[OOC: Not an open thread. If interested, PM either Dean or Ivory. Thanks!]
Whether it was the jolt or the creak the carriage made as it rolled over a pothole, it awoke Kathryn with a bit of a start. For a moment, she peered around herself, surprised to find she was not in bed. The chill of winter made her shiver, then, and she pulled the furs that had slipped back around her slim frame. Across from her, her maid gave her a slightly disapproving look and leaned forward to tuck the furs in a little better.
"You shouldn't be travelling in this cold in your condition, Your Grace." Molly scooped up her knitting needles, and, once again, the steady clack-clack-clack filled the small carriage.
Molly had been Kathryn's maid and confidant since the girl was a teenager, which had granted her the privilege of being one of the few people allowed to scold the Grand Duchess. "I know," Kathryn allowed with a roll of her eyes, grateful for the help with the heavy blankets. "Would you rather have me wait until the spring pilgrimage, when I am so big around I can't even stand on my own?"
The maid sighed in good-natured exasperation. "Hardly. I'm certain the Church would understand one missed pilgrimage, given the circumstances." Her eyes flickered to the shapes moving by the window. "Well, we seem to have arrived, anyway, and no worse for the trip."
The Grand Duchess of Connlaoth brushed back a curtain to study the familiar building in the distance. The Cathedral easily dwarfed the buildings around it and even the city wall seemed almost toy-like beside its ornate towers. A few snowflakes swirled around it and were crushed against its massive stone walls by the winds. Set against the gray sky, it looked somehow foreboding and watchful, as though Angsar Himself were watching the approach of the pilgrims from one of the Cathedral's many windows.
The thought made her shiver again and snuggle back into the warmth of her blankets.
Kathryn had been making these trips to Saint Solee's Cathedral of Oak Bluff for years now. Each spring, the site drew a hundred or more pilgrims to its sacred well to celebrate Angsar's triumph in the name of its patron saint, Solee, a warrior-king who had driven magic out of Connlaoth from both the battlefield and the throne. Kathryn attended each year as a gesture of good will and to add her royal presence (and a donation) to the proceedings in the place of her husband.
By spring, however, she would be six months into her pregnancy... Paying her annual visit now, before she began to show, was a much wiser choice in spite of the cold.
The first indication that something was amiss came as a dull thud against the side of the carriage. Kathryn heard an angered shout, and then there was another thud against, this time, the window. The colored glass shuddered in its frame, then burst with a chime of falling pieces. Kathryn inhaled sharply, then brushed aside the furs to push open the carriage door.
"Your Grace! Sit down!"
Kathryn ignored Molly's protests, instead calling to the man who was put in charge of this expedition. "Zerval? What was that?"
She realized, almost as soon as the question had left her lips, exactly what it was: it was a riot, undoubtedly sparked by the news of the Grand Duchess's early visit to the Cathedral. There were more and more of them, or so the reports said – but if Calent had believed Oak Bluff wasn't safe, he never would have allowed her to visit, even with the famed Grand Master.