Esmae Baratheon was the golden darling of the Seven Kingdoms, or so the measly common folk liked to call the firstborn child of the glorious king Robert Baratheon and Queen Cersei. The princess, however, was anything but a darling and despised the r...
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The Red Keep was a dangerous place, and Esmae knew it better than anyone. She knew of the shadows lurking in its darkest corners, knew of the eyes watching from the walls, and of spiders weaving their web in deadly, calculative silence, waiting for an insolent prey to fall into the elaborate trap.
And still, knowing all of it, fall into the trap Esmae did.
The fires danced around the dark figure clad in billowy robes, finding malicious reflection in the obsidian eyes of the man known as the Spider. Despite herself, Esmae could feel chilling dread coiling in her belly. In truth, there was no real reason to be afraid, for the man in front of her was harmless. Well, harmless as the quicksands of Dornish deserts can be, but harmless nonetheless. There was no danger to his actions, but to his words that travelled with the wind, carried on the wings of many little birds.
"Princess Esmae," he greeted in a gentle voice, "Fine time for a stroll, is it not? We do have to take advantage of the last moments of summer before the long winter befalls us".
"I suppose I wasn't as discreet as I'd believed myself to be," Esmae admitted with a small smile.
"Oh, you were perfectly cautious, Your Grace. My birds had some trouble learning it was you."
"Not too much trouble, it seems, for you are here," she pointed out quite irritably, voice laced with steel.
She could make out a smile forming on the man's lips, "Walk with me, Your Grace," Lord Varys asked, tucking his pale hands in the huge sleeves of his black robes. Esmae would never have guessed the dark figure was him had he not showed his round, powdered face. She was used to seeing the man swanning about the Red Keep in his soft slippers, wearing rich silks and velvets, with an eerily calm mien as if nothing in the whole world could irk him.
After a moment's hesitation, Esmae exited the narrow tunnel with feline grace and joined Lord Varys in the dimly illuminated cellar. She was afraid of it once. Afraid of the sinister dragon skulls that still shone with magnificence and might, remnants of the splendour of Valyria and the great Aegon the Conqueror that Tommen was so obsessed with. They used to terrify her as a child but later only served to make her sad, for it was a true tragedy that something so powerful had been reduced to naught but dust and bone.
"Have you learned anything of importance, Your Grace?" Lord Varys asked as they walked past the skull of Balerion. Esmae's eyes lingered on the deep hollows where his reptilian eyes had once been. She quickly tore them away.
"Nothing you don't already know, my lord."
"Oh but I'm sure you know a great deal more than the King's Hand," he told her airily.
Esmae stopped, confusion etched on her face, "Lord Stark?"
"Last I checked, he remains the Hand still," Lord Varys said with a pinch sarcasm so gentle, it was barely perceptible in his effeminate voice, "He has, however, been rather...heedless. Direwolf is a ferocious animal, but here in the south, we have beasts of our own. Lord Stark seemed to have forgotten that."
