Chapter 12

  Arianne of Tarth

  The needles clicked against each other as her fingers carefully wove the sun-yellow thread into the woolen banner. Another one they could hang in some rarely used room back home, hopefully never to be seen beyond by some lowly knight after a day of feasting, drunk enough he wouldn’t notice nor care about the many mistakes on the pattern.

  She did not hate embroidering, not like she used to when she was younger and she had to watch as Alysanne, her junior by a year, proved to be much better with her tiny lady-like fingers nimble as a bard’s.

  Then her lady mother would spend the day singing her praises all around Evenfall Hall until everyone from the lowest stablehand to the maester had grown sick of hearing them.

  Her eyes wrinkled into a frown. With a breath to bring it into focus, she looked down at herself to see her own dull gray aura flicker with a splash of deep, oozing green.

  Jealousy, Arianne figured. She was becoming quite proficient in telling the emotions apart.

  But it was an unworthy thought. Let no one say Lady Addison Tarth was miserly with her praise to any of her children. Despite Arianne’s many issues, her mother did whatever she could to raise her up in front of others and to herself with soft, encouraging words.

  Close by, her mother and the Lady Lenora Whitehead prattled endlessly about the tournament’s newest scandal, some bawdy not-so-secret affair between a stormlord's bastard and some westerlander knight’s third daughter.

  They tried to keep the lurid details to a minimum, mindful of the young girl in the room, yet sometimes they would subtly glance at her to make sure she wasn’t paying attention before leaning closer to whisper and giggle at each other.

  To repay the favor, Arianne pretended not to listen, gaze distant as if off into her own world. In reality, she was wound tighter than a plucked knot on one of her embroideries, a sheen of sweat already covering her brow.

  Whenever the two were too engrossed in their conversation to notice, she would steal glances at the brown-haired Lady Lenora, and the tension within herself would only increase.

  She should not be using her vision—as she’d come to call it—for this long, but she could not stop herself now that she was beginning to understand a bit more of how this strange power of hers worked.

  Earlier, when Lady Lenora Whitehead arrived for their embroidery session, she had not addressed the woman much beyond the barest of courtesies expected of her. Her mother had confined her to their rooms the whole day yesterday and into the morning today after she fell ill during the feast, and she was committed to the greatest form of rebellion she could muster—sulking.

  Luckily, embroidery no longer felt like a chore now, more a time for sinking into the quiet of her own mind, so she was sure she could sulk the morning away with a needle and thread in hand.

  But whether out of boredom or just a strange feeling urging her to do so, like an itch she couldn’t ignore for long, she had focused her vision on Lady Lenora as she happily chatted with her mom.

  What she saw left her feeling confused.

  Lady Lenora’s aura didn’t make any sense. Even as she laughed with her mother, her teeth bright and her eyes crinkling with good humor, her usually sky-blue aura pulsed an ugly red in a slow, rhythmic thump like a heartbeat.

  At times, when mother talked about her lord husband or mentioned their house, her aura would spike with the yellowish-green color of pus.

  She could not have noticed all these shifts before. Nor could she fathom what they meant; but her vision had sharpened ever since she arrived in Casterly Rock. Maybe it was seeing so many different people and being exposed to all their auras. Whatever it was, she felt she’d gained a new perspective on her powers.

  Auras were not some inflexible thing as she once thought. Though every person seemed to have their own unique one, some being brighter and louder than others, they all swirled and sparkled and shifted like a living thing, always in flux, always pushing and pulling.

  And when she focused on a single person, she could see more. She could notice a rise in their passion by the color of their aura. At the sparring yard, auras would dip into a tight cocoon as the knights focused on their swordplay, brows furrowed with the strain.

  The bout would come to an end eventually, and some would grow angry at the loss. They would snarl and curse, and shots of red would spread on their aura like blood splashing across snow. The winners’ auras, even the ones who remained courteous and restrained, would crow their victory with flashes of gold.

  After the feast, when her mother was fussing over her like she’d been dying, Lady Addison’s aura had grown agitated like a wounded animal, straining to contain a flood of quivering black and blue. And beneath all that, when she was singing Arianne to sleep late into the night, her aura pulsed steadily with waves of the deepest, most beautiful pink.

  Arianne had become fascinated with all she could see.

  She even started cataloguing what she found in a small notebook, which she hid under her pillow every night. She was certain of it now: she could see people’s emotions, read them as if they were lines writ large on an open book.

  The knight’s rage. The lady’s envy. A servant’s fear after spilling wine on a guest. Her mother’s worry and undying love.

  She was realizing that, back in Tarth, she had been much like a newborn baby slowly getting used to new, frightening senses. Even now, she could still get overwhelmed like during the feast, the world around her drowned out by the flash of all those blazing auras.

  But in the small sitting room of their apartments in the Rock where she could focus solely on Lady Lenora, without all the noise of a busy feast, she should be able to read her aura the right way. With all the easy laughter and excitement at the gossip, she expected yellow for joy or a bright orange for sudden enthusiasm.

  Why, then, was she getting this pulsing red for anger and that ugly shade of green for envy?

  With her vision activated, she shot another glance at the giggling Lenora, who was holding a dainty hand over her mother’s arm as she shared another piece of the scandal. Her mother let out a soft gasp, eyes wide with secretive thrill, and Lenora’s hand briefly clenched tighter on her arm.

  At that moment, a crackle of red splashed against the lady’s aura, and Arianne jumped on her chair at the sudden spike. Her needles fell and clattered on the marble floor.

  Two sets of eyes turned at the sound, but Arianne found herself fixated on looking at Lady Lenora’s aura, trying to catch every subtle shift in its color, every surge and every dimming.

  Stolen story; please report.

  She didn’t know for how long she looked. She had never tried to study someone’s aura so deeply, and she thought she could easily get lost in the intricacies of the shimmering energy that radiated off of her.

  “Arianne! Can you hear me?” Her mother was talking to her.

  She turned, blinked. “What?”

  “Are you well, my daughter?” Lady Addison was suddenly by her side. Her voice was a soft thing, as if afraid Arianne was a porcelain doll bound to breaking.

  “Uhm, yes.” Arianne smoothed her skirts and composed herself. “Yes, I am well. My apologies for the fright, Lady Lenora, I was lost in my own thoughts.” She dipped into a short curtsy.

  “Oh, it’s quite alright, dear,” the lady said, but the flash of color on her aura told otherwise. The woman rose from her seat. “It is just as well, as I must be taking my leave now.”

  “Yes, of course,” her mother said, giving the woman a thankful smile. Was it because she was leaving or because she had ignored Arianne’s strange actions? “We must get ready soon. Be sure to return, will you Lena? It has been so long since we caught up.”

  The lady was all smiles. Arianne felt a churn in her stomach.

  “Let us speak during the victory feast tonight, then,” Lady Lenora said. “I shall consult my lord husband about what we spoke about, and when I can confirm the invite, you must not reject it, do you hear it?”

  “Never,” her mother said. “I’d be delighted to go, truly.”

  The woman smiled, and with a curtsy of her own, she turned to leave, her skirts flowing behind her. Once she was well and truly gone and they could no longer hear her footsteps and that of her guard, her mother turned to her.

  “Are you truly feeling well?”

  “Where?” Arianne asked. Her mother gave her a quizzical look, so she explained. “Where would you be delighted to go?”

  An elegant eyebrow rose at the sudden shift in topic, but her mother was quite adept at indulging her children’s curiosities.

  “Lord Whitehead’s seat. She invited me to spend a week with her there, hawking and riding and wasting the night away talking like we did as girls.”

  Arianne felt a sense of unease at the idea of her mother going somewhere with Lady Lenora Whitehead, a sinking feeling in her gut.

  A part of her couldn’t help wondering how this feeling would look were she paying attention to her own aura, but she shook herself. Being overly consumed by thoughts of auras and emotions would do her no good.

  “I… I do not like her, mother,” she said. “She feels… false, as if she’s hiding her true feelings.”

  “What? Darling, no.” Lady Addison sighed, exasperated. “Lena and I are old friends, we spent years together at Mistwood under Lady Mary’s tutelage, and the Whiteheads have long been friends of Tarth. Ask your father, if you must. He has bought grain through Weeping Town for many years when the island needed it, as did his father before him.” Looking at her with worry in her eyes, her mother came closer to her and put a hand over her forehead. “Are you certain you feel fine? You’re sweating, honey.”

  I’m fine, she wanted to say. Better than fine. You're the one who won’t be if you go anywhere with that woman. She hates you! Can’t you see it?

  Swallowing her words, Arianne only nodded, plastering a shaky smile on her face. How could she explain she only thought Lady Lenora was being deceitful because she saw lights around her?

  Of course, she didn’t even know if that was true either. Mayhaps her vision simply didn’t work on Lady Lenora, or there were more to auras and emotions than the spikes of color implied. It wasn’t as if she’d been learning about her power for a long time now.

  No, she couldn’t say anything. Her mother would think she’d finally gone mad, then she’d end up being sent to the Silent Sisters and Arianne didn’t think she could stay quiet for that long.

  More urgently, she didn’t want to give her mother any more reason to keep her clustered in their rooms. Trekking down to Lannisport with Galladon was the most she’d gone out besides trying to attend the feasts, and earlier this morning, Alysanne had already slipped away without her with some other young ladies from the stormlands. She wasn’t exactly thrilled about spending time with some of those girls, but she had certainly wanted to have the option to go with them. She’d wanted to reject their invite, not tell them she couldn’t go!

  Worse of all, should her mother truly think she was having another of her incidents, she might even be forced to miss Galladon’s tourney finals later on in the day, and that she couldn’t countenance.

  xxx

  Alysanne took a while coming back from her outing with the other girls, and she was sure her minder would get a stern talking to given the state Lord Selwyn found himself thinking they’d be late for the tourney.

  Considering the finals were a few hours away and they still had plenty of time to get to the grounds, it told her clearly enough that her parents were in on it with Galladon.

  The official excuse Galladon used to the rest of the household and anyone who asked had been that he’d gone ahead to watch the tourney with some of his friends, which almost made Arianne laugh. She was pretty sure she was his only friend, which was pretty sad considering she was two-and-ten and a girl besides.

  True, there were those boys back in Tarth, but considering they were lowborn they hardly counted as appropriate friends.

  Their bannermen had sent some of their children to squire to Lord Selwyn or simply serve as companions to Galladon when he was younger, and while they all left completely charmed by her brother, she knew he never considered them real friends.

  He would always nod and ruffle her hair when she complained about them, so she knew he agreed with her low opinion of them.

  Her lord father paced around their sitting room, openly chewing on his nails, sometimes pulling her mother up to whisper fiercely at her ear. Somehow, he was more frazzled than his lady wife, who seemed more excited than afraid for the coming joust.

  Arianne even asked what was going on, acting as innocent as a dove, but her father expertly wove around the topic with talks of trade and other lordly matters. She rolled her eyes. Could they be any more obvious?

  She was probably sick in the head and had seizures sometimes, sure, but she wasn’t blind. She was pretty sure she could see things that no one else could, actually. Which should count for something.

  When Alysanne finally arrived, they all quickly swept out of the room, moving as a group toward the entrance with a few guards serving as an escort. At the Lion’s Mouth, a tall cavern accessible via a great set of stone stairs, other nobles had already gathered below waiting for a coach.

  She was no great student of all the realm’s standards—their maester could attest to that—but she swore she saw the colors of houses from all of the seven kingdoms, even the black sickle of House Harlaw of the Iron Islands.

  From their position at the top of the stairs, Arianne thought the line of horses, wagons, and carriages seemed endless, stretching from the bottom of the stairs where a small party of ladies was boarding an ornate coach, to the furthest stretch of road she could see heading south toward Laninsport.

  Soon enough, her mother, sister, and she were all bundled into a modest carriage, while her father rode at their head on his trusted stallion. The road out from Casterly Rock was cobbled and well-maintained, and the cushioned seats combined with the beautiful forested hills visible through the open shutters made for a comfortable time.

  A few minutes into the ride, she noticed her sister whispering on the other side of the carriage, her hands clasped on her lap.

  Arianne was not overly fond of septs and praying herself, especially now that she imagined her special vision would not be well seen by the Faith. There were too many mentions of witches and sorcery in The Seven-Pointed Star for her to think otherwise.

  And considering how different they were, she could say much about her younger sister that she didn’t quite like, but not that Alysanne was a devout believer in the Seven. The little hellion had the focus of a clown fish and could not sit still in the sept at Evenfall Hall despite their septa’s best attempts.

  Arianne’s eyes narrowed. With a sideways glance, she confirmed her mother had taken one of the windows for herself, engrossed in watching the terrain go past with a soft smile, so she slid closer to Alysanne.

  “Are you praying?” she hissed.

  Opening her ocean blue eyes, the same as Galladon’s, the girl looked at her and huffed. She kept her voice as quiet as Arianne’s own. “I was, yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Galladon’s victory, obviously.”

  She gaped. “You know?”

  Giving her an impish smile, Alysanne shot her a wink before she went back to her praying, and Arianne spent the rest of the hour-long carriage ride reevaluating everything she thought she knew of her sister.

  xxx

  AN: This was mostly a quiet chapter, but with a lot of important things going on. I also wanted to flesh out Alysanne’s character a bit more instead of her just being the forgotten sister.