Chapter 296: A Day of Triplet Sisters
Somewhere in Bolton Lands
POV of Diana Snow
13-year-old Diana bit her lip and finished the last touches of the ritual circle on the ground.
Once it was finally completed, it glowed as it was supposed to when she had completed it correctly. If not, then the circle wouldn't glow, and she would have to draw it all over again.
Seeing that it was glowing, she let out a sigh and plopped back on her butt.
She looked ahead and saw her triplet sisters, Lyanna and Sara Snow. They were also on their last ritual circle for the day.
This was a duty given to them by Lord Bolton himself.
She still remembered four months ago, when Lord Bolton visited their class and asked for the students with the best handwriting, a good head for business, and who were not shy to do some hard work for decent pay.
She almost scoffed at that.
Decent pay from Lord Bolton earned her thrice as much as her own mother did in the brothel in Lundenhold. Not to mention that her sisters were earning just as much as she was.
Their mother had also stopped working at the brothel and settled for a job at that large shop where women made woolen clothes from raw material, even though it didn't pay as much.
She could understand why her mother did that.
Being a whore was not a respectful profession, even if she was no longer hurt by her customers thanks to all the laws and regulations put into place by Lord Bolton.
If she didn't know better, then she would have thought that Lord Bolton owned those brothels himself.
Not only that, but they themselves were also coming of age, which meant that being from a respectable family would get them better marriage prospects.
What their mother didn't know was that both her sisters already had boyfriends in the military, and she herself had an eye on a young teacher in the village.
Still, it was good to know that their mother cared for them if nothing else.
Of course, Lord Bolton has raised the age of consent for marriage from 12 to 15 for girls, mainly because a lot of young girls around that age die during childbirth because of narrow hips, so she and her sister didn't need to worry about marriage for two more years.
She walked up to her sisters and noticed that they were gossiping about Lord Bolton and Lady Ygritte once again.
"The maids say that they saw Lady Ygritte being carried off by Lord Bolton as if she were some sort of prize," Lyanna said with a faraway look, probably because of her crush on Lord Bolton.
Then again, both she and Sara, and half the girls in the school, also had a crush on Lord Bolton, and the girls who claimed they didn't just hid it better.
"That is so romantic," Sara said, and Diana coughed to get their attention.
"If we're done here, then we should go to Hill House." She said, and both her sisters sighed and got up from their places.
After half an hour of walking, accompanied by the Bolton men guarding them, they finally reached the tavern, which was just one of the hundreds that Lord Bolton had built in his domain in the past decade.
"Hey, Grandpa Hillis. Where's Grandma?" She said to the old man who ran the tavern on Lord Bolton's behalf.
"Gone to bring hay for the horses in the stable." Grandpa Hillis said, pointing to the Bolton guards to whom the horses belonged.
Lord Bolton had really gone overboard with their security and making sure that they were comfortable. And she was thankful for that. She just hoped that she and her sisters wouldn't get a big head from all the luxuries they were getting.
She nodded at him, and they quickly went up to the room, which had been rented out for free to them.
They had been living here for a week already and would continue to live for yet another week before moving on to yet another place where they would continue their work of drawing ritual circles on the ground for the weirwood trees.
Their room was large, with three beds, tables, and chairs, and even a large glass window.
A tavern having a glass window of its own might seem impossible to some people. And it was.
Until Lord Bolton found how to create it and now… well, she wouldn't say that glass was a common thing, as it was still expensive, but it was within the means of the richer of the small folk like that.
It was already evening, and it was hard to see, so she lit the whale-oil lamp.
She and her sisters sat down on the opposite side of their own tables and took out one of the chestplate armors kept in the corner of the room.
"You sure we'll get a nice bonus from this?" Sara asked as she dipped the feather quill into the magical ink and carefully drew runes on the armor.
Lyanna nodded and asked. "Do you remember Bethany from the other class?" They nodded.
"Well, she works in a shop with four other kids who are supposed to draw these runes on weapons like swords and halberds. She told me that one of them once worked extra hard and drew some runes on more weapons than he was supposed to. And Lord Bolton doubled his pay at the end of the month. Called it a bonus for hard-working employees."
"I think I once heard the teachers talk about bonus pay as well," Diana said and nodded. "If they do their best work, then they might get a bonus."
"Let's not talk about boring stuff anymore." Sara said with a slight frown as she concentrated on her own work, "Mark told me that Lord Bolton is going on yet another expedition North of the Wall."
They went silent at that, knowing that all their pay came to them thanks to Lord Bolton, and if something happened to him…
"Is Mark going as well?" Lyanna asked, and Sara scoffed.
"As if… Lord Bolton is only taking the best of the best this time. He won't qualify even if he wanted to go."
"Why do you think they're going beyond the wall so often?" she asked.
Her sisters shrugged, "No one truly knows." Sara said, "What we do know is that our Lord called all the Lordlings up North after the last expedition and…"
"And they have been sending more and more workers to the Wall since then." She said, and her words brought a grim silence to the room.
"Do you think there's some King beyond the Wall like the history teacher told us about?" Lyanna asked, and Sara shrugged.
"Maybe. Though I doubt that anything could hurt Lord Bolton." Sara said.
"Let's not talk about this anymore." She said, and both her sisters nodded and went back to their work.
In the silence, she worked on drawing the runes and thought about why Lord Bolton would go to the North so often, and the bad feeling in her heart grew.
They were called by Grandpa Hillis a few minutes later for food.
Once dinner was over, they returned to their rooms and worked for one more hour before they finally grew too tired to keep going and had to go back to sleep.
And as she lay in her bed, she thought of Lord Bolton and hoped that he would be safe in this expedition.
Not because she had a crush on him, but because she had a feeling that all their lives were standing on his shoulders. And if he fell, then things won't end well for any of them.
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Next Chapters' Name:
Ch.297: Construction of the Forts at the Wall
Ch.298: Time Changes Everything
Ch.299: Wolf Becomes Sheep - I (+18)