A/N: Written for prompt 1, Colour, at Goldenlake (really cool new Tamora Pierce site with really cool people running it! You'll like it. Discussion, fic, prompts, fanart, slight crackiness. It's fostered a country singers' AU and zombie!Duke Roger already, which- well, impressive, no? :D http:// .proboards. com/index .cgi ). Please read and review!

Disclaimer: Tamora Pierce still owns everything, with the possible exception of Sir Ranulph, who was (cough) er... not based on Raleigh. No. Not at all. Filch English historical figures for my fic? Would I do a thing like that?

George doesn’t much care about the colours of his new fief, and in the end, he just suggests to the clerks trying to create a fresh coat of arms that they keep the old colours: brown and gold. George likes brown and gold, and he is unaffected by the rumours that Pirate’s Swoop is haunted by its last owner, the privateer Sir Ranulph who might object to George’s use of his colours- after all, George has been there, and the Sight showed him nothing but perfectly homely disrepair. If there was ever any ghost there, it is long gone.

George does choose the device: a key. Jon’s eyebrows shoot up when he sees the design, because there are so many implications you can draw from that: a key to a new life? A reference to the Rogue? A nod to George’s choice of the straight and narrow, preferring legitimate keys to a criminal’s lockpicks? George isn’t sure himself.

So George smiles enigmatically, lets Jon think what he will and devotes himself to reconstructing Pirate’s Swoop from the inside out, putting back together some of Sir Ranulph’s innovative hidey-holes and traps- and finding a safe place for his box of ears.