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SORRELL LOOKED DOWN upon Lannisport as the younger girl's tears bled into her cotton shift. Tysha wept often — for her mother, her home, her freedom — but this time it was different. She tightened her arms around her crying friend in an attempt to console her.
The motherhouse of Lannisport was built into the red rock crags that surrounded the great city, providing the girls with a view overlooking the harbour and spider's web of streets. Sorrell would oft spend her little free time alone, perched upon the window sill watching the ships enter and leave the port like an intricate dance: from thin ironborn longships to great trading galleys, high-masted swan ships from the Summer Isles to big-bellied whalers from the Port of Ibben. Tonight they looked like stars in the sky; little patches of light glowing in the inky-black nothingness of the ocean. When she opened the latch on the window, the smell of spiced goldenwine and sea salt drifted up from the city into her nostrils. She sometimes dreamt about running down to the harbour and jumping onto the first boat she saw, her and a crew of jolly pirates with coloured ostrich feathers sprouting from their hats sailing off into the Sunset Sea.
She could do it if she wanted to. Steal some gold pieces from the septas and run off to some far corner of the world where no one had heard of her family name, and The Rains of Castamere remained unsung.
But that was only a dream. Childish and unrealistic. Girls like Sorrell didn't get to live in fanciful states of their imagination, they had to accept cold, hard truths. And the truth was that tomorrow she would swear her vows and, for the first time in her life, leave Lannisport for her new station. The vows would become her freedom. Holy men and women had to give up their family names, but Sorrell had done that a long time ago. What she was really after was the protection of the Faith. Upon becoming a septa she would be giving up all claims to land and titles inherited, and she would become in law what she had been all her life. Invisible. Even if her true parenthood was discovered, it would mean naught.
But Tysha didn't know that.
"We could run away," the girl hiccuped, her pale eyes watery with sorrow. "We could leave Lannisport and travel the Seven Kingdoms, just like you always wanted. Anything to mean you don't go."
Sorrell just smiled pitifully at her ignorance. Tysha was too young to yet understand just how disappointing life was. Only three years her junior, her friend was sweet yet simple with a heart too kind for the world. "One day you will leave this place too, dear one, and travel across Westeros as a lady of the Faith. You may govern little princesses or ladies in the womanly arts, wed together couples in love, bless and forgive those who have sinned. The gods have gifted you with such an opportunity."
