Sitting quietly on the balcony, Lywen and Casella look out across the stubby buildings of the Spottswood Keep. It had a certain beauty, but only here did it have any privacy. Tyrish silks languished on small tables, cushions strewn across a heavily rugged floor. Incense burning gently, and perfume carefully bottled for the upcoming trip.

A long time ago, Casella reflected, this place had been a traditional Dornish room. With traditional Dornish decorations, for a traditional Dornish man. It was a place that stank of sweat, felt like hard wood surfaces. The occasional waft of blood. Their grandfather had kept it to his liking, and their father had never spent enough time there to change it. Lywen had suffered for years in rooms like this.

He turns to her, dressed as he often was in private - the style she had once been forced into. “I do not think this is a cunning move.”

“Of course it’s not a cunning move. None of us are cunning. You’re exceedingly polite, I can kill people. We are broke. We don’t have any ‘moves’.”

The Knight of the Spottswood sighs, rolling his shoulders and looking out across the Narrow Sea. “They are going to say we are throwing a tantrum.”

She smirked: “We are.”

Words failed him. Sometimes he made no sense to her, trying to carefully think around problems they weren’t equipped to deal with. She leans across the tiny table, knocking aside fruits from Olivegrove, and takes his delicate hands in hers.

“We have nothing. Perros is still captive, and the Lord Allyrion wishes merely to arrange some humiliating debt deal that we can’t even afford. Bors visits and tells us that the Princess screams and shouts when she does not get her way. Nymella can’t even get sprouted in a room full of heated young men. You’re trapped in a role that suffocates you. We’re out of options here, brother. All we can do is make noise and hope something changes.”

Letting the silence stand, the two of them watch as a tiny ship appears on the horizon, and begins to drift closer to the small wharf that connected them to the sea.

“To act without a plan is foolish.” Lywen pulls his hands away gently, taking a sip of wine, and glancing back at her. “If we have no greater goal, then our actions are pointless.”

She balks, throwing arms out wide. “Our goal is change! That’s all we can achieve. If we can get a platform to speak, we scream and shout. Worst that’ll happen is we get laughed at. What’s new.”

“Worst that could happen is that we vanish into the Sandship and we are never seen again.”

“Aren’t you tired of being nice, and playing the game politely?” She says quietly, staring intently at his eyes. “Don’t you want to be the Lady of Spottswood someday?”

Lywen looked out across the Narrow Sea, squinting into the sea breeze. She did.