Their voices rose like cinders, swirling up into purple evening
sky. “Lead us from the darkness, O my Lord. Fill our hearts
with fire, so we may walk your shining path.”
The nightfire burned against the gathering dark, a great bright
beast whose shifting orange light threw shadows twenty feet tall
across the yard. All along the walls of Dragonstone the army of
gargoyles and grotesques seemed to stir and shift.
Davos looked down from an arched window in the gallery above. He
watched Melisandre lift her arms, as if to embrace the shivering
flames. “R’hllor,” she sang in a voice loud and clear,
“you are the light in our eyes, the fire in our hearts, the
heat in our loins. Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the
stars that guard us in the dark of night.”
“Lord of Light, defend us. The night is dark and full of
terrors.” Queen Selyse led the responses, her pinched face
full of fervor. King Stannis stood beside her, jaw clenched hard,
the points of his red-gold crown shimmering whenever he moved his
head. He is with them, but not of them, Davos thought. Princess
Shireen was between them, the mottled grey patches on her face and
neck almost black in the firelight.
“Lord of Light, protect us,” the queen sang. The
king did not respond with the others. He was staring into the
flames. Davos wondered what he saw there. Another vision of the war
to come? Or something closer to home?
“R’hllor who gave us breath, we thank you,” sang
Melisandre. “R’hllor who gave us day, we thank
you.”
“We thank you for the sun that warms us,” Queen
Selyse and the other worshipers replied. “We thank you for
the stars that watch us. We thank you for our hearths and for our
torches, that keep the savage dark at bay.” There were fewer
voices saying the responses than there had been the night before,
it seemed to Davos; fewer faces flushed with orange light about the
fire. But would there be fewer still on the
morrow . . . or more?
The voice of Ser Axell Florent rang loud as a trumpet. He stood
barrelchested and bandy-legged, the firelight washing his face like
a monstrous orange tongue. Davos wondered if Ser Axell would thank
him, after. The work they did tonight might well make him the
King’s Hand, as he dreamed.
Melisandre cried, “We thank you for Stannis, by your grace
our king. We thank you for the pure white fire of his goodness, for
the red sword of justice in his hand, for the love he bears his
leal people. Guide him and defend him, R’hllor, and grant him
strength to smite his foes.”
“Grant him strength,” answered Queen Selyse, Ser
Axell, Devan, and the rest. “Grant him courage. Grant him
wisdom.”
When he was a boy, the septons had taught Davos to pray to the
Crone for wisdom, to the Warrior for courage, to the Smith for
strength. But it was the Mother he prayed to now, to keep his sweet
son Devan safe from the red woman’s demon god.
“Lord Davos? We’d best be about it.” Ser
Andrew touched his elbow gently. “My lord?”
The title still rang queer in his ears, yet Davos turned away
from the window. “Aye. It’s time.” Stannis,
Melisandre, and the queen’s men would be at their prayers an
hour or more. The red priests lit their fires every day at sunset,
to thank R’hllor for the day just ending, and beg him to send
his sun back on the morrow to banish the gathering darkness. A
smuggler must know the tides and when to seize them. That was all
he was at the end of the day; Davos the smuggler. His maimed hand
rose to his throat for his luck, and found nothing. He snatched it
down and walked a bit more quickly.
His companions kept pace, matching their strides to his own. The
Bastard of Nightsong had a pox-ravaged face and an air of tattered
chivalry; Ser Gerald Gower was broad, bluff, and blond; Ser Andrew
Estermont stood a head taller, with a spade-shaped beard and shaggy
brown eyebrows. They were all good men in their own ways, Davos
thought. And they will all be dead men soon, if this night’s
work goes badly.
“Fire is a living thing,” the red woman told him,
when he asked her to teach him how to see the future in the flames.
“It is always moving, always
changing . . . like a book whose letters dance
and shift even as you try to read them. It takes years of training
to see the shapes beyond the flames, and more years still to learn
to tell the shapes of what will be from what may be or what was.
Even then it comes hard, hard. You do not understand that, you men
of the sunset lands.” Davos asked her then how it was that
Ser Axell had learned the trick of it so quickly, but to that she
only smiled enigmatically and said, “Any cat may stare into a
fire and see red mice at play.”
He had not lied to his king’s men, about that or any of
it. “The red woman may see what we intend,” he warned
them.
“We should start by killing her, then,” urged Lewys
the Fishwife. “I know a place where we could waylay her, four
of us with sharp swords . . . ”
“You’d doom us all,” said Davos.
“Maester Cressen tried to kill her, and she knew at once.
From her flames, I’d guess. It seems to me that she is very
quick to sense any threat to her own person, but surely she cannot
see everything. If we ignore her, perhaps we might escape her
notice.”
“There is no honor in hiding and sneaking,” objected
Ser Triston of Tally Hill, who had been a Sunglass man before Lord
Guncer went to Melisandre’s fires.
“Is it so honorable to burn?” Davos asked him.
“You saw Lord Sunglass die. Is that what you want? I
don’t need men of honor now. I need smugglers. Are you with
me, or no?”
They were. Gods be good, they were.
Maester Pylos was leading Edric Storm through his sums when
Davos pushed open the door. Ser Andrew was close behind him; the
others had been left to guard the steps and cellar door. The
maester broke off. “That will be enough for now,
Edric.”
The boy was puzzled by the intrusion. “Lord Davos, Ser
Andrew. We were doing sums.”
Ser Andrew smiled. “I hated sums when I was your age,
coz.”
“I don’t mind them so much. I like history best,
though. It’s full of tales.”
“Edric,” said Maester Pylos, “run and get your
cloak now. You’re to go with Lord Davos.”
“I am?” Edric got to his feet. “Where are we
going?” His mouth set stubbornly. “I won’t go
pray to the Lord of Light. I am a Warrior’s man, like my
father.”
“We know,” Davos said. “Come, lad, we must not
dawdle.”
Edric donned a thick hooded cloak of undyed wool. Maester Pylos
helped him fasten it, and pulled the hood up to shadow his face.
“Are you coming with us, Maester?” the boy asked.
“No.” Pylos touched the chain of many metals he wore
about his neck. “My place is here on Dragonstone. Go with
Lord Davos now, and do as he says. He is the King’s Hand,
remember. What did I tell you about the King’s
Hand?”
“The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.”
The young maester smiled. “That’s so. Go
now.”
Davos had been uncertain of Pylos. Perhaps he resented him for
taking old Cressen’s place. But now he could only admire the
man’s courage. This could mean his life as well.
Outside the maester’s chambers, Ser Gerald Gower waited by
the steps. Edric Storm looked at him curiously. As they made their
descent he asked, “Where are we going, Lord Davos?”
“To the water. A ship awaits you.”
The boy stopped suddenly. “A ship?”
“One of Salladhor Saan’s. Salla is a good friend of
mine.”
“I shall go with you, Cousin,” Ser Andrew assured
him. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“I am not frightened,” Edric said indignantly.
“Only . . . is Shireen coming
too?”
“No,” said Davos. “The princess must remain
here with her father and mother.”
“I have to see her then,” Edric explained. “To
say my farewells. Otherwise she’ll be sad.” Not so sad as if she sees you burn. “There is no
time,” Davos said. “I will tell the princess that you
were thinking of her. And you can write her, when you get to where
you’re going.”
The boy frowned. “Are you sure I must go? Why would my
uncle send me from Dragonstone? Did I displease him? I never meant
to.” He got that stubborn look again. “I want to see my
uncle. I want to see King Stannis.”
Ser Andrew and Ser Gerald exchanged a look. “There’s
no time for that, Cousin,” Ser Andrew said.
“I want to see him!” Edric insisted, louder.
“He does not want to see you.” Davos had to say
something, to get the boy moving. “I am his Hand, I speak
with his voice. Must I go to the king and tell him that you would
not do as you were told? Do you know how angry that will make him?
Have you ever seen your uncle angry?” He pulled off his glove
and showed the boy the four fingers that Stannis had shortened.
“I have.”
It was all lies; there had been no anger in Stannis Baratheon
when he cut the ends off his onion knight’s fingers, only an
iron sense of justice. But Edric Storm had not been born then, and
could not know that. And the threat had the desired effect.
“He should not have done that,” the boy said, but he
let Davos take him by the hand and draw him down the steps.
The Bastard of Nightsong joined them at the cellar door. They
walked quickly, across a shadowed yard and down some steps, under
the stone tail of a frozen dragon. Lewys the Fishwife and Omer
Blackberry waited at the postern gate, two guards bound and trussed
at their feet. “The boat?” Davos asked them.
“It’s there,” Lewys said. “Four oarsmen.
The galley is anchored just past the point. Mad Prendos.”
Davos chuckled. A ship named after a madman. Yes, that’s
fitting. Salla had a streak of the pirate’s black humor.
He went to one knee before Edric Storm. “I must leave you
now,” he said. “There’s a boat waiting, to row
you out to a galley. Then it’s off across the sea. You are
Robert’s son so I know you will be brave, no matter what
happens.”
“I will. Only . . . ” The boy
hesitated.
“Think of this as an adventure, my lord.” Davos
tried to sound hale and cheerful. “It’s the start of
your life’s great adventure. May the Warrior defend
you.”
“And may the Father judge you justly, Lord Davos.”
The boy went with his cousin Ser Andrew out the postern gate. The
others followed, all but the Bastard of Nightsong. May the Father
judge me justly, Davos thought ruefully. But it was the
king’s judgment that concerned him now.
“These two?” asked Ser Rolland of the guards, when
he had closed and barred the gate.
“Drag them into a cellar,” said Davos. “You
can cut them free when Edric’s safely under way.”
The Bastard gave a curt nod. There were no more words to say;
the easy part was done. Davos pulled his glove on, wishing he had
not lost his luck. He had been a better man and a braver one with
that bag of bones around his neck. He ran his shortened fingers
through thinning brown hair, and wondered if it needed to be cut.
He must look presentable when he stood before the king.
Dragonstone had never seemed so dark and fearsome. He walked
slowly, his footsteps echoing off black walls and dragons. Stone
dragons who will never wake, I pray. The Stone Drum loomed huge
ahead of him. The guards at the door uncrossed their spears as he
approached. Not for the onion knight, but for the King’s
Hand. Davos was the Hand going in, at least. He wondered what he
would be coming out. If I ever do . . .
The steps seemed longer and steeper than before, or perhaps it
was just that he was tired. The Mother never made me for tasks like
this. He had risen too high and too fast, and up here on the
mountain the air was too thin for him to breathe. As a boy
he’d dreamed of riches, but that was long ago. Later, grown,
all he had wanted was a few acres of good land, a hall to grow old
in, a better life for his sons. The Blind Bastard used to tell him
that a clever smuggler did not overreach, nor draw too much
attention to himself. A few acres, a timbered roof, a
“ser” before my name, I should have been content. If he
survived this night, he would take Devan and sail home to Cape
Wrath and his gentle Marya. We will grieve together for our dead
sons, raise the living ones to be good men, and speak no more of
kings.
The Chamber of the Painted Table was dark and empty when Davos
entered; the king would still be at the nightfire, with Melisandre
and the queen’s men. He knelt and made a fire in the hearth,
to drive the chill from the round chamber and chase the shadows
back into their corners. Then he went around the room to each
window in turn, opening the heavy velvet curtains and unlatching
the wooden shutters. The wind came in, strong with the smell of
salt and sea, and pulled at his plain brown cloak.
At the north window, he leaned against the sill for a breath of
the cold night air, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mad Prendos
raising sail, but the sea seemed black and empty as far as the eye
could see. Is she gone already? He could only pray that she was,
and the boy with her. A half moon was sliding in and out amongst
thin high clouds, and Davos could see familiar stars. There was the
Galley, sailing west; there the Crone’s Lantern, four bright
stars that enclosed a golden haze. The clouds hid most of the Ice
Dragon, all but the bright blue eye that marked due north. The sky
is full of smugglers’ stars. They were old friends, those
stars; Davos hoped that meant good luck.
But when he lowered his gaze from the sky to the castle
ramparts, he was not so certain. The wings of the stone dragons
cast great black shadows in the light from the nightfire. He tried
to tell himself that they were no more than carvings, cold and
lifeless. This was their place, once. A place of dragons and
dragonlords, the seat of House Targaryen. The Targaryens were the
blood of old Valyria . . .
The wind sighed through the chamber, and in the hearth the
flames gusted and swirled. He listened to the logs crackle and
spit. When Davos left the window his shadow went before him, tall
and thin, and fell across the Painted Table like a sword. And there
he stood for a long time, waiting. He heard their boots on the
stone steps as they ascended. The king’s voice went before
him. “ . . . is not three,” he was
saying.
“Three is three,” came Melisandre’s answer.
“I swear to you, Your Grace, I saw him die and heard his
mother’s wail.”
“In the nightfire.” Stannis and Melisandre came
through the door together. “The flames are full of tricks.
What is, what will be, what may be. You cannot tell me for a
certainty . . . ”
“Your Grace.” Davos stepped forward. “Lady
Melisandre saw it true. Your nephew Joffrey is dead.”
If the king was surprised to find him at the Painted Table, he
gave no sign. “Lord Davos,” he said. “He was not
my nephew. Though for years I believed he was.”
“He choked on a morsel of food at his wedding
feast,” Davos said. “It may be that he was
poisoned.”
“He is the third,” said Melisandre.
“I can count, woman.” Stannis walked along the
table, past Oldtown and the Arbor, up toward the Shield Islands and
the mouth of the Mander. “Weddings have become more perilous
than battles, it would seem. Who was the poisoner? Is it
known?”
“His uncle, it’s said. The Imp.”
Stannis ground his teeth. “A dangerous man. I learned that
on the Blackwater. How do you come by this report?”
“The Lyseni still trade at King’s Landing. Salladhor
Saan has no reason to lie to me.”
“I suppose not.” The king ran his fingers across the
table. “Joffrey . . . I remember once,
this kitchen cat . . . the cooks were wont to
feed her scraps and fish heads. One told the boy that she had
kittens in her belly, thinking he might want one. Joffrey opened up
the poor thing with a dagger to see if it were true. When he found
the kittens, he brought them to show to his father. Robert hit the
boy so hard I thought he’d killed him.” The king took
off his crown and placed it on the table. “Dwarf or leech,
this killer served the kingdom well. They must send for me
now.”
“They will not,” said Melisandre. “Joffrey has
a brother.”
“Tommen.” The king said the name grudgingly.
“They will crown Tommen, and rule in his name.”
Stannis made a fist. “Tommen is gentler than Joffrey, but
born of the same incest. Another monster in the making. Another
leech upon the land. Westeros needs a man’s hand, not a
child’s.”
Melisandre moved closer. “Save them, sire. Let me wake the
stone dragons. Three is three. Give me the boy.”
“Edric Storm,” Davos said.
Stannis rounded on him in a cold fury. “I know his name.
Spare me your reproaches. I like this no more than you do, but my
duty is to the realm. My duty . . . ” He
turned back to Melisandre. “You swear there is no other way?
Swear it on your life, for I promise, you shall die by inches if
you lie.”
“You are he who must stand against the Other. The one
whose coming was prophesied five thousand years ago. The red comet
was your herald. You are the prince that was promised, and if you
fail the world fails with you.” Melisandre went to him, her
red lips parted, her ruby throbbing. “Give me this
boy,” she whispered, “and I will give you your
kingdom.”
“He can’t,” said Davos. “Edric Storm is
gone.”
“Gone?” Stannis turned. “What do you mean,
gone?”
“He is aboard a Lyseni galley, safely out to sea.”
Davos watched Melisandre’s pale, heart-shaped face. He saw
the flicker of dismay there, the sudden uncertainty. She did not
see it!
The king’s eyes were dark blue bruises in the hollows of
his face. “The bastard was taken from Dragonstone without my
leave? A galley, you say? If that Lysene pirate thinks to use the
boy to squeeze gold from me—”
“This is your Hand’s work, sire.” Melisandre
gave Davos a knowing look. “You will bring him back, my lord.
You will.”
“The boy is out of my reach,” said Davos. “And
out of your reach as well, my lady.”
Her red eyes made him squirm. “I should have left you to
the dark, ser. Do you know what you have done?”
“My duty.”
“Some might call it treason.” Stannis went to the
window to stare out into the night. Is he looking for the ship?
“I raised you up from dirt, Davos.” He sounded more
tired than angry. “Was loyalty too much to hope
for?”
“Four of my sons died for you on the Blackwater. I might
have died myself. You have my loyalty, always.” Davos
Seaworth had thought long and hard about the words he said next; he
knew his life depended on them. “Your Grace, you made me
swear to give you honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend
your realm against your foes, to protect your people. Is not Edric
Storm one of your people? One of those I swore to protect? I kept
my oath. How could that be treason?”
Stannis ground his teeth again. “I never asked for this
crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the
king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice
one child to the flames to save a million from the
dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is
never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my
lady.”
Melisandre said, “Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the
heart’s blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a
thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who
offers the only cow he owns . . . ”
“She talks of cows,” Davos told the king. “I
am speaking of a boy, your daughter’s friend, your
brother’s son.”
“A king’s son, with the power of kingsblood in his
veins.” Melisandre’s ruby glowed like a red star at her
throat. “Do you think you’ve saved this boy, Onion
Knight? When the long night falls, Edric Storm shall die with the
rest, wherever he is hidden. Your own sons as well. Darkness and
cold will cover the earth. You meddle in matters you do not
understand.”
“There’s much I don’t understand,” Davos
admitted. “I have never pretended elsewise. I know the seas
and rivers, the shapes of the coasts, where the rocks and shoals
lie. I know hidden coves where a boat can land unseen. And I know
that a king protects his people, or he is no king at
all.”
Stannis’s face darkened. “Do you mock me to my face?
Must I learn a king’s duty from an onion smuggler?”
Davos knelt. “If I have offended, take my head. I’ll
die as I lived, your loyal man. But hear me first. Hear me for the
sake of the onions I brought you, and the fingers you
took.”
Stannis slid Lightbringer from its scabbard. Its glow filled the
chamber. “Say what you will, but say it quickly.” The
muscles in the king’s neck stood out like cords.
Davos fumbled inside his cloak and drew out the crinkled sheet
of parchment. It seemed a thin and flimsy thing, yet it was all the
shield he had. “A King’s Hand should be able to read
and write. Maester Pylos has been teaching me.” He smoothed
the letter flat upon his knee and began to read by the light of the
magic sword.
Their voices rose like cinders, swirling up into purple evening
sky. “Lead us from the darkness, O my Lord. Fill our hearts
with fire, so we may walk your shining path.”
The nightfire burned against the gathering dark, a great bright
beast whose shifting orange light threw shadows twenty feet tall
across the yard. All along the walls of Dragonstone the army of
gargoyles and grotesques seemed to stir and shift.
Davos looked down from an arched window in the gallery above. He
watched Melisandre lift her arms, as if to embrace the shivering
flames. “R’hllor,” she sang in a voice loud and clear,
“you are the light in our eyes, the fire in our hearts, the
heat in our loins. Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the
stars that guard us in the dark of night.”
“Lord of Light, defend us. The night is dark and full of
terrors.” Queen Selyse led the responses, her pinched face
full of fervor. King Stannis stood beside her, jaw clenched hard,
the points of his red-gold crown shimmering whenever he moved his
head. He is with them, but not of them, Davos thought. Princess
Shireen was between them, the mottled grey patches on her face and
neck almost black in the firelight.
“Lord of Light, protect us,” the queen sang. The
king did not respond with the others. He was staring into the
flames. Davos wondered what he saw there. Another vision of the war
to come? Or something closer to home?
“R’hllor who gave us breath, we thank you,” sang
Melisandre. “R’hllor who gave us day, we thank
you.”
“We thank you for the sun that warms us,” Queen
Selyse and the other worshipers replied. “We thank you for
the stars that watch us. We thank you for our hearths and for our
torches, that keep the savage dark at bay.” There were fewer
voices saying the responses than there had been the night before,
it seemed to Davos; fewer faces flushed with orange light about the
fire. But would there be fewer still on the
morrow . . . or more?
The voice of Ser Axell Florent rang loud as a trumpet. He stood
barrelchested and bandy-legged, the firelight washing his face like
a monstrous orange tongue. Davos wondered if Ser Axell would thank
him, after. The work they did tonight might well make him the
King’s Hand, as he dreamed.
Melisandre cried, “We thank you for Stannis, by your grace
our king. We thank you for the pure white fire of his goodness, for
the red sword of justice in his hand, for the love he bears his
leal people. Guide him and defend him, R’hllor, and grant him
strength to smite his foes.”
“Grant him strength,” answered Queen Selyse, Ser
Axell, Devan, and the rest. “Grant him courage. Grant him
wisdom.”
When he was a boy, the septons had taught Davos to pray to the
Crone for wisdom, to the Warrior for courage, to the Smith for
strength. But it was the Mother he prayed to now, to keep his sweet
son Devan safe from the red woman’s demon god.
“Lord Davos? We’d best be about it.” Ser
Andrew touched his elbow gently. “My lord?”
The title still rang queer in his ears, yet Davos turned away
from the window. “Aye. It’s time.” Stannis,
Melisandre, and the queen’s men would be at their prayers an
hour or more. The red priests lit their fires every day at sunset,
to thank R’hllor for the day just ending, and beg him to send
his sun back on the morrow to banish the gathering darkness. A
smuggler must know the tides and when to seize them. That was all
he was at the end of the day; Davos the smuggler. His maimed hand
rose to his throat for his luck, and found nothing. He snatched it
down and walked a bit more quickly.
His companions kept pace, matching their strides to his own. The
Bastard of Nightsong had a pox-ravaged face and an air of tattered
chivalry; Ser Gerald Gower was broad, bluff, and blond; Ser Andrew
Estermont stood a head taller, with a spade-shaped beard and shaggy
brown eyebrows. They were all good men in their own ways, Davos
thought. And they will all be dead men soon, if this night’s
work goes badly.
“Fire is a living thing,” the red woman told him,
when he asked her to teach him how to see the future in the flames.
“It is always moving, always
changing . . . like a book whose letters dance
and shift even as you try to read them. It takes years of training
to see the shapes beyond the flames, and more years still to learn
to tell the shapes of what will be from what may be or what was.
Even then it comes hard, hard. You do not understand that, you men
of the sunset lands.” Davos asked her then how it was that
Ser Axell had learned the trick of it so quickly, but to that she
only smiled enigmatically and said, “Any cat may stare into a
fire and see red mice at play.”
He had not lied to his king’s men, about that or any of
it. “The red woman may see what we intend,” he warned
them.
“We should start by killing her, then,” urged Lewys
the Fishwife. “I know a place where we could waylay her, four
of us with sharp swords . . . ”
“You’d doom us all,” said Davos.
“Maester Cressen tried to kill her, and she knew at once.
From her flames, I’d guess. It seems to me that she is very
quick to sense any threat to her own person, but surely she cannot
see everything. If we ignore her, perhaps we might escape her
notice.”
“There is no honor in hiding and sneaking,” objected
Ser Triston of Tally Hill, who had been a Sunglass man before Lord
Guncer went to Melisandre’s fires.
“Is it so honorable to burn?” Davos asked him.
“You saw Lord Sunglass die. Is that what you want? I
don’t need men of honor now. I need smugglers. Are you with
me, or no?”
They were. Gods be good, they were.
Maester Pylos was leading Edric Storm through his sums when
Davos pushed open the door. Ser Andrew was close behind him; the
others had been left to guard the steps and cellar door. The
maester broke off. “That will be enough for now,
Edric.”
The boy was puzzled by the intrusion. “Lord Davos, Ser
Andrew. We were doing sums.”
Ser Andrew smiled. “I hated sums when I was your age,
coz.”
“I don’t mind them so much. I like history best,
though. It’s full of tales.”
“Edric,” said Maester Pylos, “run and get your
cloak now. You’re to go with Lord Davos.”
“I am?” Edric got to his feet. “Where are we
going?” His mouth set stubbornly. “I won’t go
pray to the Lord of Light. I am a Warrior’s man, like my
father.”
“We know,” Davos said. “Come, lad, we must not
dawdle.”
Edric donned a thick hooded cloak of undyed wool. Maester Pylos
helped him fasten it, and pulled the hood up to shadow his face.
“Are you coming with us, Maester?” the boy asked.
“No.” Pylos touched the chain of many metals he wore
about his neck. “My place is here on Dragonstone. Go with
Lord Davos now, and do as he says. He is the King’s Hand,
remember. What did I tell you about the King’s
Hand?”
“The Hand speaks with the king’s voice.”
The young maester smiled. “That’s so. Go
now.”
Davos had been uncertain of Pylos. Perhaps he resented him for
taking old Cressen’s place. But now he could only admire the
man’s courage. This could mean his life as well.
Outside the maester’s chambers, Ser Gerald Gower waited by
the steps. Edric Storm looked at him curiously. As they made their
descent he asked, “Where are we going, Lord Davos?”
“To the water. A ship awaits you.”
The boy stopped suddenly. “A ship?”
“One of Salladhor Saan’s. Salla is a good friend of
mine.”
“I shall go with you, Cousin,” Ser Andrew assured
him. “There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“I am not frightened,” Edric said indignantly.
“Only . . . is Shireen coming
too?”
“No,” said Davos. “The princess must remain
here with her father and mother.”
“I have to see her then,” Edric explained. “To
say my farewells. Otherwise she’ll be sad.” Not so sad as if she sees you burn. “There is no
time,” Davos said. “I will tell the princess that you
were thinking of her. And you can write her, when you get to where
you’re going.”
The boy frowned. “Are you sure I must go? Why would my
uncle send me from Dragonstone? Did I displease him? I never meant
to.” He got that stubborn look again. “I want to see my
uncle. I want to see King Stannis.”
Ser Andrew and Ser Gerald exchanged a look. “There’s
no time for that, Cousin,” Ser Andrew said.
“I want to see him!” Edric insisted, louder.
“He does not want to see you.” Davos had to say
something, to get the boy moving. “I am his Hand, I speak
with his voice. Must I go to the king and tell him that you would
not do as you were told? Do you know how angry that will make him?
Have you ever seen your uncle angry?” He pulled off his glove
and showed the boy the four fingers that Stannis had shortened.
“I have.”
It was all lies; there had been no anger in Stannis Baratheon
when he cut the ends off his onion knight’s fingers, only an
iron sense of justice. But Edric Storm had not been born then, and
could not know that. And the threat had the desired effect.
“He should not have done that,” the boy said, but he
let Davos take him by the hand and draw him down the steps.
The Bastard of Nightsong joined them at the cellar door. They
walked quickly, across a shadowed yard and down some steps, under
the stone tail of a frozen dragon. Lewys the Fishwife and Omer
Blackberry waited at the postern gate, two guards bound and trussed
at their feet. “The boat?” Davos asked them.
“It’s there,” Lewys said. “Four oarsmen.
The galley is anchored just past the point. Mad Prendos.”
Davos chuckled. A ship named after a madman. Yes, that’s
fitting. Salla had a streak of the pirate’s black humor.
He went to one knee before Edric Storm. “I must leave you
now,” he said. “There’s a boat waiting, to row
you out to a galley. Then it’s off across the sea. You are
Robert’s son so I know you will be brave, no matter what
happens.”
“I will. Only . . . ” The boy
hesitated.
“Think of this as an adventure, my lord.” Davos
tried to sound hale and cheerful. “It’s the start of
your life’s great adventure. May the Warrior defend
you.”
“And may the Father judge you justly, Lord Davos.”
The boy went with his cousin Ser Andrew out the postern gate. The
others followed, all but the Bastard of Nightsong. May the Father
judge me justly, Davos thought ruefully. But it was the
king’s judgment that concerned him now.
“These two?” asked Ser Rolland of the guards, when
he had closed and barred the gate.
“Drag them into a cellar,” said Davos. “You
can cut them free when Edric’s safely under way.”
The Bastard gave a curt nod. There were no more words to say;
the easy part was done. Davos pulled his glove on, wishing he had
not lost his luck. He had been a better man and a braver one with
that bag of bones around his neck. He ran his shortened fingers
through thinning brown hair, and wondered if it needed to be cut.
He must look presentable when he stood before the king.
Dragonstone had never seemed so dark and fearsome. He walked
slowly, his footsteps echoing off black walls and dragons. Stone
dragons who will never wake, I pray. The Stone Drum loomed huge
ahead of him. The guards at the door uncrossed their spears as he
approached. Not for the onion knight, but for the King’s
Hand. Davos was the Hand going in, at least. He wondered what he
would be coming out. If I ever do . . .
The steps seemed longer and steeper than before, or perhaps it
was just that he was tired. The Mother never made me for tasks like
this. He had risen too high and too fast, and up here on the
mountain the air was too thin for him to breathe. As a boy
he’d dreamed of riches, but that was long ago. Later, grown,
all he had wanted was a few acres of good land, a hall to grow old
in, a better life for his sons. The Blind Bastard used to tell him
that a clever smuggler did not overreach, nor draw too much
attention to himself. A few acres, a timbered roof, a
“ser” before my name, I should have been content. If he
survived this night, he would take Devan and sail home to Cape
Wrath and his gentle Marya. We will grieve together for our dead
sons, raise the living ones to be good men, and speak no more of
kings.
The Chamber of the Painted Table was dark and empty when Davos
entered; the king would still be at the nightfire, with Melisandre
and the queen’s men. He knelt and made a fire in the hearth,
to drive the chill from the round chamber and chase the shadows
back into their corners. Then he went around the room to each
window in turn, opening the heavy velvet curtains and unlatching
the wooden shutters. The wind came in, strong with the smell of
salt and sea, and pulled at his plain brown cloak.
At the north window, he leaned against the sill for a breath of
the cold night air, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mad Prendos
raising sail, but the sea seemed black and empty as far as the eye
could see. Is she gone already? He could only pray that she was,
and the boy with her. A half moon was sliding in and out amongst
thin high clouds, and Davos could see familiar stars. There was the
Galley, sailing west; there the Crone’s Lantern, four bright
stars that enclosed a golden haze. The clouds hid most of the Ice
Dragon, all but the bright blue eye that marked due north. The sky
is full of smugglers’ stars. They were old friends, those
stars; Davos hoped that meant good luck.
But when he lowered his gaze from the sky to the castle
ramparts, he was not so certain. The wings of the stone dragons
cast great black shadows in the light from the nightfire. He tried
to tell himself that they were no more than carvings, cold and
lifeless. This was their place, once. A place of dragons and
dragonlords, the seat of House Targaryen. The Targaryens were the
blood of old Valyria . . .
The wind sighed through the chamber, and in the hearth the
flames gusted and swirled. He listened to the logs crackle and
spit. When Davos left the window his shadow went before him, tall
and thin, and fell across the Painted Table like a sword. And there
he stood for a long time, waiting. He heard their boots on the
stone steps as they ascended. The king’s voice went before
him. “ . . . is not three,” he was
saying.
“Three is three,” came Melisandre’s answer.
“I swear to you, Your Grace, I saw him die and heard his
mother’s wail.”
“In the nightfire.” Stannis and Melisandre came
through the door together. “The flames are full of tricks.
What is, what will be, what may be. You cannot tell me for a
certainty . . . ”
“Your Grace.” Davos stepped forward. “Lady
Melisandre saw it true. Your nephew Joffrey is dead.”
If the king was surprised to find him at the Painted Table, he
gave no sign. “Lord Davos,” he said. “He was not
my nephew. Though for years I believed he was.”
“He choked on a morsel of food at his wedding
feast,” Davos said. “It may be that he was
poisoned.”
“He is the third,” said Melisandre.
“I can count, woman.” Stannis walked along the
table, past Oldtown and the Arbor, up toward the Shield Islands and
the mouth of the Mander. “Weddings have become more perilous
than battles, it would seem. Who was the poisoner? Is it
known?”
“His uncle, it’s said. The Imp.”
Stannis ground his teeth. “A dangerous man. I learned that
on the Blackwater. How do you come by this report?”
“The Lyseni still trade at King’s Landing. Salladhor
Saan has no reason to lie to me.”
“I suppose not.” The king ran his fingers across the
table. “Joffrey . . . I remember once,
this kitchen cat . . . the cooks were wont to
feed her scraps and fish heads. One told the boy that she had
kittens in her belly, thinking he might want one. Joffrey opened up
the poor thing with a dagger to see if it were true. When he found
the kittens, he brought them to show to his father. Robert hit the
boy so hard I thought he’d killed him.” The king took
off his crown and placed it on the table. “Dwarf or leech,
this killer served the kingdom well. They must send for me
now.”
“They will not,” said Melisandre. “Joffrey has
a brother.”
“Tommen.” The king said the name grudgingly.
“They will crown Tommen, and rule in his name.”
Stannis made a fist. “Tommen is gentler than Joffrey, but
born of the same incest. Another monster in the making. Another
leech upon the land. Westeros needs a man’s hand, not a
child’s.”
Melisandre moved closer. “Save them, sire. Let me wake the
stone dragons. Three is three. Give me the boy.”
“Edric Storm,” Davos said.
Stannis rounded on him in a cold fury. “I know his name.
Spare me your reproaches. I like this no more than you do, but my
duty is to the realm. My duty . . . ” He
turned back to Melisandre. “You swear there is no other way?
Swear it on your life, for I promise, you shall die by inches if
you lie.”
“You are he who must stand against the Other. The one
whose coming was prophesied five thousand years ago. The red comet
was your herald. You are the prince that was promised, and if you
fail the world fails with you.” Melisandre went to him, her
red lips parted, her ruby throbbing. “Give me this
boy,” she whispered, “and I will give you your
kingdom.”
“He can’t,” said Davos. “Edric Storm is
gone.”
“Gone?” Stannis turned. “What do you mean,
gone?”
“He is aboard a Lyseni galley, safely out to sea.”
Davos watched Melisandre’s pale, heart-shaped face. He saw
the flicker of dismay there, the sudden uncertainty. She did not
see it!
The king’s eyes were dark blue bruises in the hollows of
his face. “The bastard was taken from Dragonstone without my
leave? A galley, you say? If that Lysene pirate thinks to use the
boy to squeeze gold from me—”
“This is your Hand’s work, sire.” Melisandre
gave Davos a knowing look. “You will bring him back, my lord.
You will.”
“The boy is out of my reach,” said Davos. “And
out of your reach as well, my lady.”
Her red eyes made him squirm. “I should have left you to
the dark, ser. Do you know what you have done?”
“My duty.”
“Some might call it treason.” Stannis went to the
window to stare out into the night. Is he looking for the ship?
“I raised you up from dirt, Davos.” He sounded more
tired than angry. “Was loyalty too much to hope
for?”
“Four of my sons died for you on the Blackwater. I might
have died myself. You have my loyalty, always.” Davos
Seaworth had thought long and hard about the words he said next; he
knew his life depended on them. “Your Grace, you made me
swear to give you honest counsel and swift obedience, to defend
your realm against your foes, to protect your people. Is not Edric
Storm one of your people? One of those I swore to protect? I kept
my oath. How could that be treason?”
Stannis ground his teeth again. “I never asked for this
crown. Gold is cold and heavy on the head, but so long as I am the
king, I have a duty . . . If I must sacrifice
one child to the flames to save a million from the
dark . . . Sacrifice . . . is
never easy, Davos. Or it is no true sacrifice. Tell him, my
lady.”
Melisandre said, “Azor Ahai tempered Lightbringer with the
heart’s blood of his own beloved wife. If a man with a
thousand cows gives one to god, that is nothing. But a man who
offers the only cow he owns . . . ”
“She talks of cows,” Davos told the king. “I
am speaking of a boy, your daughter’s friend, your
brother’s son.”
“A king’s son, with the power of kingsblood in his
veins.” Melisandre’s ruby glowed like a red star at her
throat. “Do you think you’ve saved this boy, Onion
Knight? When the long night falls, Edric Storm shall die with the
rest, wherever he is hidden. Your own sons as well. Darkness and
cold will cover the earth. You meddle in matters you do not
understand.”
“There’s much I don’t understand,” Davos
admitted. “I have never pretended elsewise. I know the seas
and rivers, the shapes of the coasts, where the rocks and shoals
lie. I know hidden coves where a boat can land unseen. And I know
that a king protects his people, or he is no king at
all.”
Stannis’s face darkened. “Do you mock me to my face?
Must I learn a king’s duty from an onion smuggler?”
Davos knelt. “If I have offended, take my head. I’ll
die as I lived, your loyal man. But hear me first. Hear me for the
sake of the onions I brought you, and the fingers you
took.”
Stannis slid Lightbringer from its scabbard. Its glow filled the
chamber. “Say what you will, but say it quickly.” The
muscles in the king’s neck stood out like cords.
Davos fumbled inside his cloak and drew out the crinkled sheet
of parchment. It seemed a thin and flimsy thing, yet it was all the
shield he had. “A King’s Hand should be able to read
and write. Maester Pylos has been teaching me.” He smoothed
the letter flat upon his knee and began to read by the light of the
magic sword.