage when they had stock to trade, and each infringement had cost them a finger, or an ear, or a toe. They had not been long about coming into line.
"I will skin any man who harms you alive, aunty," she said, swallowing her bitter tea. "Worry not on that front - they are good boys, so long as they continue to fear me."
Gwynesse looked less pleased by that than Asha felt she ought, but it would do - anything that quelled Gwynesse's razored tongue would do.
"Your fool mother has been trouble enough, without your crew, " Gwynesse grumbled, "always wailing and moaning about her absent babes."
"Not so absent now," Asha said, "and yet she can hardly stand to look upon my face - are you sure that my brothers and me are the cause of her pain?"
"You four, and your rotten-smelling father," Gwynesse hissed, fists clenched tight on the table top. "My sister has known nothing but pain from the day she took Balon Greyjoy's name."
Rotten-smelling, she had called Lord Balon. Like the stench Qarl had noticed over Pyke, like the greasy shadows that permeated the hall around the Seastone Chair, like the shadows that infested her dreams, trailing the ghost of the Silence.
Qarl looked surprised when Asha stormed aboard, weighed down by a case of books from her uncle's library and more worries than she had borne in a long while.
"My mother is losing her mind," she said, "and my father is not far behind her. My uncles are at war, and the winner is plain from here - what kind of Isles will we have if Euron rises to the throne?"
Qarl spat over the side of the ship, quiet as he so rarely was, and turned to look her in the eye after a long, thoughtful silence.
"Not the sort of Isles for the likes of us, I think," he said. "What heading, captain?"
"I think," Asha said, "that we ought seek out the Damphair, and seek his counsel - two uncles who see beyond these islands of ours have I, and I would have wisdom from each of them."
"Great Wyk, then," Qarl said, offering her half a bow before turning for the helm.
Asha waited there, at the top of the gang plank, and turned to look back up at the heights of Ten Towers.
There, a pale ghost that might have been her mother.
Beyond, a dark shadow that was likely her aunt.
And here, waving down at her in farewell, with his ridiculous Myrish lenses perched on his nose, was the Reader, as constant as the salt in the sea.
"Great Wyk, then," she said, and gestured for two of the lads to come forward and lift the plank. Best to set off with this fine wind behind them, and hope for the best ahead of them.
Perhaps it was time to write to Theon, far inland at Winterfell, and tell him that he ought to seek home - he would doubtless be next to useless after so long so far from the sea, but he might work as a symbol, or as a support.
Because it was clear now, as clear as the sun in the sky above her - if Balon Greyjoy fell, Asha herself could well be all that stood between the Crow's Eye and the Seastone Chair.