The Tartered Dragon - Aegon, Son of Baelon)by mootjeman7)

Chapter 13

108 AC - Lys

Johanna Swann POV

The ink wetted the parchment as Johanna's hand moved across from left to right in laces, in bows, and in sharp lines, so swimming was she in her thoughts and in her words that she barely registered the door knocking.

"Come in" she called out absent-mindedly as she continued to write instructions on what to purchase from the trip to Volantis.

With the upcoming Dohaerys festivities, a festivity to which she'd won the rights to provide the entertainment, her very first victory in high society, she needed to make sure that it was a resounding success.

A clearing of throats made Johanna blink out of her thoughts, her quill still in her hands, and she looked up and she saw that it was Kriritte, her assistant in most matters these days. Much needed too, she mused, for her council was the sword of steel she wielded against their foes. She eyed the elder woman for a brief moment.

Kriritte, or Ritte as she liked to call the woman, was a beauty, firm rose petal pink lips that stood out against her pale though marred skin, marred with ancient scars that did not take away from her beauty, a beauty of a kind of wildness emboldened fiery red hair that flowed silk strands of captured fire.

Though, she was far from a delicate thing, aside from the scars that spoke of a difficult past, like so many of the other girls in the pillow houses of Lys. It was in her eyes, you see. Blue eyes that still burned with blue flame even now, even after years Johanna had bought Ritte her freedom.

But then, Johanna considered, it must be the wildling blood in her. Where the other girls chose to set aside their pain, Ritte never forgot. Never forgetting the bite of winter. The bite of hunger. And neither did she forget the freedom taken from her.

Even when she was beaten into seeming submission or when she was tied and forced upon, she never lost that ferocity of her people. Her own. The same kind of ferocity that Johanna thought wolves must feel when they smelled warm blood on snow.

Six and ten years a pillow house slave failed to burn that out.

No, Johanna thought, her ferocity never dimmed, only changed into the patient kind.

The vengeful kind.

She almost pitied Belan Ostos for the fate Ritte had planned for the slaver.

"We have a guest…the chequered kind."

Ah…well, it was about time.

"Uthrik?" she asked and Ritte shook her head.

"No, it's a different one. Brown-haired. Walks like a fighter." Ritte paused for a second as her hand went up to her face "Scarred. If barely" she said as she slid down the right side of her chin with a finger.

She eyed Ritte for a moment which the woman understood and gave her a little nod of assurance which made Johanna relax. Nothing was askew with their guest, she accepted, having successfully given the answers to the security phrases.

So a knight then most likely. Or mayhaps a guard.

She idly wondered if her letter had been too straightforward, too easy to read between the lines of the importance of her request as she expected him to just send a merchant or a sailor like he usually did.

She hadn't thought she needed reinforcements, not for a while at least, but it was certainly welcome if it came sooner.

Johanna placed the quill down and spoke calmly, her face a mask of amiability as she eyed the red-haired woman "Has he been entertained?"