Chapter Text
A host of singers roamed along the edge of field with sweet or raucous melodies, little caring if their songs clashed. Lark only narrowed their eyes at them. “They lack spirit,” he said. “They sing from throat, like goose. A true song burns in belly, devours a man with heat.”
“I wonder how you can know so well, when you don’t sing at all,” I said with a devious smile, and he smirked at me. He knew I meant to tempt him, but his songs, it seemed, were only for Queen Helaena.
We walked through the line of tents and past the commons, where it seemed the whole city was pressed against the barricade, delighting in the revels. The melee would be far briefer than the joust, and the morning was given over to mummers and bards. Jesters from across the sea cartwheeled across the field and juggled coins, occasionally tossing a silver stag to the eager crowd.
Lark told me of a scandalous Myrish dance as we took our seats. “They press their cheeks together,” he said matter-of-factly. “And whisper indecent things. Magisters try to outlaw it, parents try to control children, but no luck.” He looked with awe at the platform erected before us, a stage with a glittering backdrop of cloth-of gold.
“Is that-“ he said, but he snapped his mouth closed and nodded reverently. A musician in massive pantaloons knelt before a foreign double harp and plucked a mournful ballad. Across the field, the more typical fare continued, mummers and fools in motley.
A slim young man minced onto the stage in black wig that tumbled to his waist. His silk gown was too large, his cheeks were heavily rouged and he looked at the audience with forlorn eyes lined with kohl.
“All pity Nymeria, princess of the Rhoyne!” he said in a sweet falsetto. “Abandoned by my love, I must take to the sea!”
The courtiers hooted, ready for a farce. The usual fare meant crude faces, a slap on the arse or a dangling rubber phallus. But it dawned on me, from the Braavosi accent and the plaintive music, that that these were not mummers, but players. In Braavos, they learned whole stories by heart, tales of long dead kings, fated lovers, and treachery.
The crowd erupted in whistles and a knight, already drunk, demanded to see Nymeria’s teats. At one point Nymeria’s voice cracked, which led to peals of giggles from the stands. But it did not phase her, and she continued on, joined by other players, a Rhoynish prince, a sister, a merchant and a sea captain.
It was not the story I knew, of Nymeria who fled the Valyrian Freehold and eventually found refuge in Dorne, but a convoluted love story. The villain was a scheming merchant who laid out various plots to separate Nymeria from her true love, Prince Garin.
Even I knew it was nonsense, but by the time Nymeria stepped onto her ship, a heavy contraption manned by three assistants, I had lost all my qualms. She gave her parting speech, her words rich in poetry and deflection, and tears rolled over my cheeks. I turned toward Lark, but he had vanished.
“Did you like it?” asked Aemond, who had taken his place.
I wiped my tears and nodded, embarrassed to be seen weeping. But I broke into an involuntary sob. He smiled knowingly, and taking a kerchief, dabbed the tears from my cheek. “There now, you’ll make me sorry I brought them.”
“You brought them?” I had not realized.
“Well, they were in the city, and my brother needed a morning’s entertainment. I thought you might like to see something of Dornish history.”
I stared at him, confounded. He couldn’t mean I had influenced his choice.
“Of course, a few changes had to be made. The villain was a wicked Valyrian prince, which obviously couldn’t be permitted, so he was replaced with a merchant.”
“You should not have,” I insisted.
That amused him. “You would prefer a wicked Valyrian prince?”
I couldn’t help smiling. “It might be truer to life. But no… not that.” I knew the court had been watching us, that his mother had been watching us. “You should not have put on this play- thinking of me.”
“There is no harm in it.” He shrugged, and nodded to a group of courtiers, who wiped tears from their eyes. “It is not as though the others disliked it.”
“But you should have asked someone else. Such as your brother or-“
“He has no interest in this sort of thing. Truth be told, he would have preferred the farce.” He gestured toward Aegon, who was clapping at Winkle’s antics. “I did nothing for you, but for me. I wished to talk of it. Did they tell it true?”
I shook my head, and smiled. “No. I know little of such things, but the story I learned was much different. The Valyrian prince was not the only change.”
“It’s nonsense.” He frowned. “It was so foolish that it brought you tears.”
I laughed. “No! It is nonsense but…there is something there. Something beyond the story. I wish I could explain it.” I tucked a curl behind my ear and looked into his eye. “The truth of it hardly mattered, not when the way it was told was so beautiful.”
He nodded. “You like poetry then?”
“I don’t know.” I was aware of the vastness of my own ignorance, and I knew that to exaggerate my little store knowledge would only make it look the smaller. “I do like words. And I liked the way she said them. I liked to watch such sorrow, without being in danger of it myself.”
“I see some traces of sorrow. Here.” He wiped a stray tear from my jaw.
“That’s not real sorrow. It is a relief somehow, to cry at nothing.”
“I knew you would like it,” he said, his face brightening. “You have a taste for poetry. The Myrish and Braavosi put us to shame. And the wicked Valyrians, though their golden age is long past.” He sighed at that, and squinted into the sun.
“You are sorry for it.”
“I am sorry for the mysteries, the knowledge lost.” When he spoke again his voice was boyish, careless. “I must ready myself. Will you watch the melee?”
I looked into his eye, seeking. “Your promise.” I insisted.
He nodded, huffing. “I remember. But I’d like you to be there. If nothing else to keep me to my course.”
“I don’t know,” I said, with a flush. I knew well it could turn bloody, and I was not sure I had the stomach for it.
He held out his hand, palm down. “Take my wrist.”
“Why-,” I started, but the curve of his lip convinced me. I slipped my hand beneath the cuff of his jacket.
“Look,” he said, and I did. I stroked the black velvet band with my fingers, and pushed my thumb beneath it, feeling his living pulse. The people around us faded to nothing, and I could not find the will to let go.
“Marai.” It was half a warning and half a plea. Slowly, I turned his hand and looked at his palm, its curves and delineations. His fingers tightened, and then relaxed.
“Stay,” he asked.
My land lingered on his wrist. “I will,” I said.
He leaned inward and I felt his presence like a lingering doubt, the shift of his shoulder, his lips mere inches from my ear. “That’s not an order,” he said.
I dared to meet his eye. “I know.”
Xxx
The singers had returned when Jocasta joined me, and the sorrows of Princess Nymeria were replaced with drums and bawdy rhymes.
“Lady Marai, you’re alone.” She adjusted her grey velvet skirt and slipped beside me, handing me half a lemon cake in a kerchief. There was a lightness to her I had never known. “I’m here with my husband. I would introduce you, but he is hosting an ambassador from Lorath.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I said, and meant it. Her cheeks tinged with red, and I hoped she did not sense pity. “He has been so busy.”
“Of course,” she said, nodding, and lifting the cake to her lips. I imitated her, hoping she would not notice. It was too easy to make a mistake in the minute details of eating. “And now Roelle is to be married.”
“It was unexpected?” I asked.
“There was talk of betrothal. Lord Crakehall had offered Roelle’s hand, but I believe Rogar wondered if he could do better, and stalled on an answer.” She shook her head. “Roelle has been unwise with Ser Jasper. But perhaps she should thank him for urging on Lord Baratheon’s suit.”
“Does she wish to marry him?”
“She is so proud, Lady Marai. Now that it is a settled thing, she will have it known it was her idea all along. I think she will be pleased to be Lady Paramount of the Stormlands, but she has never shown an inclination for Lord Rogar himself. We do not marry for preference of course.” Jocasta smoothed her skirts. “ I can only hope that Ser Jasper has the good sense to avoid her.”
“Is it really so far advanced?” I asked. I remembered her beaming face, the crown of roses and marigolds on her loose red hair.
Jocasta hissed through her teeth. “I hope not. There’s something reckless about him, and I think that’s what she likes. She thinks herself daring, but she’s a child really, the pet of her father and a sister ten years her elder, beautiful and catered to.” She laughed. “ I really should hate her, shouldn’t I? But she looks after me in her own way, and there’s a certain charm to her. She’s witty and foolish and lures you in.”
I clutched at my skirt. “There are rumors…about Lord Baratheon.”
Jocasta sighed. The look she gave me was full of pity. “Prince Aemond ….is still grieving. I feel for him, but I cannot believe it. My husband says they are rumors spread by the enemy camp. They wish to see the Stormlands and King Aegon’s faction weakened, and what better way than lies?”
I could only nod. She did not want to believe it, that she danced and joked and dined with a murderer, and that Roelle would marry him. I too would be relieved if Aemond was in the wrong.
She lowered her head so that her dark braids spilled into her lap. “And I wanted to say…when Roelle teased you about Prince Aemond, it was only her way. I don’t think she comprehends what people like us endure.”
People like us. I wanted to laugh at her, or hug her. She too was a bastard, but she had never been a whore. If only there were someone like me, I might not feel this constant weight.
“I’ve confused you, I see. Forgive me for saying so, but I too was unmarried, and baseborn.” She sighed and looked across the field. “We can hardly help if men far above us to choose to notice us. Lord Fossaway was kind enough to put an end to the rumors and take me to wife, but it was highly uncertain. There was a long period of doubt.”
It was a bold confession, I knew. She was grateful to her husband for the act of marrying her, though it seemed he was the source of the rumors that plagued her in the first place. But she loved him, there was little doubt.
I looked down, crushing the kerchief in my hands. Too often I avoided what I did not want to know. “Are there really such rumors?”
She looked at me blankly. “Nothing alarming. But court can be so dull, that they notice anything.” She laughed briskly, and reaching out, she took my hand. “So take care, Lady Marai.”
Trumpets sounded. The melee would soon begin. “I must return to Lord Fossaway,” said Jocasta, and with another squeeze of my hand, she was off.
Xxx
People milled to their seats, ready for the fight, but there was no sign of Sylvie. I pushed through them to the bottom of the stands, where Elinor Santagar sat with her cousin Jennelyn. It took all my courage to draw beside them. “Good day,” I said, as brightly as I could.
Elinor looked at me through long black eyes and squeezed her pendant of pale jade. Her smile was polite but distant.
Jenny was a laughing girl of twelve, with copper skin and tight curls. “You must be the lady Marai. Sylva has told me of you,” she said. Her accent was richer than Deziel’s, the warm intonations of southern Dorne. “You dove from the cliffs together. Father will not permit me to swim, but everyone does in Sunspear. When we go back, he will not be able to stop me.”
“We are not going back to Dorne,” said Elinor wearily. “Forgive her, my lady, she believes that all her troubles would be solved in Sunspear.”
I laughed. “Perhaps she has the right of it.”
“Ah, but fathers will be strict the world over.”
I thought of King Aegon, against my will. “Can you tell me where Sylvie is?”
“Deziel would not permit her to come. The fighting is too thick.” Jenny giggled. “She was so mad. I told her she was too little to understand but that just made her madder. So we are not speaking at the moment.” She lifted up her nose.
“That may last an hour. Or two,” said Elinor, a smile creeping over her lips.
“She’s a baby,” said Jenny. “And I am a maiden grown. It is no longer becoming for me to keep company with children.”
“Indeed,” said Elinor. “We can’t have her driving away your suitors.”
Jenny hunched her shoulders and pouted, unsure if she was being mocked. Eleanor only blinked with stately seriousness, pushed back a loose black strand from her forehead, and gazed at the field. “I believe our champions are here,” she said.
Xxxx
The melee would be far briefer than the tourney, a single round of furious combat. The crowd seemed more on edge, as though the scent of blood was in the air, and it fell oddly silent. Curling smoke from cookfires rose in the distance and pale slivers of sunlight broke through the clouds. The river gleamed, silver and serene. Banners whipped in a rising wind and even the ever-boisterous commons spoke in whispers which rose and ebbed like the tide.
A trumpet heralded the combatants, eight on eight. The Master of Revels called forth their names with thunderous power, and they rode in a stately procession across the field. Most held their helms in their arms, all the better to smile or grimace for the benefit of the crowd.
It was mummery, I realized, as much as Nymeria and her plaintive speeches, though certainly deadlier. The knights could sate themselves on blood, settle their old enmities and dynastic ambitions under the mild guise of sport.
Nobody was as I knew them. Deziel had transformed, had reverted to the aspect he so often wore in public, sullen and powerful. His armor was fresh, copper hued with black wings spread wide across the breastplate. He looked unsmiling at the crowd, and Maegor snorted and danced beneath him.
He and the men who followed wore short capes of golden velvet, fringed with tassels, to signify their team. I saw two Hightowers, handsome men with auburn curls and glinting green armor. They were doubt the Queen’s brother and her cousin, Ser Gwayne and Ser Martyn, newly arrived at court from Oldtown. I recognized Ser Ambrose Wylde and his shield emblazoned with a turquoise spiral from the day before, and I had seen Ser Leo Redwyne in the training yard, though now he wore a veritable vineyard of golden grapes and silver vines braided into his plate mail.
Two hedge knights, their armor dull and their faces gaunt and weathered, followed behind. If they could take a knight for ransom, they would have the right to claim his horse and plate, which would mean a fortune for men of their rank. We had seen such champions at Mysaria’s, exultant with the feel of coin in their palms. They rarely kept it.
The Master of Revels heralded the Scarlet team. Prince Aemond rode at the head in a coat of jet-black armor emblazoned with golden flames. Steel scales covered his arms and crept up his throat, and he wore his pale hair braided over his shoulder. His silver destrier, a black star on its brow, eyed the field with anxious fury, but Aemond’s face was blank and unyielding before frenzy of the crowd. His eye pulsed with curious energy, and his fingers grazed the hilt of his sword.
I knew Aemond as a creature of the shadows, lean and elusive. But in with his dense coat of steel and high blooded warhorse he seemed another being, massive and indominable like Aegon I or Maegor of legend. I would never have dared to touch him.
He was followed by Ser Bertram Peak, his breastplate and shield emblazoned with dark fortresses. In what might be some gesture of goodwill, Rogar Baratheon had been placed on the Scarlet team. Perhaps Queen Alicent or Lady Roelle had brokered some peace between them, or Rogar had argued his case. Jocasta believed him to be innocent, and I could only hope that Aemond had been mistaken.
Rogar looked the part of a Baratheon lord. His golden armor was polished to a high sheen, with deers’ heads grimacing at the shoulders and a rearing stag inlaid in onyx at his chest. Two kingsguard, Ser Arryk and Ser Rickard, followed with three other knights, waving and guiding their steeds into a prance.
The clouds parted over the tourney field, and armor glittered like gemstones as the knights rode into formation, eight against eight. Their capes of scarlet and gold fluttered about their shoulders in the rising wind and the scent of woodsmoke permeated the field. Sensing the onslaught, the commons broke into a dull roar and nobles hollered and raised gloved fists. The knights squinted and carefully surveyed the field before dropping their visors.
They rode with fury, their blunted swords and axes raises high as they charged. There was no breaking the ferocious pace, and the two teams collided in a vicious clamor. Ser Bertram’s horse shrieked as it dashed headlong into a Hightower palfrey. Ser Ambrose struggled to control his destrier, whose eyes were bright with fury as it snapped its jaws at the passing knights. The men reeled on their horses, keeping themselves aloft while seeking their target.
It was fiercer and more confusing than the tourney, and the limbs of horses and men tossed about in a mad scramble for dominance. A fearsome hedge knight and a Hightower were unhorsed, but both scrambled to their feet and dashed from the clamor, holding out their swords in a silent alliance. One unhorsed, the combatants could not remount, but must fight afoot.
Ser Rogar circled the mass, and clashed swords with Ser Bertram Peak. Ser Bertram fought bravely, but his horse lost its nerve and reared, leaving him at Rogar’s mercy. Rogar took him ransom, which meant his armor and gear were now forfeit.
Ser Rickard of the Kingsguard lunged into the fray, bringing his horse to a leap to slam into Ser Gwayne. The destrier lost its footing. Its leg twisted and horse and man shrieked as they met the hard earth below. The battle went on about them. Ser Bertram and a stranger in blue stripes had been taken for ransom, a hedge knight had forfeited after a ringing blow to the head, and Ser Rickard was pulled out screaming from under his horse. Horses were removed, one by one, and the fighting was now mostly afoot.
Only Aemond and Ser Arryk of the Scarlets, and Deziel and Ser Ambrose of the Golds were ahorse. Deziel honed in on Aemond, his black destrier panting with the thrill of battle. I began to doubt the fairness of the promise I had extracted. I had not understood the rules of combat, and how easily they might find themselves at odds. Aemond raises his sword, but with a whip of the reigns veered sidewise and locked with Ser Ambrose, so that Deziel was sidelined with Ser Arryk.
I clutched my belly, watching the men on horseback, and the clashing swords below. Dust began to rise at their heels, and the crowd bayed for blood.
“Kill him, brother!” called the king. I turned, looking at his red face and the Lannister brothers braying alongside him with equal fervor. I rather suspected he meant it.
When I turned back, Aemond tumbled from his horse and hit the ground below. I shot to my feet. But rolling, he evaded capture and the footfall of his hissing destrier. I looked about me, momentarily panicked by my show of feeling, but the crowd was too fixated on the battle to notice me. Clutching my chest, I fell to my seat.
Aemond was in his element on foot, where his natural quickness worked to his advantage. He spun into action, prostrating Ser Ambrose and taking him for ransom. He smashed his shield against Ser Martyn, but was distracted by a glancing blow from a hedge knight.
Deziel had stayed ahorse the longest, but now entered the fray, slow but powerful in his strokes. I lost sense of the battle, of red capes and gold, of which man was the fortress and which the tower. My eyes ached from the glint of metal on steel, the smoke and dust.
Blood. There was blood on the field, from man or horse I did not know. All the horses had been cleared but Ser Rickard’s, who shrieked and struggled to right itself. Blood dripped from Gwayne Hightower’s helm the onto emerald green of his armor, and he lurched and fell to his knees. Ser Ambrose limped, his leg a dead weight behind him.
And that smell. It wasn’t roast meat, cookfires, or sewage, though that was there too. Death. Sweet and foul. The scent of makeshift funerals in Mysaria’s parlor, of Beth, who had been pulled out of the Blackwater after three days and an elderly cook we called Saffron, who had the misfortune to die in the high heat of the summer.
But no one is dead. Even if they had died, they would not smell like that, not so soon. My stomach lurched and it passed, replaced with the homely scent of the river, reeds and rotting wood.
Squeezing my hands, I looked to the field, where Aemond loomed over Ser Martyn, his sword over his throat. Ser Martyn lifted in his hands in a yield, and Aemond helped him rise to his feet before turning toward his next opponent.
Rogar Baratheon strut past him, far too close. He lurched into his shoulder and Aemond fell forward, to his knee. The crowd murmured. Whether it was intentional or a mere accident, Aemond went deadly still.
He raised his visor and the eye beneath was black even in the fierce sun of early afternoon. The clamor of swords and struggling forms in their shells moved on about him. Indolence could be deadly on a field of combat. But he had no intention of remaining still.
He charged forward like a darting arrow, and his shield smashed into Rogar’s form. The crowd went silent for one second, two, before it erupted in whispers. Prince Aemond Targaryen and Lord Rogar Baratheon were on the same team and both wore the scarlet cape. They were not supposed to clash. To fight Rogar was a breach of honor.
Perhaps it was the confusion of combat. But Aemond was anything but confused.
He smashed his shield against Rogar’s, so hard that the three headed dragon splintered down the middle. Rogar stumbled backward, winded, and lifted his mace, tossing it at Aemond’s head. Aemond ducked and slammed his knee into Rogar’s chest so that he fell to the ground.
The crowd, commons and nobles alike, screamed. There was a lust for blood, a thrill at the unusual situation, but also panic. Queen Alicent rushed to the bottom of the stands and wailed her son’s name as he threw himself on Lord Rogar.
It took the other combatants longer to realize. Ser Ambrose defended himself against an onslaught, and a battered hedge knight made his fortune by taking a Hightower for random.
Deziel, in combat with Ser Leo Redwyne, started. Both men drew back simultaneously. Deziel lifted his visor and his dark eyes grew wide. Aemond and Rogar supposed to be allies, and as sworn knights they could not allow this breach.
My heart hammered as Deziel and Ser Leo plunged into the fray. Ser Leo grabbed Aemond’s arm and Deziel shoved Aemond’s shield aside before he could thrust its point into Rogar’s chest. Aemond ripped his arm from Leo’s grasp, and rising, elbowed Deziel in the chest. Leo staggered back but Deziel honed in, raising his sword.
Aemond rose to his feet and delivered a powerful blow with his gauntleted fist. Deziel’s visor had been up and I could see Aemond’s knuckles meet the bridge of his nose. Once. Twice.
Stop it, I screamed, but no sound emerged from my throat.
Aemond lurched back to Ser Rogar. Ser Criston had been summoned, and I could see him in the periphery of the field, his snowy cloak waving like a flag.
Deziel. He reached out his hand to his nose and turned pale as he saw blood on his gauntlet. He took two steps backward and collapsed to the ground.
xxxx
I screamed.
I suspected I was not alone in my panic, for the last thing I saw before I plunged down the steps was Elinor Santagar’s wan face.
“You promised,” I gasped. My voice was ragged in my chest, not that anyone could hear me. “You swore not to hurt him, you took my favor and…”
But people did not keep promises. Not in my old world, and not in this one, where they held their word at such dizzying heights.
Deziel was blessedly near the stands. I heard whispering as I ducked under the barricade and I fell to my knees beside him, thanking the Gods that Sylvia was not here. He was breathing steadily but did not respond to my voice. Armor was unfamiliar to me but I looked over the various straps and buckles, and began to work at them.
Aemond got in a final blow, his gauntlet smashing against Lord Rogar’s loosening helm. Criston Cole finally managed to subdue him with a twist of his arm, but Aemond writhed within his grasp.
“Enough!” shouted Ser Criston.
Eventually, Aemond stopped tossing. With his free arm, he yanked off his helm and thrust it to the earth.
“Marai,” he sputtered, tossing it to the ground. He had burst his lip, and blood streamed from it. “You don’t belong here! Get back to the stands.”
I only looked at him with wide eyes. His eye was massive, dilated by the elation of violence. The crowd was full of murmurs, but from their stillness, I suspected such wanton brutality was not truly a surprise. Only I had been foolish enough to breach the field.
xxx
A powerful pressure swarmed about me, like the churning of a gathering storm. But there was no storm. The sun fell in bright rays over my hands and glinted over Deziel’s breastplate. Then a bird keened, the sharp and mournful cry of a seabird.
It’s only a gull, swept up from the bay.
But no gull had ever been so loud.
A terrifying wail, trilling and sputtering, rose and fell in tremulous waves over the field. The air smelled of pitch, rank and deep and earthy. I screamed and I was not alone.
A dragon, blood red with the craning neck of a worm, careened across the sky. Caraxes.
Daemon must be riding him. But I only had eyes for the monster: his dizzying speed and whipping body, his gaping maw and the death contained within. He made a single pass, high overhead and then returned, sweeping downward so his feet just grazed the top of the high poles.
He tore at the banners with his massive talons, edging far too close to the miniscule people below. Their screams were drowned in his roar, which was not a roar at all, but an unearthly rending shriek. He screeched and chirped, and beneath it all a pulsating chittering shook the stands and chilled the marrow of my bones.
The people’s cries were faded in comparison, even as I heard the pounding and wailing from the stands. I could not move, could not turn my head, could only clutch at Deziel’s breastplate and stare until tears streamed from my gaping eyes.
Caraxes passed again, his strange fin-like protrusions twisting, and he and his rider soared to the south, towards the thick wooded glades and away from King’s Landing.
I did not know how long I sat transfixed, my heart beating in my ears and my eyes seeing nothing at all. It was long enough, and the crowd broke from its paralysis, calling, waiting, hoping, and protesting.
“He’s not returning!”
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Get back!”
It was a flash of white that broke me from my stupor, the spinning cloak of Ser Criston Cole as Aemond whipped from his grasp.
“Go with my mother,” cried Aemond, and his eye darted toward the stands. “Where is Helaena?”
“She retired early,” said Criston, gasping,” She’s at the keep.”
“Thank the gods. Go!” He shoved him forward, and ran to my side.
“Come,” he panted, taking my arm. “We must be quick.”
I yanked away from him. “I can’t.”
He looked down at Deziel’s prone body and wiped the blood from his broken lip. “Leave him. He has men to attend him.”
I snorted, looking at the panicked crowd that had broken past the barricades, and swarmed the field. If I abandoned him, they would crush him underfoot. “And where are they? How would they even get here?”
He groaned. “This isn’t a game, Marai. Daemon may well return, and if he does, all of this will be set ablaze.”
My entire body shook. “I know,” I said hoarsely. I managed to yank off Deziel’s helm. His face was pale and his hair clung to his face. “This isn’t the first time King’s Landing has burned. I may die, but they’ll crush him for certain if I don’t keep watch. He has a sister. I have to-”
He snatched my shoulders in his hands and for a brief moment I froze, staring at the violet of his eye, before I wriggled free. “Off!” I yelled.
“You love him that well?”
“It’s not a matter of love!” I spat, and I worked the buckles of Deziel’s gauntlet. Sweat dripped over my brow. “You promised to spare him. You lied to me.”
“It was never a lie! I did not intend to-“ His hissed. “He was in the way!”
“As so many are,” I said, gritting my teeth. It was not as though I wanted to be here. “In wars you wage, in dragonfire-“
I stopped as he knelt down beside me. Strands of silver hair fell over his face and his gloved fingers worked over Deziel’s breastplate. “Pull,” he said, and moved to his leg plates. I froze before I lifted the plate and tossed it aside. The crowd was pressing in tight, and I placed Deziel’s head in my lap.
“Seven hells,” hissed Aemond, as he unfastened the arm plates and they clattered to the ground. His eye met mine. “You could have chosen a smaller man to champion. You must help me lift him.”
I nodded. Together, we pulled, and grunted and managed to thrust Deziel over his shoulder. Aemond groaned. “Now,” he said, looking on me intently. “Will you follow?”
“Yes,” I said. We left the armor behind, and it clattered as the gathering crowd jolted forward. We pushed forward, and screams resounded through the air. I hated to be so pressed, so confined and a familiar nausea rose through my body as arms and trunks and legs twisted inward.
Only I could not allow myself to grow weak, not now. A young boy, no more than three, wailed at my heel. He was too small, and could too easily be tripped and crushed. I lifted him in my arms, and he cried harder. I held him close, restraining his kicking limbs. “We’ll get you to your mother,” I insisted, and he looked on me with wide eyes, too awed to protest.
Aemond turned his head, eyeing our new companion. “I hope that is enough.” He said. “You can’t save every soul in the city.”
“I have to find his mother,” I said. I tried to look about me but it was too dense to see anything but shoving bodies, and the black delineations of Aemond’s armor.
“What you have to do is keep yourself alive,” he retorted. He sighed and his voice sounded strangely raspy. “And him too, if that’s your wish.”
I placed my lips on the boy’s soft hair, as much to comfort myself as him. The mob jolted Aemond forward and I wanted to scream as a slew of strangers filled the void between us. I could not be alone here, not in this mass.
“Arms around my neck,” I said to the boy. His huge, unblinking eyes seemed to comprehend all, and he obeyed.
I shoved forward and darted out my arm into the sea of bodies. It smelled of sweat and stale beer and I panted, struggling to hold the boy in one arm.
“Hold on!” Aemond shouted, reaching back so that his fingers grazed mine. He grasped my wrist and I thought it might break under the pressure of the metal gauntlet. The people about me squawked as I pressed through them.
“Gods,” he said, and swept me in front of him, so I could feel the hard metal of his armor against my back.
He cast a shadow over me, as though his entire being were a refuge from the crowd and the glaring sun. “Let go. Please,” I said. The boy was slipping from my grasp and my wrist was still encased in metal.
“Yes, of course,” He said, and the steel shifted. My skin was red and imprinted from the gauntlet as I lifted it to clutch the child.
“I did not mean to-“ he said.
“You did what you had to,” I answered. I was too aware of his face near mine, the jostle of leather and metal and the warmth of him. There was no avoiding contact in the press, and I could barely distinguish between Aemond and Deziel, the small boy and the mass of humanity around us.
We passed beyond the field, to the outskirts where the tents had been unceremoniously crushed, their proud flags in dregs beneath us. Tables laden with food were overturned, cakes trampled flat and roasts reduced to gristle and bone underfoot. For the first time the people of King’s Landing had turned their noses at a gift of food. The wheelhouses and carts were in sight, and press began to break as we were pushed forward, toward the Blackwater rush. I wondered if river water could douse dragonfire.
As we neared the wheelhouse a weeping woman, hair in disorder, threw herself against me. “Jack! My Jackie,” she wailed as she plucked the boy from arms, barely noting me. Surprised, I released him, and she dashed into the crowd.
“She might have thanked you,” said Aemond, raising a brow.
“She nearly lost him,” I said. “I don’t expect her to fawn over me.”
“No,” he said, eyeing me. “I suppose not.” We stood before the wheelhouse. Beads of sweat fell from Aemond’s brow, but stood upright under Deziel’s impressive weight.
I reached out my hand and touched Deziel’s cheek. Warm, but no sign of awareness. I clenched my fists. Together, we lay him over the wheelhouse floor.
Aemond hurried me inside, and looked toward the sky. “It looks like we might live another day,” he said. I only looked mournfully at Deziel.
Aemond watched me as he pulled off his gauntlets. He reached under his sleeve and when he knelt beside me the black ribbon was in his palm. With his long fingers, he tied it on my wrist, and I was too weary to protest. “I’ve stolen your luck,” he said. “But it’s yours now.” I felt his breath on my hand as he sighed. “Marai, look at me.”
I stared at him, the sheen of his face, his long features and curving lips. I sought his beauty and the cruel chaos that lurked within. Deziel lay prostrate on the floor, and a dragon was somewhere on the horizon, a blaze lurking in his gullet.
“Marai,” he repeated. Shaking my head, I turned from him. He had played too much with my fate and my life. Luck had little to do with it.
Part I: Epilogue
We were confined to our rooms for two days. A palace guard had briefed me quickly, but otherwise I was in the dark. Daemon could be back at any time, and all believed that war was afoot. Guards stalked the halls, checking the rooms at intervals to make sure no spies had entered the keep.
I knew what they did not say, that the Red Keep could become an inferno at moment’s notice. Dragonfire could melt stone, everyone knew that, and a block of withered manses on Visenya’s Hill spoke to the scale of such devastation. The merchants had simply left, unwilling to spend their coin on such a risk, and vagrants had overtaken the hollow shells.
I hoped that Prince Daemon would spare the city and attack only the Red Keep. They said he had friends in Flea Bottom, which was near the Street of Silk. He would surely not want to harm his old drinking companions? But I knew that if my mother and friends were safe it was not through affection, but through insignificance.
Any spies would be lurking in secret tunnels like the one in Aemond’s chamber. I remembered his simple, hard bed with something like grief. Was he sleeping there, his body on the stiff board, his eye trained on the chamber, watching for spies?
I held my knees and stared into the fire I had built myself. It felt good to be my own servant. I only wished I could be my own master. I had considered fleeing, but it would only arouse suspicion. I did not wish to sleep in the black cells.
The smallfolk said Daemon knew everything, could go anywhere, could make himself the size of a rat and could perhaps even warg, though no one had ever heard of a Targaryen possessing the powers of the First Men. Sage had told me of the panicked gossip and delicious legends that passed through the servant’s quarters. I had never bothered to ask Aemond if his uncle could skinchange into a dragon or a rat, but I could hear his laughter, rare and rich.
Such rumors did not spread from nothing. They meant he at least had a sense of being everywhere all at once, hearing everything. The rumors had been blunted by the truce, the desperation to see the end of the reign of dragons. The calm would soon be shaken and stories would again spread like wildfire.
The view out the window was dreary, and I had little patience for books. I paced the chamber, struggling to control my frantic energy, and creaked open the door. I had to see Deziel, to hear what the Maesters had to say. Perhaps he was awake now. I knew where his chambers were, if I could only find the courage to seek them. A long shadow loomed in the torchlight, and I quickly closed the door behind me.
xxx
A knock. I inhaled. Only one person would come at this hour, so long past my lessons. I held my arms around my knees by the fire. I couldn’t see him. Not after he had so utterly failed me.
A second knock. I buried my face in my knees and breathed. I thought of his face, how it glowed like a lamp in the candlelight. But maybe he had news of Deziel. The door creaked open as I raised myself to my feet.
Castos entered the room, smiling as always. He wore a loose yellow jacket, flared at the waist, and his chain of golden dragons clinked as he walked.
I held my hand to my mouth. He was not supposed to be here. Not so late at night.
“Have you- have you tidings of Deziel?” I stuttered. I could not imagine he would be the bearer, but it was possible.
He tsked. “Deziel, Deziel. It’s always about my brother with you. Doesn’t it get dull?”
I averted my eyes, and placed a hand on my core. Was he mocking me?
He sat down on my table, and shook the jug of mead before pouring it into a glass. “You are faithful to him, it seems, but it seems in spite of everything, you may find better prospects before you. Sit, my dear.”
I stared at him. He took a swig and snorted. “Are you deaf?”
Slowly I obeyed, and he filled my glass. I cupped it in my hands, just to have something to do with them. His long lashes cast shadows over his freckled cheeks. “My half brother has yet to wake up.”
I clutched my stomach. I thought of Sylvie, her grief and terror. Aemond, who had caused it all. And now, Castos who held it all over me with triumphant glee. “Is he going to die?”
“So morbid! I think not, but who knows?” He sipped his mead. “The Maesters say it was a blow to the head. But we can’t well conclude a marriage pact with the groom so indisposed.”
I looked down. Was this freedom? I did not know the possibilities and their outcomes, and I did not wish to profit by anyone’s suffering. “You are hard to read, my lady. You neither weep, nor smile, and I know not want to think.”
“Is the betrothal then…off?”
He grinned. “That is the root of the matter. I don’t think you ever imagined yourself as the Lady of Blackmont.
It could not be. “You mean then-“
“Of course I do. You will marry me.”
I stifled my trembling. “I cant- I couldn’t possibly.”
“It does you credit, this hesitation, though there is little need. I admit myself taken with you.” He raised his brow. “Which I did not expect. Aegon is my dear friend, and there are advantages in connections to the greatest house in Westeros. Deziel has no head for that sort of thing, but I can make use of it. And you do not have those common airs about you one might expect from a whore”
The hairs on my neck prickled as he spoke. “You know, then.”
He laughed. “Know? It’s the worst kept secret in the Red Keep. Of course I know, as does Deziel. Well, he did know. Did really you expect to fool him? I tried to make sport of the poor boy, but he’s about merry as a withered septa when it comes to japes.”
Deziel did know, had always know, but had treated me with the courtesy of any lady. He had helped me write my mother, knowing all the while who she was. My face flamed.
“And of course, it made my choice difficult, but I decided to follow my inclination. You’ll find I am known as a generous man.”
“Your father would not approve,” I said, desperately, scratching lightly at the table.
“My father will approve where I do.” He smiled. “He is proud of course, but done and tired, and has left the running of Blackmont to me. If Deziel were available, he might have more qualms, but that, it seems, is no longer an issue.”
He drank and I stared at him, utterly chilled.
“You do have Targaryen blood,” he continued. “My children might ride dragons, and mayhaps the Blackmonts will rule Dorne.”
I’m not a Targaryen, I thought, though I was, in the sense that he meant. I was so baseborn, and yet now I would be a vessel to pass down exalted blood.
Castos stood and looming over me, he kissed my cheek. He smelled of wilting lilies and copper, and I willed myself not to shake. “Cease your worries, sweetling. Your father tells me this seclusion will end tomorrow.”
I never had a father.
“Caraxes is off ruining someone else’s party,” he said with a snort. He did not lack courage, it seemed. “You have something pretty? That silver dress, perhaps? Come morning, we can stand before the all the court, dressed in our finest, and share the happy news.”
He was so elegant as he bowed farewell, sloe-eyed and golden and hollow. I waited until the door was closed behind me to bury my face in my hands.
Aemond, what have you done?