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CHAPTER SEVEN. ━━━━━━━━━ Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
DYLAN THOMAS, IN COUNTRY SLEEP ━━━━━━━━━
WHEN ELIA HAD MARRIED, MARIAH HAD attended court to witness the honour bestowed onto her family. She had been thrilled to be granted such a thing, and for many moons the memory of the opulence and extravagance of King's Landing, seat of the mighty Targaryens, would drift through her mind as she fell asleep, sending a smile playing over her lips. She could recall with startling clarity the shrill cry of the merchants with their wares—silk and fine bolts of cloth, spices and freshly baked bread—and the grandeur of the castle overlooking the bay, looming ever closer as their carriage rollicked over the cobblestones, through the gates and up the hill.
She sees it now through clearer eyes, a woman's eyes: the hot stink of it so unlike the sweet air that flows off the gardens of Sunspear, the dirt and poverty that lingers in the corners though the city's gold cloaks try and shoo the unpleasantness from her eyes. The air is sticky, and she swelters even in gowns made for the heat of her homeland, cut in Dornish fashions and sewn in shades of yellow and orange and red.
It is nothing of the glamour she remembers, and her sole relief is walking by the waterside of Blackwater Bay. Mariah relishes the soft breeze coming off the bay, smelling of salt and brine. The sand is coarse beneath her bare feet, and spreads far up the coastline behind her and piles against the wall that guards the castle. By the end of the evening she returns to the castle with her gown sodden at the hem, leaving a trail of water upon the pristine marble floors as she walks.
They are the few minutes of peace she is afforded, when she is left alone. Ser Barristan lingers back near the wall, where his white cloak nearly blends against the weathered stones, silent and still to offer her a measure of privacy, and only the gleam of the sun against the hilt of his sword, a sudden blinding flash, gives away his presence.
Still, they are largely unnoticed—the world now that the war is ended is new and strange, and she is still so newly come to the capital that the people do not recognize her yet. It seems that the lack of any sort of ornate finery is as far of a disguise as she needs.
Mariah had not tried to protest the need of a guard—she misses the freedom of home, to go and come as she pleased—but she is learning that the luxury of being alone is something that she left behind in Dorne, before her sister's murder, before she was being watched by suspicious eyes. Solace belonged to Mariah of Dorne, not Princess Mariah Martell, and it is only one of many adjustments she has had to make, between the life she knows and the one she finds herself suddenly thrust into instead.
