Celaena II

Celaena paused on the stairs, jumped straight to the landing and walked briskly to the gallery overlooking the training yard. The hollers and encouragements of the spectators were unilaterally supporting one side of the match but that didn't affect her brother's performance. It was simply not possible for anything to make Kaeron worse than he already was. Aaron Santagnar muttered something she was too far away to hear but she could guess the disapproval in the Master at Arms' voice. Kaeron parried Edwin's blow quickly at least though the counter could charitably be called 'halfhearted'. Instead of blocking or parrying, the prince took a step closer and absorbed the blow on his padded shoulder. Kaeron couldn't—or didn't—answer that for crucial seconds and the fighters in the small crowd broke out in a cheer as that cost him the match. The next, last blow left her brother on the ground. Her feet were flying down the short stairs and crossing the yard before thoughts could her mind but Edwin and his Stark betrothed still reached him first. Her brother stood up before any of them could offer him a hand, his demeanor making it clear he did not expect one and gave a bow so courteous she could almost believe he had no bruises. Almost.

"Are you well? I did not mean to—" Edwin began.

"It was my pleasure to be given the opportunity to train with a warrior as fearsome as yourself, Your Grace." The gauntlet still on his face left his words distorted but no one spoke against it. Metal was twice as expressive as his face would be anyway.

With another bow he was off and Celaena followed him with after sharing a perpetually confused look with Edwin. Ser Santagnar caught them almost immediately but the smell of blood oranges preceded him on the autumn winds. "You did well in incorporating the riposte, Kaeron."

"I observed Ser Harry Hardyng and Ser Robar Royce practising it earlier," he replied.

"It was good to use it regardless. You still need to work on you reflexes though," his face twisted on the second last word. Or the lack thereof, she filled in. Kaeron gave a nod and the knight moved on to the other, victorious side of the match, encircled as the prince was. Her brother shrugged off the compliment, the advice and the armour alike. One of the Redwyne twins gave a loud pat to his friend for "besting the Cloaked Lord before he could fly off" and the itch of impatience erupted under her skin.

"You could start trying at these fights, you know. It wouldn't kill you."

"Won't it?" He smiled wryly.

Her frustration spilled out with a huff of breath, headless of who could hear her. It turned out to be Lady Sansa, who had made her way to them as silently as her wolf. Kaeron turned to face her before Celaena even noticed her approach and gave yet another bow.

"No, don't—you needn't bow to me, my lord," she spoke hurriedly. "It would aggravate your bruises and I am not your superior besides."

Celaena voiced out her frank agreement.

"Chivalry raises every lady of the Faith above a knight, my lady, let alone me," he replied.

"Does that chivalry extend towards the daughter of a faithless lord as well, my lord?" Sansa broke into a smile and Kaeron shifted his feet.

"It does extend towards the daughter of the Lord Hand."

"Regardless of Argos Sevenstars' personal opinions on the matter?" The name was one Celaena could not place but Kaeron evidently could, from the astonishment on his face. It was not something a young lady should say from the way Lady Sansa blushed and her brother's still surprised look. That alone made her like the Stark girl.

"There's a reason his name isn't spoken on Hugor's Holy Day, my lady." The response was a tad too late and the awkwardness stretched between them.

"I hope Edwin isn't injured?" Genuine worry drew out the inquiry from Celaena as much as anything else.

"No, the prince is well." Lady Sansa stole a glance of her engaged and they followed with their gazes. Edwin's view of them was obscured by Tyrek but she could still see Talla Tarly's hands on his cheek. Cleaning some unseen speck of dirt and lingering.

Elyana's arrival saved her from the decision of telling the clueless girl of her betrothed's other….interests. "Edwin! You promised me you wouldn't get into any fights today!" The princess did not pause to give her brother a chance at a reply. "The Tyrells are almost here, their banners are in the city! And have you seen—ah, Lady Sansa, there you are! Come quickly, I want your direwolf to stand among our party too." Sansa gave the two siblings a small smile before hurrying after her goodsister-to-be.

"She's half in love already," her brother mused, head twisted with a far-eyed look. "I wonder if she'll go to the marriage oblivious too. I would say I feel sorry for the poor girl…but well, fate doesn't help those without preparations."

"Perhaps you could take that wisdom and practice for your days at the Wall," she snapped.

"Then again," he continued as if he hadn't heard her, "sometimes the summers last a decade. Mayhaps that's what our new queen will be fit to make preparations for." He shot a calculating look at her as she refused to answer. "You should make preparations too, Celaena. Or will you be oblivious as Elyana goes to her marriage bed?"

"I know not what you're talking about," she argued.

"She doesn't want you," he said, the words as cutting as his tone. "You may consider my talents at the battlefield to be less than shameful," he cut her off before she could deny it. "Don't lie, little sister," Kaeron's tone might confuse someone into thinking it a patient chastisement of an elder brother but then his eyes cleared that misconception. "But I have seen enough and Aenyra agrees with me. You need to lose that wide-eyed infatuation of yours before I need to do it for you."

He left her with one last heavy look and she made it to Aenyra's side without thinking back on it.

Her sister startled out of a daydream when Celaena tapped her shoulder and blushed prettily. She did everything like that though so Celaena barely noticed by now. "I heard there was a match between our prince and our brother," she told-asked. It was something Aenyra did when she did not know much and more often than not, the listener told her what she did not. Knowledge of the verbal trap did not stop her from falling into it however and Aenyra gave a slight grimace when she heard the explanation. They both knew the ropes by now. His mood would be foul after this, made worse as he pretended to be unaffected by regular humiliation. He would hide himself away then until the armor on his face was back.

"He won't lurk out of sight for long this time," Aenyra said with uncharacteristic assurance. Yet if there was one thing Celaena could be confident of, it was her sister's estimation of people she knew. And her brother's capacity for peculiar behavior, she reminded herself. "With all these knights of the Reach arriving with the Tyrells, today's fight will be out of everyone's mind before long. I have already had two squires asking for my favor in the tourney Uncle Robert will throw for Elyana." Celaena could easily believe that, her brother's words coming back to haunt her at the last word like they'd never gone away.

"I'll be joining you in the Queen's Ballroom tomorrow," Celaena tactlessly changed the subject.

Aenyra, bless her heart, took to it without any questioning. "That'll be wonderful! Let me guess: you want to interrogate our visitors from the east for stories? I can't see you entertaining merchant princes otherwise."

"Desperate times call for desperate measures. Anant has gone on an expedition, he won't be back for moons." At her sister's questioning look she elaborated, "He has been in the red and this will be enough to pay back his loans."

She didn't get a chance to reply. The eldest prince and princess took their places at the head of the greeting party and Aenyra leaned back on her etiquette lessons, folding her hands in front of her and looking on with rapt eyes. Celaena copied her. They stood waiting patiently, with her foot tapping in coordination with the arriving column. The entourage from Highgarden could be a small army on its own and it took just as long marching in. Kaeron had said something about the Queen of Thorns sending people she liked and also people she disliked but that had not truly captured her attention. The princess they were coming for had. Elyana's melodious voice floated to where she stood, borne on the back of the winds her ancestor had commanded. Even as her Tyrell betrothed made his way towards her, her head remained fixated on Talla Tarly.

She could take that as a sign, something to sooth the hope. But the smile Elyana gave to her betrothed was unmistakable and she laughed lightly as he bent to kiss her hand. They are right, disappointed thoughts and disappointment at those thoughts lolled in her gut. I can't dare to dream about her anymore.

She excused herself when no one was looking and slipped quickly to the Tower of the Hand. There would be no one here, the highborn would be greeting the Reachmen and the servants preparing for the feast. She did not expect to see a girl lounging near the balcony, seemingly at ease waiting in front of Celaena's chambers. Honey blonde hair fell down in a neat braid down the Arryn's back, tight enough that not a strand fell out of place. Everything about Arwyn was neat: her hair, her dress—slim and elegant in a way that made her seem taller than she really was, almost seem enough to reach Celaena's collarbone—and even her movements as she stood to greet Celaena. "Lady Celaena," and she resisted the urge to correct her. She was no lady. "I though you would be with the rest of the welcoming party."

"I always try not to be where I am expected," Celaena shrugged.

"Why not?" The question caught her off guard. Her siblings never needed to ask her that and no one else had ever bothered.

"Because nothing surprising ever seems to happen. You being here, for instance, is rather surprising," she diverted, eager to slink away from the topic.

Arwyn gave a perfectly symmetrical smile that nonetheless seemed genuine. "I used to have my quarters here but…." Her eyebrows rose and fell. "Everything has changed."

Celaena could not help but agree. "You aren't hitting me for touching your stack of books now, for starters."

"When did I ever do that?" Mouth agape and eyes innocent. Celaena would almost believe it if she hadn't been consorting with smugglers and thieves since before she bled. Arwyn relented at her look. "Perhaps you were messing my stack. And far as hitting without reason goes, the crow calls the raven black."

Celaena took that as a confirmation and ignored the latter implication. "It is good that you have confessed, saving your soul from the Seven Hells. Have no fear, I won't send a hulking brute to demand satisfaction."

"Or be the hulking brute yourself?"

Celaena snickered, she could not help it. "You have my word."

"How can I take a rogue lady at her word? Unless she can help me to prove her gallantry and faithful heart," Arwyn ventured, smoothing out invisible strains in her clothing.

She motioned for her to go on and Arwyn did. "My quarters were placed here and if it was not too much of an imposition…." She trailed off.

"What isn't too much of an imposition?"

"I believe I might have left some trinkets behind before my fostering." Arwyn's tight braid was usually beneficial, keeping her long locks fastened but now its honey-blonde color only seemed to highlight the red in her ears.

Celaena frowned. "Everything would have been swept away by now—oh, wait. Did you leave them in the tunnels?"

As if to prove it was possible, Arwyn's form seemed to become even shorter. "I didn't know I wasn't supposed to, and then my lady mother came to help me pack and I just didn't have the chance to—nevermind. Right, yes, I might have left them in the tunnels."

"Might have? Even I'm not foolish enough to go into them and you walked in, brazen as a bull when you were what, six?"

"Eight," she replied primly. "And if you must call me a brazen beast, I would prefer to be known as a falcon."

Celaena shot her an unimpressed look, the closest approximation of Queen Cersei's that she could manage. "Then again, who am I to judge a foolish, brash girl? As far as I remember, your rooms were those." She pointed to Kaeron's chambers.

When Arwyn nodded an affirmation, she gave a dubious snort. "Perfect. We'd have better luck going to Yi-Ti and marrying the woman with a monkey's tail. My brother is the only one who can open that door."

Arwyn's little face pinched in determination, one that didn't lag when the door failed to miraculously open at her tug. She flew to the second door then, quick as a cat and was within Celaena's room in a moment, forcing the latter to follow.

Celaena would be angry if the other girl's face hadn't gone pale and then green. "It's so….dirty."

"You are welcome to come into my room however, Lady Arryn," she said dryly. "I am certain you will not lose your manners when you set foot inside the door."

"And I am certain you will lose your clothes and mayhaps an elephant in this mess," Arwyn said as she started sorting different things into different bundles. Celaena let her, watching those efforts make no difference except divide her room with the brutality of a civil war. Arwyn ran a red washcloth—Celaena would not be surprised if the girl always carried that thing with her. She had certainly never seen it before—over a silver and violet brush that had a coating of dust so deep, it seemed to be a secret hidden away for decades. The poor hairbrush, which had once stood highest on the dresser, fell onto the seat as the red cloth and its mistress moved on. The king in the south falls first, she commented to herself.

The bundle of garments resting beneath the garden window was precariously close to tipping and a scarf fell onto the wayside. A deserter that escaped the clutches of his captors, his dream to flee into the southern kingdom. Arwyn obliviously stepped on the scarf, turning the lively orange to a mud brown. The runaway has been caught by an enemy that takes no prisoners, she thought mournfully even as Arwyn profusely apologised, her manners restored from earlier.

Seeing that it would be her books and notes that would be decimated—or cleaned, in Arwyn's way—she doused herself out of the lethargy that had crept into her bones like ivy. "Why did you sweep in here anyway?"

Arwyn looked up from where she had been examining one of Celaena's most treasured notes. It was a map of Essos and the Summer Isles from before Corlys Velaryon's voyages and the cunningly made marks on it were all places the Sea Snake had visited later. She liked to imagine this was the same map Corlys had used, and Kaeron had told her once that a Velaryon bride had come to the Red Keep not long after the Sea Snake's demise. How far flung were the odds that she had brought the Sea Snake's childhood map with her? Enough that Celaena kept the embers of plausibility burning, a secret that could be shattered if she told someone.

In lieu of a response Arwyn walked to the dresser—a black and gold pin now reigned over the southern kingdom—and started to knock on the wall in different places. Celaena was anticipating a portion of the wall to side behind itself but when Arwyn's hum of satisfaction came, it was in the direction of a shifted tile in the floor.

The shaft of the tunnel, which seemed more an overgrown rat's house, ran along horizontally and in the first few seconds as Celaena climbed down—almost on all fours considering how low she had to crouch—she knew she'd have nightmares of being trapped here. "Of course you wouldn't have any problems in a place that small," Celaena grumbled as Arwyn led the way right. "I've seen taller crannogmen." She regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth. Calling someone a mudman was bad enough but the lady of a great house that she barely knew? Her brother would throw her from the Moon Door himself to remedy the wrong.

But the other girl just stuck her tongue out and that alone left Celaena so dumbstruck she failed to notice they had walked into a dead-end. She was still processing that when Arwyn turned back to their rat tunnel and took the left passage but she at least had the presence of mind to ask, "Do you have any notion of where we are going?"

"There are only two directions to go in this corridor," she remarked coyly and Celaena barked out a startled laugh. This corridor had a cranny that went in the general right direction and Arwyn's grin was the only light thing in there.

"It looks like no one has been in here since it was made," Celaena said.

"Mayhaps the last person to come in was Maegor the Mouse through the rat tunnel," Arwyn japed and Celaena tensed, waiting for the sneer. But the other girl was merely struggling to hold her dress in one hand as she tried navigating a pile of rubble. Celaena forced her muscles to ease out the urge to flee. It was amusing, really. It was certainly the most inventive jape at a Targaryen's expense she had seen. Though it was too late to laugh at it and Arwyn was avoiding looking at her, she gave a hand to the struggling lady, until she had crossed the dirt as spotless as before. To let her know she did not take offense, though the urge to playfully dirty her garments was intense. Once Celaena had crossed as well—without any help, partly because she did not care for some dirt on her clothes and partly to see the small pout Arwyn gave—the other girl started probing the wall. Her efforts were rewarded with an opening in the floorboard and when Celaena gave an affirmation, they climbed up. Kaeron wouldn't be here now. "Oh, the rat tunnel from his room is large enough to fit an aurochs. Seems fair," she lamented, only to be rewarded by a smack on her shoulder.

She couldn't have responded even if she wanted to because that was the moment they entered her brother's room. It was surprisingly…..ordinary. Kaeron hadn't let anyone inside for so long, she had half-imagined it to be akin to a torturer's dungeon. But the only thing that was different from her own chambers was the arrangement of the furniture and—

"It's so neat," Arwyn gasped as soon as the words left her mouth as if she hadn't meant to say it. She stuck to her social folly with a stubbornness Celaena could admire. "After seeing your quarters, I had expected it to look like Harrenhal."

"Is my brother truly so detestable?" Celaena said with mock-offense, for Kaeron's sake, knowing he would never do the same for her.

"No!" Arwyn exclaimed. "He has been the soul of politeness itself the few times I have met him."

"Then make your case, fair lady," she prodded, adding a smile to let her know it was a farce even as her curiosity begged Arwyn to speak.

"Have you been to the Eyrie? You must have heard of the Moon Door at the very least." Celaena gave a nod and Arwyn kept speaking. "Kaeron's eyes are like that, a window from the mountaintop. Except there is no view, just a fall that seems like flight at first. When father isn't—wasn't," Celaena froze, realising she shouldn't have brought this topic to light. Lord Jon had died less than six moons ago. But Arwyn just cleaned dirt from her dress, dirt that wasn't there, and continued. "They keep it closed most of the time, the weirwood so sturdy you could lean against it."

"Only if you are as mad as Patchface," she muttered, glad to know there were limits even she would not cross. Arwyn spared her a smile so real she could believe her grief to have fled. It lingered in the size of the smile, the black colouring on her clothes, and the way her thin, neat fingers did not rest in a place for long.

"Kaeron's eyes are like the Moon Door. A closed Moon Door, thankfully. In the Eyrie, we keep it locked with three heavy bronze bars, ones that we both couldn't lift together. But what keeps him barred?" Celaena's finger twitched, drawing them both out of the dream-like state they had been in. She took a step back—when had their bodies come so close together?—and looked around at her brother's room for the lack of distractions.

Oddly, the bed was adjacent to the wall, facing both the window and the door while the back was to a shelf. That struck her as unlike him, too inefficient. How does he use that lower shelf? She took a step closer. The bed was in the corner, flanked by the wall and the small cupboard yet there was a silver of a space between it on both sides. She reached forward with one hand and then paused. Coming into his room was bad enough but if she did this, it would be no better than thieving. Despite what her choice of company would indicate, she had never done that. Maybe 'borrowed' sometimes, she justified.

Turning her attention back to Arwyn, who had lit a candle, she said, "Where were you saying your trinkets are?"

Arwyn straightened the wax a little and beckoned her to follow. Barely a few steps from the entryway was a high shelf, made when the tunnel had been constructed, she guessed. Arwyn reached for it and did not even come close. She tried again, stretching out with one hand to illuminate with the candle and even stood on her toes. Celaena swallowed a chuckle and considered letting her keep trying. She decided against it, knowing she would start cackling like a witch if Arwyn kept at her pitiful attempts. She took the candlestick in one hand, finger brushing Arwyn's knuckles, and reached towards the shelf with the other hand.

There could be vermin up here, she realised a fraction too late. Fortunately, the piece her hand wrapped around was wooden. She still gave it to Arwyn before having a look at it, hoping her shiver went unnoticed. From her smug expression as she brought that 'trinket' closer, Arwyn saw it plain as day.

"What is it?"

"Who is it," Arwyn corrected and Celaena could finally see that it was a doll, its upper body painted Arryn colours while the latter half of the robe had jagged sea green swirls on a black field, as if made by a child's hand. Beneath it were flecks of blue-white paint and it took her a moment to realise that they were not spots of paint carelessly left when the upper was painted. The daughter of the Lord Hand would never have something as ill-made as that, Kaeron's voice rasped in her head. A closer look showed that the doll's robe—dress, it was a lady's dress—had been coloured sorely in Arryn colours and the lower half had been painted over by a child for some reason.

Without giving her a chance to ask, Arwyn ran to Kaeron's room and returned without the candle, closing the tile behind her. "We should run like greased lightning before he gets back."

"Could've used the candlesticks right about now," Arwyn pouted when they reached the rubble but she accepted Celaena's hand without scruples. Celaena said nothing more as she followed Arwyn Arryn into the sparse light offered by her room.