Chapter 5: What Baelish Sees

The corridor outside the small council chamber smelled of tallow and old ambition, a particular combination Elspeth had come to associate with the administrative heart of the Red Keep — the scent of decisions being made in rooms where the making of decisions was the only thing that mattered. She had no business being there. That was, precisely, why she was.

She had been following Sira Mallery.

Not with any intention of confrontation — confrontation would have required acknowledging that she was following her, which would have required an explanation for why, which she did not have in a form she wished to speak aloud. But Sira had moved through the residential wing after the morning's attendance with a purposefulness that was different from the ordinary court drift, and Elspeth, who had been cataloguing purposefulness for ten days with the focus of a woman whose life had become an exercise in reading rooms correctly, had followed at a distance that she hoped read as coincidence. Sira had turned twice, which meant nothing. The second time, Elspeth had paused to examine a wall hanging — a faded tapestry of some Targaryen conquest she could not name — with the focused attention of a woman with a consuming interest in needlework.