Thread: A Tale of East Meets West ('Noise & Rivine)

He had never seen the Red Keep from such an intimate distance before. The great crimson stones had certainly been firm fixtures in the shoreline of many, mostly successful, trips every which way across and along the narrow sea, but never had he considered the sheer ostensible mass that they would present from a pedestrian's approach. It may have simply been the Braavosi in him that took comfort in the subtle, mercurial shifting on the sea beneath his feet, or it could have been the fact that any which way you sliced or stabbed at it, the Red Keep was a massive bleeding spire that rose carelessly from the cesspit that was King's Landing. Simply further proof that Faro Ilerie was far from his home shores... as if the months spent in the damp, moldering stone accommodations of Lord Plantan's hospitality hadn't already established that fact quite thoroughly. He knew from first-hand experience his homeland was far from the idyllic land of freedom and equality that the Sealord liked to hear it sung in ballads and stories, but compared the personable view of the sunset lands he'd been so kindly allowed in the last few years, Valyria's bastard Titan son offered a stalwart open-handed palm compared to the twitching trick-fingers of Westeros. Still, the singers had not told him he'd been born under the slim-waxing moon of fortune for naught. He was nothing if not an optimist and it was hard to keep his mind on those bad things that surrounded him when he was, at least, in a place where he might breathe the salt air under the heat of the sun over the narrow sea. It was the kind of outlook that made past and current acquaintances call him all manner of doomed, sodding fool, but he was of the mind that he was ever to face death, as every man, woman and child must one day do, he would do so on that day with his fool's grin firmly in place. Though Faro had been instructed, firmly, to make directly for the petty audience chambers of the Red Keep upon his arrival to King's Landing, he'd never been much for the specifics of instructions... particularly when handed down from a man who's 'charity' included imprisonment and blackmail. If his up-jumped Lordship wished to have the job done right, he could wait until Faro had eaten. And not that unfortunate stuff that the Plantan soldiers had offered him, grateful though he'd been at the time to charm them out of a share of hardtack and stale mead. Finally capable of enjoying at least a scant imitation of his home cuisine, the swordsman had made for the first smell of salted fish his nose had been able to pick out of the sweltering mass of humanity that was King's Landing. The crisply little fish were not nearly as flaky as he prefered and the spices weren't nearly approaching hot enough, but half a loaf was better than none at all. He was leaning carelessly against the worn stone of one of the main roadway arteries into the city, licking his fingers of the fatty, salty remnants of his filched snack when he heard the screech from the alleyway. His curiously bright eyes hadn't been on his fish for some time. Faro let the scene play out in his mind, eyelids drooping closed in an expression that to any onlooker would seem the careless sleepiness of mid-afternoon. Four men, only the one woman. Long odds for the average do-gooder, of whom there seemed to be none of the sort in King's Landing, but for a skilled, albeit slightly out-of-practice Swordsman who knew that the narrow breadth of the alleyway would serve to guard his flanks, it was an easy enough thing. In the end it took him five strikes to finish it, and two of those had been into one man after a slick bit of mud had weakened his footing slightly. He cursed in the colorful, rolled syllables native to his tongue. Out of practice indeed. The thin blade of his sword he cleaned on against the shirt of one of the would-be assailants, the drying brown-crimson not serving to make the unfortunate bit of clothing much dirtier. Faro wasn't surprised to see the woman gone by the time he'd finished. She'd been no beauty by any means, though he would have perhaps appreciated even her gratitude after his time spent locked away. The bright silver metal glinted as he sheathed it back in one fluid motion. Perhaps it was time to reach his actual destination. ... Please tell the young Lord Plantan that I have been sent by his brother. Faro held aloft the first of the two missives he carried, both emblazoned largely and obviously with the family crest. It as the only reason he'd been permitted this far into the Keep in the first place. He was well aware that he stood out. Though the elder Plantan had been gracious enough to provide him with a rather expensive set of fit traveling clothes, the man seemed willing to spare every expense to see this through interestingly enough, there was no disguising the blatant foreignness about him. His accent was thick and Faro had never made any attempts to disguise or underplay it - the Westerosi tongue was boring enough as it was to speak it, much less to sink to the low, groveling lack-of-inflection they used in their voices. Though with his darkly tan skin and riot of long, auburn curls it likely wouldn't have mattered either way. Not to mention the long, thin blade that hung at his hip - he couldn't have been anything else but what he was. At least his eyes were always a wild card, no one ever seemed to know exactly what to do in response to the calm, glinting silver brightness of them set in his wind-scarred, sable features. He was a man of average height, his frame perhaps a bit thinner than it would have been normally after his period of uneasy internment but there was an easy, natural handsomeness to his features that had aged far too well. It would have been easy to dismiss him as something of a harmless fop if not for the careless ease with which he stood even surrounded by the Keeps' guards... And of course, those eyes. I will speak to him.