eachdraidh | (sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

[ before the lockets sits a well-composed and well-turned-out lady: her face is set with discipline -- though below it she wants to crack and cry. but sansa stark has a duty -- some imperative -- to speak calmly of grave matters. nothing about this is comfortable; nothing about this is within her conventional grasp. she could compare it to her makeshift trials before the lords declarant or her audiences with the king, but this stage is far wider. out of frame, her fingers tremble. ]

Dear Shardbearers of either court --

[ if her voice shakes then it is by design. some honest fear is permitted into her tone, for what better to move the hearts of strangers than to express genuine dismay at this great knotted problem? she would not have thought to even sell it as injustice until living here and meeting many a person who appeared outraged over these alliances. these marriages. these common cages. ] One turn of the moon ago, High Queen Morla delivered onto me an ultimatum: to marry some Unseelie lord of her choosing, or else invite war upon the Cothromach. Whatever your loyalties, I beg you all to recognize the attempt for what it was --[ and do please fill that blank with your own outraged conclusions. ] I call for aid and support.

[ some words are permitted more of a quiver than others: morla; marry; aid; war. ] But I fear war has come already -- has long already been present -- and today I will refuse the proposal offered, because I fear it was only ever a blade's poisoned edge. I would prevail upon some soul from that queen's court to speak my refusal to her. [ powerful men have met her vulnerabilities with laughter, only to turn and shake their heads when she took small careful steps towards decision. what else is she to do? if she will not play the game by their rules, she must try to write her own. but even now, she hinges her action upon the passion of someone else's protest. someone else's judgement -- for better or worse. ]

The Lady Keeper of the Cothromach will not swear away her city to another court by marriage vows or by vows of any kind. [ except for other partial vows made in quiet rooms with would-be neutral parties. but those meetings are a secret and her announcement today comes instead to engage the hearts and sympathies of prospective champions who might grow incensed over a bully's tactics. lady sansa is not above playing upon their pity if said pity will protect her, her family, and her new city. anyone's pity will do: seelie or unseelie alike. ]

High Queen Morla's dogs are at the gate; let us be wolves when we meet them.

( ooc; i know some efforts have already been made re: the unseelie camps by lancer and others -- there's also a fresh log for the battle itself. )

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The High Queen did not name him. Not in her letter, nor by her courier neither.

[ sansa knows his name, of course. knows his face and voice and distant smirk. but lord ganondorf has not asked for these things: he asks merely whether saralegui was named to her, and so she answers only what she has been asked. ]

Yet you rejected all the same. Did you discover the name of this lord or did you refuse merely for principal?

[He would find the latter a bolder choice and one certainly worth praise. Certainly it would have been easier for this girl-ruler to have simply accepted the marriage and meekly tried to make the best of it.]

[ a trickier question that he perhaps imagined: sansa had refused on principal, then met the man, felt her ideologies bent and twisted, then was brought up short to refuse again. so which answer becomes the honest one?

no. she must not think of honesty. she must think instead of which answer becomes the most clever and most careful one. ]

I refused -- [ she still spoke in that soft vulnerable voice ] -- because my hand is not Queen Morla's to give and dispense as she wills it.

[ implying, perhaps, that she is not so strong-hearted. someone with the proper claim upon her fate might make a better argument. solais, perhaps. her lord father. an older brother. a guardian. she will paint her refusal not as some head-strong rebellion, but a perfect adherence to order. to justice.

to her court's code. ]

Indeed it is not.

[He injects a finality into that tone so that if they are being listened to, there will be no mistake that he has an open disdain for the prospect. Let these other lords and ladies be played with, but Ganon is not to be toyed with.]

I confess, I find marriage itself a puzzling concept even on its own. That it should have any sway in the matter of lands and thrones is absurd. It has never been practiced in my land, but I have seen it in others. Love is a fickle thing, so what place does it have in this war?

You've done well to refuse, though I suspect your city will pay dearly for it. Though I suspect your Minister has it all well in hand.

[After all, Tzilan had provided an army to take out Reynard. Why should he not put that same effort to protect his own city?]

[ the very benefit (she has come to find) of a man who declares so much is that she could avoid the humiliating implications and responses to one matter and focus instead upon the path of least pain.

or, at the very least, the path of the most prospects: ] Cothromach has many a minister, my lord.

[ he'd claimed a kingdom, once. but since then she has been reminded that previous titles mean nothing here. titles fit to these lands are what matter, so she uses the one appropriate to ganondorf. ] Do you speak of one in particular?

[ you do you do and i know him, she thinks. but her face is a chilly mask. ]

As do my own cities, but I doubt there is any but one that is of consequence in Cothromach.

[He did not mind speaking so obvious and bluntly of Tzilan's existence. He did not know the man, but suspected him to be a snake. And so it was in darkness and obscurity that snakes did their best work, so Ganondorf acted the part of a blundering fool by making so obvious a mention. Let us see if the little man has fangs.]

I am certain he must have spoken to you on matters of trade.

[ the trade minister. and they had already bandied that word about in the past. she makes no real attempt to hide the fact that her sentence proves little more than code -- identifying tzilan without looking herself so brash and braying. ]

But of course. I regret that I may not gain the chance to visit your city now. If you should fail, Queen Morla may install some new Keeper that is not so... reasonable as you are.

[Which he does not want. He wants Cothromach for himself, but he is not so brazen as to take it now, even if the Seelie are weak now. This is a victory he wants to score for his own sake and not for the Unseelie. Morla is powerful enough already, but he will not tip his hand to help Sansa save the city.]

Beg pardon, my lord, but Cothromach stands assaulted because I have become the very opposite of reasonable.

[ but one queen's measure. it's a hollow boast, but one that bore being made. ]

[A dry chuckle.] Then let me say instead that any lord or lady who would surrender their city without a fight is beneath my interest. If you are victorious, you will have earned the right to call yourself Lady Keeper.

[ earned it in blood -- and by some unseelie brute's estimation. in truth, she doesn't know whether he is really a brute or not. only that he'd first threatened trespassers and waver had seemed somewhat uncertain of him.

she thought for a moment it might be best to stay beneath his interest. ]

An encouraging perspective -- whether you intend it or not. [ others had taken a rather different bent. ]

A true ruler is forged in fire and made stronger for it. Those that bend or break in the process are cast aside for better material. There is nothing kind or encouraging in it, but so rests the nature of the world.

[The strong survive and the weak perish. Those who lack strength and deign to try to rule are punished for their avarice and perish so someone more suitable can lead instead. That is the rule of the desert, where weakness is a death sentence.]

Edited 2014-11-04 00:13 (UTC)

[ porcelain to ivory to steel. ruler or not, her metal was forged in cruel angry flames. they'd taken a brittle girl and sealed up all her fissures with burden after burden after burden. and yet she feels the weight of this new metaphor: saber claims she is a beaten dog; lord ganondorf says instead she might be a some rejected ore.

this analogue, however, hurts less. perhaps because her thoughts dwell upon the forge more often now than they ever have before. even so, she does not engage with his imagery. she provides her own. ]

The fire will burn itself out, in the end. [ she straightens her shoulders. ] But Winter is Coming. [ ...

there is more she could say. ought to say. pre-emptive plans to be seized upon before the battle is even decided. but he chose not to lock their conversation, so she uses instead to maintain a chilly demeanour. who knows who watches. ] Have you any further business, my lord?

So it is. [He does not gather the meaning of these words, though they seem vaguely familiar. But he has not forgotten that there was a boy king who hated the Starks. But that whelp was gone.]

Call upon me, should this battle end in your favor.

You have my word.

[ and that word might be a girl's word. a green ruler's word. but it was also a stark's word -- and she is beginning to feel that her word, when wholly given, is worth more than many another drabwurld lord or lady.

and so (with no other sound) she took that heart-shuddering bold initiative and was the first to snap the locket shut. it took courage even to be the first to end a conversation. ]

(sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

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