Chapter 6

Unlike King's Landing, Lannisport did not smell like complete shit. Not to the same extent, at least. This was still a real-life renaissance fair where sanitary levels came down to—please throw your poop in these specific areas where our cleaning crews will come to collect and not all over the streets. Pretty please?

Surprisingly, it worked. I think it came down to the Lannister's creative punishment for those caught defacing the streets. Throwing your poop where you aren't supposed to? Well, get ready for your new, one-year career of shit-collecting. Hope you brought your own shovel 'cause you're not getting any from us. It's called manual labor for a reason.

I saw at least two crews of five men hauling piles of steaming brown shit in donkey-led carts, always keeping to the alleyways so as to not importune the perfumed ladies and well-off nobles that were visiting the city. That aside, the city was the best I'd seen so far. Streets paved with cobblestones and lined with white-washed timber-and-stone houses, taverns and inns teeming with customers in every corner, wide avenues where merchants could park their laden carts and advertise their wares.

We had stopped by one of the nicer storefronts after Alysanne gawked at all the colorful fabrics that hung outside, intermittently turning my way to stare at me with the eyes of an orphan puppy begging to be adopted. What else was a brother to do?

I waited for her on the other side of the street, enjoying a fish pie I bought from an old man and his son in their small stand. Biting into the pastry, I savored the rich, salty flavors of the perfectly baked pie. Fluffy as a cloud. Better than many a noble feast, I'd wager.

Inside the store, I could see Alysanne and her maid, Lia, a matronly woman well into her fifties, trying out different hats in the Westerland style, chatting excitedly with an attendant. I would be worried that my sister would get ripped off had Lia not been there. I pitied the salesperson who tried anything tricky with that woman around. A couple of our guards were waiting by the door, while another waited by my side. We would have been fine had it only been myself and the girls, but father had insisted.

"Brother." A sudden whisper against my back.

I startled, and my pie slipped from my hands and splattered against the cobbles. "Ah!" Turning, I saw the culprit standing there as if nothing had happened. Of course it was her. "Bloody hell, Arianne. Don't do that to me." I looked down and mourned my spoiled pie. "You ruined my lunch."

"We need to talk," she said, her button nose scrunched up, brows furrowed. That kind of gravity didn't look right on such a cute kid.

I sighed. "Do I need to go over how conversations are supposed to work again?" Wiping my oily hand on my pants, I signaled to the guard nearest to me to give us some room. "They usually don't include cryptic entrances, for starters. And weren't you with Alysanne? I swear I saw you going into the store with her."

"Your eyes must have deceived you, then, for I walked in your shadow the whole time."

She wanted to play like that, huh? "Keep that up and I'll start locking my door at night, young lady," I said.

She gasped. "You wouldn't."

"Try me."

We stared unmoving at each other until, in a second, the serious face was gone and her bottom lip suddenly started trembling. "How… how could you be so cruel when you know about my night terrors?" Her eyes grew wide and bright like a doe's. "How could you, brother?"

I crossed my arms together. "It doesn't work when I know what you're capable of, Arianne. Those dead rats didn't make it into my room by themselves."

She kept up the act for another heartbeat before the pout vanished. Clicking her tongue, she relented. "Tsk, fine." She looked much like our mother when she wasn't trying to appear all mystical—pretty and dignified except for the chubby cheeks "I want to speak about what you're doing here."

"Grieving over my pie?"

She huffed. "First, you are not funny. Second, no." Then her voice dropped to a whisper. "I meant you riding as a mystery knight in the tourney."

I tried not to let the shock show on my face. Standing quietly for a moment, I let my eyes flicker along the street to see if anyone had been around to hear this. It wouldn't matter in a few days, but revealing myself as the knight too early would absolutely derail all my plans for the whole thing, even if I'd still be in contention for the prize money. Thankfully, we were in a quieter area of Lannisport, away from the hubbub of the central market plaza, and the only other people in sight were the bakers, a passing couple dressed like Riverlanders, and our guards, all out of earshot.

I pulled my sister to the side and knelt so we stood almost face to face. "How do you know this?" I knew our parents wouldn't have said anything to her. They didn't really know how she truly was and still treated her as a kid.

"Why does it matter? I just want—"

"Arianne," I cut her off firmly. My tone clearly jolted her, as I'd never spoken to anyone in my family like that before, much less my sisters. "I'm being serious now. How do you know?"

She started saying something, then stopped herself.

"Well?"

Arianne sighed and looked off to the side, almost as if embarrassed. "Anyone who's ever seen you riding back home would be able to tell." This time she was the one to cross her arms together. "There, satisfied?"

I looked at her closely before nodding. "You're too smart for your own good, you know?" Raking a hand over my hair, I stood back up to my full height.

"Yes, brother, I know," she said lowly.

I turned back to her, but she was only looking at me the same way she always did. I sighed. "Well, what now?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. I just wanted you to know that I knew, so that…" she trailed off for a moment, worrying her lip. I raised an eyebrow. "So that you could tell me if there's any way I could help you. I know you would do anything for our family, and I want to pull my weight too."

Oh. "Arianne…"

"I know I'm young still and just a girl, but there are things I can do that no one—"

"Gal!" Alysanne's voice sounded from across the street. She was leaning against the door of the store, three hats each of a different color hanging over her head. "Gal, come here! You must look at what I found. Can I have them? Please?!"

When she saw me looking, she dipped back into the store. My shoulders sagged. These girls really had me wrapped around their fingers, didn't they?

I turned back to Arianne. "Look, we'll talk about this later, alright?" She didn't look convinced, so after making sure there was nobody around to see it, I lifted a hand up and squeezed her chubby cheeks. She hissed and slapped my hand away. I let out a quick laugh. I'd be paying for that later, but I didn't like seeing my sister with such sad eyes. "Also, you're right, I know how smart you are. I'll find something that you can help me with, I promise."

xxx

Arianne Tarth

Her brother walked off toward the store, only leaving after calling back the guard to stand closer beside her. She watched as he ducked inside the store, and the bright golden aura that clung to him disappeared like a candle being extinguished after the door was closed. The pleasant heat that had been warming her despite the cloudy sky vanished with him.

Sighing, she nodded to the guard and went to sit on a bench by the fish pie stand. Soon, she had a pie of her own in hand and enough peace of mind that she could stop and think about everything that had been happening.

Growing up, Arianne had always known Galladon was special. No one else on the island ever shone to her senses like her brother did. He seemed to her eyes like a ball of light and warmth, radiating comfort and love wherever he went. Even her lord father and lady mother didn't glow like him.

But maybe that's what all big brothers seemed to their sisters, a figure larger than life. That's what she had told herself, at least, but she had confirmed it years ago that Alysanne did not see the world or Galladon like she did. And had the light that she could see shining around people been the only thing that made her special, that wouldn't have been so bad.

But she knew something wasn't right when the nightmares started a few years ago. She could hardly make sense of half of them; and the ones she could, she wished she hadn't. Her innocence had been chipped away night after night after witnessing both terrible and completely nonsensical things in her dreams. Deformed men with green scales for skin performing sacrifices deep inside a thick jungle; ice demons with crystal-like skin wandering across a snowy wasteland; dragons incinerating men in their thousands in a battlefield. If she focused, she could still hear their agonized screams as they burned to death.

She wished she could be just a normal girl like her sister, but she knew that would be impossible. She knew too much, saw too much. Her brother's light had been the only thing that could calm her after one of the nightmares, and for that, she thought the world of him. The most important person in her life—and if the intensity of his aura compared to everyone else's in Tarth meant anything, the most important person in the world!

Arianne had been wrong. Before this trip to the Westerlands—the first time her and her sister had ever traveled outside of Tarth—she had never seen anyone that could match Galladon's light. She'd thought no one else ever would. Now, she knew otherwise.

Here, amongst some of the most powerful and influential men and women in the kingdoms, there were dozens of people that stood out to her. She almost fainted the first time she walked inside the Rock's main hall during one of the feasts. Colors washed over her vision like she was seeing from inside a rainbow. The world was too bright, too loud with feeling. Her mother had to walk her back to their apartments as her senses tingled like an overused muscle.

It was true that few could match the brightness and sheer intensity of her brother's aura, but they existed. Some, like the Prince and his violet-eyed guard, shone even brighter than Galladon. Their auras were a jumble of colors she couldn't make sense of. Ser Barristan Selmy burned like a beacon of pure white light, cool and silvery like the moon, while the Lord of Casterly Rock, Tywin Lannister, wore his aura tightly wrapped around himself, as if kept under strict control. It pulsed with the deep red of a man's blood.

There were many more, men and women of all ages that she didn't know and couldn't name. But she knew this ability of hers was important. Knew there was something about these people that made them special. She wanted to tell her brother about it all, to finally let out the secret she kept her whole life. She was sure Galladon would know what to make of it.

But she could never bring herself to say the words. A paralyzing fear seemed to seize her whenever she gathered the courage to do it. Would he think any differently of her? Would he see her as a freak? Her brother wasn't prone to cruelty, she knew, but beneath the golden-glow of his aura, beneath the light and the warmth, there was a streak of stormy gray there, something sharp and wicked and unbending like steel. The possibility of having that turned in her direction terrified her.

In the end, she couldn't do it, couldn't risk the only light in her life. When her brother and sister came out of the store a few minutes later, Arianne stayed silent.