I am a ship in a sea of fools. She is an insidious worm chewing at the flesh of the apple. My patience runs thin, yet I watch her wriggling with amusement. I keep my anger banked, a well-tended fire for the future.
This northern woman has little coin to spend, and what there is lies under her skirts. She will not spend it on the Crow; no - he can bring nothing to the bargain that can help her. She realises that I make no bargains. And so I watch, with weary inevitability, as she turns to the Dunlander. High enough in my trust and favour to be worth spending her coin, and perhaps foolish enough to be taken by her pretty mummery.
But this play ... how many times in a life must it be seen? A quick-caught breath, a downcast eye, fluttering helpless bird, adrift ... Alas! Who can save her?
I found her kissing his rough-stubbled cheek in thanks for some imagined kindness. No doubt she has told him ''he is the only one who has shown her any kindness since she came to the camp''. Lying, brazen whore. She stands there in a dress gifted by me, eating and drinking my food, reading my books, warming her thin northern hide at my fire. And he ... wants to believe her. He is nothing but a narrow-eyed killer - but he wants to believe that she sees something noble in him.
I laugh as I recall their suprise as I walked into the tent. The worthy knight, reeking of his bear-stench, and the innocent virgin captive, plotting how to use what she has - as cold and worldly as a fish-wife.
Did she taste his guilt on him? The layers of blood on his skin? Did she taste a brother, cousin, friend that he has dispassionately stalked and hunted down. Does she want his hands on her, that have reached out in the dark and throttled the starlight from the eyes of her northern kinsfolk? A bitter way to spend your coin.
I sit back further in my chair, relaxing, drinking deeply of their folly.
