The Black Flagon

[The Forgotten God]

A fancy tavern in the town, named for the Targaryens by a sellsword who went native and returned a dragon worshipping nut. He does make an excellent lager though. The entire place is ebony and black oak, polished to shine, and riff raff is not tolerated in the establishment.

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon led Asha to the strange tavern, not without a considerable amount of redirection when he made to turn a wrong way more times than he would have cared to admit. On reaching the place, he held open the door for her, as a Prince of the Reach ought, before following her in. He scanned about the establishment, scouting ahead to see if there was a chair he would need to hold for her as she sat. "This is quite a unique place." He commented as he looked around.

[The Forgotten God]

"Wait until you meet the owner,@ she said drily as she smiled and let him pull her chair out. "The manners are so real," she said, taking her seat. A woman comes to take their order and she looks to him. "Pick our poison," she said. The woman smiled at Percy and looked to Asha. "She wants to know if you want the very important person treatment," she said. "A back massage and all."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Not sure the back massage would lead anywhere he was comfortable with it going, Perceon shook his head. "Our agreement was for drinks. I would not want to spring extra costs upon you at this late juncture." Perceon appraised her trying to figure out what she would like, but he really had no idea so settled for what was safe. "What wines do you have?" He inquired.

[The Forgotten God]

"Every wine," the foreign girl said. "No charge for extra for important people. Our special is a cherry wine from Barrowton. Northern wines haven't the same fame as others but 177 was a special summer, three yields of red cherries." Her voice was flawless in describing the vintage, obviously honed by months of practice. Asha smiled.

"Perfect." She waved her off. "So then, what does a prince do during his days?" She asked. "It is a shame we had all this drama, I do not feel you're much different from theon in your own way. Men of minds in a kingdom of swords."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon gave the serving girl a polite smile as she parted before devoting his attentionto asha. "I spend time in court, flatter my nobles, look into all manner of boring administrative things that I shant bore you with." Perceon replied. "On good days my brother visits so I can talk to him and learn how he is faring in oldtown. On bad days I am ill and not capable of near anything. Fortunately there have been more good days than bad in recent times. In truth I was worried I might fall ill here, but the gods have treated me favorably thus far. I don't know what theon does in court, but there are similarities I am sure. But what of you, how do you spend your time when you are not entertaining foreign princes?"

[The Forgotten God]

"You haven't loosened my tongue yet," she said, "so I find it best to remain a woman of mystery for now. Your days sound dull and dishonest, Flattery should be left to the professionals such as myself." She leaned in, looking like a car in repose as she grinned. "So let's see how well you do at flattery. Melt my heart, great prince. You might like what you can find under the ice."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

"You think I'm not a professional?" Perceon responded. "Perhaps I'm simply saving my best efforts for someone fairer and cleverer than yourself." He let the words hang for a moment before adding. "Although I have yet to know such a person here, so that is unlikely. I shall simply have to excuse my poor performance up to this time by remarking that your appearance beside me in the stands of the archery was an entirely unexpected and most welcome event, you are more interesting than the best placed shot, and your good looks and quick tongue seem to have landed a better shot to my senses than your man Mychel managed in the contest, which I can only hope to recover from to have the chance of impressing you enough to leave open the opportunity for future such blows from your looks and charm were we to see one another again."

He finished with a smile that left it unclear whether it was all flattery or part genuine. Half truths could be most advantageous in games such as this one, and Perceon wasn't about to let her know which ones were which.

[The Forgotten God]

Asha smiled. "Very good," she said. "If you found anyone here fairer than myself I'd have to settle that issue personally. A princess is always allowed to be the prettiest in her own home." The wine arrived, tart with an aftertaste of nutmeg, and Asha sipped it pleasantly. "You have a quite poor opinion of my people," she noted. "Not that I am surprised." She licked her lips to savor the taste of the wine. It is quite distracting. "You aren't a knight," she said, changing the subject suddenly. "Do you feel bound to their way of life regardless?"

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

"Why do you think I hold your people in poor esteem?" Perceon responded. "I am here with you, trying to learn more of how you live, am I not?" He took a sip of the wine, finding it passable. "What way of life might that be?" He inquired. "I see no need to hold myself to all the knightly rules, since as you have said, I am not one myself. But there are codes that supersede knighthood and apply to all civilized  men and women. To those I do find myself bound."

[The Forgotten God]

"You made several comments directed at my kind relating to medicines and honor and the like," she said. "You're here with me because I do not seem to fit into those molds, and I imagine that you find my forthrightness refreshing. I do not know if you would approve of it in, say, Highgarden. There I would be a terrible target for the gossip mangers and political..." she shook her hand back and forth like she was rolling imaginary dice trying to come up with a word, "whatever you prefer to call the lickspittles who talk all day and say nothing."

A young man stared at her as he passed and she batted her lashes at him then waved him off dismissively. "I understand I'llbe married off and put into a gilt cage one day. I've always wondered if there's any size the cage could be to not seem imprisoning anymore." Her speaking cadence was rapid but clearly intelligible; she did not spout off babble so fast she was difficult to understand despite her frequent topic changes. "Now, then, let me hear of the deeds of Prince Perceon Gardener, Heir to Highgarden and the Reach. What will historians say of you before you ascended your throne?"

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon shrugged. "My comments were based on what I know of your kind. Which is little, and admittedly largely negative. The regular raiding of my lands is a nuisance at best and an atrocity at worst. I am here because as you've said, you are pleasant and interesting, and I welcome the opportunity to learn more of you and your way of life. It is a foolish man who condemns what he does not understand. And you are wrong to believe that I concern myself with what individuals such as those you mention have to say. I have been the subject of such commentary for much of my life, and I hold it in low esteem. Particularly when it selects as its target those I like rather than just myself, who everyone has already formed an opinion on one way or another."

"You are the last person I can imagine being put in a gilded cage." He responded. "You told me you have choice in who you marry. Do you doubt your ability to win the heart of the man you chose? You have nothing to fear if you succeed in that."

"They will say I was a great disappointment to my family and to the Reach, if the lickspittles you speak of have their say." Perceon responded. "If my history is written by my friends, and I will do my utmost to ensure it is, it will be said I concerned myself with matters of state that house gardener has neglected to it's detriment for many years now. And no doubt it will also say I was sickly. Some facts are impossible to polish."

[The Forgotten God]

"Facts are facts," Asha agreed to his last point. "It'd be unfair to you to be hagiographed into some legendary warrior. Your brain can do much more than any man's sword, so long as some other man's sword stops a blade from claiming your brain." She seemed to delight in odd sentence structures. "Why not take their tongues?" She asked. "Belinda Bracken said I was a slut in training once, when I kissed a boy she liked." She rubbed her chin. "I quite forgot where she is in Harrenhal," she admitted. "Three years can pass in the blink of an eye. A knight would challenge a man who spoke to him like that to a duel, if that sounds in any way familiar."

She finished her first cup and awaited more. "Well," she said, "suppose I was able to win your heart, or more importantly, your bed. How large would my cage be? I've heard so much chatter about trying to stuff your sister back into hers, a girl cannot help but be concerned."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

"Yes. Fortunately I have my dear brother to keep me safe." Perceon replied. "And my sister too although that causes problems with well...everyone with standard sensibilities. And if I were to take the tongue of any man or woman who spoke ill of me I would be the most despised Prince in the long history of the Reach. That is not how I want to be remembered, to say nothing of the rebellion it would create. I'm not too proud to let my reputation come before the position of my house in the long term." Perceon let the comments about stashing ladies away in Harrenhal, presumably without tongues go, because he found it distasteful and didn't know how to respond. "People are not so foolish to speak such insults to my face, and even if they did I would not want my brother fighting on my behalf. He is the greatest sword in the Reach, but if a man fights enough battles luck will not forever be on his side."

Perceon was drinking slower, so took the opportunity to catch up. "This isn't bad." He told her, after he finished what he had. "But you should ask your nephew from some of the stuff I gave him. That is stuff fit for a princess. I disagree in any event. In marriage the heart is what matters. An unhappy bed is no place to build a family upon, and if all you are to a man is an outlet to a particular pleasure you will never be free from that particular cage. As for my sister's I had not known she was causing trouble again. So long as she keeps her doings to herself, I am fine to let her do as she pleases. When she creates trouble for our house, like she has done on occasion in the past, that is a different matter. Your cage would be the same as my own; big enough to do what you please so long as it does not cause problems in the realm."

[The Forgotten God]

"just one or to tongues," she said, shrugging, "the rest will stop wagging. Treasonous words are a poison to royalty, my mother says. but i could have any man's heart, but if it cannot lead to a more intimate union formalized by our laws and families and alliances, what is the point? From such a toxic brew comes adutlery and the most profane murder," she said, with her voice dropping an octave to sound mock threatening. "What exactly does a woman skilled with a sword have to do with causing problems in the realm, so long as she fulfills her marital duties?" Asha asked. "Asking for a friend," she winked. "I assure you my agility or vigor shall never be tested on a battlefield."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

“An insult and treason are not the same thing.” Perceon replied. “Both are born out of a lack of respect, but there are many steps between disapproval and disloyalty. In the Reach the removal of a tongue would inflame far more anger than it might here. And if a man truly loves you he would marry you, so I would be wary of any who proclaim their affection but do not attempt to formalize the bond.”

Perceon sighed. “My sister offends tradition, and slights the traditions on which society itself is built. If a woman prefers the battleground to the bedchamber, how can any man trust her to bear or raise children, or see to the administration of the household in times he is absent? I am no conservative, and there are times when I have recognized the usefulness of a sister who can do things I am not capable of, but when she does them publicly she attracts attention from those who are more narrow-minded. To me that seems like a problem that needn’t exist. Can a woman not bear a sword, or train with it, without wielding it publicly? Then both she and the men with power in the realm would both be satisfied. She would be capable of protecting herself or those she cared for when the occasion arose, but she would not offend the sensibilities of otherwise loyal vassals.”

“So,” Perceon concluded, wondering just how bold Asha was, and taking the conversation a direction he had not expected he would earlier. “My sister tests her agility and vigour in the yard, where exactly do you imagine you’d be testing yours if not there?”

[The Forgotten God]

"If the king is the realm, then an insult to the king is an insult to the realm, which is loosely, treason," she said, "or maybe sedition, I always forget that word exists. I have more marriage proposals than socks, and I have a great many socks," she said. "Pink ones, purple ones, green ones, one that has a whole and no mate but I kept it because it reminds of of how I lost the other."

She listened to his tirade on the place of a woman and nodded along as she nods along to all the justifications. At his last question, she looks about and shrugged. "I'd be very enthusiastic about bearing children, my prince, and that was quite ungentlemanly to ask," she said with just the tiniest hint of a smile. The server comes to bring some more drinks.

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon smirked. "Was it? I thought you had some perfectly polite athletic pursuit planned. Pardon my manners."

"Perhaps it is treason." Perceon responded. "But I would sooner reward good vassals to encourage others to emulate their behaviour than go seeking quarrels over words with bad ones. There's no profit to be made in displeasing me, that I can say." He was totally at a loss about how to respond to her revelation of hoarding socks, so he just asked. "If you have so many proposals, why are you wasting your time on me? I do not expect either of our fathers would agree to a marriage between us at this juncture given the bad blood between our families now. Surely there was a promising offer amongst those you have received? I cannot be your most interesting possibility, can I?"

[The Forgotten God]

"What better way to fix bad blood?" She asked, asking for some fruit to be brought. "I have plenty of promising offers, I just wish to go through all my options first. The Reac is so beautiful, it's said, and their knights so handsome and all, I decided to see what the prince would be like, the prince who others don't think fit in. I don't rank my potential matches by number," she said, "why couldn't you be interesting?"

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

"None I suppose." Perceon responded. "The offer just needs to be accepted for it to do any good. That's the problem I see."

He sipped his wine, considering her. "You are welcome to come visit the Reach if you would like to see it. It is beautiful, although I must acknowledge your family has built something impressive here. Your nephew appraised me of the human cost for Harrenhal's construction when we last spoke. Unfortunate, but those are facts of the past and needn't colour the future."

"I am interesting." Perceon informed her, confidently. "My thought was I am likely not as interesting to you as other potential matches."

[The Forgotten God]

"The Reach is interesting," she said, "it makes you interesting. I'm sure none of you major heirs are quite the strongest,t smartest, or most skilled at lovemaking on the continent, so let's not pretend that's an insult. And Theon loves to exaggerate. As though we ever had a million slaves," she rolled her eyes. "I'd bet maybe fifteen thousand. A horrible thing, but that is the price of progress and if they didn't want to die, they should have allied with House Hoare when they had the chance," she winked. "My apologies, that's not a threat....I am just ever so outspoken."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon laughed. “If you think House Hoare has the power to actually enslave the entirety of the Reach, you are unfortunately mistaken. And I see you are treating me as synonymous with the Reach again. Is that what makes me interesting to you? By capturing my heart you would metaphorically enslave the Reach, and be able to brag of doing something no Hoare before you has managed? It would be no mean feat, I’ll admit. As for me, I’m not the strongest, but I might be the smartest of your options. As for my other abilities, well, you’re not the only one who can keep things a mystery to keep things intruiging.”

[The Forgotten God]

"Like I said, my dear," she said, "it isn't your heart that will bing us together. Of course House Hoare can't enslave the Reach, why would it want to? We make more money without war." She regarded him and shrugged. "If you're the smartest, you'll see that even if I am an evil little vixen, well, the Isles and Rivers are interesting too."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

“Well, that is welcome news.” Perceon replied. “More trade between our kingdoms is something that I covet. And again, I disagree. Hearts have everything to do with the matter. Each of us has multiple viable options. Who we pick will be a product of who it is we like most of the foreign princes and princesses.”

He finished his second glass of wine. “I am smart enough to see you are neither evil nor a vixen.”

[The Forgotten God]

She grinned and got up, sauntered over to him, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead. "You are half right," she said. "But I must be away now," she said, "it isn't suitable for a woman to be alone with a man she isn't married to for so long."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon was quite content to let his head be kissed and was glad she had chosen so suitable a location. Of course, my princess.” He responded, standing. “Please allow me to show you out.”

[The Forgotten God]

"How charming," she said, offering an arm, "thank you my lord."

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon took the offered arms and led her to the door, opening it for her to allow her out. "I suppose we ought to part ways here." He said, stepping out after her. "Thank you for the drink, this has been most enjoyable."

[The Forgotten God]

Asha grinned as she headed out. "I once heard that people hate havng me go but love watching me leave," she said. She bounced off to her two gigantic, brutal looking guards, clearly men plucked for not only skill but sheer intimidation.

[King Perceon IV Gardener]

Perceon had an idea why as he watched her do so. Then he made his own way back to the Reach camp.