[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/oI3QbSd.jpg[/img][/center]

[right][sub][b]Mina Tyrell // [@Espada Emi][/b][/sub][/right]

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The Sept of Upper River Road had not been what Dake had expected. Instead of just serving one or two Septons of the Sept, he found himself running around what the Faithful called the septry—the Septry of the River as the Faithful called it. The Sept, itself, was part of it, but there was more to it: there was the common hall, the infirmaries, the scriptoriums, the dormitory, the kitchens, a brewhouse, the cells, the gardens, the Sept, and the small Sept. And that didn’t even include all them other outbuildings.

Rarely did Dake find himself helping an actual Septon, of which there were more than two, he learned. Instead, there were Protectors and Holy Brothers, though mostly they just called themselves brothers, and even then, there was an Elder Brother apart from the Septons and the Proctors and the rest of the Brothers. Dake didn’t understand it all yet, but they just told him to listen more than he talked and respond to someone asking something of him with “Yes, brother” or “No, brother.”

He helped with the garden some days, but mostly he scrubbed floors when he wasn’t helping in one of them infirmaries. Brother Stohl told him the Sept of the River had the most, and largest, infirmaries in the Reach, maybe all of Westeros. The bile and the blood and the vomit and the spit and the piss…Dake didn’t know all them bodies held so many things, and he was used to the streets of Oldtown. But Dake didn’t waiver none, Brother Stohl called Dake blessed by the Seven because nothing seemed to turn his stomach.

The worst of it was the early mornings, but Dake got pretty good at waking up before even his mother, often sneaking out and making it to the Septry in time for the morning prayer. Because if you didn’t make it to the early morning prayer, you didn’t get to break your fast with the brothers, and Dake liked the stew the brothers typically had in the morning. After that was the work.

But after that was the mid-day meal, which was usually the same vegetable stew. After mid-day meal he’d sometimes be told to see Proctor Robin in the scriptorium. Dake wasn’t allowed to touch anything down there, but he would scrub floors, and the Proctor and Brothers who worked there would show him numbers and letters. Dake could write to ten, which made Brother Otho proud, cause none of them other ‘street boys’ did that half as fast as Dake was able to do it. The faster and more he learned, the more Dake was told to go work in the scriptorium, and Dake liked Brother Stohl the best, but the infirmaries were full of groaning and crying and sometimes worse.

The scriptorium was quiet, peaceful like. Dake liked that. It was Brother Otho who tapped his shoulder today as Dake went about scrubbing the stone floor, whispering in his ear about someone asking for him. They wasn’t allowed past the gatehouse ‘cause they was a girl, said Brother Otho. Dake rushed, ‘cause if the Proctor caught him gone too long it’d mean trouble, Brother Otho warned him. But at the gatehouse he was met by Septon Arlo. Arlo was old, thin, with shoulder length white hair and a blind eye…but he was the nicest man Dake ever met ‘sides Brother Pater.

And Proctor Robin wouldn’t do nothing if Septon Arlo said it was okay. Septo Arlo looked out for all the other boys in the Septry, too.

“Dake? You have a visitor,” The Septon said, as he moved aside, and motioned the Brothers at the gate to let the visitor into the gatehouse. Dake blinked when he saw Cissy.

“They don’t have girls here, Cis.”

“Go on,” Arlo gently urged the girl, with a calm tone and warm smile, like he was everyone’s grandsire, “you are safe here, child.”

Something wasn’t okay, though, Dake saw it. Dake could always see that kind of thing, and Cissy’s skin wasn’t usually so pale, and she never looked scared. Nothing scared her, except maybe Big Bill. “What is it, Cissy?”

The girls big eyes went to the Septon, to the Brothers of the Gate, before slowly falling back to Dake, “It’s your mum, Dake, you gotta come quick.”

Silence was the response. Dake just blinked, again, thinking…he’d seen his mother this morning. She was tired, but she was always tired, her labor was long and hard, she always said, but she was glad to do it, she also always said.

“Go, Dake. You may return on the morrow, I will explain it to Proctor Robin.”

Dake felt himself nod and leave with Cissy. Outside the gate she took his hand, which just made him feel more confused. Cissy didn’t hold no hands, but now she was squeezing his, “What’s wrong with—”

And then it just burst out of Cissy, like a cry that was all hushed talking, like she was afraid they’d be heard, “Big Bill needs your help, Dake! He said only you can help him, said it’s about your mother, and there’s gold in it. Real gold, Dake. But we got to hurry!”

Dake just ran with Cissy after she all but pulled him along by the hand at first. Dake tried looking back when he thought he heard someone shout out to him, but Cissy just yanked all the harder, leading them quickly down an alley, down a shortcut.

Scrapstone Alley once wound behind the North Silver Street. Disease had cleared out most of the shops and homes that had boxed it in tightly on its southern side, leaving Scrapstone Alley wider than most streets in Oldtown in some places. Though it was mostly mud and exposed foundations with nothing left on them instead of cobblestone, there were still one of two buildings that had been gutted by fire, or further disease, or banditry. The Square of Scrapestone was the largest ‘square’ of the alley. Its where Big Bill had held court for the past two years, after stabbing another, older, street urchin in the neck to take control of the band of urchins they called the Scrapestone Boys. Where once it had been makeshift seats and benches and tables filled with urchins of nearly all ages, some of the bordering buildings used for hideouts and makeshift brothels of the girls ruled by the Scrapestone Boys, when Dake and Cissy got closed, they saw now the square was bordered only by the mail and blue cloaked members of the Oldtown City Watch. At least a dozen of them.

Death and blood was everywhere. Big Bill’s body was broken and bloody, headless, thrown aside his big chair. All the others boys and girls Dake knew for years were laying around, some looking asleep, others with heads missing, or giant gashes flowing with guts and blood where they had once been whole. In Big Bill’s old big chair was a large man, shoulder length black hair, face covered in black hair. He didn’t look old, but he didn’t look young, neither, to Dake. Dake turned around, but his heart sank when he saw more of the City Watch when just moments ago had been the alley. Dake knew a trap when he saw one. When he looked to Cissy, she wouldn’t look at him, even as the members of the Watch behind them grabbed him, lifted him, and carried him forward to dump him at the feet of the large man wearing the uniform of a City Watch officer.

The man’s eyes were black, and seemed to smile in a way that didn’t hold any joy.

“Hello, Dake,” the man said sternly to him, before his black eyes looked up and past Dake, to Cissy, “dispose of her.”

Dake tried to move, but felt only a fist upside his head, sending him spiraling to the ground of mud and blood, all he could see was the officer’s booted feet. All he could hear was the screams of Cissy…before, suddenly, he heard steel, and then heard Cissy no more.

“M’Lord, ask Septon Arlo, ask Septon Pater, please M’L—”

Silence came to Dake in the form of a heavy gloved backhand from one of the two who’d threw him down.

“I know of your favors, urchin. Given not by the Seven, but by a certain sinful noble lady. But worry not, Dake. Your mother will live, your mother will keep her place in the service of her merchant master, and you will be forgiven for your sin of acting as a pawn of such sinful nobility…and in return, you will tell me how it is you got to Lady Vittoria’s inn on Port Market Street. How you managed to sneak past the patrol of the City Watch. Tell me this, young Dake, and forgiveness will be given to you.”

Mina had wasted no time in saddling back up and riding to the Septry of the River as she was bid. She was still running off of the electric high of what had happened at her father’s great tent earlier this morning and it wasn’t until she pulled up to the gatehouse and asked after Dake that her mood started to deflate a bit. She’d just passed him, said the old Septon with a milky eye as he pointed the lad out, running hand in hand with a pale street girl away from the sept on some urgent business about his mother. Mina wheeled around, trotting forward and shouting after Dake, but the girl just tugged him away down a side alley. Cursing, Mina leapt off her horse and went after the two before she lost them completely. If something was wrong with Dake’s mother, Vitta would want to help the boy further, she was sure. 

Fortunately, the two younger children’s trail wasn’t hard to follow. The alley lead to a wider one, disused, worn and muddy with visible footprints. Mina slowed as her eyes caught their tracks, not just to better follow them but because of what surrounded them. Dake and the girl had left the freshest footprints, but they were overlaid onto a background of bigger, heavier prints, dozens of them, made by what looked like sturdy, hobnailed boots. Mina stopped completely, closing her eyes and focusing. A Water Dancer must learn to sense danger and see with more than her eyes, that’s what Master Athos had taught her, and something about this already felt wrong. 

Yes, she wasn’t sure how she’d missed it before, but there was an unmistakable smell in the air too. Blood and spilled viscera, coppery and nauseating like someone had been doing a bad job slaughtering animals...or people. Mina shivered and moved more carefully, and as soon as she spotted the first blue cloaks she ducked quickly out of sight, pinned flat against a husk of a burned out building as she took in the scene.

There were children’s bodies littering the square, some with guts spilled and giving off the foul odor she’d smelled moments ago, some headless, some twisted and broken, all in pools of blood and mud and gore. The blue cloaked guards, a dozen of them visible, ringed the sight of the massacre uncaringly. Their eyes were fixed on the young boy sprawled on the ground rather than at the horror around them. If the girl slumped limp and blood-soaked at the feet of one guard currently wiping off his sword blade was anything to go by, the reason for their indifference to the hideous crime was plain enough. Mina fought down a wave of cold terror and nausea, breathed in, breathed out, trying to center herself. Now was not the time for fear. She could still save Dake. Besides, the bearded man towering over the boy had just mentioned ‘Lady Vittoria’. He might well be a threat to her sister. 

Mina steadied her shaking hands and slipped away from her hiding spot. She could do this! The guards were distracted by Dake and she’d practiced stealth by sneaking up on tree cats in the forests off the River Mander. Quiet as she could, Mina slipped by the guards at the outer ring of onlookers and pulled her thin Braavosi blade from its sheath. Stalking up to the man who was still cleaning his blade of the girl’s blood like she’d stalked any number of animals, she readied herself to deliver a clean thrust to the gap in the armor near his neck.

Dake heard the words as they left his body, unbelieving he was saying them. Was his mother really even still alive? What had Cissy been screaming when they killed her? Mostly, his mind circled and circled around the same question that left him stunned, barely able to think, barely able to understand this was real life, that this wasn’t just a bad dream: Dake would’ve told the man whatever he wanted to hear. So, Dake told him, and when he was done, he finally looked up, and stared into the man’s black eyes.

“Why, m’Lord? I would have told you.”

The man sighed, a great weight upon him, his voice turning into a tone of wisdom, of a master taking a hard lesson to an apprentice, “They were criminals. Rapists. Murderers. Thieves. Your friend, the girl? Caught last night snatching the purse from a man of the Watch visiting the brothel her own mother worked at, as the man took his pleasure. Street urchins, Dake, do you not see?” His body shifted, from a comfortable seated position into Big Bill’s big chair to leaning forward, knees on his thighs, gloved hands clasped tightly together before him, half-helmed head lowering to bring his eyes almost level with Dake’s. 

“You thought a sinner from the nobility was your savior, though you were wrong, I will give you that at least you tried to turn away from this life and serve the Faith. But these…things?” He said, raising his head up and unclasping his hands to motion all about, at the corpses of street children around him, “They had no sinner to save them, Dake. All that awaited them was a life of crime and pain and sin. Instead, we have given them the mercy of a death for a noble cause, in service of the Seven, for justice and the peace of the city. Their struggle is over, they now bask in the glory of the Seven. Grieve them, boy, but be glad to know their struggle has ended. The very sinful noble that saved you called banners to raise an army to oppose the Faith. Today, Oldtown will see just how mortal this ‘Ardent Maiden’ is.”

“Lady Vittoria is good, m’Lord, please. She protects the Realm, she—”

“—is an afront to the natural order as given to us in the Seven-Pointed Star itself. A sinner and hypocrite who says she dedicates herself to the Faith, while only serving her House and herself. The very creature who would raise an army against the army of the Faithful. Is this the person you would tell me is so virtuous, boy?”

Madness took him, as he didn’t blink before he heard himself say it, as he looked at the bodies around them, “...she wouldn’t have done this.”

The Commander of the City Watch stood suddenly, the song of steel ringing out as he drew the short sword that rested upon his hip, hanging from his belt, “The Stranger has bid you to come and see, Dake, and so it seems only then will you understand. Goodbye, child.”

In truth Mina wasn’t sure she could go through with killing anyone in cold blood, even supposing the man in front of her had killed children. It was different, skulking like this and committing to it deliberately, rather than defending herself in the chaos of a battle. But hearing his commander rave so coldly about her sister, about sin and slaughtering children, then watching him draw steel on Dake, her resolve and anger solidified. She stabbed out with her blade, quick, clean and forceful just like Master Athos taught her and shouted “Run!”

Alaric’s eyes narrowed in on the sound of the voice, and Dake saw the man…smile, like he’d seen a welcome surprise. The rest of the Watchmen just seemed stunned, but Dake didn’t so much as breathe again before he darted past the Watch Commander. Steel flashed as the man swung the blade after him, but it was a hair late, and Dake weaved between two Guardsmen who took bad angles in the chase, leaving both behind him. A single look over his shoulder was all he gave, enough to see the two guardsmen re-gather and start after him—while their Commander made a deliberate pace in the direction of the other voice, the one Dake didn’t recognize. He hadn’t time to waste, he had to lose the two men on him, and he had to make it to his mother before they did…if she was even still alive. Dake ducked into one of the empty shells of a building and went quickly up a barrel and into a hole in one of the floors, the kind of shortcut he knew that the two watchmen would not. He went out the window to the left and was quickly on another rooftop, his boots simple things but better and with more grip than his old ones. The Brothers had given them to him just two days prior.

He had failed the Septons. The Proctors. The Brothers. He couldn’t go back now. All the hope Lady Vittoria had given him was just gone, like that, because of a Watch Commander and an order. His face was wet and hot as he ran, and it wasn’t until he flew down to cobblestones that he realized…he was crying.

“Dake?”

Loud Lonnie stared at him, confused, from the door of his shop…but Dake just looked at him for a moment, felt nothing but shame, and kept running. It wasn’t until the pot shop that he wheeled around a surprise hay wagon along the side of the building and up back stairs, only to find the door open, certain they’d already gotten to her. What felt like tears before nearly took him to a sob before shock splashed upon him as he went through the door…and saw her there, shoving things into a basket.

He walked to his mother and cried and tried to tell her all of it. She probably heard none of it, as he blabbered and sobbed, hugging him close for a moment before lifting his chin to look her in the eyes.

“Babbet told me. Now let’s go, we’re going to King’s Landing where my sister is.”

She didn’t sound surprised, only determined. And yet again today, Dake just felt confused. A confusion that only deepened when he heard steps on the stairs, and saw a figure darken the doorway.

It was a girl, barely taller than he was, clean, except for sweat, and…the blade. The reddened blade. 

Mina stood there in the doorway, panting slightly after the chaos and tumult of running full tilt after Dake. She reasoned he knew these streets and how to run and hide in them a lot better than her, so she’d followed him as he fled. Now she found herself awkwardly looming with a bloodstained blade in his doorway. She held up her free hand, trying to show she meant no harm.

“Sorry, I’m here from Lady Vittoria. Wanted to make sure you were safe. She’ll want to help, I think.” Mina made a half-awkward bow-curtsey. Then she remembered she was still holding the bloody blade and flicked it clean before wiping it down against the sheath and stowing it, Braavosi fashion. She didn’t think about how that just spattered more blood across the floor, couldn’t focus on the blood at all. Nor how the blood had gotten there, the man she’d killed, how she could feel the jerk and gasp from him as he’d died on her blade. But now that the running was done it was getting harder to ignore. No, best to focus on helping Dake and his mother.

“Lady…VITTORIA? TYRELL?!”

Dake’s mother exasperated a loud whisper, and she did it quickly, turning to stare at her child. “Why would she want to help? Dake of Blackcrown…why would…what did I tell you about the nobility? Do you not remember…”

Her voice trailed as her son’s eyes welled. The woman looked breathless in a terror of shock as she looked back to the girl in the door, “…and you? Do I even want to know what you are? Do either of you know the danger we are in? The Faith and the Watch have eyes everywhere. There is nowhere safe in this city.”

“They’re gonna kill her, mum.”

His mother's face twisted in confusion, but for a moment, until realization dawned further fear, “Kill her?” The words the woman wanted to say didn’t come, instead, her features seemed to soften as she looked at the hurt, scared, boy of hers, “Dake, I’m not even sure the dragons could kill that girl. She’s surrounded by an army. And what of us? What do we have to protect us but this girl assassin sent by this noble lady?......how did you come to find service with the Septry, Dake?”

The boy frowned, and his mother sighed. “Gods. And you never told me.”

“Wanda, I’m starting to hear…” The man who appeared walking up the backstairs was tall, but too simply dressed and he smelled of a tannery, short blonde hair and small blue eyes regarding the scene he stepped into carefully, “The wagon is loaded, everything is covered in hay.”

“This chest,” Dake’s mother said, shutting it, moving aside so the man could take it and load it. As he lifted it, the boy’s mother stepped forward and placed her hand on the man’s arm, “I’m truly sorry.”

Sadly, the man smiled, “I’ll be in King’s Landing as soon as I can get there. You two go…or three,” he said, awkwardly, before carefully moving himself, and the chest, out of the door and to the wagon.

Dake’s mother just stared at the assassin, “You can hide in the wagon with us. The man watching the gate we’re going out of is a friend. We’ll make it out, but we must hurry.”

Mina nodded, face twisted into a grimace as she put together just what her sister’s charity had wrought for these folk. “My thanks. I’m sorry.” It was all she could think to say. She didn’t bother correcting the woman’s assumption that she was an assassin, nor try to explain herself. It would take time they didn’t have and it could wait til they were safely away. 

“Let’s go. Now,” the boy’s mother said, with the kind of courage and determination only a mother with a child in danger could provide.

“Lead the way.” Mina agreed, inwardly resolving to herself that she would do whatever it took to protect these two and fix her sister’s mistake.[/color]