Dame de Lanz always needed to remind the women around her that, no, no, Dame was her real name; it was no lady's title or significant representation of honor. But she was no duchess, no baroness, even though she'd learned the recent habit of turning her nose up at the muddy boys playing in the gutters when she brought out the furs and rugs to beat, beat, beat the dust out of them and sing her song, her new favorite song. A tune she'd written using a familiar, sacred melody of the One True Faith.
And as she stood in front of one of the lodging rooms in the Broken Dagger -- it was the right room, wasn't it? She unfolded the parchment in her left hand to be sure -- she trilled the little song under her breath.
"The ladies call her Lady, for she listens to our needs,
Charity and friendliness are but few among her deeds.
A dandy lass, this Rhaena, whose grace is on us heaped,
She gave to me her smile, and o'er and o'er I weeped."
Crisken always said It's wept, Dame -- wept; say it right or don't say the damned thing at all, but he'd been a brooding, plodding mess of a husband since Pinbone's unexpected death. Rot of a dog, messy old bitch, couldn't keep her hind leggers apart enough to piss let alone take what a hound could give her, good riddance, good riddance, Rhaena would have just as quickly wanted the dog to be put out its misery, she imagined--
She swept aside a sleeve gilded in stark red and shining golden brocade (she thought the Lady's colors fit her quite nicely, and she was glad to be her Lady's -- why, children all ought to eat, and that good Elliot boy and that lovely squire of his were just the most precious little squirts) and drummed her hand once, twice on the door.
"Girl," she bleated. "Precious girl." She cleared her throat, then managed to sputter out, "P-...Plehew," because who would ever name a girl that? Plehew, so hard to say, a twist on the tongue, Dame would have rathered a Daisy or a Petunia or a Lorice or a Feneere or a--
"Oh," she said, then scrambled to turn the page right-side up and read the name as it was meant to be.
She knocked again, then again.
"Child! Delivery for you, love. Girl. Whelp! Time to rise and greet the sun, darling. Letter for you!"