(sixth lemon cake) video ✧ open to both courts

[steeledskin]

[ 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. )

Comments

[steeledskin]

[ earnest in her fear. her sadness. her desire for comrades. all of it can be bent towards an aim, can't it? the true question is only whether its end purpose somehow invalidates the original earnest emotion. these broad statements are truer and better meant than any of the lies told to joffrey just to keep her skin unbruised.

it's a question too lofty for her -- especially when there are hard true pressing matters with which to contend. hounds at the gate. ]

I told them the truth of the matter. I was earnest with them. [ a pause (perhaps for effect?) ] And their actions afterwards are their own. Any help they choose to give the Cothromach is surely to their credit, and not to mine.

[ she will not confess to any cleverness. perhaps she had manipulated a great host of respondents, but it was crude to say so. not when they both understood what had happened. ]

[enthraller]

[she hadn't agreed or admitted to anything, but that still seemed to be the correct answer. saralegui grins, the expression just a bit more amused and mischievous than is really appropriate for a conversation about war and emotional manipulation.]

You may just survive this world after all.

[steeledskin]

[ lady stark, you may yet outlive us all. so said her husband (long before he became her husband) and it had been a rallying moment. sad, precarious, and unsettling. but she'd been rallied all the same. and it shocks her (just a little) to hear one half of that sentiment repeated now.

she absorbs it. tacks it on to her armour like so many other throwaway sentences. and in this quiet private expanse of conversation, she allows herself only a small confession: ] I pray so.

[ to survive, and to safeguard the stark name. these are her goals. tzilan and saralegui's notions about stalemates and neutral grounds are merely means to these ends. she would speak to greater effect with him about these notions, but she does not trust the lockets. perhaps, sansa thinks, she ought to send a raven. or better yet! speak to waver about those magics he promised her.

she changes the subject: ] Have you yet settled in Redgate, my lord?

[enthraller]

No, not yet. I have some loose ends to tie off first. Morla, for instance.

[pointed, but vague. he does have to handle the likely fallout with the unseelie queen for rejecting her offer, but he also has to complete his original mission and deliver tzilan to her, and sansa doesn't need to know that much.]

But Saber has gone ahead of me, to help look into the situation in the city.

[steeledskin]

Will she be your castellan as well as your sworn shield?

[enthraller]

She has sworn me no oaths. She only said she would stop by on her way elsewhere. A favor for a friend, that's all.

[steeledskin]

-- Have you not appointed one?

[ a castellan, she means. the lack of sworn service she can understand well enough. but she wonders if there is anyone in these lands he trusts well enough to give command of his city in his absence. ]

[enthraller]

[there's hardly anyone in his own land he'd trust that much, honestly.]

The ink on the documents declaring me its lord has barely dried. I haven't exactly had time to find someone. And with any luck, I'll be there myself soon enough and the point will be moot. I expect they can manage until then with whoever has been taking care of it since Alyosha's death.

[steeledskin]

[ strange politics, she thinks. but of course -- she would think so, given how westerosi appointments work.

yet she scours between those spoken lines and decides there is indeed none he'd trust. and she offers a shallow commiseration: ] Perhaps I ought to count myself fortunate to find Stark bannermen amidst the other Shardbearers.

[ well. one stark bannerman. bannerwoman. but in desperate times--! ]

[enthraller]

A bit more than "perhaps", I think. I only wish I was so lucky as to have others from home here.

[very certain others, anyway. belias, at least. yuuri, maybe, but the chances of yuuri ever trusting him again after their last meeting were slim. anyone else, well...he could probably do without.]

[steeledskin]

So long as they are allies and not enemies.