Weaving my way through the hall and the dozens of nobles, I went out to get some air, playing my part as the poor, refused lordling. My family had already retired for the evening, with Arianne having never been much of a social girl, especially with big gatherings.
I tried not to worry too much about her, but I feared her night terrors were a sign of something more serious than simple nightmares.
Sometimes at night, as she slept, she would murmur incoherent words in languages I knew she could not speak like High Valyrian and Ghiscari. Words I myself did not recognize until I casually asked the maester about it as if simply curious about Essos.
And then there was coming here. She almost had a seizure on the first day of the tourney when we came into the hall, and throughout tonight I could see her struggling with herself, her face scrunched up as if, not quite in pain, but overwhelmed by something.
It could be a simple case of a young girl's anxiety flaring up, but Arianne had never seemed to struggle with anything like this back home besides the night terrors, and I knew well this was not the same kind of world as my previous one.
Something might be happening with my sister, and I needed to sit down with her when we arrived back on Tarth to figure it out.
Skirting a small group of knights loudly arguing over who would win the tourney, I came upon a tall, arching opening on the rock wall on one side of the cavernous room that made the main hall of Casterly Rock.
The raucous sounds of the feast almost seemed to cut off once I stepped outside, a gentle breeze rolling through to tousle my hair.
The balcony jutted out the side of the mountain facing the ocean, running the length of the great hall. A smattering of lords and ladies were already here, sipping on chalices and enjoying the quiet atmosphere. Well-dressed servants flitted between the groups expertly refilling cups and offering up tiny cakes and pastries on platters.
Walking up to the edge, I took in the fresh air with a deep breath, smelling the distant ocean and the flowers and vines that hung from the balustrades lining the balcony.
The lapping waters below looked like an endless mass of darkness frothing with the waves. To one side, Lannisport was a collection of thousands of orange dots, a constellation of torches and braziers right there on the ground. Above, the cloudless night sky seemed close enough to touch, filled with its own stars.
At that moment, I could better understand Cersei's sense of superiority if you grew up knowing all of this, as far as the eye could see, from this mountain itself with its endless riches, to the city below and all the land beyond, belonged to your family.
And if that was the case for the Lannisters, what would it be like for the Targaryens of old, then, who flew on the back of their dragons? Why wouldn't they think of themselves as gods?
One of the servants came up to me then, offering a glass of mulled wine that I didn't refuse. The night wasn't exactly cold, but the wind had a bite to it so high up we were, and the wine was warm and watered enough I wouldn't lose my wits.
I looked down at the cup after taking a sip, relishing the strong taste of cinnamon and the faint aftertaste of ginger. Alcoholic drinks were something I thought I could bring over and make some gold out of it, even if the idea of the whole undertaking seemed like a huge chore to me.
This world had made me more like Robert Baratheon than I wanted, sometimes. I'd catch myself thinking why go through the whole trouble of creating an industry to make some coin when I could mount a horse, knock some man down on their arses, and come out thousands of gold richer for it?
Still, I'd been to enough brewery tours to know how whiskey and vodka were done.
Granted, the whole point of the tours were the tastings so that knowledge had been filtered through an unsobered mind, but I knew the basics of it, and knew the general shape and purpose of the copper instruments we'd need to get proper distillation going.
In reality, I'd need to get some maesters in on it, or at least some learned men, to help me get the details right. But while I trusted our own maester to be loyal to our house in most things, as he'd been for decades already, I didn't trust that he wouldn't send the knowledge of the distillation process back to the Citadel for their own study.
That was the maesters whole thing, gathering and hoarding knowledge, but I needed every advantage I could get, including a few months or years heads up before the other houses and powers-that-be figured it out on their own.
The whole thing would still take years and a lot of startup gold to get it going. I let out a heavy sigh. I needed to put someone I could trust on it, throw some gold at them, and see what they could scrounge out of it.
I thought about that for a second, feeling the wine warm up my insides. Maybe Grey could do it. He was smart enough to figure things out by himself after I pointed him in the right direction, and I knew the little details of stuff like fractional distillation that could set us up for success.
Approaching footsteps pulled me from my musings. When I looked up, Lord Steffon Baratheon had already sidled up beside me, watching me with striking blue eyes the same color as his son.
xxx
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