Chapter Text
Toryen Buckler
White-hot fury burned within Toryen Buckler’s chest, scorching away the breeze and ocean mist on deck as he climbed out of the hold. A world gone upside down felt less and less like a world worth rectifying with beastly women dressed like men lording over castles where debauchery and depravity were not only permitted, but celebrated. It was too much.
The deck of the swan ship was filled with Islanders hauling lines to raise sails. Their unbridled brute muscularity was disturbing, their large eyes and dark faces were inscrutable. Their language, if one could call it such, was impenetrable. The strange spices they used on their meats poured from their sweat, the air redolent of it. Toryen had a hard time squaring the disciplined choreography of movement and task with what he felt were lesser men.
He absently played with the loose end of a line hanging from a row of belaying pins in a pinrail. One of the sailors eyed him, then followed the line up to where it connected to a sail, the name of which Toryen did not know. The man was clearly concerned, yet did not have the words to voice it. Few of them spoke the common tongue. Toryen dropped the line and gave a wholly artificial smile. The man backed away.
Better than me? Better than me? The nerve! The abject nerve of that beast making such claims. What did she know? What could a thing like her know about anything?
He punched the bulwark in front of him, enjoying the sting to his abraded knuckles.
Toryen paced the main deck like a nervous dog. The sailors conspicuously avoided him, making room for him to pass, as it should be. They were savages, mumbling their guttural lingo. He disliked the look of them. Their dark skin and wide noses were unseemly. But at least they understood order, and brutish and ugly as they were, they were strong men, and Toryen had need of strong men just now. Storm’s End wasn’t the only castle that echoed, emptied of swords, horses, and men by the war. He could not offer Bronzegate as a viable option, but he could offer himself and what he had taken. A castle does not make the man; the man makes the castle. He had Brienne, and would have Evenfall, and who knew, perhaps Storm’s End as well.
But before any of that could happen, Brienne had to acquiesce. She had to submit. She had to say it where everyone could hear, that she was wrong, an aberration that had no place in anyone’s castle.
He would make her concede, whatever it took.
“Toryen, you cannot do that again,” said Mosi, having slipped silently up behind Toryen.
Toryen turned, startled.
I will do as I please, and when your value to me is exhausted, I’ll be less gentle with you.
Instead, he said, “That is the warrior maiden of Westeros. I am sure she’s fine.”
“We must discuss the change in plans. Issa will have reported back to the prince by now. Ser Podrick as well. Abioye will know my part in this,” said Mosi. He was agitated, nervous. Islanders did not go in for physical violence and Mosi was an old done man. He would like it even less.
“It was never going to be a secret for long, Mosi. Nothing has changed.” Toryen insolently flipped the concern away with a hand.
“They could be setting sail as we speak,” Mosi continued.
“They likely are. Is your great swan ship not up to the task?” Toryen gesture up to the billowing sails. “Brienne’s largest ship is only a caravel. It should be no match.”
“Her ships do not concern me. I doubt they will leave port. But those belonging to Prince Abioye are some of the finest on the water. His men are equally skilled. And what of your own people? Will they not eventually come to rescue Lady Brienne?” Toryen heard the implication in Mosi’s voice, questioning if the swords Toryen had promised would, in fact, arrive.
Toryen deflected. “Would you? She’s an abomination! And to think you let the Pig escape.”
“We have Brienne,” Mosi said churlishly.
“Fool! Podrick will take Evenfall and sit Timmor at his side as his whore!” How could the man be so blind? He’d explained it a dozen times.
“I understand that troubles you, Toryen…”
“You understand nothing.” All these questions and doubts where infuriating. Who did this man think he was? “You build entire temples devoted to fucking. What could you understand of what it means to be a man in the six kingdoms? Podrick must fall. Without him, Timmor has no place from which to humiliate my name.” Toryen gazed out at the unchanging horizon. “Can this infernal ship not sail any faster?”
Mosi was minutely cowed. “We take the long way back to Ebonhead, Toryen, as we discussed. Abioye will assume we hide amongst the smaller islands and keys. He will not think we head for open water. We must tack our way around The Singing Stones and The Exiles. Prince Olamíde will have ships waiting to escort us into the harbor.”
“You had better be right. If I see sails crest the horizon behind us, I’ll put your head on that mast as a lookout. Only your head.”
He left Mosi without so much as a word of dismissal and climbed to the quarter-deck, and then on to the poop deck, wanting more than anything to be away from these miserable people. Walano had long ago faded into a smudge on the horizon indistinguishable from where the clouds met the water in the immeasurable distance. The back of the ship was high above the waves and Toryen imagined dropping his enemies one by one into the roiling water that curled behind the ship in whirlpools that broke off and traveled back into the distance.
He gave each a name.
The small one being eaten by a larger one, that one was Timmor. The foam and bubbles were the lace and frills Timmor loved so much and that should belong to no man. His blight on House Buckler would be swallowed by the leviathan Toryen imagined himself to be. If Timmor would not obey sense and form, then he would be eaten by fate. He had tried with Timmor, when he was young, tried to make him into a man, but it was not in him. Tapestries, books, and his mother’s side were all he cared about. There was no making a man from those materials.
That one, the poorly formed spiral of water, that was Brienne. Down into the abyss she swirled, shapeless and deformed, her history, her central position in the wars, her close personal ties to the Starks, to the crippled king, even to Queen Sansa on her icy throne in Winterfell, all slipping into darkness. Let the abyss take her hideous face.
And the big one there could be none other than the Pig himself. Toryen hated him the most. He was no knight, no matter the expense of his armor or that Brienne had employed the full and complete ritual with vigil and anointing as though he were being made a kingsguard. Is that what she thought? Did she see herself as a king appointing her retinue? For the millionth time, the image of Timmor and the Pig entwined in bed came into his mind. The fury and disgust were dizzying.
Toryen ran the tip of his tongue over the scar on his upper lip, the one Podrick’s fist had left there over a year ago. The Pig was as craven as he was fat, daring to touch Toryen only when he’d been bound securely to the horse. Toryen’s shoulder no longer ached from where Timmor’s dagger had sunk in to the bone, but that too had spoken of the Pig’s cowardice, thrown from a distance rather than taking him on in close quarters.
Smugglers, beasts, bastards, buggers, and pigs as lords and ladies. What had the six kingdoms come to?
No, this had to stop and it had to stop now.
Toryen longed for a glass of wine or something stronger. The Islanders did not keep grog on their ships, adhering to a peculiar abstinence that was so lacking in the rest of their lives.
“I know you would rather be home,” came Mosi’s voice, unbidden and unsolicited, having silently climbed to the poop deck, else Toryen had been too lost in thought to notice. “And in truth, I would rather you were home as well.”
That was a surprising admission from the man. He was usually terse and reserved, though his habit of sneaking up on Toryen was a known, annoying quantity. He would have made a good assassin if he had half a spine.
“You’ll get no argument from me there, Mosi. It is insufferably hot and your food turns my stomach. I have a rash that… Never mind. It’s hot! You’ll be rid of me just as quickly as I wish to be rid of you.” The how of those two respective outcomes, Toryen left unsaid.
“Perhaps if I better understood…” Mosi began.
“You will have Abioye’s princedom. That which I need, you do not have to understand.”
Mosi gave an almost imperceptible bow and left him alone on the high deck.
Home, how Toryen longed for it.
The Stormlands still had no Lord Paramount to whom they bore fealty, bending a knee instead directly to the cripple on the throne. Toryen had spent the year receiving reports from his spies and lackeys concerning the goings-on at Evenfall and Port Town, though he hardly needed their information. The expansion of the port and the reopening of the quarries and mines were the talk of the Stormlands, the smaller freeholds and houses buzzing with anticipated trade and commerce. The vast majority of stone was destined for King’s Landing to repair and rebuild the Red Keep and the lower parts of the city decimated by the mad queen, Daenerys. It would keep Tarth bathed in gold for the foreseeable future.
When he’d heard of the expedition that Lady Brienne meant to lead herself, that had been his cue.
The sacking of Tarth was well out of the question - too many houses were already bowing their heads to Evenfall Hall - and Davos Seaworth, Lord of the Rainwood, had made oblique mention to more than a few houses that Tarth was under his protection until Lady Brienne returned from her expedition. With well over half the other houses of the Stormlands already carefully presenting a son or daughter, niece or nephew for service at Evenfall, the Stormlands had made their choice ahead of the king, hoping for beneficial consideration upon Lady Brienne’s return. In a further display of her perversion, Brienne had put those noble children to work. Work! Assigning them positions of responsibility at the quarries, mines, and even the Port Town and smaller hamlets as local constables. Gentle-born folk made to earn a wage with the sweat of their brows. It was disgusting.
The only other contender of note, Storm’s End, was yet another great house reduced to chaff by the wars. Gendry Baratheon (Baratheon, what a jape!) wandered the halls of an abandoned castle with a handful of men cobbled together from the remains of other houses and small-folk he’d recruited from Flea Bottom, happy to come in out of the mud and rain, leaving Lady Brienne and House Tarth as the clear favorites. Gendry was an affable enough man, but Toryen could only see a bastard, the legitimizing at the hands of Daenerys was meaningless. And again, Gendry had no men to speak of, just the muck he’d found in his old haunts, so his grand castle was as meaningless as the name he now carried.
But taking the Beast herself was another matter altogether.
And he had her, but there was no sense of satisfaction, no victory, not without taking his brother and the Pig as well.
Toryen scanned the horizon, low-grade anticipation in his chest, or perhaps worry. Somewhere out there in all that green and blue water, forces were amassing against him. No idea how many or how soon, but they were there. A warm wind whipped his hair about his face. It was damp and sticky, both the wind and his hair.
Yes, the sooner he was done with this place, the better.
They continued to sail southwest, rounding The Singing Stones and The Three Exiles. They were little more than granite keys. Large blubbery creatures packed their rocky shores making a commotion that could be heard from the ship. As they passed south of the small islands, the smell of the creatures blew over the ship, nauseating in its pungency.
He had Brienne brought up on deck so she could see how far they’d come unmolested. He meant to demoralize her. She said nothing other than requesting water to bathe. Toryen had two of the sailors splash her with buckets of seawater. True to her legendary stoicism, she took it silently. He had her bindings undone, daring her to try something. She only removed her leathers and asked for more water from the sailors. They eyed Toryen, looking for instruction. He waved it off as beneath concern so they continued and Brienne scrubbed her head and beneath her muslin shirt, never once taking her cold blue eyes from Toryen.
“Behave and I’ll only have your hands tied. You can behave, can’t you, Beast Brienne?” he taunted her from behind several armed men.
“I have no wish to harm these people, Toryen. They are not the savages you make them out to be, but they answer to someone, as do we all,” she replied. He heard the vague threat, but the very vagueness was what made it empty.
She would comply.
Another two days brought them to the island of Moluu. Rounding its southern tip, sails crested the horizon. The sails bore the lavender cockle shell of Prince Olamíde.