silver tongue || robb stark

first.

HAD SOMEONE ASKED if she was afraid, her answer would have been a rather resounding no.

Fear required having something to lose. Having someone to miss once you were gone. Fear required knowing that if you only tried a little harder, you wouldn't be in that same position that struck you down with cowardice.

Shara had nothing to lose, bar her sanity, no one to miss her, bar perhaps those she informed (would the famed Varys really miss one of his birds? He could replace her within a week, of that she was certain), and above all, could have done very little to get out of the situation she was currently in.

So. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, and therefore no fear.

The fact of the matter remained that Shara was not particularly troubled by the concept of her own inevitable death.

Shara Callister had nothing to fear from death, after all. She had seen enough places, lived enough lives, that an end to it all would be a kind of relief. One could only have no real name for so long. Varys' birds often died young, she was told, and that had been one of the reasons she'd taken the job.

She would rather die young than grow old in a place like Westeros. She would sooner move to Bravos and become disciple of the Many-Faced God than live to see her final days in the stinking city of King's Landing. At least she shared that sentiment with the King in the North. They both had a fair amount of disdain for the inhabitants of Westeros' crown jewel.

Robb Stark perhaps a little more so. They had decapitated his father, so it was justified.

Perhaps that was why she was here, then. One of Varys' little birds, loyal above all to her beloved King Joffrey, and the darling Queen Mother who could do no wrong. Shara would have laughed in his face if Robb Stark had proposed such an ideology before her. 

She had not expected to die in a northern camp, though. Had not expected that the brutish, rough Northerners would be the ones to notice the wiry, brown-haired girl sending ravens off to Gods knew where. King's Landing, perhaps. An irrelevant town along the Kingsroad. Bravos, Dorne, the Iron Islands.

All Shara knew was that she had many contacts and was to send the information she received as swiftly as she received it, never using the same contact twice. Nearly ten years she had worked for Varys, her namedays coming and going with the seasons (though in the North, there weren't really any seasons. It was just cold, year round). She had learned not to question the spider who weaved his web of birds.

She was well-rewarded for her service, anyway, and though she had no family to care for, the payment suited her needs well enough. Well enough to earn her a home outside of Fleabottom, outside of the slums where she had spent most of her thus-far unfortunate life.

Jaime Lannister had endured much the same treatment as Shara had, and as such she had slightly more respect for the man. It was not enjoyable, sitting bound to a wooden pole in the mud and in the cold, being kept on watch every hour of the day and night.

Still. Jaime Lannister was fucking his sister, so Shara figured she had slightly more moral fibre than him.

Three weeks she had been kept in a cell. Long enough to be well aware that everyone in the camp seemed wholly unaware of what to do with her. She suggested to the guards that they simply behead her and get it over and done with, but they paid her no mind.

Shara didn't know what they were waiting for. She knew they had the Kingslayer held captive as well, had helped gather information on their movements for the sole purpose of rescuing the wretched man, so she was hardly the most important captive in the camp.