[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/0GZWmsA.jpg[/img][/center]
[color=gray][right][sub]Collab between [@LadyRunic] and Ruby[/sub][/right]

She entered to find candlelight, and a plate of half-eaten food; he ate some of the roast squirrel, none of the bread, and most the sausage. The strong red Arbor wine looked a quarter gone, and the small camp bed was a matter of multiple bed rolls, and a wooden frame with leather straps in support.

She had used it during the Vulture Hunt, she knew it wasn’t that bad. She came in with just the green dress and a cream colored great cloak nearly completely covering her but for a few inches of her body. Leather riding boots had been replaced with more mundane leather slippers, and her hair was now tied with a cloth-of-gold ribbon behind her.

The tent had belonged to Ser Wyatt, but Ser Wyatt was one of the lucky fellows who drew the overnight sentry, and thus had packed for the departure to Oldtown due in the morning, leaving the tent all but empty so they had a place to Lord Elmo. The tent was in a ring of tents, across from Ser Dennet Tarly, with a single guard outside, a squire named Pate who smiled big at her as she passed him to enter.

She held up two candle sticks after walking in, “A gift, Lord Elmo, in case you want to stay up reading.” He seemed, to her, like the type of man who might just do such a thing out of habit, more than anything else. “Our Maester came by to do what he could?” she asked, staying just a few feet inside the tent’s entrance.

There wasn’t much room in a tent of this size, and she tried to be polite.

Elmo was sat on the camp bed, his frame not so hidden in the black tunic. It had been shed to reveal a cream lighter shirt beneath the stiff jacket. In one hand the man had a tankard, which he was in the process of setting aside with his left hand. A small tremor showing it had been through some strain causing the wine to swirl. The other held a book just as the Lady had expected to find. A battered thing talking of Essos and the various illnesses there of the title was aught to go by.

"A more welcomed sight I would be hard put to see," The young man drawled, squinting at the woman as she entered. Lines of that constant creasing etched about his eyes."Your Maester is a capable man, though there was nothing new he could console me on." From his tone it seemed bitter, but accepting of that fact. The said leg stretched out across the tent, in the limited light Vittoria could see the way it twisted under his leggings. The foot looking clubbed at an angle that was not natural. In truth, Elmo could sit and stand with it looking normal under long robes. It merely cost him pain and aches. Now, he let the leg rest, the muscles he had kneaded to relax. His cane set near his side. "I've more than enough medicine to dull it, and your Maester had a interesting concoction. Don't touch the wine." The advice was not quite an order but it was not idle. The pain dulling dose had been mixed with the tankard, a potent thing."Sit if you wish, Lady Ardent. I would bow, but getting up in this small a tent would be impractical."

“No one bows to me in this camp, Lord Elmo.”

The tone was as far from declarative as it could be; merely a casual statement of what was known. She nearly said that she had ‘seen worse’ in the Citadel, but she was no fool: it would have been no comfort to a man grown like Elmo. Maester Lyonel, though not the Archmaster of the silver link, was still the best she had known in the field during her time at the Citadel, and she would never forget the one time he remarked on such a thing:

[i]”Broken men are still men. They will never forget their misfortune, but they would also rather everyone else did most the time.”[/i]

Vittora smoothed her skirts as she sat in a small chair near the entrance, setting the candlesticks aside. “We depart for Oldtown tomorrow. Your horse and saddle, or one of our wagons, it’s up to you. We got nothing from the brigands.”

A tired sigh came from her as she leaned her head back, her right hand going up to where her left shoulder and neck met, rubbing at it absently, “I will deposit you at the Citadel if you still want. Although, if so, I will walk you in myself. Women can’t be Maesters, or I’d be one. Still…they were kind enough to give me something for my time.”

Her right hand left her shoulder, as her left hand went to her right sleeve, and folded it up. In the dim light it was hard for him to see, but she removed it, and ably gave it an underhand toss to fall where he could easily retrieve it: a bracelet of Maester links.

“For the Initiates and Acolytes, it’s often back-breaking in the early years. I remember one scene, in particular, with the silver links…they were cutting flesh, and part of it was rotten and…” Her right hand came up, palm out, as her face twisted and eyes snapped shut. Her voice strained, like even here and now, she might vomit at just the memory, “Less said, mayhaps. I was just present, an observer, and yet the Maesters just said to me: ‘Then vomit, girl, there’s work to be done and you can clean it up later.’” Her voice mimicked the cold, dismissive tone the Maester had used that day. “So, I did, on both accounts. I think the Acolytes were grateful I returned to clean it up myself.”

A laugh, even if a hard-fought one. “I meant to ask,” she began, pivoting even after her laugh faded from her lips, “is there anything you can tell us about Harrenhal? Anything beyond the ordinary? Quite a castle, even in its melted form. I know next to nothing about the family that acts as its overlords…despite helping to clear it of Harren the Red.”

The bracelet surprised Elmo, for women were generally not welcomed in the Citadel. They may be amused and humored but they could not be Maester themselves. “A wagon.” He spoke evenly as he examined the links, his brows neatly raised in surprise. For whatever he expected from this woman? This was not it. “For while I do enjoy the mobility of riding, it is not worth this ache.” His words were absent as he let the links run through his fingers. There was a greed in his eyes, not for the links and chains a Maester wore but for the knowledge that he gained. The books, the scrolls and aught else.

“Harroways of Harrenhal…” Elmo’s gaze moved away from the bracelet and back to Vittoria, reaching out with his stronger hand, the book set aside, he offered the links back to the woman. “And while I know more than even they would expect… Tell me, what would make it worth my time to tell you more than the public faces?” His lips curved into a mocking smile as he took a deep swallow from the goblet, grunting at the sour taste that even with wine was not hidden. “Foul concoction.” He swore, coughing heavily into his arm. “Maester will either see my dead of their ramblings or their brews.”

Her mind traveled to the secret vaults of knowledge she should not have. That she was unsure should even exist, let alone wind up in her possession. She fretted the reaction to it more than she did the Faith Militant or the High Septon. Her momentary distraction broke only as she leaned forward and retrieved the bracelet. Her brow perking when he posed his question, as she slipped the bracelet back on and lowered her sleeve over it.

She leaned back into the small chair as her mind weighed the question as it might the timing to strike on a battlefield. Too early, and you risked exposing your own lines to a fault. Too late, and your host might lack the strength and will to execute as required for victory. In the end, she shrugged, “One cannot reasonably offer a price without knowing the value of the product of service in question. You ask a question there is no equitable answer to, Lord Elmo.”

“The fact I am the firstborn son to the heir of Harrenhal, Jon Harroway. The grandson of Lord Lucas Harroway himself and retain informants in the castle itself?” His languid and dry voice was humored as he revealed exactly who he was, or would have been if not for his deliberating accident. “Had a horse not fallen on me, I would have been Lord Elmo of Harrenhal in time.” He pointed out reasonably. “My price would not be a small thing, my Lady, but I am not so greedy as some I could name.”

The stillness ended not with a sound, but with a motion; her body raising from the back of the small chair, the top of her leaning forward, the only thing keeping her long dark auburn hair from spilling forward as she rested her knees on her thighs was the cloth-of-gold ribbon restraining it into a loose ponytail.

“I suppose, then, Lord Elmo…it comes to this: do you think me capable and willing to properly appreciate what it is you might say, compared to others you might say it to, given the limited opportunities to put two people in the same quiet room together that life naturally offers? That is your decision to make.”

Her back straightened, as her pretty features tilted to the right, and the slowest shrug seen in a day full of them rolled about her slender shoulders, “Such judgment calls can be difficult to make with limited information. What do you think of me, Lord Elmo? Am I that one noble that you will meet in your life, at the right time, with the right appreciation of what you might say, both capable and willing to pay whatever price it is you desire most?”

For a reason known only to the ghosts of Highgarden and Harrenhal, both, in that exact moment, a tiny shadow of a smile crept over the pink lips of the Ardent Maiden.

“Your family holds sway with the Maesters and the Citadel. It is perhaps that we could achieve what we both desire. I desire for those lovely links without being bound to the Citadel by the Maester’s Vows as is expected.” His head cocked to the side, his pale hair and sallow looking features looking perhaps a bit more grim in the faint light. “You want information on the Harroways, Harrenhal, perhaps other places. If I can stay outside of those irritating orders while seemingly to comply with them as is expected of me, there need be no worry about a bastard taking the seat of Harrenhal’s Lord.” He did not wish to reveal that, but it would be a tasty tidbit for the woman to chew on.

[i]If the Maesters don’t have me assassinated for what I already know…[/i] Her head dipped to the left, back to the right, before again to the left, and a pause…then the second child of House Tyrell nodded, firmly, as if she had debated it and come to a firm conclusion. “This can be done. There is precedent for going nearly to Maester and leaving. Rarer still, some examples of full Maesters leaving the service…but this requires mitigating factors, and is far more rare and difficulty done. Either way, once you leave, you will be exposed: it is doubtful House Harroway would welcome you back. Doubtless still any reputable Lord or even merchant would support you. The alternatives are dark, and unsafe,” she thought of the former Maester she found mutilated about Saan’s ship, immediately. “You sound half-whisperer in this night, already, Lord Elmo. Learn what you wish, and yes…I will make a full whisperer master out of you. Truth be told,” she admitted, her smile widening, “there are few things I value in this world half as much as whispers.”

His smile to some would be sinister, but it was often lopsided and rarely met his eyes. “Oh, then we understand each other. I have one important line I will not cross, my Lady.” Now flint was in eyes and voice and he spoke firmly. “No harm is to come to the maid in the Harroway House going by Elayne Rivers. She’s outside their House, despite being apart of it. Do you find these terms suitable? That you will leave this woman be and take her out of harm’s way if possible, that you shall aid me in this forging of my chain without being a Maester myself, and in return I shall give to you whispers and the full extent of my knowledge?” He offered out his hand, the grip strong and ready to accept the bargain if she was.

“Lord Elmo,” her voice took on a deeper, harder, sound than he would have ever heard from it before, “I am uncertain if there has ever been, will ever be, a Lord Commander in this realm that would be more apt to take a girl out of harm’s way than myself. These are terms I accept.”

Her smaller hand reached to his, and sealed their pack with as firm a shake as she could manage.[/color]