286AC
She laid the basket down on the cold, rocky floor once again, and as her new habit, took out her flute, and began to play. Viserys, despite his apparent lack of emotion, was no fool, and ever since the first day she had played, he had turned to look at her as she entered, seeming to wait for her to play as he sat on his bed, and echoed her song with his own humming throat.
From that hummed tune she had slowly pieced together the full tune of the song, note by note, it was a simple thing, quiet and low, and tonight she hoped to finish it. She played it again and again as if it were a chorus, and each time she practiced she got a tad better at it, and when she got it right, a new note had been added to the end.
She could feel that the end of it was coming, only a few more notes. She could tell that Viserys could too, a sort of imperceptible tension building up in his form as she reached the end of the song that she knew.
Viserys kept humming another three measures, just a calm, trio of notes.
She felt her eyebrows raise at the sound. "Did you remember the rest of it?"
Ever so gently, the boy nodded, before, with the most movement she had ever seen out of him unordered, he lay down back onto his bed, with his feet still hanging over the side.
It took her a moment to that was all the answer she would get. "Will you tell it's meaning to me?"
There was a long pause of silence, but then the boy finally said "No,". There was a finality and a rawness to it that she hadn't expected, especially from who had otherwise seemingly learned the Slave's lessons so well. His voice dropped from its emotional high down to the cold sound that she expected from him. "But, if you play it again I will tell you other things, that is what you came here for, isn't it?"
She sat back in the chair, feeling almost naked. Had the boy seen so much through her while only glaring at the walls? Then she realized the terms of his proposed bargain, and put the flute to her lips once more, preparing the quiet tune in her mind once more. "One question a song?"
She could likely get more, but in the rocky room, so much smaller than her own, she had grown used to its sound and didn't mind the extra songs she would need to play in order to have her questions answered.
At the boy's nod, she pressed her lips to the flute once again, the sweet and soft tune beginning to echo through the halls of the lower pyramid once again.
When the song was finished and concluded the boy sat back up from the bed, and seemed to eye her up for the first time, his gaze tracing her form, perhaps putting it to his memory. "What is it you want to know?"
Cherazza tried to keep her smile small, but couldn't help herself, she thought for just a moment before speaking.
"Tell me about the Red Witch."
And so he did. He told her of the old woman's cruelty, of the way she would send shadows of magic to torment him in the night, of the way that she would push his hand into the fire if he did wrong, of how she seemed to know people in every city they visited despite appearing as an old poor woman. He even told her a fanciful story of burning skeletons that she could summon by throwing her old and rotten teeth to the ground, and how she could see visions of the future in the flames. As he spoke of her, she saw the second emotion that the boy had ever shown her.
It was fear, fear and sometimes pain, the boys fear of the old woman was deeper than the charnel pits of Meereen, and darker than the night of the new moon. As he went on she got the feeling that it was her grasp around his heart that kept him from showing feeling, like a great boney claw wrapped around his soul, letting nothing seep through.
She couldn't say why, but the thought of it made her sad. Here was a dragon, so chained and tormented by the fear that even the bonds that her father wrought round his neck meant nothing to him. She had never seen a slave broken so completely, but here one was in front of her. She could imagine many of the Ghiscari masters would be proud to have such a trophy, but rather than being impressed by the old woman's work, she felt only a sort of sad revulsion. It was one thing to think about breaking a man, or in this case child, so completely that he lost his emotions, but another to hear how it was done from a boy in front of her who could not be older than twelve.
But now those emotions were seeping through. She had opened a hole in the old woman's hold with her song. She had mistaken herself for holding the needle, when the boy came equipped with a needle of his own, or perhaps a vase that was slowly cracking to allow the water inside to leak out.
Viserys was a puzzle, something for her to decipher, and by deciphering, learn. She clenched her hand around her flute as she departed. If the cracks were there, she needed to widen them.
As she returned to her chambers, she idly wondered what special significance the tune had.
Perhaps, he would tell her in time.