What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.

– Drowned Man

Mother's face had frown lines, Myrcella noticed.

Mother did not appear to notice Myrcella enter the room. She kept looking out of the window, the sunset softly dappling Mother and the capiz shells on the window panes in red and gold. Mother's cotton-clad elbow was resting on the mahogany sill, her hand curled around a cup of palm wine.

Myrcella remembered that same hand wrenching a splinter off their storm-wrecked ship, that same hand stabbing their fellow survivor in the neck as the waters of the Summer Sea raged and threatened to engulf them. The man had sunk, and the remains of the ship door had managed to carry Myrcella, Mother, and their small bag of jewels apiece to safety.

Myrcella had not expected safety to mean a shore on Laya Sea, far south in Sothoryos. She had not expected it because it was not in the maps.

It was just one thing in the list of things that Myrcella had failed to expect.

That afternoon in Sunspear playing cyvasse with her betrothed, Trystane, had been expected because Myrcella had often played cyvasse ever since she had come to Dorne. They had been seating on cushions and drinking lemonsweet, Trystane good-naturedly complaining for a rematch after Myrcella had defeated him as Ser Arys had looked on with a smile.

Myrcella had offered Ser Arys the rest of her blood orange whilst Trystane gathered their toppled pieces. Joffrey had been dead for some time then, and beyond Dorne war had been raging for two years as Lord Robb and then Lord Renly had joined cause with Lord Stannis. Ser Arys had been kind to Myrcella and had promised that no harm should come upon her whilst he lived. He had been Myrcella's white knight and the closest to a father Myrcella had ever had. Ser Arys had often praised her progress with cyvasse, unlike Father who had often been absent when he was not fighting with and hurting Mother before he died, and unlike Uncle Jaime who had been distant even as Myrcella used to wish that he were her father instead of King Robert.

The Seven had eventually answered Myrcella's wish. Knights had come that afternoon, disturbing cyvasse and lemonsweet time, to announce that war was over and that Myrcella and her brothers were in truth bastards of Mother and Ser Jaime. The gods could be cruel like that.

They could be crueler, in fact, because Ser Arys had died refusing to hand over Myrcella. He had called her princess and the men who had come to take Myrcella had said that she was not a princess but a bastard girl with the name Hill. Myrcella remembered crying as she had been dragged away from Ser Arys' blood-stained white cloak, the cyvasse board still in her numb hands. It had been one of the handful of times that Myrcella had ever cried.

"Mother," Myrcella called now.

Mother turned her head. For a moment her eyes seemed to stare through Myrcella, but then she blinked and her frown lines creased when she saw Myrcella's full hands.

"Sweetling." Mother's voice sounded papery. She cleared her throat and took a sip of her palm wine, beckoning for Myrcella.

The room's walls were stone and the floor was polished wood over stone. It was in a small guest house nestled amongst coconut trees, with a wild garden beyond, owned by Juhara's family and paid for by a few of Mother's jewels. Mother did not like being in debt for too long, and a Lannister always paid her debts.

It was a small room so Myrcella reached Mother in a few strides. But then Myrcella had been walking with longer strides nowadays.

Myrcella put down the bag of dried mangoes and fried duck on the sill before presenting Mother with a necklace. A single pearl, faint coral pink and nearly as large as a coin, gleamed from a band of silver.

"Happy nameday, Mother," Myrcella told her.

Mother's lips twitched into a faint smile. "My thanks," she said, gathering her golden hair in one hand and adding, "You can put it on me, Myrcella."

Myrcella went around Mother's ornately carved wooden chair. "Have you picked fruit for today, Mother?"

"Yes," Mother sighed. "We have two melons."

She did not like leaving the house. Mother often sat by the window, or napped, and she often told Myrcella to stay in the house as well.

Myrcella often wished she still had her cyvasse, but the board had been lost to sea.

"There." Myrcella went around to face Mother again. "It looks lovely on you as you are lovely, Mother."

There was still a faint smile on Mother's face as she fingered the pearl, and she sipped from her cup again. "Where did you get it, sweetling? I did not know pearls of this colour exists."

"Juhara gave me the band. I swam for the pearl myself."

"Swam?" Mother's voice softened, the dangerous voice. Her green eyes narrowed at Myrcella. "Princess Ethelwolda told me how pearls are acquired. You mean to say that you – that you –"

Myrcella bit on her lip and nodded.

"I forbid you to do that again," Mother snapped.

"But –"

"I will hear no more of this, Myrcella," Mother said, standing up to reach for the jug of palm wine.

"I've always been good at it," Myrcella insisted. She figured that she should not include how she drowned, or thought she drowned, even though Pippa, a noble girl and an older friend of Juhara's, had done something to Myrcella to wake her and make her cough up the sea water. "I've swam for so many pearls and sold them in the market. I'm good at trading, too. The marble-carver said –"

Mother slammed the jug on the table. The ceramic vase of hibiscuses clattered dangerously. "No. You will stop swimming for pearls. What if you drown?"

"I won't drown, Mother, I told you –"

"I heard what you told me," Mother cut off. "Take no chances with the sea. You will stop diving for pearls. You will stop selling them in the market like some commoner."

"I am a commoner," Myrcella said. She wanted to shout. She could feel her nails and her ruby ring digging on her palms. Myrcella found that she was good at cyvasse and pearl-diving and numbers. Joffrey had been good at nothing yet Mother loved him best, and Tommen had been too young to be good at anything but being kind. "I am a bastard."

The air seemed to freeze then, as the light from outside the window turned from red and gold to purple and blue. The air between Myrcella and Mother grew cold and heavy, as cold and heavy as Myrcella's drenched gown and jewel bag had been when she had hauled an unconscious Mother to the shore. As cold and heavy as Myrcella's heart had been when she had thought that Mother had died and left Myrcella utterly alone, before a fisherwoman had pressed on Mother's chest repeatedly and breathed air into her as Myrcella helplessly sobbed.

Mother continued to stare at Myrcella, her knuckles a ghostly grey on the jug. It was the first time that either of them had voiced out loud anything closely related to what had happened in Westeros, with just the two of them in the room.

Mother had told Princess Ethelwolda that she was a Westerosi queen in exile. The princess had assured and warned them with, "Laya and the rest of the Sothoryosi kingdoms care not for any place outside of the continent, except for the Summer Isles, of course, and Ulthos. Unless they look to disturb our peace with their slavers and conquerors." Then in a tinkling of her necklaces of beads and bells she had introduced Myrcella to her eldest daughter, Juhara.

But now with only Myrcella and Mother in the room, when the shock of the shipwreck had somewhat passed through the waning of moons, saying it out loud made everything more real.

"You are not a commoner," Mother said at last. Her frown had deepened and there was a shadow of a snarl on her lips. "You are born of noble blood, from your mother and father both."

"What do you want me to do, Mother?" Myrcella ground out. "Rot away? Drown in grief like you?"

Mother darted forward and pinched Myrcella arm. Myrcella cried out in pain as Mother dragged her away from the window in a pinching sharp-nailed grip.

"Stop that!" Mother hissed. "Stop it!"

She released Myrcella's arm, and Myrcella stopped herself from rubbing the sore skin. She stared up at Mother, who seemed to grow less tall every day, and did not cry. Crying involved too much fuss: nose clogging and eyesight blurring and much wiping at the nose and eyes.

"How dare you throw this back at me?" Mother demanded, and in that moment, with her mane of golden hair and the full snarl on her face, with her eyes snapping like wildfire and looking the most alive since they had sailed from Maidenpool, Mother looked almost like a lion. "Do you think this has been easy for me? Exiled with nothing to my name! I am a queen. Casterly Rock is mine by rights. Father dead and Jaime lost in the Riverlands and Tommen at the Wall and – do you think any of these has been easy for me?"

"You live," was all Myrcella could say. Her mouth was dry, and Mother's face, so very like Myrcella's own as she had been told countless times, looked so unfamiliar. "I live."

Mother drew back from her. She stared at Myrcella as Myrcella's heartbeat pounded from her chest to her throat and as the last lights seeped from the sky.

They ate supper in separate rooms that night.

Mother was having a bad dream.

In the muted light the next morning, Myrcella watched Mother mutter something about witches and Mother and her children dying. Mother's sheets were rumpled and her blanket was a rope twisting around her leg. A light sheen of sweat shone on Mother's forehead.

Myrcella did not wake her. Mother disliked being woken as much as she disliked leaving the house, so Myrcella just pulled at Mother's toes. It eased Mother's restlessness, and Myrcella left a cup of boiled water before she went out of Mother's room.

The half-empty jug of palm wine from last night was still on the table near the window. It smelled spiced, like the kind traded from the Summer Islanders. Myrcella's nose was wrinkled as she watered the wine. She disliked it when Mother drank her meals.

Myrcella arranged the sewing materials by the window, like she always did, in the event that Mother might wish to do needlework today. Myrcella rolled a ball of red thread as she hurriedly ate duck and fruit, and then she was dashing out of the house.

Myrcella's cotton skirt fluttered around her bare legs as she ran to Juhara's. The wind whipping her hair was cooler than Dorne's but warmer than the Crownlands'. It felt like it was giving back her breath for every foot she covered with her run, so that when she skidded in front of Juhara she still had the breath to call out, "Well met!"

Juhara looked up with a grin. She was four and ten, like Myrcella would shortly be. She hurried down from the veranda, her beads and bells clinking, and reached for Myrcella's hand. "You have to see this, Myrcella."

Pearls gleamed from Juhara's ears and fingers. Her skin was the colour of pale gold, the colour of pearls gilded with the brightest sunlight, and there were pearl pins holding her black hair in place. Hair that should have been the colour of Myrcella's if Mother had not committed treason with Ser Jaime. But when Juhara turned her warm dark eyes on Myrcella and gestured to the marble floor, all thoughts of Mother were left to the wind.

"Kittens!" Myrcella gasped.

And they were kittens, a little pile of tiny kittens, white and orange, mewling plaintively.

Myrcella crouched down, cooing. "They're so adorable. Look, oh, darling," she told a pale orange one tottering towards her with the tiniest paws.

Juhara giggled. She held up a finger in front of the kitten and they both cooed as it gave the finger a tinny mewl. "They're Sapa's."

"The queen's cat?" Myrcella said. The queen was Juhara's grandmother. "Well they must have the best milk if they are Sapa's." Myrcella beamed at the orange kitten and at the others mewling and gently pawing at one another. Tommen would have loved them, she thought with a dull pang.

Three servants bustled into the veranda to scoop the kittens into their arms. The kittens were to be distributed amongst Juhara's siblings and eight other royal cousins. Juhara herself had first pick, the pale orange one she and Myrcella named Jumyr, since Juhara was the daughter of Princess Ethelwolda the heir and would inherit after her mother and then her older twin brother.

"My mother is divorcing my father," she told Myrcella as they fed Jumyr milk from cloth.

Myrcella tilted her head. "What do you mean?"

"They will no longer be wife and husband," Juhara explained. "My father will leave and take his possessions with him."

"Oh," Myrcella said. It was a strange thing. In Westeros a couple ceased to be married when one of them died or the marriage was set aside by the king for some unique reason. She put a hand on Juhara's shoulder. "Are you sad? Where will your father go?"

"Back to his homeland, I suppose. He's a prince from Guintarin."

Myrcella had glimpsed Juhara's father once, a tall man with intricate ink markings on his bronze skin and gold on his ears and wrists. Juhara had said that Guintarin, an ally kingdom, was rich in gold and iron like Laya was rich in pearl and marble. She had also explained that victorious warriors ink their skin before grinning and saying, "I hope to get my first one by the time I am seven and ten."

Juhara clasped Myrcella's hand on her shoulder. "But I'm not sad. Not quite. My father disrespected my mother, siring a child on some cloth merchant, so it is only proper for them to divorce."

It was suddenly difficult to swallow. Mother should have done it, this divorce. Mother should have done that with King Robert, but Myrcella could somehow understand that Mother wanted to rule above all else. Joffrey had been Mother's favourite even though he had been so vile and insufferable, and she had wanted Joffrey to be king. Then he died so Mother had fought for Tommen to be king.

Myrcella wondered if Mother would have fought for Myrcella to be queen.

"Oh," Myrcella repeated. She picked her words carefully, like she had learned to do in Dorne, because sometimes what was notably different did not mean that it was wrong. "Well. That's interesting. We never had that in Westeros. I wish we had." And she added with a smile, "But then our maps don't have Sothoryos either."

Juhara laughed. "We don't want to be found, that is true. They were looking too hard, your map-makers and conquerors."

A whisper of something like embarrassment touched Myrcella. "You said you don't call your continent Sothoryos. Am I misremembering?"

"No." Juhara stroked Jumyr's little head. "Sothoryos is a Common Tongue word."

They spent the morning in the marble veranda, playing with Jumyr whilst Juhara taught Myrcella the greetings and numbers in the Laya tongue. When Jumyr had given a tiny feline yawn, they headed to Juhara's rooms so that they could let him sleep.

This was the first time that Myrcella had been let into Juhara's rooms. There were lanterns made from tiny shells hanging on the corners of the airy bedchamber, and plant baskets swinging near a writing table. The writing table itself had sturdy-looking wooden legs and its top was a smoky marble. Meticulous lace curtains hung from the canopy of Juhara's bed, and by the foot of the bed there was a gilded chest which Juhara now opened.

"I have a basket here somewhere," Juhara said, rummaging around. "It was for flowers for my uncle's wedding but I think we can have Jumyr sleep in it."

"Where will we get the beddings for Jumyr?" Myrcella asked.

"I have old scarves and such. Here, you can help me find what we need."

Myrcella did manage to root out two scarves, one of cotton and the other of gauze, and she was just pulling another one of unfamiliar cloth when she saw it.

"Oh, by the Seven!" she exclaimed, restraining herself from lunging into the chest and grabbing it. "Juhara. You have a cyvasse board."

Juhara glanced at the board and continued removing petals from the basket. "Is that what it's called? It's from a Summer Islander when she came to stay with us. But she gave it to me shortly before she departed. Apparently it's from Volantis."

"You have a lot of people coming to stay with you," Myrcella remarked distractedly, trying to be polite.

"There are a lot of traders and merchants, yes. Singers and other artists. Do you want the board, Myrcella?"

"Oh, oh no," Myrcella demurred. "I couldn't possibly –"

"It's quite all right." Juhara set down the basket and reached for the cyvasse board. "I insist. No one in court knows what to do with it."

Myrcella licked her lips. She twisted the scarves in her hands. "I will accept it if I trade it with something else."

"That is fair," Juhara agreed with a reassuring smile.

Myrcella slipped off her ring, a long ago gift from Uncle Tyrion. "This is a ruby and diamonds set in gold. I don't know where the ruby and the diamonds came from. But the gold – the gold is from Casterly Rock in Westeros."

"I did not ask you to water my wine," was Mother's mild greeting when Myrcella had entered the house.

When Myrcella remained silent by the door Mother looked away from the window. Her shadowed eyes took in Myrcella from head to feet.

"Come." Mother stood up in a rustle of her cotton skirts and tasseled shawl. "There are fish cakes and melons. Come eat."

Myrcella carefully put the cyvasse board on the table. As she settled down to bite into a fish cake, Mother stepped behind her chair wielding a comb.

"Scampering about the place and letting this be an unsightly mess," Mother said as she ran fingers and comb teeth through Myrcella's hair. "What must Princess Juhara say."

"Nothing." Myrcella broke her fish cake in half. "I've left her sweaty and with bruises because she's training swords with her twin brother and master-at-arms."

"Oh yes? She is allowed to do so?"

"She's required to do so, Mother. Juhara is a princess of Laya."

Mother began plaiting Myrcella's hair. "I used to switch places with Jaime when we were little. Those were the only times I was allowed to practise arms. Like all our women."

The bitterness in Mother's voice sounded as heavy as the smell of her spiced palm wine. Myrcella thought of how Prince Oberyn had allowed his daughters to be trained in weapons, how he treated them like they were trueborn sons, but she realised that Mother might not take kindly to the bastard Sand Snakes as examples.

"Juhara's grandmother," was what Myrcella said instead. "Queen Agot. She became queen because her older brother wasn't interested in ruling. He said he's a better woodcarver than ruler so he made fancy woodcarvings and traded them. Queen Agot also rode to command a battle when she was four moons pregnant."

Mother was silent as she listened to Myrcella chatter.

She finished dressing Myrcella's hair shortly before Myrcella finished eating, and then she was drifting back to her window again. Myrcella glanced at the window and at the untouched needlework materials and said, "Won't you play cyvasse with me, Mother?"

"Play?" Mother said, looking down her nose on the board.

Myrcella did not let herself be discouraged. She opened the board of jade and carnelian and lapis lazuli squares. Then she clattered with the screen, and the ivory and jade pieces.

"It's a game from Volantis," Myrcella explained. "It keeps the mind sharp. The goal is to kill the King."

Mother picked up an ivory trebuchet in a careless swish of her tasseled shawl and raised her brows at it. "The king," she murmured. "Thinking of what they did to us makes me want to hurl boulders at them. Smash their bones and their castle walls."

Myrcella paused in setting up the screen, hesitating on what to say. Sometimes she thought about what had happened, in the darkness of her bed before she slept. Mostly it made her sad. Being sad was a lousy feeling, Myrcella had decided, so she persevered to be happy.

"You may need diversion from thinking about them, Mother," Myrcella said. "You could think about cyvasse instead."

Mother made a face. She returned the piece on the jumbled pile.

"You could smash castle walls with a trebuchet in cyvasse," Myrcella persisted. "Metaphorically, of course."

"What is that screen?"

"Oh. It is for cover. So neither of us could see how the other arranged her squares."

Mother's fingers tapped on the table in thought. "Well."

She turned away that Myrcella thought she refused after all the convincing, but Mother merely fetched her wine cup and jug from the windowsill before settling across from Myrcella.

"Very well," Mother said. "Let us play this cyvasse of yours."

Myrcella beamed.

Two hours into the game, more or less, and Mother was pushing back her chair in irritation. She was losing.

Mother tossed the dregs of her palm wine out of the window. "I've been so careful with my elephants and the crossbowmen."

"You've been too focused on them, Mother," Myrcella said, gently. "There are other pieces."

Myrcella had come upon the notion of what Mother must be planning midway through. But Mother had been too intent, too focused on one aspect that it blinded her to Myrcella already casting her own moves with the rabble.

"This game is maddening," Mother said.

"Only at first," Myrcella assured her. It was partly true because it never got not maddening.

"It remains positively maddening," Mother said into her wine cup, two days later.

It was after supper, and they were sat from across each other as candle lights flickered across the board.

"I lost a lot of games when I was new to this," Myrcella said. "But I started to defeat Trystane eventually."

"As you should," Mother replied, her eyes narrowed on her pieces.

Myrcella decided to be graciously encouraging. "Well I must have inherited my wits from someone."

From beyond the screen, Mother's full lips curved ever so slightly.

"I told Juhara I will stop joining their swims," Myrcella said as she moved her spearman, a fortnight later. "I told her I have to play cyvasse with my mother."

"Be quiet for a moment, sweetling," Mother said. "I'm thinking."

Mother let out a growl.

Myrcella wouldn't be too surprised if Mother tipped the table over, but Mother just stood up abruptly in a creak and scrape of wood on wood.

"I nearly had it." Mother smacked her fist on her palm, and paced. "I really had it. Why have I not seen your little coup?"

"You have a whole board of other pieces, Mother."

During a gusty morning Myrcella left Juhara earlier than usual.

"I have to attend a council meeting," Juhara told her as they tied a belled ribbon on little Jumyr. "I'm required to sit in some meetings now. We can play kites tomorrow."

Myrcella kissed her on both cheeks before heading to the house.

She opened the door to Mother bent over the cyvasse board in the middle of a game with herself.

Myrcella leaned against the ornately carved door, smiling, and watched Mother pace. Pace, and pace, and pace. Bend over to peer at the pieces. Pour herself some wine. Pace some more.

"This is even more maddening," Mother muttered.

"We have no more wine," Mother said, glancing at her cup.

Myrcella looked up from her squares and pieces. "I could put in the order in the market later."

Mother hadn't looked up from her squares, but she held up a finger to hush Myrcella.

Myrcella tumbled into the house, windblown and flushed and beaming, her kite string coiled around her wrist. She and Juhara had raced kites with the other children, sons and daughters of courtiers and merchants. Then they had eaten dried squids and mangoes, and Myrcella even chattered with the marble-carver's daughter, the marble-carver who had praised Myrcella's skill with numbers.

The cyvasse board was in the middle of a game. Mother glanced at the door long enough to say, "Let me plait your hair, Myrcella. I am growing tired of pacing for this maddening game."

Myrcella looked up from the board one day and realised that Mother had grown less impatient with the game. Mother would sit back and survey all the pieces, a lock of hair pulled tight around her finger in thought.

Oh, Mother still paced like a caged lion. Mother still crushed hibiscuses from the vase on the table beside the board and the wine jug.

Tonight Mother impatiently tipped the contents of her cup into the vase.

Myrcella wasn't sure if the bunch of hibiscuses appreciated wine gardening.

"The bloody wine is clouding my mind," Mother snapped. "I didn't see the bloody elephant."

They were eating pomegranates with sharp white cheese after lunch when Mother won.

The both of them stared at the board for a heartbeat or two, taking it in. Then Myrcella beamed. "Oh, well done, Mother!"

Mother's fierce and sudden grin was dashed with the arterial red of the pomegranate juice. It looked like she had just torn out someone's throat.

The room was lit by only five candles when Myrcella had got out of bed to drink water. Through the narrow space of the mostly shut capiz window panes, a cool night air was stirring.

Mother looked up from the board. "Myrcella? Why are you awake?"

Myrcella blinked and blinked. "I was – I fancied a cup of water."

Mother poured from the jug beside her and held out her cup. "Here. Drink, and go back to sleep."

As Myrcella had expected the bunch of hibiscuses wilted.

What Myrcella did not expect was to come home to find a fresh bunch in the vase.

"I took a walk in the garden," Mother told her. "It was very wild. Not at all pruned and polished. I was playing cyvasse by myself and needed some air."

"Oh," Myrcella said.

Mother looked up with raised brows. "Tell me about your day, Myrcella."

Myrcella fussed with the screen, so Mother frowned and tugged it away. "Well," she began. "Juhara and I visited the marble-carver. She let us look at the instruments."

"It is more interesting indeed," Mother declared, with a slight smile which was both thoughtful and gloating, "to move a piece than be a piece."

She was examining the king, twirling it around after another win.

Myrcella had to smile at her mother. She reached for the jug by Mother's elbow and poured herself a cup of water.

"Mother," Myrcella said, carefully, as they squeezed orange juice between games. "Mother, I was thinking. May I apprentice with the marble-carver?"

Mother did not immediately reply. She just accepted another peeled orange from Myrcella to crush and squeeze. This was quite new. Mother was usually abrupt, for good or ill.

"As a book-keeper, you mean?" Mother said at length. "Or as a carver?"

"Carver."

"I see." Mother crushed a few more orange wedges into a pulp. "You might ruin your hands."

"Well, if I apprentice and do things right I might avoid ruining them."

Mother slanted a glance at her. "You are such a willful child. I do not know if you remind me more of Jaime or myself. Mostly you remind me of my own mother, what I can remember of her."

Of course. She knew Mother would refuse.

"You may apprentice," Mother said, and Myrcella looked up sharply, cautiously hopeful. "I suppose this is better than diving for pearls. Show me a carving you will do."

They poured the orange juice into the jug and headed back to the cyvasse board.

Mother started asking about the court in between Myrcella's tales about her day.

Oh, Myrcella had raced kites with Juhara and other children? Who were these children? Who were their parents?

Oh, Princess Ethelwolda had invited Myrcella to tea? How marvelous. What was the tea like? Were there other people present?

Oh, Romba the marble-carver had so much custom. What were the marble carvings? Who were the patrons?

Oh, were there really a lot of visitors to the palace and the town? Were there enough inns? What were these inns like?

Oh, was the court really unfamiliar with cyvasse?

"You could come to Juhara's with me, Mother," Myrcella suggested, shifting the basket on her other arm.

She and Mother were picking tomatoes in the wild garden, a soggy sun peeking in between freshly emptied clouds. They were in the middle of a game, and Mother had wanted fresh air to 'give her perspective a little shake.'

Mother examined a plump tomato, dewed by the rain earlier that morning, and gave a noncommittal hum. "It may not be polite without invitation."

Myrcella paused in basking at the smell of wet earth to consider Mother, who was now flicking away a crushed ant. She had to be patient when it came to Mother, Myrcella realised. She regretted the harsh words she had said, uttered in frustration and with the intention to cut. Myrcella vowed to be like a shore to Mother's crashing wave, to not be harsh but to know when to yield and when to stand firm.

"They're very hospitable," Myrcella said. "You could give them something. An embroidery, perhaps. It's not as if we are barging into their territory. They hate that."

"I never did enjoy embroidery," Mother murmured. She plucked two tomatoes and put them in Myrcella's basket. "But I suppose I must try something."

Throughout the whole process of producing the gift, Mother had worn a faint distaste only interrupted by an intense thoughtful expression for her next cyvasse move. Mother had taken to picking their food in the garden, finishing the gift, and making fruit drinks as ways to vent her frustration and her remaining impatience when playing. Myrcella had once come home to find Mother playing with herself whilst savagely smashing tomatoes. They had delicious tomato paste with garlic and bread that night.

But Mother did finish the embroidery, a red mantle embroidered with a golden lion in repose. Myrcella had long acknowledged how relentless Mother could truly be.

"I look adequate, do I not?" Mother said on the morning of her visit. She dubiously examined herself in the mirror, smoothing her hair and her green flowy cotton skirt.

"More than adequate, Mother," Myrcella assured her. True, Mother might not be wearing the gowns she was used to wearing, those glamourous creations often with precious gems stitched on them, but she still looked radiant. Mother's eyes were Myrcella's favourite right now. They were a clear green, with none of the disturbing brightness that constant wine-drinking had brought them.

Mother poked into her bag of the jewels they had sneaked with them when they fled Westeros. She swept back a lock of her hair with an emerald-encrusted comb and fixed an emerald ring on her finger. Then she straightened her tasseled shawl, and with one last imperious turn for the mirror she said, "I should hope so."

Princess Ethelwolda was delighted with the mantle and declared that she would use it on her chest of her finest silks. Mother tilted her head so charmingly in thanks.

It was especially a treat to see Mother charm her way with other people once again.

It was a greater treat to see Mother baffled by the talk of the other women, though: Princess Ethelwolda who had just divorced a prince; Lady Maya who hunted game because she had a better aim and her husband Lord Taga who supervised the kitchen because he was the better cook and enjoyed cooking; Lady Yela who prided herself on her needlework because her technique produced firm lining for the working clothes of her family and kept them warm and secure during storms; Lady Felisa who was pregnant and whose blessing their farms and her husband required, because to give birth meant being closer to the abundant earth for the Laya people, to give birth in blood meant something like war and magic to them. How House names came from the women because it was from their bodies that queens and kings and scholars came from, and how inheritance went either through birth order or skill and interest regardless if one was a man or a woman.

Myrcella was happy that Mother was exposed to such thoughts that Myrcella had been mulling over and enjoying for many moons now.

"You must come visit us again, Queen Cersei," Princess Ethelwolda urged.

"I think I will, Your Grace," Mother said, pleasantly. "I have not been refreshed in so long. And the tea is exquisite."

"Yes," Lady Felisa was saying across the veranda, two moons later, "I do know how to foretell fortunes."

Myrcella was sitting on a cushion, petting Jumyr and keeping Juhara company whilst Juhara studied, so she was able to see how Mother flinched.

"How," was Mother's near-inaudible reply, "how do you accomplish that?"

Lady Felisa settled more comfortably amongst the cushions on the divan, her hand gently smoothing her pregnant belly. "The person rubs their hands together and I read it on their palms."

"You don't require – blood, my lady?" Mother said. Her right hand curled into a fist so white. Myrcella frowned.

"Blood? By the gods, no, Queen Cersei." Lady Felisa smiled, and her deep brown cheekbones sharpened even more. "I did read Princess Ethelwolda's fortune, and the other ladies' as well. And let me tell you, I did not need blood magic to tell them what already came to pass."

"So there is magic here as well."

"Of course. How do you think we haven't been found by those who desperately seek for our existence?"

Mother leaned forward in her seat, an intense look on her face. Her knuckles were still very white. "Lady Felisa, if you would. If you would be so kind to read my palm?"

Lady Felisa smiled obligingly. "But of course."

Myrcella couldn't help but feel Mother's nervousness. Her arms tightened around Jumyr, and Jumyr mewled complainingly. Mycella glanced down to hush him. When she looked up Mother had already rubbed her palms together.

Lady Felisa took Mother's right hand in both of her own ring-laden hands. The tips of Mother's knuckles brushed against her pregnant belly. "This is the hand you write with, Queen Cersei?"

"Yes," Mother said.

The cool wind blew, making the lanterns of shell and fiber and bells tinkle and Mother's hair stir.

Lady Felisa's loose hair remained still as she peered at Mother's palm.

"I see nothing," Lady Felisa announced at length. "Your palm has been washed clean. Like a shore rearranged by the tide."

"I quite like them," Mother said, a moon later.

It felt like she was admitting this information so Myrcella looked up from arranging her cyvasse squares to smile.

"Lady Yela has the bawdiest tales," Mother continued. "She's – they're – so blithe and casual about their bodies and their pleasures. For women. It was like listening to obnoxious men deep in their cups, but this one's better. I cannot put my finger on why it's better. But I quite like them."

"I like them, too," Myrcella said, cheerfully. "Juhara and Pippa visited me in the marble-carver's today. They brought me fried squids."

"How charming."

In the middle of the game Mother paused in her silent contemplation of the board and said, "I have a mind to purchase some land nearby."

"Oh?"

"Yes." Mother made her eliminated rabble thoughtfully walk across the table. "I have noticed that accommodations for wealthy merchants outside the palace compound is needed. Something not quite the palace, but not quite the common inns."

Myrcella was wrapping her carving instruments with cloth, her hands and arm muscles sore from the day's work. Romba had examined Myrcella's work for the day before critiquing it, patting her on the shoulder, and heading out to a house down the street for a custom.

Myrcella stepped out of the shop, dreaming about some dried mangoes, and promptly bumped into Mother.

The coral pink pearl with the silver band shone on Mother's neck. "Myrcella, sweetling. Do close your mouth."

Myrcella dragged her gaze away from her gift, given what seemed so long ago, and looked into Mother's eyes. Mother seemed as calm as the gentle breeze wafting past them, although she still had her eyebrows raised at Myrcella.

"Happy nameday, Mother," Myrcella blurted out, and smoothened it with a beam. Then she reached into her ropey bag of instruments, her hand curling around something she had been working at little by little. "And well, I was planning on giving this to you later but I failed to expect to meet you here."

With that she gave Mother a marble carving.

Mother raised it to her eyes, as if barely believing it. It was a cyvasse piece, a trebuchet to be exact, done in a marble of pale red spiked with smoky swirls. The corners of Mother's lips tugged up into a smile. She bent down to kiss Myrcella's forehead. "My thanks, Myrcella."

Myrcella beamed and beamed. She was starting not to mind the ache in her muscles much. "Should we go home, Mother?" she asked, before startling a bit.

Home. It was the first time she had thought of the little house nestled amongst coconut trees, with a wild garden beyond, as home.

"In a little while," Mother said, her hand curling around the cyvasse piece. "I wish for you to show me around the market. Then we could have those dried mangoes that you appear to be so fond of."

Myrcella found that she couldn't stop beaming, the gods help her. It was Mother's nameday and she had worn the pink pearl and loved Myrcella's marble carving. Mother had noticed what Myrcella loved, and they were to walk together in the market, no doubt with Mother planning something. The air was mild, so perfectly mild that it soothed away the hotness from the shop and at the same time warmed something in Myrcella's bones. And they would go home later.

"Of course, Mother," Myrcella said, and took Mother's arm.

fin