God-Child-Soldier

IV

When Alder awoke in a bed which was not her own the next morning, the disorientation of it all caused her to knock the wardrobe over.

"My apologies," she whispered to the wardrobe as she asked it to right itself. It did, rising back to its original position as if drawn along strings. It also, however, brought a maid running in, frantically asking about the noise. Alder simply thanked her lucky stars that she had not come in before the wardrobe was fully fixed, and told the maid a bird had flown into the window (not her best lie, but it worked in a pinch).

The maid was the same freckle-faced girl that had attended to her the night before, which came back to her in fractured pieces. The exhaustion had hit her the moment she had left the room filled with royalty. She remembered Ser Maddock showing her to the room, and offering to sharpen her swords for her, begrudging respect in his eyes. She remembered declining, and his whispered understanding about how a good Kingsguard never let another man touch his sword. She remembered a warm bath perfumed with floral scents, a bed softer than she believed beds could be. Even now, sitting with her back against the wall, she felt as if she was perched on a cloud.

The maid's name was Arya, a Northern name. She and Alder commiserated about silly southerners and their inability to handle the cold, as if Alder was capable of handling the summer heat without spending the noon hours floating in the frigid sea. Arya was a charming and witty girl, younger than Alder by a few years, the same age as the prince Lucerys. Whom she spoke of very, very fondly.

"He's just so..." Arya trailed off as she shooed Alder out of the bed so she could strip the sheets. Alder went to peer out the window, having never been so high up in her entire life. No tree in the forest reached such a height, and she imagined that this was the vantage point of a dragon as Arya continued. "He's so kind."

Alder had no doubt that the prince was kind enough for his station. But Arya was young and while Alder couldn't exactly boast a career of close romantic contact, she liked to think she knew just a bit better than a fourteen year old. "How is he kind?"

"He says hello to me when he sees me," Arya sighed dreamily, fluffing already fluffed pillows to the point where Alder feared they would burst. "And so does his brother, but Jacaerys is so...intimidating."

Before she met Jacaerys' dragon, she would have laughed. She did not now. "Arya, I must ask. If Lucerys was not a prince, would you find him half so kind for simply greeting you?"

"It's not just that he's kind," Arya giggled as if Alder simply could not understand, "He's gallant, and noble, and one day he will be the Lord of Driftmark."

Alder gave up after that. She simply allowed Arya to hand her a new set of clothes, finer by far than the ones she had come wearing last night despite their simplicity. The clothes whispered over her skin, a pair of dark brown trousers and a simple dark-blue tunic. Odd that it was blue, Alder thought, considering the Targaryen colors, but she thought blue suited her much better than red.

The sun was just barely rising over the Narrow Sea, and so the lords and ladies of the castle had not yet awoken. Alder, accustomed to waking early, wanted to relish these last few moments of luxury, and so accompanied Arya to the kitchens where the staff of the castle were breaking their fast. The cook quickly took a liking to her after she caught a bowl of berries before they could hit the floor, and served her a huge slab of the baked porridge the staff often ate in the morning. Arya informed the table of Alder's exploits, a vastly grandiose tale where Alder had somehow swum the prince across the channel with her own arms and legs.

"It truly wasn't so interesting," She professed for the fourth time to a group of young laundresses who stared at her with wide, enraptured eyes.

"But was the prince as gallant as they say?" One asked. Alder thought of the boy who had nearly thrown up the night before and chose generously to lie.