Morning is checklists.
Food dish. Water. Window sill. Rhaenys's ribbon accounted for. Cat alive, smug. Elia steady, but guarding her breath again. I hate that for her.
Today is for maps. The small kind. The kind that keep children breathing.
I start with the garden.
Servant door on the left: sticks unless you lift while you push. Boy with freckles knows the trick. Girl with braids doesn't and swears under her breath in the soft way of the south.
Guard loop: three men, same order as Day 2. Bored, alert, mean. Bored picks teeth with a sliver of straw. Alert counts steps. Mean watches Elia like a problem.
Noted. Not liked.
KeenEyeI-patterncaptureactive.
The air teaches too. There's a line of moving warmth that runs along the wall when the oven fires in the kitchen. There's a cold drop near the drain by the lemon trees. I ride both, short hops, no showing off. If anyone asks, I am a small bird being small.
Rhaenys does letters at the table. She hums the alphabet like it owes her money. Elia corrects her with a tap and a smile.
"'B' is belly first, my sun. Then the straight line."
"Belly first," Rhaenys repeats, serious. She glances up at me. "Velmir, belly first."
I pat my own chest with a wing. Belly first. Sure.
When the lesson ends, Elia rests a hand at her side and closes her eyes for a slow count of five. No groan. No complaint. Just a pause a stranger might miss.
I don't miss.
Rhaenys sees me looking and tilts her head. "Mother is fine," she says, brave. "She says pain is a houseguest. We feed it little and keep the good cups for friends."
That hurts in a way I can't peck.
Midday. I test routes beyond the garden.
Rule one: never past the second turn if I can't get back fast. Rule two: keep a reason to be somewhere- crumb hunting, water, a random preen. Rule three: if a human looks twice, I look harmless three times.
Service hall: narrow, hot, steam rolling out of a doorway where someone is losing a fight with onions. I ride the ceiling draft. A cook throws flour at a mouse and curses the Seven. Mouse wins on points.
Stairs down: too many boots, too much noise. I mark it and leave. No hero runs. No spy miracles. Just patience.
Back up by the gallery, there's a painted niche with a crack wide enough to slip behind. It doesn't go far; I can see the dust line where nothing living has cared in years. Good. Bad paths are still paths if you only need them once.
A maid sees me and laughs. "Bold little thing," she says, King's Landing rough on the consonants.
I tilt my head and hop like an idiot. She tosses a crumb. I ignore it for dignity, then eat it for survival. I contain multitudes.
Afternoon, bald man passes again. Varys. He does not hurry. He never hurries. Hurrying is for people who admit time can beat them.
He pauses, eyes flicking up to the balcony, then to me in the corner shadow by the water trough. The look is clean. No grabby thoughts. Just surprise.
"Still here," he says softly, mostly to himself.
I consider a chirp and decide against it. We are not friends. We are two tools in the same drawer, pretending the knife doesn't know the scissors can cut.
He moves on.
I map another piece: the long passage to the gallery Varys mentioned yesterday. One shutter is stuck. The other will swing wide to pull a draft if you wedge it with a wedge. Smart. I file which stone to kick if we need air fast.
At dusk, the mean guard swaps with another mean guard. Great. A franchise.
He talks about a noble's child in the dungeon. "Lordling with a lion," he says. "Thinks he'll go home same as he came."
His friend grunts. "He will, if his lord wants it."
"And if not?"
The grunt turns into a shrug. That shrug has a lot of dead birds under it.
I make a noise in my throat I didn't know I could make. A warning sound. Quiet. Mine.
Back in the room, Rhaenys lines up her stones again. The house gets a roof this time. It still leaks. She accepts this with regal sorrow.
"Help?" she asks.
I push one stone with my beak. It slides into place. She cheers like we won a tourney.
Elia watches us, fond and tired. she says. "Little mason."
I preen my wing to hide how good that feels.
Later, Rhaenys naps on the bench in the warm patch that moves with the sun. I guard the edge. A wasp considers her and then reconsiders me. Good choice.
In the quiet, a memory tries to kick the door of my head in. City at night. Plastic bag in a gutter. Red light on wet pavement. It won't settle. It won't leave. I add it to the pile of unsolved.
I take a slow lap.
Window sill to wall. Wall to tree. Tree to the narrow beam under the balcony floor. I check the nails. I check the slack rope someone left looped over a peg. I check the gap under the garden door where a small thing might slip on a night I don't want to imagine yet.
KeenEyeI-routemapupdated.
No capes. No x-ray. Just time.
Evening brings voices.
Two servants trade gossip near the arch, voices under the breath.
"The King raged again," one says.
"As he does," the other says. "The Hand took it on the chin and bit his tongue."
"Better a bitten tongue than a burned face."
They laugh without joy and move on. The mean guard catches the tail of it and glares like he can shackle sound.
Elia lifts Rhaenys from her nap and gets a sleepy protest that dissolves into a cuddle and a yawn.
"Hands," Elia reminds, gentle. Rule is rule.
Rhaenys washes and returns to the window with a question on her lips. "Mother, may Velmir come to the solar tomorrow?"
Elia considers. "If he is quiet." She eyes me with mock sternness. "Are you quiet, Velmir?"
I give her my most innocent chirp. It convinces no one and works anyway.
Night. Lanterns wake along the walks. The city breathes in and holds it.
I test Ember once in the far corner. A dot. Warm, not bright. Enough to say "I have fire" to the dark.
The kitten arrives and drops a beetle at my feet like tribute. I accept the gift and the lie that we are both great hunters.
Rhaenys leans on the sill and watches the sky go purple.
"Will you be here in the morning?" she asks, very small.
"Yes," I think so hard it feels like speech. "Yes."
She nods like she heard me anyway.
Elia draws the curtain halfway. She leaves it open enough to see the garden. To see me.
"Sleep," she says. "We keep what we can."
We keep this: routes, faces, drafts, habits.
We keep a ribbon. A cat. A child's laugh in a place that eats them.
We keep breathing.
And we wait.
KeenEyeI-stabilized.
Copy that.
I tuck my head under my wing and listen to the quietness of night.
Waiting for the loudness of a day.