WIP Wednesday
I’m too excited about the next chapter of nothing sacred, all things wild so of course, I’m sharing probably far too much of the next chapter here...but guess what? I don’t care.
I’m just happy to be writing again! It’s been a crappy few weeks, I’m excited to be excited again.
A very long excerpt below the break:
“Two days at court, and still the king has not shown up to receive Lady Margaery. Perhaps the Tyrells really aren’t as powerful as they let on.” Myranda flicked open her fan with a vengeance, a trickle of sweat tracing down her hairline as she observed Margaery holding her parasol so it shaded Loras more than herself, while her brother, Garlen, and his wife, Leonette, sipped lemonade on either side.
An oppressive heat had settled over the city overnight, turning the red stones of the keep to burning coals, and wilting everything else, indiscriminately.
This had not stopped the princess, however, from holding court beneath the sun’s glare.
The flower arrangements withered in their vases, the peerage’s hair collectively lost several inches of volume, and every lord and lady unfortunate enough to have traveled with only their autumnal silks had to suffer in silence as they sweat through their brocade.
Ostensibly, there was to be a performance—a parade of animals, recently brought over from Essos to join the princess’s menagerie, though Sansa imagined the tigers would be as loath to march beneath the midday sun as the rest of them were. The heat was making her irritable. She disliked the feeling of her palm sweating against the lacquered wood of her fan that she kept closed at her side.
“It’s not just Margaery he hasn’t publicly received,” Anya remarked. “Stannis Baratheon has arrived as well, and I hear he’s fuming at the king’s absence.”
Randa snorted. “He certainly isn’t being subtle with his intentions, with the way he’s parading his daughter about. Poor thing. With that face, I’d never leave my chambers, let alone agree to half the peerage seeing me. No amount of powder can cover that, especially in this heat.”
Sansa watched the young woman standing just behind her father, the marred side of her face tilted into the slip of shade offered by a bougainvillea climbing the wall beside her, her eyes trained at her feet, ignoring the wide berth the other courtiers left her as they all waited for Daenerys to invite them beneath her canopied pergola; the only true respite from the relentless sun. Unfortunately, the princess had seemingly lost all sense of decorum or duty ever since a garishly dressed, blue-haired Tyroshi man had gone down on one knee before her and presented a violently orange monkey. It now sat perched on Daenerys’s delicate shoulder, eating berries from her hand as she joked with the man.
Rage trickled down Sansa’s spine.
“Shireen Baratheon is the daughter of the Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, and until our king sires a son of his own, she is the likeliest heir to the Iron Throne. Myranda, you may have a beauty that turns the heads of even the highest lords but you’ll never rise higher than the daughter of a steward. No amount of powder can cover that up either.” She didn’t look away from Shireen, or wait for Myranda’s reply. “Have there been any sightings of Lord Manderly’s ships, Lord Royce?”
After a rather violent clearing of the throat, the old man replied.
“I’ve heard nothing my lady, and I’ve got a boy paid to wait at the docks until they’ve arrived.”
“I don’t understand how the council is set to begin on the morrow and the Warden of the North isn’t present.”
“I don’t understand how the council is set to begin on the morrow and the king isn’t present,” Anya said. “Do you think something happened? His grace held a feast when you arrived, did he not? Now, he suddenly can’t be bothered to receive the very lords his reign depends on?”
Sansa ignored the older woman’s gaze, fixating instead on the princess, who cut a strawberry in two with her own teeth, before pressing each half languidly to the golden monkey’s black mouth.
Petyr used to press fruit to her lips too—when he called her daughter, and pulled her chair too close at the breakfast table.
“The king is throwing a feast for all the high lords tonight, Anya. I’m sure everyone will get the reception they are due at that time.”
“Still, it’s strange. You’d think he’d be using every possible moment to rub elbows and grease wheels before the real business of the council begins.”
“We have no reason to suspect he’s not, behind closed doors.”
“With whom? No one that I’ve spoken with has seen him since the morning of Robb’s arrival.” Anya’s gaze bore a hole in Sansa’s temple until at last she met the older woman’s stare with a slow blink of her own. She’d said nothing of Jon’s midnight proposal and offered no explanation for the boarded up panel along her bedroom wall.
There was nothing to say. The air grew too thick.
“The Princess of Dorne is not present,” Myranda whispered. “Perhaps the king’s business is with her.”
“Ah,” Anya sighed, opening her own fan. “If that is the case, the king may be conducting important business indeed—perhaps the most important kind.”
Hot air puffed at Sansa’s face. She swore it smelled of mint. She hated mint.
“What would it mean for us if he names her his queen?” Myranda asked.
“Nothing.”
“The Vale has no relationship with Dorne,” Anya answered, when it was clear Sansa wouldn’t elaborate. “At best, it means we stand exactly as we do today. Though, I expect whatever sense of kinship the king has for our lady that Sansa has not already destroyed, will only fade further beneath the brilliances of that Dornish sun. They say she is a great beauty.”
“Who is this ‘they’ everyone is always speaking of?” Sansa wondered aloud. “And what gives them so much authority?”
“If I knew you grew so piqued in the heat, my lady, I’d have advised you to avoid today’s gathering altogether.”