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You finish your meal and make way back down the hill towards the low-lying streets cradling the harbor.
“It has a sort of charm from up here,” Ellyn remarks of the city.
“All agree,” you say. “Merchants of worth live above the rest. My own family lives two hills over.”
“Within the black walls?” she asks. From atop this craftsmen’s hill, the blackstone walls of the Old Valyrian founders are much more prominent. As is some of the squalor around the harbor and the general disrepair evident in some sections of the high walls wrapping around the city. A legacy of the Tyrant’s ploy. The sack of the city was before your birth, but the event and the subsequent years of occupation have left their marks.
“… near it,” you answer. Your father’s efforts have put your family only just a rung beneath the esteemed families within. He has the honor of a vote within the Dyer’s Syndicate, but there is a gulf between that and the honor in being of old wealth. For the past few hundred years, only a dozen families have lived within the walls. The names have changed, but the number has remained the same, some relic of an old form of governance if you recall correctly. Most prominent is the Archon himself followed by eleven others who all have the privilege of being styled as magisters.
Reaching the old inn half-deserted inn proves to be an easier journey in descent. You enter to find Harlor rummaging behind the bar and Noren slouched down asleep in a chair by the hearth. The squire boy is still sulking about, so you presume the others haven’t taken flight. The boy glares at you, so you pat your new sword that he unwittingly paid for and grin in response. You greet Harlor and, much to his delight, pass him the writ of sale for his part of the coin so far. Gwynfryd steps into view from atop the stairs and looks down upon you, making no remark over the presence of her cousin by your side.
“Where is Jeyne?” you ask.
“Abed,” Gwynfryd answers.
“Get her. And dress for comfort. We are leaving,” you tell her.
“Leaving where?” she asks.
“Somewhere to see her treated and me paid for the trouble,” you say.
“You mean to sell her,” she translates, all cold judgement as you have come to expect.
“It was the plan, no? You knew this. Was your day of use with her?” you ask. She was supposed to question the wench for what good it might do.
