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Smoke & Salt: A Horse Grenadier Company in Westeros

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The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Margaery VII
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    • "It's going to snow today, mark my words." Elinor said, glancing up at the dark, overcast sky.

    "Winter is coming. Brace Yerselves." Meredyth said, in her worst imitation of a northern accent.

    Margaery laughed, despite herself. She needed levity.

    The three of them wound their way past a group of servants carrying laundry, past soldiers drilling with spears. Even with things as tense as they were, business went on as usual for the common folk. They still had twice the usual number of armed guards trailing her, alert for any threats. She tried not to let herself get too on edge.

    Seven Above, what a mess. Olenna would laugh herself sick over this.

    Well, she wouldn't. She'd just nod along and let Selyse destroy herself, then have some nice men quietly sent to Myr to deal with Lord Baelish.

    A year or two ago, she would have done the same without hesitation. Now, she did not know. She did not know who had truly tried to kill her, and she did not know if Renly truly believed Selyse did it, or if he was framing her. If the former, and he was proven wrong, that would be deeply embarrassing. If the latter… that would be disastrous. Fire and ice both threatened them, from the north and the east. They did not need a civil war if they were caught, and if Renly lost, well, Stannis and the Florents both detested the Tyrells. They could expect little mercy.

    This is all Renly's fault. A dangerous conspiracy was one thing, but dragging her into it without her knowledge or consent… she had gone into the marriage knowing it was for the greater good of her family, not her own happiness, but even so, it stung. Deeply. And that was before the petty lie about how soon it was.

    All the more reason, she supposed, to tell Tane of the inquiry. That might gain her trust, get her support if things went wrong.

    They arrived at the Red keep's sept just as the first flakes of snow began to fall. She caught one in her hand, and held it up to her face, peering at it. She thought it looked like a rose, before it melted.

    She took turns praying at every statue, but she prayed longest and hardest to the Crone, begging for wisdom to light her path. She didn't dare say out loud why she needed that. She prayed to the Father too, that if Selyse was innocent but ended up convicted anyway, the true killers would face justice. Not Baratheon or Tyrell justice, mayhaps, but justice nonetheless. She didn't say that out loud, either.

    "Lady Baratheon. You are wanted. By your lord husband. At the Small council chambers." A voice said behind her. One of her servants, Lanna she guessed.

    Margaery stood up. "Renly wants me." She glanced at Lanna, favoured her with a smile. Feeling appreciated never did someones loyalty any harm, and besides, the servants worked hard enough to deserve it. "My thanks. Do you know if it is Stannis or the Ironborn?"

    Anything involving Selyse would be dealt with in Renly's own quarters.

    "I heard Oldtown mentioned…" Lanna said.

    "Ironborn then." Margaery said. Euron must have finally made his move.

    They crossed through the Red Keep, past Maegor's holdfast, a virtual prison now for Selyse and her household. Margaery had stayed away on purpose. She did not want to have to confront Selyse or Shireen herself.

    The Small Council chambers seemed almost empty when she arrived. Randyll Tarly, Guncer Sunglass, and Ser Arys had all gone north, leaving only Renly, Alester, Davos and Tane.

    Margaery strode into the small council chamber in a rustle of skirts, as fast as her injuries and pregnancy would allow.

    "What is the news from the shield islands? Are we under threat? Is there-"

    "It's Euron. The self-proclaimed lord of the Ironborn." Renly said.

    Tane stood up from where she sat.

    "He's hit the Shield Islands, the Arbor and Mott Caillin. Some of the Arbor fleet got burned or cut-out at anchor, and others are bottled up in their harbours. There could be other targets that didn't get their ravens off before they were overrun." Tane explained.

    "Well then, we need to act!" Margaery snapped. Highgarden was in an exposed position, close enough to the Mander for Ironborn to sail up to it. Mace, Willas and Garlan would put up an able defence, but if they were isolated, and without another strong leader like Tarly to rally the rest of the Reach, the Reachmen might end up scattered facing down raiders rather than concentrating against the main threat.

    "Obviously." Renly said, sitting at the head of the table. "I'm going to request the defences of King's Landing reinforced, including the kingsguard, and for Loras to be sent as a King's representative. Stannis will, of course, be asked to return south."

    "One or two kingsguard won't do much." Tane said. "Loras has no command experience either."

    "No, but every sword counts. How soon will your troops be ready to march?"

    "Within a day or two's notice, as long as food isn't a problem. If we'll have to stockpile our own food, longer."

    Renly nodded. "Hopefully Garlan and Mace will be able to beat them off. If not, your troops will have to march." He shrugged. "I'd prefer to keep them here. Reserves for when Aegon comes."

    Tane nodded grimly. "Best hope dragon scales aren't strong enough to resist musketry. A bunch of cityfolk with no proper weapons killed the things, so enough firepower should do."

    "That won't matter if we can't defeat the Others." Guncer said.

    "The Others have a wall in the way. The dragons do not." Renly said. "Tane, I fear you're going to have to deal with fire as well as ice before this is over."

    They stood up to leave, Tane jinking towards her past the chairs with an annoyed look on her face. The inquiry. She linked arms with Renly, and hissed "You told me we had two weeks" to him, displeasure in her voice, just loud enough for Tane to hear. Renly didn't react, just took her arm and maneuvered her out of the hall as quickly as possible.

    "Well, yes. Servants gossip. If they were overheard, Selyse's people could try and hide the evidence. This may yet throw them a loop." Renly said.

    "Tane knows." Margaery said, once they were out into the courtyard. She glanced around, checking that their servants and guards were keeping a respectful distance.

    "Knows what?" Renly asked innocently.

    "That this Selyse business... she reckons your evidence is full of holes. She believes that you've been trying to keep her away from the assassins." Margaery said.

    "Again, Selyse could try and destroy the evidence." Renly said. "There is no such thing as being too cautious."

    "And yet how reckless are you being? If Stannis convinces himself that you framed her, that is treason. That would mean a civil war, during which the Targaryens or Others could come down upon us even if you win, and if you lose-"

    She knew her husband to be callous and to care little for her, but putting them all at risk like this was a new low.

    "I have good evidence." Renly said. "Selyse is guilty as can be. Stannis will see the truth, or I will resign my handship and travel to Oldtown. If he wants to fight, so be it. There are many in the realm who love him little and would have him taken in hand. Especially once his wife is known as a murderer who he let off. Selyse is guilty, and one way or the other she will pay."

    She hoped to the Seven that Renly was right, otherwise this was going to get very messy very quickly.​
     
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    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Renly VIII
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    • "Everything is in place, I assure you." Gared said, trotting alongside Renly as they made for the Red Keeps gates. The gaoler was having to visibly slow himself to avoid pulling too far ahead.

    At least I've stopped myself obviously limping. Training himself to do that when in public had taken a frustrating amount of effort.

    Renly could already hear the chanting coming from outside. Baratheon guardsmen were keeping the crowd back from the tournament stands that had been erected facing outwards.

    "Excellent. How many towers did you want on your castle, again?"

    "One or two would be good enough. More of a tower house, really." Gared said.

    He'd have to watch Gared. Ambition was good. Too much ambition… that could be dangerous. And Gared knew things no one else but Renly did.

    Selyse was done. Either Stannis would be forced to execute her, or the backlash from letting her walk would cripple him.

    Bill? Full confession with all the gory details. Sallereon? Gared had persuaded him to confess to sheltering the assassin even knowing what they would do. Selyse? She'd agreed to make her case, which was sure to start a riot, and Gared had discovered some interesting letters of hers that she'd failed to dispose of in time. Ironborn were involved. With recent news of the attack on the Reach, that was sure to have an impact. Tane was going to be a problem, but at least she'd been taken by surprise by the inquiry. Margaery hadn't leaked the inquiry to her hens, and even if she had, they would have assumed it was a week early. He didn't entirely trust her to keep her mouth shut.

    The halberdiers guarding the gates stepped aside as he approached. Goldcloaks, hopefully loyal to him. Tane had taken all the best men in the Goldcloaks for her own troops, giving them better pay, and the regular Goldcloaks resented them for it, while he'd had their pay increased and made it known who was responsible. He'd ordered the Silvercloaks to stay in their quarters built near the tourney grounds. He'd said they'd just inflame the situation.

    There were Stormlands archers up on the walls as well, and spearmen, more a show of force than anything else. More practically, they also ringed the outside of the tourney stands, stopping anyone from climbing up. He glanced at the witnesses as he walked past. Lord Sunglass had gone north to personally inform Stannis of what had happened, so he was unavailable, but Margaery, Tane, Sace, and a half dozen Septas and Septons were standing about.

    "Are you ready?" he asked. Margaery nodded. She interlinked her arm with his as they walked out the Red Keep's gates.

    It should be Loras at my side.

    He clambered up onto the platform, wincing as the climb put pressure on his leg. The moment he stepped up onto the stage, his leg felt like it was on fire. He ignored it. He could not show weakness before the people of King's Landing.

    As he walked to the edge of the stands, a guardsman stepping aside as he stood before the crowd. A wave of cheers went up when they saw them.
    "Margaery! Margaery! Margaery!" the crowd called, and "The rose of Baratheon!"

    It rankled him to hear most of them cheering for her, not for him. Still though. Him or her, it didn't matter. He had the people's support.

    "Justice for the High Septon! Let no infidel go free!"

    That one was coming from a knot of men in austere clothes, Septon Ollius at their head.

    He let it go on for just long enough that the people had their say, then raised his hands and called for silence.

    "As you all know, I, Renly Baratheon, Lord of Storm's End, Hand of the King, heir to the Iron Throne, was attacked three weeks past by assassins. My lady wife, Margaery, was also attacked and sorely wounded, as was Captain Tane Bayder. Most heinously of all, the High Septon, a Septa and a Septon were murdered in the holiest place in the Seven Kingdoms. Not since the days of Maegor the Cruel have we seen such a crime against the Faith!"

    More yelling.

    "Off with her head!"

    "Kill the bitch queen already!"

    "Fookin' Rhllorites!"

    Margaery called for calm this time.

    "It may very well be the case that Selyse did this. It might be the Ironborn, or the abominations of incest that ordered this atrocity. Whoever they are-"-Margaery paused to raise her splinted arm-"By the old gods and the new, my Lord and Husband has sworn to make them pay."

    "To establish the facts of the case, all those concerned will describe what they saw and did on that terrible day."

    First came the Septons. Half a dozen of them, each described the same events. They saw a group of shifty looking Essosi around the Great Sept near midday. A Septa confronted them on the balcony as they approached the High Septon's chambers. Her throat was cut. One of them had opened the door and thrown an axe at the High Septon, only for Tane to charge them. She'd killed two before being forced back into the chambers. They hadn't seen much, besides Septon Orel running in to try and help, then Sace had arrived with pistols and her sword belt-she'd had no time to buckle it on- and blown the last assassin's brains out. Some of them testified that they'd seen the flame tattoo on one's ankle, and a one-legged Septon who'd been a sailor long ago said the throwing axes in the attack were ironborn make, just like the one that had taken his leg.

    Margaery gave the same version, adding how she'd pleaded for mercy, and how the killer had refused.

    The mob was bellowing, jeering, screaming for blood.

    "Off with her head! Off with her head!"

    The way they said it, Renly was convinced they wouldn't need a sword to take her head off.

    Then it was his own turn. He told how he'd punched the assassin, fuelled with rage when he'd gloated about murdering Margaery.

    That brought a cheer.

    He told how the man had sworn to Rhllor when captured. And he told them how he'd tried to save Selyse, but had no choice but to arrest her when the confession was read out.

    Tane came next.

    She began explaining how she'd fought off the attackers, killing one man with a hatchet she'd taken off another.

    "-I was wounded several times, and only saved from worse by my mail."

    She took off her hat, showing the short, ragged haircut she'd gotten so her surgeon could get at the wounds. Her hair was shorter than most mens by now.

    "One of them had a rhllorite tattoo, another looked Ironborn. Two more looked like Essosi sellswords. I don't think they were all rhllorites. Hired by Rhllorites, maybe-"

    A flick of his wrist and Gared came to the fore, confession in hand.

    Gared cut her off. "Indeed, the assassin explained himself when forced to speak by the rack and the iron."

    He unscrolled the parchment.

    "Item: I was recruited into the faith by the Red Priest Thoros of Myr. I was then but a humble sellsword…"

    Renly skimmed over it. Rambling, mostly, about his career as a sellsword. The torturers were thorough. The scribes too.

    "Item: I was alongside four others, all of us faithful, hired by a man who called himself the red knight. He said he had been sent by certain highly placed persons to kill all those who opposed the one true king and the one true faith."

    "Item: When in King's Landing, I took a position in Renly's guard so as to be close to him. I attended the nightfires while I was there, and greatly admired Selyse. I told her at the nightfires I had great plans to do service for the faith, and she smiled and told me she was glad the faith had such experienced warriors in it's service. Later, she told me that she wished someone would rid her of the meddlesome Margaery."

    "Item: We were planning to kill only Renly and the High Septon, but when we found out about the meeting, we postponed it for a day to kill Margaery and Tane too, in order to please Her Grace."

    "These are the words of the man who called himself Bill, would-be murderer of the hand of the King! He was most reluctant to speak, to protect his Queen and master, but when he did, it was illuminating. He cannot appear before you know to give his confession, since I fear such a rogue's chances of escape are too high."

    "There is more. The blacksmith Sallereon, when put to the question, confessed that he sheltered the killers full well knowing of their mission, since he supported any Rhllorite who would fight the faithful."

    "Throw them out! All of them! Force them out of the city!" someone yelled. "No Rhllorites in the sight of the Great Sept!"

    Gared let them continue for a moment, then Renly called for calm.

    "Furthermore, while searching Selyse's affects, I found letters from Selyse Baratheon addressed to Euron Greyjoy, the very man who now ravages the coasts of the Reach! She was begging him to seize the chaos that she knew would soon be sown!" Gared said.

    The mob was bellowing, roaring, screaming.

    "Bring out the bitch queen! Bring her out!" the crowd roared.

    "Now!" Renly called. "Would anyone speak in Selyse's defence!"
     
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    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Tane VIII
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    • "I will!" Tane yelled. She stepped forwards, up into a gap between a pair of spearmen guarding the edges of the platform.

    Here we go. Telling the Hand of the King and an angry mob that they were full of it and barking up completely the wrong tree had to be one of the more dangerous things she'd ever done. And that included storming castles and drunk duels. There had to be thousands of people out there, all of them packed into a single mass, trying to get close enough to the stands to hear.

    "After the fight, I wanted to know why those men had tried to kill me. So I interrogated those who knew Bill."

    "What I found wasn't entirely consistent with what Bill said in his confession. Firstly, he claimed in the confession that Selyse trusted him enough to tell him at the nightfires that she wished someone would kill Margaery. But Ser Davos Seaworth had agents watching the nightfires, and they barely ever saw Bill there. Neither did the other members of Renly's guard report him to him have been particularly faithful. So it is claimed Selyse knew Bill was a killer because she'd hired him, and trusted him as such. But then, Davos keeps track of such things, and no Rhllorite knights had left or returned in the time needed to be the 'red knight' in the confession."

    "Then there is the matter of who she ordered killed. If Selyse had hired him to kill her enemies and both of them knew what he was there for, why on earth would she risk exposing both of them by telling him she'd like Margaery dead in the Red Keep? If Selyse did this, Margaery would be the primary target from the start. Selyse is convinced Margaery was spying on her. Selyse hated Margaery and blamed her for Stannis's decision to put Renly ahead of Shireen in the succession. She was not a subtle woman. But in this attack, the High Septon was the main target, with four men sent to kill him, and another man to kill Renly. Myself and Margaery were only added to the death list at the last minute, if this confession is to be believed, because Selyse mouthed off in broad daylight. She gained nothing from killing the High Septon besides riots. It makes no bloody sense. And if Selyse was clever enough to send an agent all the way to Myr to recruit these killers, why would she act so stupidly as to have letters to the Ironborn lying about?"

    The mob was, well, not convinced. Bored out of their minds more like it.

    Thank Mary-Isis I'm not a lawyer.

    "Worse, I went to talk to the assassin myself. He'd been tortured."

    Some in the crowd began to cheer. "Cunt deserved it!"

    "It might have gotten him to start talking, sure. Or it might have made him lie, to tell his captors what he thinks they wanted to hear. There's no way to tell. Without any real corroborating evidence, it casts doubt over everything he said."

    "Think about where he said he was recruited. He told me he was converted by a Quellos of Myr, while the confession lists the late Thoros of Myr. Now, who would be in this area who would be more likely to try and throw the realm into chaos? Petyr Baelish, thief and traitor to the realm, known on reliable evidence to be hiring sellswords, and the Lannisters, claimants to the throne. Petyr's given the Myrish navy gunpowder weapons, you know. Varys, the old master of Whispers, was from there too. He fled as soon as the Lannisters fell, and it is said he convinced Aerys to open the gates to Lord Tywin. He is most likely a Lannister agent as well. Either one has the means and the motives to destabilize the realm for their own ends. And if they set it up to have Rhllorites kill the Hand and the High Septon, right when a certain Rhllorite queen is unpopular…"

    Christ-Horus. This is the sort of logic I would've laughed at three years ago.

    More boos. Someone threw a rotten apple. She jerked out of the way, resisting the instinct to get her arm up. Just fruit, not bloody Cateran arrows. Trying to convince an angry mob didn't matter. It was the people behind her, not in front of her, who she needed to convince.

    "So you're saying the Hand of the King is lying?" someone yelled.

    Yes, or incompetent. Or just seeing what he wants to see.

    "No. I'm saying he's mistaken. An understandable mistake, one our enemies want us to believe."

    "Is there anyone else who would like to come forth?" Renly asked.

    "I would." Davos Seaworth said. The small man came to the front, facing the crowd through a gap between soldiers, while Tane moved to the back, to stand besides Sace.

    "As Master of Whispers, I can tell all of you what Tane said is true. No Rhllorite close to the queen left for Essos or on any other sea voyage on my watch. Now, that's not all. I have men amongst Selyse's circle, to watch for any foolishness of the sort Selyse is said to have committed, and have had them talk to others, when they are in their cups. They all tell me the same story. She is a spiteful and unpleasant at the best of times. She has, more than once, said that she detests Margaery and believes her to be out to take everything from her. But she had no reason to risk trying to kill the High Septon or Tane at the same time, and I have no reason to believe that she could organized an assassination without being discovered."

    "Fuck off, Rhllorite!" someone yelled. More rotten fruit and then a rock, clattering off a man's helm.

    "Now, will anyone else speak in Selyse's defence!" Renly yelled, once again.

    "I would." A woman's voice said.

    Selyse Baratheon clambered up the tourney stand steps, even more gaunt than usual. A pair of Storm's End guardsmen moved on either side of her.

    Mary-Isis fucking the Father with a pole-axe…

    Tane glanced at Sace. "Get the whole company here, on foot. There's going to be a riot. Renly's foot won't be able to hold the gate without backup. Go. Now."

    She absent-mindedly loosened her backsword in her scabbard. She hadn't bothered with armour beyond her buff coat, but she'd brought the sword rather than her rapier. If she had to hold off a mob the extra cutting power would be more valuable than her rapier's reach and point control.

    Sace nodded, her face suddenly paler, and scurried off.

    "I did not try to kill Renly Baratheon. I did not try to kill Margaery Baratheon. I did not kill the High Septon. I did not try to kill Tane Bayder."

    "I was right to fear them, though, for now I know that they scheme against us. The Great Other stirs in the north, and godless savages march against us in the south. There are abominations of incest in the east. Someone, Varys or Littlefinger most like, seduced apostates from the Red God to their cause and sent them here, to make the faithful look guilty and to sow discord. You heard what Ser Davos and Lady Bayder said! Margaery and Renly are scheming against me, as they always have! She nearly died, and her first thought was how to attack me!"

    Tane couldn't see the crowd, but she could hear them. They were bellowing, a solid wall of noise. A rock went flying, then another, clattering down behind the tourney stands.

    Where's a helmet when you need one…

    She glanced at Renly. "Pull Selyse back now. I'd want reserves up as well."

    Renly shrugged. "Selyse must be given a chance to defend herself."

    Idiot-

    He knows exactly what he's doing.

    She swore under her breath. She was going to have to save Selyse from her own stupidity all over again. She clambered up the tourney stands, past surprised Baratheon soldiers.

    "Your Grace, it isn't safe-" Tane said, having to yell to make herself heard over the noise.

    "Off! With! Her! Head! Off! With! Her! Head!"

    "Quiet! They are being deceived, I know-" Selyse said, looking down at Tane.

    A rock hit Selyse in the side of the head, and she began to crumple.

    Tane caught her, grunting with the effort as she tried to haul her back onto the platform, moving without thinking. Selye's leg hung over the edge, and someone grabbed at it.

    Someone was yelling about the bitch queen accusing Margaery of treason. A man leapt at the platform, trying to clamber up, but Tane kicked him in the face and a spearman drove the bottom of his triangular shield down into his shoulder, dropping him. The platform felt like it was shaking, and Tane realized that the crowd must be pushing up against it for that to happen. One of the men on her left went down, blood pouring from his mouth.

    Selyse finally came free, and she pulled down onto a lower level of the stairs. Her eyes flickered open, groggily. Blood was already running down the side of her face.

    The guardsmen were jabbing with the bottom of their shields, trying to keep the crowd at bay. "Get someone up here to pull Selyse back!" Tane yelled.

    She glanced back, saw Margaery rushing forwards, lifting her skirts. "We need calm, please-"

    Renly caught her by the arm and pulled her back. One of Renly's non-coms was yelling for the archers on the wall to open up, and another man was calling hold.

    A stone thudded into the ground next to her head. "Get Selyse back!" Tane yelled. A pair of guardsmen did as she said, hauling the big woman back. She pulled herself up, then grabbed at the nearest spearmen. The other Bill. "We need to get the civilians back inside, then fall back into the-"

    A rock slammed into her shoulder, leaving her swearing bloody murder.

    "Chop her bloody head off! Come on, we got blue balls out here!"

    "Finish the bitch off!"

    The human wave was pressed up against the stands, some heaving at them, attempting to push them over. They get through, we're all done. Some of the guardsmen were jabbing, spears coming up red, while others kept striking with the underside of their shields.

    "Get the civilians back! NOW!" Tane roared, turning back to Renly and Margaery. She swore as the stand rocked under her, bracing and leaning like she on a pitching ship. It was like getting hit by a witch tilting gravity, only worse. At least she'd trained to deal with that, which put her at an advantage over Renly's men, several of whom had lost their footing and gone down.

    Fuck this.

    "Get back off the stands!"

    She got behind one man, bellowed for him to fall back. Rinsed and repeated.

    Another jolt and she fell.

    She tumbled back, rolling with the impact down a couple of stairs, snarling in pain as her shoulder jarred. A few more men had fallen, one screaming as he landed arm first and snapped it like a twig. The rest were clambering back down as fast as they could, just as the stands began to rise up.

    Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck-

    Calmness, vigour and judgement.

    "Get everyone out of the bloody way! Now!"

    Bill was yelling much the same. Arrows were flying, but the men they needed to deal with, those pushing the stand, were in cover.

    She grabbed the man with the broken arm by the swordbelt and tugged. "MOVE! MOVE!"

    They had nearly everyone clear when the stand was fully tipped over.

    It came down on someone's legs. The guardsman screamed, shatteringly high pitched as rioters began to clamber over it. They might not have even wanted to attack them; might just have been pushed forwards by the pressure from the rear, trying to avoid suffocation.

    They caught bullets all the same, the crack of musket shots rolling over her. She dropped to a half crouch, scrambling off to the sides. "Down and to the sides! Clear the line of fire! Move!"

    She glanced about for Gryff. He was standing off to the side, bellowing orders. "Fire over their heads! Reserve pistols for anyone who keeps coming! Watch your line of fire."

    "Gryff! Are the civilians back?"

    He shook his head. "I think I saw them coming back in. Margaeries alright, and most of her lot. You see any casualties?"

    "The queen's down. Two of Renly's men too."

    Bill grabbed at her. "One of my men fell into the mob before the stands tipped, we need to get him…"

    "Prepare to advance with bayonets!"

    This was going to be a long day, she could tell.
     
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    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Margaery VIII
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    • No-one had lit any fires that she could see, at least. That was the only good news from the city. Half a dozen of Renly's men, men she had known for years now, were dead or maimed. Dozens or even hundreds more had been shot down as they'd tried to come pouring over the overturned stands. She hadn't seen it; she'd been fleeing in the middle of a huddle of her handmaidens as the Grenadiers had come charging past. She'd heard, it though: the roar of gunfire, the screams of panic, the barked orders scarcely audible through her half-deafened ears. Then the chaos had really set in: mobs of enraged citizens forced to flee from the stands, attacking Rhllorites on the streets, dragging them from their homes. The Goldcloaks were out in force, and the Silvercloaks as well.

    "Selyse is conscious, at least, though the Maester said she's delirious. She may have to be trepanned." Elinor said behind her. She'd sent Elinor off asking after the Queen, since Renly had ordered her to stay put in the tower of the hand.

    'Pity, that she didn't go the way of the High Septon" Meredyth Crane said. "An axe would have been better than a stone, I think."

    "She could be innocent." Megga said. "Do you remember what Davos said? He is an honest man."

    "There was a confession." Elinor said.

    Seven save me, Renly is going to lose this. Even with the Ironborn letter…

    She heard the sudden, distant crack of gunfire, wafting across the city.

    "Some fool lit a fire over there…" Aunt Janna said, pointing out another window.

    It was on the street of steel, near as she could tell. There was always smoke coming from the street, but this was far too much, and that blacksmith-Sallereon or whatever his name was-had his shop there.

    "At least those are smith's shops, they should be hard to burn down…"

    *

    By the time the sun was setting the fire in the street of steel was out, but two had started down in the merchant's quarters. There'd been no more shooting, at least, though she'd heard more screaming, yelling and drumbeats than was entirely comfortable.

    There was a knock on the door, and Elinor appeared. "Tane wants to speak with you."

    She took the stairs, letting Elinor take her arm, her head spinning. This was a bloody disaster. When Stannis returned, he'd have every excuse to move against the Tyrells. And it was all Renly's fault, because he'd rushed into conspiracy without preparing it properly or asking her to help him.

    She found Tane, Sace and two other Grenadiers at the base of the stairs, kitted up in breastplates and buff coats with arm harness for the officers. Both musketeers had their bayonets fixed. Sace's vambraces had blood spattered across them, and she looked paler than usual.

    "Not her blood." Tane said. Margaery realized she was staring.

    "There was a woman. She'd been, um, attacked, and I tried to help her since she wouldn't let any men get close enough…" Sace said.

    Oh gods be good. Watching the rioters overturn the stands had been bad enough. Being caught on the ground amongst such a mob, with no name to protect her, no guards and no shelter...

    She shuddered, remembering the daggers.

    "Is the city safe? Where any of your men hurt?"

    "It's still.. unstable. None of my men are dead, though there's plenty of bruises and a horse I think will have to be put down. The fires are under control, mostly."

    "And the people?"

    Tane pinched the bridge of her nose. "Dozens dead. At least. Both from the rioters and my men."

    She'd helped feed those people, funded the septons that taught their children. She'd heard them chanting her name for two years. It had been the cold calculations of court politics at first to go out there amongst the crowds, but to say she didn't care about the city and it's people would be a lie.

    Now many of them were dead because her husband botched up his conspiracy.

    Tane ushered her aside. Her armour clicked and rattled, and her hand went out to stabilize her sword. Margaery felt near naked compared to Tane's steel carapace.

    "You told me we had over a week, not a few days." Tane said, her voice strained, like she was very hard to not be impolite and failing.

    Margaery thought she'd let Tane overhear her objection to that at the small council meeting, but she supposed she wanted direct confirmation.

    Margaery dropped her voice down to a whisper. "He must have changed it-"

    Or lied. She didn't say that, though. Too much risk.

    "Or lied to you." Tane said. "Put out disinformation, confuse the enemy. Whether whoever was putting out the disinformation knows it? That's completely optional." She shrugged, her lobstered pauldrons seeming to almost crunch with the movement.

    "Captain Bayder?" Renly's voice called out.

    "Yes?" Tane asked, turning.

    Renly had arrived, half a dozen longbowmen in tow.

    "My apologies for any losses you took. Is Sace unharmed?"

    "Yes. Got blood on her helping a woman who'd been raped." Tane said, venom dripping from her voice.

    "What does the situation in the city look like?"

    "At least a dozen dead or seriously wounded amongst the silver and gold cloaks. Hundreds of civilians killed, either by us or by the mob. There's fires on the street of silk, though at least the Watch have got a bucket brigade going out there. We've managed to get a curfew going, and a couple of silvercloak coys cut their way through to the street of steel and defended the rhllorite merchants there. The big mobs have dispersed, but there's still packs of looters striking at the merchant's manses and fading into flea bottom. We're going to have to either lure them into ambushes or wait for them to get bored before this dies down." Tane said, rattling it off like a scout reporting back. "What in Christ-Horus's name were you thinking?"

    "I have to admit to miscalculating with this, but there are good reasons to hold an inquiry."

    "What bloody reasons? There are hundreds killed or wounded out there and it's all down to this bloody inquiry! Hell, maybe if you'd actually told me you were going to hold it more than a few days beforehand, we could've gotten better preparations in place, but no, you had to go behind my back."

    "I had to reassure the people that their concerns were being addressed, before they-"

    "What? Rioted? You got your riot. Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to have a look at the city from the walls. See if anything else got lit on fire." Tane turned and stomped out, her troops following.

    "We need to talk." Margaery said, ushering Renly off into a side-chamber, away from lurking ears. She couldn't avoid any of the listeners in the walls-if Varys could do it, so could Davos or another player-but she could at least avoid any servants spreading rumours.

    The moment she'd gotten Renly alone, she rounded on him. "Please tell me there was some sort of purpose to that. At least three of our household are maimed because of this."

    Renly shrugged. "I didn't expect the crowd to become so aggressive."

    "Tane warned you to pull Selyse back. Why didn't you?"

    "There was no time. Even if I'd ordered it, she still would've been hit."

    "You didn't know that when you ignored Tane. She's dealt with riots before. Back wherever she came from. You should have listened to her. Or not called this in the first place. That was reckless, and unnecessary."

    She saw the slightest flash of anger on Renly's face.

    "It was necessary. I had to make it clear how guilty Selyse was to the people, so that Stannis would not simply pardon her."

    "Oh, so you wanted the threat of a riot over Stannis's head? Funny, you just told Tane that you wanted to avoid a riot."

    "Both. Stop a riot happening now, and use the threat of it to force Stannis to give us justice later."

    "Pity it achieved absolutely nothing for us besides probably enraging Stannis, and got hundreds killed into the bargain." she said.

    "Selyse is wounded and may not recover."

    "So that's it? Stannis forbid you from taking her head, so you had smallfolk stone her instead? I'm sure Stannis would be understanding."

    "Selyse tried to have you gutted!"

    "Maybe. Maybe not. But why you did not even tell me what you were planning, when I was just as much at risk as you-"

    The anger was overtaking her, making her say things she shouldn't.

    Renly shrugged. "I trust you, but I don't trust your hens, and I do not know which ones you would tell-"

    "Elinor. Megga. They're my own blood, and Megga is smarter than she seems. I'd trust those two with my life. Maybe Merry, since she's been feeding me information on Selyse and I'm closest to her out of my women. The others? I don't see Alla enough to trust her. Sace and Taena are too close to Tane."

    "Regardless, I have proof beyond a murderer's word that Selyse is guilty. That letter, written in conspiracy with Euron Greyjoy."

    "Who found this letter? They could have forged it seeking your favour." If anyone was listening, they would know that she believed this an honest error of judgement, that she had tried to warn Renly back from his path.

    The whole thing reminded her of being a girl in Highgarden, when someone or another would go tattling to the Septas or Mother. They'd always make their complaint as juicy as possible and point the finger at whomever they misliked, regardless of the truth. When it came down to he-said she-said, the favourite would be believed. Not the facts. She had always been good at making sure she the favourite.

    She'd taken advantage of it more than a few times, but this was rather higher stakes than who'd made off with a bottle of arbor red. She could lose her head if she miscalculated.

    "Unlikely. The man I put in charge of the investigation is most reliable."

    Renly lurched forwards, grabbing her by the shoulders. He loomed over her, half a foot taller at least. She tensed, fearing for a moment he would chastise her.

    "When Stannis comes, we must be a united front. Either we both go after Selyse, or we both claim to be mistaken. That would both be a lie, and destroy my reputation, and yours with it. The court and Stannis would think me a coward, a fool or a liar, Now, if we bring down Selyse? We're the heroes of the faith, and rid of an enemy. She was your enemy before this, and she is certainly our enemy now. We must finish the deed. It is a cruel thing to wound a beast, but not kill it."

    "Do you not care who did it, truly? This is not some game of sinecures and holdings, they tried to kill me. They tried to kill your child!" She kept her voice down to a hiss.

    "Oh, I do." Renly smiled crookedly. "That is why I want Selyse executed. That is the only way to see justice done."

    His blue-green eyes bored down at her.

    "Did Selyse order the killings?" His tone of voice made it clear he wasn't asking what she believed. He was asking her in the tone Stannis would soon take, wanting to know who supported what.

    She paused for a moment, thought on it.

    "Yes." she said. No. Mayhaps. Whatever gets me through this with my head on my shoulders and my babe in line for the throne.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Lancel IV
  • Threadmarks
    • "That's a snowstorm blowing in." Hargrey said through gritted teeth.

    "Need to find shelter, then." Lancel muttered.

    They'd been moving all day since the attack, not daring to stop until they were sure that they'd managed to lose the Others. They'd managed to outrun the wights in their frantic rush, and the Others hadn't bothered to pursue, as far as he could tell. Hargrey had insisted on sticking to the forests, to stop the dead birds from spotting them.

    His legs felt like they would drop off at any moment, and Hargrey seemed to have picked up a limp from Seven knows where. The Bolton man had brushed it off every time Lancel had raised a concern, insisting he was fine.

    "Knee never liked the cold. And that was bloody cold." He'd said.

    Lancel had just nodded and kept moving. If he stopped, the cold would be worse. If the cold got worse, he'd want to curl up like some small animal in a cold snap. And if he did that, he'd die.

    He didn't particularly want to die.

    As he shuffled along behind Hargrey, trying not to stare at the flayed man-now spattered with actual blood-on his cloak, he pointed out a craggy hill.

    "That looks like it might have shelter…" Lancel said.

    Hargrey grunted. "Aye. We'll need it. Light a fire and we'll bring them down on us."

    Lancel shivered. "If we do it in a cave, they might not see us…"

    "No fire. Too risky." Hargrey said, swearing as he stumbled on a log buried in the snow.

    *

    In the end, they did light a fire, as deep as they could into the cave so that the fire wouldn't show. The wet wood put out smoke that stung their eyes, but Hargrey had brought dry tinder in his back.

    "Hunting in winter, you southron summer child. You always have to be ready to sleep rough." He'd explained.

    Lancel took first watch that night, crouching by the fire, far enough out that he wouldn't be silhouetted, an unlit flaming brand ready to be lit the second he saw walkers.

    He was staring at the mouth of the cave, looking for any sign of movement. He felt his hand beginning to shake, his body coming down from the rush of fighting for his life and running through the snow with wights and spiders at his tail.

    Pyp's dead. Grenn's dead. Two dozen or so others.

    If I'd been quicker, I could have saved Pyp at least-

    He slapped that thought down. There was nothing he could have done. Pyp had that spider's venom in him by the time he'd reached him. Grenn had fought as hard as he could and they'd been overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers. It was a miracle that himself and Hargrey had gotten away as they had.

    They'd done what they could, let the riders hopefully get back to the wall-at least they'd have gotten knowledge of the ice spiders back, that was something-then saved themselves.

    For now, at least.

    He supposed that was something to, if not be proud of, then certainly not be shamed by.

    He certainly preferred being a shadowcat to a kingslayer.

    Outside, nearly drowned by the howl of the snowstorm, came a sound like shattering glass. Something moved in the inky blackness, a faint shimmer cast by moonlight.

    It was the height of a man.

    His blood ran cold, and he drew his falchion, slowly backing away into the cave, towards the fire.

    What the hell was that? A ghost? A Wight? An Other?

    There was that awful cracking sound again, and a second shimmer came up behind the first.

    He backed around the corner, scrambling back into the guttering light of the fire. His foot kicked a stone and it went clattering down into the dark.

    He shook at Hargrey.

    "Get up! There's something in the cave!" Lancel hissed, trying to keep it down to a whisper. Hargrey jerked awake, swearing under his breath.

    He rolled over and grabbed his sword.

    The sound of cracking and grinding ice came again. He snatched up a flaming brand in his off-hand and began to back up, trying to put the fire's circle of light between himself and the things.

    Then they came around the corner, through the gloom and the smoke and the flickering firelight, and he saw them for what they were: men in armour, mirror-polished so well he could see himself on the first ones breastplate for a moment before the armour turned black. It had a long-headed spear in its hand, the whole weapon, even the haft, made of what had to be glass. The second wielded a sword.

    Others. Wight walkers. Neverborn. Demons of the Seven Hells.

    "The one on the left. Kill it first." Hagrey said. The older man was audibly having to stop his voice from shaking.

    His own hands were shaking too, and he forced himself to take slow controlled breaths.

    The two demons glanced at each other, one nodded, and then they came on.

    The Bolton man charged at them with a yell, longsword in one hand and dragonglass dagger in the other Bravosi style. Lancel followed, making for the one with the spear, trying to circle around to its left flank.

    Lancel couldn't tell, afterwards, if the fight took seconds or hours. The Spear-Other took Hargrey full in the chest with an impossibly fast thrust. Lancel darted in and brought his falchion down on the thing's glassy vambrace, driving his torch into its face a moment later. Their bodies crashed together, going down in a tangle of limbs, his torch going flying. He came down on top of it, grabbed at its throat, began smashing the pommel of his falchion onto its armoured head. The Other bucked and twisted, and he virtually slid off its belly, just as an icy sword flicked through where his head had been a moment before. His vision swam as he hit his head on the way down, only saved from braining himself by rolling with the impact.

    The one on the ground was making sounds in that cracking language that could only be swearing. Hargrey lay on the ground, gasping in pain, the spear thrust through his lungs. His hands were gripped around the haft, trying to pull it out. The one with the sword was stepping over the downed man, somehow doing that with inhuman elegance.

    Lancel stumbled to his feet, his foot catching on a stone. He went down on his arse again, fumbling for his dagger. The Other began to advance, just as Hargrey lashed out, cat quick, grabbing it by the leg and driving an obsidian dagger into the back of its knee. The Other screamed in pain and whirled, its blade scything through Hargrey's wrist then spinning back around to face Lancel. It lunged at him, but Lancel rolled out of the way, and the Others leg gave out, pitching it down onto the ground. It tried to stand, screaming in pain, but he saw that its leg hadn't just been crippled, it was melting, armour and flesh and even bone, and its torso too. The Other flopped on the ground, screaming in agony, flailing like a fish drowning in air.

    Dragonglass.

    The Other that he'd knocked down was getting to its feet, drawing a dagger of its own.

    It looked him straight in the eyes, it's cuirass shimmering from pitch black to mirror to slate grey. He saw his own face reflected back at him for a brief moment.

    Cold, dead eyes, but they weren't shining blue.

    "Come on!" Lancel spat. "Come the fuck on!"

    He realized that the fire was guttering and dying, and even in the relative warmth of the cave, the cold was chilling him to his bone.

    The Other edged in, circling.

    Lancel stood his ground, resisting the urge to back up. The footing was too unsteady to risk moving more than he had to. He tried to remembered what few lesson's he'd had in fighting with daggers.

    Get it in the joints, I have obsidian so it'll die as easily as a man, just keep your nerves…

    The Other lunged, inhumanly fast, hand shooting out to catch Lancel's dagger. He jerked back and tripped, tumbling straight back through the fire, yelped in pain as the flames licked at him.

    The Other strode after him, the fire guttering and dying as it stepped through. Lancel rolled to his feet and scrambled away as the light died, the Other shrouded in blackness, the only light coming from his dropped torch. It was hard to tell what was the Other and what was it's shadow. It slipped off into the gloom, moving away from the torch, into the blackness.

    Lancel scrambled back, panting, feeling behind himself for the cave wall.

    Where is it? Where the hell is it?

    It must have read his thoughts, because it laughed, the sound echoing through the cave. Shockingly close; too fucking close-

    Lancel hurled himself at the noise with a scream. He slammed into something hard and wet, felt his dagger bite flesh, heard a scream, and then a hand with a grip like iron caught his throat. He felt his feet leave the ground as he kicked at nothing, gasping and swearing, trying to slip free of its grip to no avail…

    Until it just collapsed, dropping him panting to the ground, gasping for air.

    There was nothing, no light, no sound but his own breathing, his hammering heart and wet sputtering coughs. Hargrey's still alive?

    Then he heard the crunching of feet, and the fluttering of wings.

    "Get up, Brother." A voice called, coarse and thin.

    Lancel scrambled over to his torch and snatched it up, sending ravens ravens flapping and quorking in all directions.

    He turned, looking for the voice, grip tightening on his dagger. Please let it be another survivor, please…

    Then he saw him, a man with his face muffled and dressed all in black, a great elk behind him in the long flickering shadows.

    "Who are you!" Lancel called.

    "A man of the Night's Watch."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Renly IX
  • Threadmarks
    • The docks were choked with fog the morning that Stannis returned. The Fury loomed out of the mist like some monster out of legend, oars lifted and the fighting deck bristling with spears and longbow staves like spines on a dragons back. Dozens of springalds, scorpions and great crossbows glared out over the city, and Renly spotted a pair of small cannons-"murderers", Tane called them-positioned on the forecastle, beneath the catapult.

    Renly could hear the yells of sailors and stevedores echoing back and forth across the water as they dragged the bulk of the great dromond to its moorings. Armed men surrounded him; his whole household guard and several groups of goldcloaks, though he'd left the Horse Grenadiers at the Red Keep and kept the number of goldcloaks down. He didn't want to appear weak or expose himself to attack, but neither did he want to appear fearful.

    He waited as the sailors threw the gangplank down. It seemed like an eternity. Finally, Stannis came down. He seemed almost a vulture, his gaunt, balding head poking out from the bulk of the fur trimmed cloak thrown over his broad shoulders. Two kingsguard knights came before him and another two behind, their white armour almost blending with the fog. Loras was among them, he knew.

    The one in front, on the left, he decided, when he saw the rose pommel of his sword and the way he held himself in armour.

    He let Stannis come to him, Loras and the other knight standing aside to let Stannis through.

    "Brother. Your Grace. I have grave news to report."

    "Yes, I know. You have arrested my queen for treason and murder."

    "Graver news. I had to hold a presentation of evidence to try and calm the situation. There were whispers of a riot if Selyse didn't face trial soon. Selyse decided to try and defend herself before the mob. I warned her against it, but she has a right to defend herself. She was struck and wounded by a rock thrown by the mob after she provoked them terribly. The mob rioted, but my men brought it under control."

    Stannis actually flinched, anger crossing his face.

    "You let Selyse be wounded? Did I not expressly tell you not to harm a hair on her head? How badly hurt is she?"

    "She is recovering well, the Maester says. Fit enough to stand trial for her crimes."

    "We shall discuss this at the Red Keep. Now, do you have me a horse or do you intend me to walk?"

    A servant led a horse forwards for Stannis, one picked from the King's own stable. Stannis swung himself up onto horseback, as did the other men of the kingsguard. Renly had ordered Loras's favourite courser brought, of course, and had asked those of their squires and pages present to pick horses for the rest. Stannis rode side by side with him, snowfall speckling his cloak white.

    "What is the state of the wall? Are we all about to be slaughtered by wights? Margaery is most concerned."

    "Lord Stark has the wall well manned and well provisioned." Stannis grunted. "It should hold."

    "Good. Very good."

    Stannis turned back to the streets. The smallfolk shuffled out of the way as the river of horses and clinking mail pushed forwards through the fog and snow.

    Stannis did not appear likely to do anything rash so far. That was good. Of course, he hadn't yet heard Davos, Tane and perhaps even Margaeries account of events, so that would change. As long as he didn't end up outright wrathful, Renly knew he would benefit. Either he could get rid of Selyse and have Margaery dominate the court to an even greater extent, or Stannis would try to punish him and he would play the martyr. Even if stripped of his position, he was Lord of Storm's End. He had contingencies in place. The only way it could go wrong was if he ended up killed or imprisoned, and Stannis was no kinslayer.

    They were riding up towards Aegon's High Hill when Stannis next spoke. "I shall have audience with you in my solar. Await me there. I want a full explanation of everything that happened."

    Renly nodded. "Of course. The situation in the city was… volatile. Not all my decisions were the right ones, I must admit."

    *

    He'd been waiting for what had to be an eternity outside Stannis's solar when the king finally arrived. His leg was screaming with pain, but he would not sit. That would mean showing weakness.

    Stannis had changed into a black doublet, and had a pair of Kingsguard following him. Ser Morrigen and Ser Emmon Cuy, Renly guessed from their height and Cuy's choice of a round shield. His expression was more than uncommonly angry. From the way his jaw was knitting, Renly was surprised he still had teeth.

    "Come." Stannis said, opening the door. He was an inch short of braining himself on the doorframe.

    Would be that he would. Stannis having an accident would make things much easier for, well, everyone.

    Renly followed, and shut the door behind him as Stannis sat on the other side of his desk, lighting a candle.

    "You have proclaimed the queen a murderer on dubious evidence, disobeyed your kings lawful commands, and set off a riot that has the queen bedridden and hundreds dead. You had best explain yourself most convincingly."

    The flicker of candles and the fogged windows made the room seem near dark as it would at night.

    "The confession plainly stated that the assassin was recruited by a Rhllorite knight from Westeros, that he had contact with Selyse, who knew he was an assassin, and that she said she wished someone would get rid of Margaery. It was read out to me in front of full court. I had no choice but to arrest Selyse. Letting her go on account of station when charged with such a grievous crime would set a poor precedent, I think. And then her followers tried to stage a coup and we uncovered evidence that she had written to the Ironborn, offering the seas to the drowned god if they would help her rule on land. The smith Sallereon, when interrogated, said he had helped hide them and recommended Bill for my guard when asked. Every objection raised was that Selyse was too smart or too stupid to do this or that, not any real evidence. There is no good reason to think her innocent."

    "Selyse would sooner see the Ironborn burn as idolaters who make mock of the Lord of Light." Stannis said. "As to the rest? All of that is well and good, but I expressly told you not to put Selyse on trial, or harm her at all. I warned you, I believe this is the work of our enemies, trying to pin the attack on Selyse, and you have played right into their hands."

    "The people of the city drew restless and demanded answers, backed by radical septons. They feared you would not judge Selyse fairly. I did not put her on trial. I held an inquiry, where all the witnesses could give statements. No judgement but in the minds of those watching."

    "That was foolish, brother. My wife was hurt badly enough she had to be trepanned. She could quite easily have died." Stannis said.

    "Oh, I agree. It was a poor decision on my part, I'll admit that. But it did seem reasonable at the time."

    "A little more than a poor decision, I would think. As foolish as dangling meat in front of a wolf then putting it behind your back to stop the wolf biting you. Indeed, considering that you hid how long there was until the trial from mine own master of whispers and the Captain-General of the Royal Army, I would say a little more than foolish."

    "Hiding how long was necessary to stop Selyse's supporters destroying evidence."

    "Any evidence that could have been destroyed would already be gone by then." Stannis said, his face hard as stone. "You also, I hear, denied the rest of the small council the right to interrogate the prisoner Bill, instead leaving it to some merchant's son you fished out of the city."

    "An assassin was part of my retinue. Myrish mercenaries in your employ freed Littlefinger and the Lannisters. Do you not think keeping the guards careful was not wise?"

    "How many six foot tall women who dress like a Tyroshi sailor do you think there are in King's Landing?" Stannis said. "And yet I hear Tane was evicted when she tried to interrogate the assassin herself, with Lord Seaworth's approval."

    "The guards followed orders… a little too well." Renly said with a shrug. "They are good men, assassins aside. Now, what is to be done with Selyse? It is plain as day that she is a murderer."

    "I will have Davos interrogate all those claimed as accomplices and witnesses. He is a most reliable man, and I doubt the truthfulness of an assassin under torture. Especially if he had the presence of mind to sow further discord among us by blaming the queen rather than his benefactors."

    "Are you saying that there will be no trial? That is madness! There would be another riot!"

    "I am saying that there will be a trial. I will judge Selyse innocent or guilty, as the evidence shows. Not you or anyone else."

    "Surely you will not judge, she is your wife, accused of trying to murder your heir-"

    Stannis stood up. "I am the king, and I neither love nor hate her. I will do my duty. If Selyse is proven guilty, you have done me leal service, even if in an irregular fashion. I would not have a murderess as my wife, if the evidence proves her so. If she is proven innocent… many would call you a fool, or worse. There are some who already accuse you of fabricating the evidence against Selyse."

    Stannis looked like he was scarcely holding himself back from making the accusation himself.

    That may be a problem.

    "I won't find out, because I am quite sure the evidence will convict her." Renly said, standing up. He had work to do.

    *

    "I think Stannis cracked a tooth when he heard that you'd slung Queen Moustache into a dungeon." Loras said, laughing. He lay beside Renly, hose unpointed and rolled down, shirt lost somewhere in the gloom. The combination of candlelight and sweat made his chest look like the sun rising over the blackwater.

    "Better that than declaring me a traitor and taking you hostage." Renly said. He'd fended off Stannis for now, readied the trial, given Gared his newest directions, and had now taken a well deserved rest.

    "If Stannis had tried to take me, his men would be dead before they hit the floor. This kingsguard is a joke. As long as I had the initiative, I'd give myself at least even odds on being able to take them all." Loras's voice dripped with contempt. "Ser Fiche might be worth something, as is Ser Balon. Morrigen won a tournament, but that was sheer luck. I'd have to fight those three one at a time. The other three? I could probably take them all at once."

    Renly believed him. At the melees Loras had fought in, his axe had been a blur of steel, his horse and himself moving as one. He was easily the most skilled knight knight Renly knew.

    And the most beautiful.

    "How is my sweet sister?" Loras asked.

    "Recovering well enough. I'm sure she'll get the use of her arm back. And get me an healthy heir."

    "Margaery told me you lied to her without reason." Loras said, his voice suddenly serious.

    "Well, yes, I had to stop any information getting out."

    "You could have just told her to keep it secret." Loras said.

    "She'd been spending too much time talking to Tane. Now I think she's convinced herself Selyse is innocent, but she's trying to hide it from me." Renly said.

    "She's my sister and your wife. Those men tried to kill her. She wouldn't act against you without good reason." Loras said.

    Renly nodded along. No point risking a quarrel. Loras had a hot temper at the best of times.

    "I know. I was being over-careful."

    "You shouldn't be. Selyse is a murderer, and you have the Stormlands and Reach at your back. You have the will to match Stannis, and the wits to exceed him. All that you did by being too careful was making yourself look suspicious. That is why Margaery resents you." Loras rolled up onto his knees, grabbed Renly's hand. "I know you'll get justice for what she did to Margaery."

    Oh, he would. He would. Justice, and more.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • LOL Renly's corny thoughts about Loras.

    Would be interesting to see what would happen if Renly's scheme went wrong and Margaery has to cut him loose and Loras has to choose between him and Margaery.
     
    The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Tane IX
  • Threadmarks
    • "What did we tell you last time, m'lady? No one is to see the prisoners without the permission of the hand of the king-" the guard said, shuffling nervously.

    "Or His Grace the King." Tane said. Davos passed him the letter. The man read it, raised an eyebrow, and passed it back. "Oh, um, yes. Of course."

    Tane resisted the urge to grin. Try going obstructionist now, dogfuckers. He waved them through, lifting his halberd out of the way. Tane's party moved through: Herself, Davos, Morgan to watch for any listeners in the secret passages, and two lances worth of Horse Grenadiers because she bloody well could march a dozen of her men through Renly's dungeons at the order of the King.

    Her hand went to steady her backsword as she went down the spiral staircases that led into the black cells. Davos had given her his orders that morning. Stannis wanted the interrogations repeated on both prisoners, by both her and Davos. It had been Davos's suggestion, to see if the prisoners contradicted themselves or each other. There was no way to get them to tell the truth and know it, but they could at least expose them as liars.

    She came out into the guardroom lit only by bare torches on the wall. A pair of longbowmen were sitting at the table, dicing. They didn't notice as they came down into the room.

    "You should be very glad right now I'm not one of your Non-coms. First time I've ever snuck up on someone while I'm wearing armour. Now, would someone get whoever's in charge here? Ser Davos wants to see the assassin and the smith. Stannis's orders."

    One of the longbowmen jumped up and scurried off.

    "We were off duty-" the second man said.

    "Don't care. A dozen armoured soldiers stomping into your guardroom should merit at least a glance." She leaned back, rolled her shoulders with a rattle of plate. She'd drawn the line at full plate, but she'd put on half-harness for this. Intimidation value.

    They waited for what had to be an eternity-she hadn't bothered bringing her pocket watch-before the Red Keep's gaoler arrived. He was a slight, well dressed man in a cheap but well cut doublet with clipped black hair and a dagger on his hip. Rather different from the Varys in disguise that they'd had before.

    "Apologies for keeping you waiting." He led them into another stairway. "And about last time? I know, those orders were nonsense. Renly being foolish. Orders are orders though." He shrugged. "You understand."

    That depends entirely on whether he's sincere or arse-covering.

    "Do you want to deal with Bill first, or Sallereon?"

    "I will see Bill. You can see Sallereon." Davos said.

    "Yeah. Bill will recognize me. Might alter his responses." Tane said.

    They came down out of the staircase and went through another corridor. "I should warn you that Bill is… dangerous. He's tried to attack the guards to force them to kill him. It didn't work."

    He marched up to a door and unlocked it, swearing under his breath as he fumbled with the keys. "I'd suggest taking off your daggers. Don't want him to grab them and try and kill you. Or himself."

    Gared opened the door. She nearly squeezed her nose shut from the scent. She wasn't ever going to get used to the smell of dungeons. He snapped his fingers. "Bill, get up." He stomped in. "Wake up." She saw him kick at someone. "Bill, get up-"

    He knelt down to grab him.

    "Bloody hell!"

    "What is it?" Tane asked.

    "He's dead, or near enough as makes no matter."

    She grabbed a lantern and strode into the room. Bill was slumped forwards, blood smeared across the wall behind him. As she looked closer, she saw blood matted into his hair on the back on his head. His fingernails had been ripped out as well, and his shoulders were a red and purple mess.

    "You killed him, you bloody idiot-"

    "He probably killed himself! By beating his head against the wall. Prisoners have done it before." Gared said.

    "Bloody hell." Tane turned back to her grenadiers. "Blodwen, go get Connor." The company surgeon would do a better job at detecting foul play than Renly's torturer. Blodwen nodded and took off at a quick march, musket shouldered.

    "Corporal Carrow, you and two men stay here to guard the body. I'll take the rest to check on Sallereon."

    If both of them killed themselves… there were going to be questions asked. Pointed questions.

    "Gared, take me to Sallereon. Now."

    "Of course." The gaoler stood up, and hurried off, Tane following after him. "How often did you check on him?"

    "Oh, we have guards outside his cell. We feed him at 12 and 9. I last came to talk to him a few hours ago. "

    'Did he say anything to indicate he would kill himself?"

    There were three options. Suicide, murder by an outsider who had someone gotten into the cell, or murder by one of the guards and gaolers.

    "Well, putting men to the rack does tend to have unfortunate effects on their will to live." Gared said.

    He came up to another door and opened it. "What do want of me now?" A man asked.

    "Someone wants to ask after your safety. And talk to you." Gared said. He turned around. "If you need my men to bring him to the rack room-"

    "That won't be necessary. For now." Tane said. She shouldered past him, harness clinking.

    Sallereon lay chained to the wall, in a ruined shirt and not much else. A ragged beard marked his face.

    He turned to glare at her as she came in. "I already told you what I know-"

    "You housed the man Bill, gave word of his good character to Renly's household guard, and did so in full knowledge of the fact that he was an assassin." Tane said.

    Poor fucker's most likely innocent.

    "Yes, yes-"

    She turned around and locked the door behind her. "Tell me what I need to know, or you get the rack. Again."

    "I told you everything!"

    "Not everything. Problem is, who sent the assassin? Selyse? But she is hardly clever enough to have sent a man all the way to Myr without being noticed by the Master of Whispers. Except many of the Master of Whispers assets belonged to Varys, before he fled. They could be still be working against him."

    "Who is Varys?" the man asked. He seemed genuinely confused.

    "The eunuch spymaster. He is fond of many disguises. He always appears plump of face and round of body, though. Do you remember anyone of that description?"

    "No!"

    "Maybe the rack would quicken your memory."

    Threatening a most likely innocent man with torture was hardly her proudest moment, but she had to prove his testimony couldn't be relied upon.

    "I, I, um… there was a customer. He called himself a Manderly. He looked like this Varys man you said."

    "And what did he tell you?" Tane asked with her best growl.

    "He ordered an, uh, a suit of armour. He wanted it fixed after the tourney. He said me giving room and board to Rhllorites was most generous."

    "Oh, I'm sure Lord Varys told you more than that. What did he say?"

    "He ordered a suit of armour and-"

    She lunged forwards, cat-quick, and grabbed his wrist, her other hand going to the dagger in the small of her back. He jerked back, but screamed as that put pressure on his racked shoulders. "What. Did. Lord. Varys. Say? Tell me or I'll cut your arm open. Nothing fatal, just fuck the sinews up enough that your hand won't work for a while. Or ever, if the stitches don't take. Just ask Margaery."

    "He, he- He told there were assassins coming that I needed to help, oh God please-"

    She let go of his hand. "There. No need to lie. Now, so. Queen Selyse and Varys were working together to undermine the realm. But who benefits? King Stannis? Killing the High Septon would just result in a new High Septon. Hardly a benefit to the Red God. But killing him would create instability, as would killing the hand."

    "I don't know, I was just a catspaw!"

    "What are your beliefs on House Targaryen?"

    "They were born of incest and abominations."

    "Tell me the bloody truth. That's what the Red Priests say. But that's not what they want, is it? Fire purifies. Fire cleanses. And the dragons have fire aplenty. Varys was raised up by Aerys, at the same time Thoros of Myr came to court."

    "What? No!"

    "Think again. Or I'll make you think."

    He shut his eyes, shaking hard enough that his chains rattled. "I wanted the dragons restored, that I confess."

    "So Selyse, Varys and the Targaryens are working together to disorder the realm. And Selyse wrote a letter to the Ironborn, so Euron Greyjoy is in on it too. But who else?"

    "I don't know, I was just a blacksmith, I told you everything."

    "Not everything. You've been lying to me."

    "Everything I said was the truth." He was still shaking, cringing away into the corner of the cell.

    "Petyr Baelish. The master of coin. He bankrolled this, didn't he? He's based in Myr, where the assassins where recruited. Did they mention anything about him? A short man, slight? Maybe in disguise?"

    "No!"

    "Think again. Good with many? Anyone who paid a suspiciously large amount of money, just before or after the assassin's were in your shop?"

    "No! No, I have papers of all my finances, you can check for yourself..."

    "Your shop was burnt in the riots. Your word is all we have. Now, do I have to loosen your tongue?"

    "A short man arrived just before Lord Manderly-Lord Varys I mean-and promised me money if I hosted the assassins."

    "I've heard enough."

    She turned her back on him, and slammed the door behind her.

    "So what did he say?" Davos asked, as soon as she was out.

    "Apparently, Selyse, Varys, Littlefinger, the Targaryens, and that mad fucker with the flaming sword are part of a grand conspiracy. Oh, and Littlefinger was in the city all along and Varys is a Manderly." Tane said. "Or at least that's what he said the moment I reached for my dagger."

    She rounded on Gared, stalked forwards closer than he was comfortable with, backed him up against the wall. "Or you've tortured one source into babbling back whatever is suggested to him and let the other one kill himself, you incompetent bastard."

    "I did nothing untoward. It was the only way to get him to talk."

    Tane spat. "Talk nonsense, sure. Kill themselves, sure. But we're no closer to sending assassins or war galleys after whichever whichever bastard actually tried to kill me."

    Isis fucking Mary, this just keeps getting worse and worse.
     
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    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Margaery IX
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    • The throne room was an island of red in a sea of fog that morning. Robert had removed the dragon skulls, and Stannis the hunting tapestries his brother had replaced them with, leaving only crowned stag banners and stark red stonework. At least he hadn't put up the flaming hearts his wife was so fond of.

    Stannis had arrived before most of the crowd, and was busy being uncomfortable on the Iron Throne while his courtiers filtered in. Alester Florent and the other Queen's Men-Melisandre, Lord Sweets, Lady Melara Crane, and dozens of landed knights and second sons who'd converted to the faith-stood around her. She hadn't been popular before the attacks, and now all her friends but the most dogged had abandoned her cause, or were keeping their distance, to see how things would play out. The queen herself was not present, confined to Maegor's holdfast for protection against the mob by the King's order.

    More were the King's Men-those who, officially at least, waited for the King's Judgement to form an opinion. Davos, Tane, Lords Celtigar and Velaryon and Sunglass, Ser Andrew Estermont-Stannis's old squire, Justin Massey and dozens of others. The cautious and undecided, or those who bore Stannis their personal loyalty.

    Then there were her own supporters, or rather, Renly's. They filled half the room. Stormlanders and Reachmen, and a few Valemen and Riverlanders too. Half a dozen great lords she could count, besides Renly and her own father. She stood at the front, Renly on one side of her and Mace on the other. They had their knights and bannermen arrayed behind them, just as she had her handmaidens.

    The whole room seemed to be murmuring at once, as more and more of them filtered in. Finally, Stannis raised his hand and stood up from the Iron Throne.

    "The assassin Bill, he who tried to kill my brother, is dead. He killed himself yesterday."

    Well, that wasn't a surprise. Renly had already told her, after some prodding. He'd died a few hours before Tane's men had entered the dungeons, looking to interrogate the prisoners themselves. Not at all a coincidence, she suspected.

    "He beat the back of his head against the wall." Stannis added. "Though he is dead Queen Selyse Florent, Ser Imry Florent and the smith Sallereon shall stand trial. No sooner, and no less."

    "Who will stand in judgement!" someone shouted. She didn't catch who it was.

    "I will." Stannis said. A murmur passed like a shockwave through the crowd.

    "Your Grace? You would try your own wife? Surely if you were to forgive her, men would doubt it's truthfulness, while if you convicted her, men would say you sought a new wife?" Lord Sunglass asked, stepping forward from the mass of King's Men.

    "Aye, I would stand in judgement." Stannis said. "I would not let my wife be beheaded or slandered if innocent, but neither would I let myself be married to a murderer."

    There was more murmuring.

    Stannis spoke up again. "As you all know, the forces of Euron Greyjoy have seized the Shield Islands, burnt much of the Redwyne fleet at anchor, and now threaten Oldtown. I mean to have the fleet make ready to meet them, if the Redwyne fleet cannot drive them off. They will outnumber them ship-for-ship, but they have only light galleys and longships, not war dromonds. The remaining third shall remain to protect the city against any surprises from the west."

    "And who shall command them?" Lord Alester Florent asked, stepping forth from the Queen's men.

    "You shall lead the fleet defending King's Landing." Stannis said. "Lord Velaryon shall have command of the attacking fleet. One of my lealest lords and my Master of Ships; there are no better men to lead such an expedition." The words had the awkward, clipped tones Stannis had when he'd been rehearsing something.

    He's going to let her off. Tane was right, the evidence was in Selyse's favour. Bill was dead; no chance of Renly trotting him out with a new, damning confession, but then again there was no chance of him just recanting the old confession. And Stannis already misliked Tyrells and his brother. He would believe men like Davos over Renly any day, even without Renly having turned the inquiry into a bloodbath. And now he'd all but announced he didn't mind relying on the Florent's as part of his military planning.

    Seven above, why did this have to be complicated? It had seemed so easy then. Have her attacker beheaded, roll up her faction at court, have the support of an enraged faith, be the mother or wife to the undisputed heir to the Iron throne. Without Selyse's influence, there was no chance that Stannis would push for Shireen. Then Renly had lied to her about who had tried to murder her, lied to her about what date he was holding his inquiry, and then nearly gotten her killed with how badly he had botched it. He swore up and down he had a plan in case they failed to convict Selyse, but Margaery had her doubts about it.

    If her husband couldn't keep the situation under control, she would have to.

    There were more petitioners after that, Rhllorites demanding compensation for damage in the riots, a couple of knights with a land dispute from the northern crownlands, half a dozen other complaints. Many of them had appeared before but were trying their luck again with the King back in place. Stannis chewed through them all with grim resolve, growling out judgements. The crown was not responsible for damages in the riots, but he would order doubled goldcloak patrols in affected areas. The dispute went to Ser Harwyn Brogan.

    Then he dismissed them all, and they filed out. She stayed close to Renly, in the middle of their huddle of retainers and handmaidens. "Would you take lunch with me?" Margaery asked in her most innocent voice.

    "Of course, my sweet." Renly said. He somehow managed to inflect his just so, to make it sound sincere. For a moment, she saw how so many other women, who did not know him as she did, could have fallen in love with him.

    *

    "What are you going to do if Stannis lets Selyse off?"

    "Why?"

    "I was misled about who tried to kill me and nearly killed by a mob the last time you didn't tell me about your plans." Margaery said. She didn't bother trying to honey-coat her words. "I want to know."

    Renly shrugged. "If he lets Selyse off, I shall resign my handship in protest then ride south to Oldtown's aid, rallying all the swords of the Stormlands to me. I will be a hero treated unjustly, coming to the rescue of the true center of the faith."

    "And if Lord Velaryon gets there first?" Margaery asked. "If Stannis decides whatever happened to Bill is you covering your tracks, and has you arrested for treason? If I am too weak to travel?"

    She'd felt surprisingly well throughout the pregnancy so far, some nausea and vomiting early on aside. But she did not want to risk her life or her child to a slip of the horse, or end up giving birth surrounded by strangers.

    "Stannis won't charge me with treason."

    "He might." Margaery said. "He's already made up his mind about Selyse. And that death does look like hiding something."

    "There is still the letter." Renly said. "That's like a bloody dagger."

    "And who found the letter?" Margaery asked.

    "Gared. My gaoler. He led the search of Selyse's apartments."

    "And who has the letter now?" Margaery continued.

    "The Onion Knight. He took it off Gared when he and Tane raided the dungeon."

    The former smuggler. The current master of whispers, working with a woman who commands former goldcloak officers. They will know men who know how to detect forgeries.

    She paused for a long while in thought, taking small, precise bites out of her lemoncake. Thoughts galloped through her head.

    If the letter was found to be a forgery, Stannis would not just have Renly judged innocent with the whole thing assumed to be Renly being outplayed by enemies seeking to sow division. It would be taken as treason.

    She had to protect herself and her babe, and Renly if possible.

    "Do you trust Gared?" Margaery asked. Of course not. But she had to frame this right, not confess that she was complicit in her husband's treason out loud. She'd already near enough done that once

    Renly laughed "Of course not. He loves only coin."

    "Well, I don't trust him either. If he brought down a queen for you, he'd know he'd be handsomely rewarded. He could be buttering up the evidence. It would explain all those little inconsistencies that have crept in."

    Renly's the one buttering it up, I'm sure of it. Arguing with him about his foolishness was one thing, saying out-loud he was complicit in treason was quite another.

    "And your point is?"

    "Cast him loose. At the first opportunity. This is his fault, feeding you false information."

    "False? I think not."

    "We'll see. And if this doesn't work out-"

    "It will. Even if Stannis lets her off, I will resign my Hand in protest and head south."

    "Where Lord Velaryon will have beaten you to Oldtown, getting the heroes welcome. And if Stannis declares you guilty of treason?"

    "I will deny such false claims, resign my handship, flee south-"

    "And call the banners, starting a war. Or the grenadiers and silvercloaks catch you before you can flee the city, and you lose your head, and probably me with you."


    "Gared is guilty of treason." Margaery added. "You should have him arrested for it. To do otherwise…"

    "Not a chance. Every dealing Gared has had with me has been completely honest. If Stannis refuses to see the truth, it is his own blindness at fault."

    "I still don't trust him. Remember who the last gaoler turned out to be?"

    "Oh, please don't tell me he's Davos in disguise." Renly said.

    Margaery laughed, despite herself.

    "Not Davos in disguise. Another Baelish. Undermining us from within, for his own profits."

    Another scapegoat, more likely. But if Renly could be convinced to blame him, to throw him down…

    "I rather think that's reaching." Renly said, finishing off his plate. "The evidence against Selyse is perfectly good. If Stannis spares her, it will be because of cowardice, not because of the evidence."

    He won't do it, she realized. Won't take the humiliation of admitting to being wrong. He'll stand his ground, insist Stannis was wrong, hoping to make himself a martyr without having to have his heart ripped out before a heart tree first-

    -And then Tane and Davos will cut out his scheme from under him, and he'll be destroyed and me with him. Or he'll call the banners, and fight, and leave a feast for crows when the dragons and the demons come.

    She nodded. "Of course." She smiled slightly. "You've dealt with Gared, you've gathered the evidence, you will know more than me."

    She knew what she had to do.

    *

    She met Tane later that day, in the gardens that had been packed between the Throne Room and the walls. They had been Myrcella's rose gardens, once, but if Myrcella had a rose garden now it was in Myr. She'd asked Lady Merryweather to ask Tane to meet her there. The look of vague suspicion from the Myrishwoman had gotten a raised eyebrow out of her. If I was fool enough to do that, I wouldn't go through her. Taena was not the sort of person you put a particularly large amount of trust in.

    She found Tane standing by a fountain. Her cloak hung halfway down past her knees, the sheath of her sword poking out the back. Margaery adjusted her own shawl, lined with northern furs. The cold made her wound ache, and she was sure it couldn't be good for her baby.

    "Could've picked somewhere warmer." Tane said. "Guess you were worried about the listeners in the walls?"

    Margaery nodded. "Speaking of listeners in the walls, could they have killed the assassin Bill?"

    "I wouldn't be surprised. Though I have other suspicions." Tane said.

    "Not Selyse's agents. He has already written down the confession, and it would make her look too suspicious."

    "That, and keeping the assassin alive and getting him to recant would be her best bet. The confession can't be relied upon. I interrogated Sallereon, the blacksmith, and they'd tortured him so badly he confessed to Selyse, Varys, the Targaryens, the entire red faith and the Ironborn all being part of one conspiracy. Also, Varys is apparently Lord Manderly in disguise."

    "Like Lord Rowan at the end of the dance." She said. Tortured until he confessed to causing the doom of Valyria.

    "Aye."

    "It's Gared. The gaoler. He has access to the prisoners, he would have gotten the confessions, Renly told me he found that letter to the Ironborn…"

    Tane already knew there was foul play. She just had to distract her, convince her Gared was the traitor and Renly only his unwitting accomplice. Gared's house of lies was going to come crashing down sooner or later, and she just had to make sure herself and Renly weren't inside it when it did.

    "And he came into service at around the same time as the assassin Bill joined Renly's guard." Tane said.

    "Exactly. I tried to warn Renly he was dangerous, tried to tell him he was not to be trusted."

    "Bloody idiot." Tane was pacing, her shoes crunching in the light dusting of snow, thumbing the long parrying dagger she wore in the small of her back.

    "Oh, I know." Margaery said. "Renly puts too much trust in him, relies on him too much. It would be easy for him to deceive us all…"

    Then she added "Gared is dangerous. I've heard boasting that he wears two knives on him at all times, and he won't ever be on the other side of a jail cell."

    Kill him, when you come for him. Just end this here.

    Once it got out, those who believed it would see Renly not as a traitor, but as incompetent. Those who did not… they would still see Selyse as an enemy, Renly as a martyr, and Gared as the victim of Stannis trying to cover up his wife's guilt.

    And even if Renly did fall, she could not say she had not seen through part of his plan, had not separated herself too far from him, had not aided his enemies to take part in his downfall.
     
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    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Tane X
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    • Stannis sat the Iron Throne like a vulture perched atop a pile of carrion, glowering at those assembled-nobles, knights, merchants, and curious servants and soldiers from the Red Keep. He'd once again decided to arrive early, in the finest martial tradition of hurry up and wait.

    Herself, Davos, Sace, Connor, Morgan and the other defence witnesses were on one side of the throne room, with Renly, Margaery, Guncer Sunglass, Gared and a horde of courtiers, servants, guards and septons behind them. The gathering crowd filled the rest of the hall. He'd kept the area directly in front of the throne clear. That was where the witnesses would speak.

    Selyse had been put at the base of the throne, her hair covered by a coif and the skin above her lip scraped red. Two kingsguard knights and a dozen Goldcloak spearmen stood behind her. The wound she'd taken had created a depressed fracture that had forced her to be trepanned. The operation had gone well, and she had recovered almost immediately.

    Hopefully this time she would avoid provoking the mob.

    If she tries to get herself killed again, I'm not going to save her.

    Christ-Horus knew she'd already had to do it twice.

    Finally, Stannis cleared his throat. "Selyse Baratheon, you stand here accused of ordering the murder of His Holiness the High Septon and two other Septons, the wounding of the Lady Margaery Tyrell and Captain-General Tane Bayder, and the attempted murder of Lord Renly Baratheon, Hand of the King and Lord of Storm's End. How do you plead?"

    "Innocent, your grace." Selyse said, looking her husband dead in the eyes.

    "The persecution shall make their case." Stannis said. "Renly, come forwards, if you will."

    "Oh, of course." Renly's case was brutal and efficient. The confession was read out, Renly recounted what he had seen in the attack. Margaery explained how she knew Selyse hated her. She didn't give her opinion on who had given out the orders.

    Avoiding either lying, or going against her husband. Sensible.

    A dozen courtiers came forwards one by one, all painting a picture of Selyse as a fanatic who believed that the Red God would protect her from the consequences of her actions, that Margaery, Renly and the Faith plotted against her, and who had become less and less stable since coming to court.

    Selyse remained silent, stone faced.

    Gared said that he'd been close to getting an even more detailed confession out of Bill when he'd killed himself. He didn't mention Sallereon's confession. He had to know that she'd rip any confession from him apart. The letter was only briefly raised, but Renly confessed it seemed almost too much to believe. "Now, this letter could have planted to undermine this case, that is true. Gared has already told me of his suspicions. But if it true, then it is the most damning evidence yet." He knows.

    Then Renly described Imry's coup. "Do you think that the actions of an innocent man? His men tried to storm the rookery of the Red Keep, most like trying to warn their co-conspirators what had happened. If Selyse was innocent, they would know they had nothing to fear and would await justice. As you can see, your grace, I believe that in all likelihood that Selyse Baratheon is guilty of everything she has been charged with and more, and that worse, at least some of her kin are guilty also."

    He returned to his place at the side, a satisfied look on his face.

    "Now, what witnesses do you have to plead your innocence?" Stannis asked Selyse.

    She turned to them. "The lady Tane Bayder."

    For fucks sake, Captain-General. She was a bastard. She hadn't inherited any worthwhile titles from her father, and her mother was a kept woman from the lower gentry. She had no titles but what she'd earned with her pole-axe.

    She stepped forwards, rehearsing the arguments in her head.

    "Selyse Baratheon bore Margaery Tyrell ill-will, but I do not believe she murdered the High Septon."

    She hammered away on the points she was making, calling up other witnesses. Margaery came forwards and agreed that Selyse considered her a spy. Bill of the Storm's End guard corroborated that he'd scarcely ever seen Bill the assassin go to the nightfires. Davos agreed that there was no plausible agent of Selyse's in the free cities. She pointed out the leaps of logic in Selye's plan, and asked why she would drag in the Ironborn. Sace told the court how she'd shot the last assassin, and said that only some of the assassins where Rhllorites.

    She pointed out how poorly Selyse had defended herself; surely if she had carefully planned assassination and rebellion, she would have a defence ready rather than stumbling about provoking mobs? There was nervous laughter when she recounted the tale of Lord Roxton and how he'd been tortured into confessing to causing the doom of Valyria.

    She explained how Selyse had to be both an idiot to openly tell the assassin to kill Margaery and rather subtle to slip someone past Davos to hire them. Why the fuck did she leave incriminating letters lying around rather than burning them the second she couldn't send them immedietely? Bill was not at the nightfires enough for his fellow guardsmen to notice. She hated Margaery, but the attack on her was opportunistic, while the attack on the High Septon, which was properly planned, had no motive. The assassin's testimony was unreliable; certainly, Sallereon's was. He would confess to anything.

    Then she brought Imry Florent forwards to explain why he had tried to seize the tower. "I feared a coup, that the Queen would be killed and Stannis deceived as to the circumstances. I wanted to get ravens out explaining what had happened to Stannis. I tried to win over Tane thinking she would be on the side of justice, but she ordered me arrested."

    "Better that than another coup." Tane said. She turned to the crowd.
    "If you believed your cousin was being arrested on false charges, could be executed, and that your life was in danger, would you not do the same?"

    There was a murmur of agreement amongst the Queen's Men and Kingsmen in the room. Tane didn't have much of an eye for crowds, besides when they were trying to kill her, but some of the Tyrell bannermen were talking amongst themselves already, looks of concern on their faces.

    Then came the killing blows.

    "It is our opinion that not only is Her Grace innocent of these charges, but that some of the evidence against her was falsified. Varys had control of much of the jail staff, and Petyr Baelish backs the pretenders and may still have agents in the city. They have caught us all in a web of intrigue." Tane said.

    Don't accuse Renly directly of treason. That was what Davos had said when they'd planned this out. Leave him an out, a way to admit he'd made a mistake without admitting to framing the queen. If she moved against him directly the risk of civil war was too high.

    Davos came forwards. "This letter claims to show that Selyse was conspiring with the Ironborn to attack Westeros just as she killed Renly and the High Septon and cast the realm into chaos. A terrible attack on the queen, if true."

    One of his men, a scruffy Essosi in an ill-fitting blue doublet at his side, came up. He was holding a sheaf of documents.

    "This is the forger Baelyr, reformed. He is one of no less than four such forgers, or customs men used to looking for forgeries, that I have shown this letter to, along with all the writings by Selyse, her maester, her family and her household I could find. It is not the writing style of a highborn lady or of a formally trained maester, but rather that of a corrupt clerk trying to imitate the same. He says the handwriting resembles most closely, of the samples I showed him, that of the torturer Gared. Indeed, this letter was found only after the coup. Slow for it to be found by searching, but quick enough to be forged and planted. This, I believe, was planted by the enemies of the realm to make the situation worse."

    Then came her own testimony, about how she'd interrogated Sallereon, and every threat had him taking his story in stranger and stranger directions. "All I had to do was wave a knife around and he'd confess that Varys was a Manderly in disguise!"

    There was nervous laughter from the hall.

    Then she explained how Bill had died and called forwards Connor, the company surgeon. She'd had him examine Bill's corpse.

    "He was murdered." Connor said. "The fractured skull was too severe to have been self-inflicted, but was rather caused by a blunt instrument to the back of the head. There were also scrapes on his hands and torn out hair, consistent with a struggle… the killer beat his head in, then made it seem as if he'd committed suicide by slamming his head against the wall."

    Morgan, her company witch, described the times she'd caught tongueless children creeping through the walls, though she left out how she'd tracked them down with her third eye. "Such agents could easily have planted evidence, or crept in to murder the assassin. Varys also had many agents amongst the jail staff. Of course, they have been purged, but who is to say that the new staff are not just as corrupt?"

    Stannis glared down from his throne. "Renly, do you have any answer to this?"

    "Captain-General Tane Bayder is an honest woman, and I believe her objections are sincere, though all of them have explanations. But I do not trust Davos's testimony. He is a criminal and a lowborn, still close to the Florents. Look at who he brought to testify today! A forger who boasted of his skill in this very throne room! And the murder of Bill? Well, I must thank Connor for his work in finding the cause of death, but it is just as credible that the agents of Selyse or someone else who was against her downfall, like, say, Aegon or Euron-had him killed to stop any further confessions. Anyone could use those tunnels, after all. And Sallereon? He never knew much. Gared was far more careful to ensure he did not prejudice Bill's confession."

    "Davos has been loyal to me for well over fifteen years." Stannis said. "I will not have you impugn his honour. Meanwhile, Gared either murdered a valuable prisoner, or let him be silenced."

    "Loyalty? Or sticking to you while the going is good, then jumping ship for Selyse when he sees an opportunity?" Renly answered.

    "What opportunity would I gain by supporting Selyse?" Davos asked. "I love her little. I only went where the truth led me."

    "You are close to her daughter Shireen, no? My death, and the death of Margaery's child, would clear the line of succession for her."

    There were yells of shock.

    "Being fond of my king's daughter is hardly motive for murder!" Davos snapped, anger creeping into his voice.

    "ENOUGH!" Stannis bellowed. "Ser Loras, Ser Balon, seize Gared and bring him to me. He will explain these going-ons in his dungeons himself."

    "There's a problem with that." Morgan called. "He just left the hall through the servant's door. And he's now running away from it."

    Oh, fuck.

    "Morgan, Sace, with me." Tane snapped, turning back to the side door behind them. She'd let Varys and Baelish give her the slip. She wasn't inclined to let this bastard go.

    "Gared had to go and make water. I can assure you, he wouldn't flee." Renly said. Tane kept stomping towards the doorway, dodging past everyone in the way.

    "He's making a break for it." Tane yelled, loud enough that Stannis could hear.

    "Tane is right. Davos, have the gates closed and the passageways watched." Stannis said.

    "Oh, first you assume a criminal is trustworthy, now you assume that having a bladder is treason?" Renly asked.

    "The evidence of foul play is clear enough, and I will know the who's and why's of it. Find him, and bring him back here." Stannis said. Tane didn't need the reminder.

    She, Morgan and Sace ducked out the servant's side door, into a courtyard or garden of some sort wedged between the walls and the throne room.

    "See him in your third eye?" Tane asked. Morgan could see every soul within a hundred or so meters.

    "I can see him again. Barely. In that building over there." Morgan said. They took off at a jog towards the building Morgan had pointed out, Morgan mumbling behind her about why she chose today of all days to wear her dress.

    Morgan pointed at a half-open door in the side of what looked like some sort of storehouse, up against the curtain wall.

    Tane took off at a jog, her hand going to steady her rapier.

    She pushed open the door. It was a smaller door built into what looked like a barn door, with a large stairwell going down into blackness inside. Some sort of winch lurked in the dark above, like a bat hanging from the ceiling. Morgan snatched up a pair of torches from a stack in the corner. "I have a lighter."

    Tane nodded. Morgan lit hers with three quick clicks of her lighter, then lit Tane's torch off hers.

    "Sace, hold this doorway and direct anyone who comes up behind us to follow us down here." Sace nodded, the cornet-no, lieutenant now-nodding and drawing her smallsword and a pistol she'd hidden under her dress. Tane wished she'd had the good sense to bring her mail.

    She took point on the stairs with her rapier drawn, Morgan keeping her updated. "He's moving… right under the throne room now, actually."

    "You couldn't see him before?"

    "Too much stone in the way. Blocks the third eye. He's right under us now."

    The staircase wound around itself three times before it reached the bottom. There was only one way from there, a long, broad corridor.

    "I'm losing sight of him." Morgan said. "He should be straight under the throne room by now."

    "Afflict him." Tane said.

    She heard distant, muffled swearing a moment later.

    As long as Morgan was within a hundred or so meters and recognized his soul well enough to avoid friendly fire, she could take him out from a safe distance, stabbing out with an extension of her soul into his. The soul affected the mind, and the mind affected the body. The results were much the same as a seizure.

    "Dead souls up ahead. Very old ones. Too old to tell if they're human or not." Morgan said.

    The passageway was yawning blackness. She drew her rapier and kept the torch ready. Her heart was hammering. Moving forwards into the pitch blackness outside the torchlight, with bloody tongueless children and Father knows what else crawling around in there, scared her far more than any amount of hand-to-hand fighting.

    "Antiquarianism can come later." Tane said. Stay calm, stay focused, stay in control. The passageway, near solid black, expanding out into a vaster chamber. There were shapes, some surfaces smooth and other jagged, looming out of the darkness. The only light besides the torches came from a couple of slit windows and a single, dropped candle at the centre of the room. There was a flash of movement as Gared darted for the candle, then thought better of it and dropped back behind one of the shapes.

    It had to be a dragon skull. It was as big as a whale's head, far vaster than anything natural she'd known to fly. The fangs seemed sharp as swords, even in the failing light.

    She tensed, her heart hammering faster. Her eyes still hadn't adjusted, there was cover everywhere, and she had no armour. One mistake and she was dead, or they'd lose their best chance-

    "Knock him down." Tane said, reverting to Brythwic. "Then I'll go around and take him. Stay close on my back."

    There was no time for fear.

    "Aye." She heard the faint sound of metal on wood as Morgan drew her backsword.

    "Down!" Morgan yelled a few moments later, and Tane moved. She skirted around the dragon skull, going as wide as possible around the corner to avoid getting jumped, just in time to see Gared staggering to his feet.

    "Halt!" Tane bellowed. "Hands above your head." The gaoler raised his hands.

    "Take off your belt." Tane said. She needed to disarm him, and this was less of a risk than getting him to draw and drop his dagger.

    His hands came down to his belt. She kept the tip of her rapier aimed dead at his centre of mass. He undid it and pulled it away from his body, looping it around before he-

    Her torch hand jerked up just in time to block the belt as he whipped at her, part of it catching her on the head. The dull thwack of it stung to her bone as she lunged at him with her rapier. His hand slapped her rapier aside and grabbed it. A knife flashed in his other hand, and she reacted just in time to slam the lit torch into his knife hand. It batted his attack away, and she followed up with a jab to the face just as she tugged back on her rapier.

    A strong enough grip on a sword, enough to stop it sliding across the hand, would stop it cutting. Having a lit torch shoved in ones face was not conducive to a strong grip. He let go of the weapon with a scream of pain, stumbled back, then tripped and fell straight onto a dragon's lower jaw.

    Tane stepped back out of striking distance and levelled her point on instinct.

    Gared was twitching and struggling like a half-crushed fly, his belly arched forwards supported by the dragon's jaw. He made an effort to push himself up, but collapsed back down, whimpering in pain.

    "Men coming. A dozen at least. Loras is with them." Morgan said behind her, her voice as flat and calm as it always was. Tane had no idea how she did it.

    There was the click of her working her lighter, then the rush of flames.

    Morgan stepped over to the man, illuminating him for Tane. She saw the glint of his dagger on the ground, well away from his hands.

    "Well, at least we know you're guilty." Tane said. "Trying to run like that."

    There was only groaning. She heard the rattle of plate harness, and someone's voice, Loras she thought, yelling orders. She turned back to them, goldcloaks with crossbows and spears, Loras at their head.

    "We got him. He's hurt badly. Someone send for Connor and a Maester!" Tane called. Her drill-ground yell echoed through the cellar, bouncing off the walls over and over. The Kingsguard knight-Loras she thought-had already strode over to them by the time the last of the echoes had faded. The rattle of his armour mixed with Gared's whimpering.

    "What happened to him?" Loras asked, his voice accusatory as he pulled his helmet off.

    "Tried to knife me. Didn't work. Took a fall. Wait for Connor to move him. Those teeth should be plugging up the wounds."

    "You already killed me." Gared said. "At least give me the mercy of a quick death."

    She though of Sallereon's ruined joints, how the man would lose his livelihood. How his forgery had helped Renly set off riots that killed hundreds. How a dying confession could tell her the full extent of Renly's treason.

    "Keep him there." Tane said

    She untucked the hem of her shirt and wiped her rapier down, then sheathed it. Her heart was still hammering, coming down from the battle-rush.

    Then Loras called for the goldcloaks to move him anyway. "Every time he twitches those teeth are tearing him up more and more."

    Gared didn't scream as they pulled him off, but he did moan, low and awful. He tried to push himself up with his arms, but his legs were deadweight. They dragged him across to the walls, propping him up. Even in the torchlight she could see the red smear he left.

    "Why'd you run?" Loras spat.

    "I'm not talking." Gared said, voice slurred.

    Loras drew his sword.

    "Why'd you run? Why'd you abandon Renly-" Loras repeated. Tane came up behind him, hands brushing her hilts.

    "Stannis would have had my head once he knew. At least this way I had a chance. Good job." He added, nodding to Tane.

    "Renly would have defended you-"

    "Him, defending his mercenary?" Gared laughed, his breath sputtering. He oddly calm for a dying man. "I think not. Not if it meant he could let me die and wash his hands of it."

    "You dishonour Renly!" Loras snarled, then with less conviction "Liar!"

    "I did what I was told. Nothing more, nothing less." Gared said. "Never did get that knighthood he promised me, though. So I suppose he betrayed me, in the end." He tried to laugh, only for it to come out as wet coughing.

    "Liar" Loras said again, flatly. Then his sword scythed through Gared's head, ripping it apart in a spray of teeth and brains.

    He turned to Tane, eyes burning with anger. "That was a dying man's spite. Even in death he was a liar."

    A dying man's spite, against the man who brought him to this point.

    He stomped towards her, the bloody blade naked in his gauntleted hand. Tane tensed, and found herself instinctively profiling her stance. Every inch of her screamed for her to go for her rapier and dagger, but she ignored it. Loras was as fast as her, stronger, fully armoured, and had a half-dozen men with spears backing him. Without Morgan, he could hack her to ribbons if he wanted. With her, Tane still didn't fancy her chances. Where's a jack of mail or a brace of pistols when you need it?

    "Do you understand?"

    She kept her eyes on him, didn't back down or go for her weapons. It was like facing down a sicklehawk hunting. The slightest sign of weakness or aggression would see it strike, but stand your ground and you were fine.

    "I understand that if you murder me, my troops will be honour bound to avenge their captain. I understand that the Silvercloaks and Grenadiers outnumber your household men, and are better trained and equipped than the Goldcloaks. I understand that your sister and your lover both stand to loose their lives if this turns into a bloodbath because of you. And I understand that was a dying man's spite and that Renly knew nothing."

    Loras turned away, yelling in anger. His sword sent sparks flying as it skipped off dragonbone like a hardened cuirass.

    Tane wanted to do the same. Instead, she kept herself focused. Calmness, vigour and judgement. "Morgan, is Connor coming?"

    "With twelve grenadiers."

    "Good." She strode off to meet with them. They needed to tell Stannis what had happened as fast as possible. And Renly and Margaery. Play it right and hopefully, she could end this without a bloodbath.​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Renly X
  • Threadmarks
    • They brought up the body like undertakers, wrapped in a golden cloak with black blood oozing through. Loras came first, the goldcloaks Stannis had sent with him straight behind, the body slung between them and then the Grenadiers, muskets on their shoulders with bayonets fixed.

    Good. Two men could keep a secret if one of them was dead.

    "Most unfortunate." Renly said. "We shall never know his innocence or guilt now."

    It had felt like an eternity since Tane and Loras had left. The throne room had nearly descended into pandemonium. Rumours swept back and forth, like a jostled tub of water. Renly sent Gared away to pin the blame on him, he ran because he knows Stannis kills even those who do him good service, there's goldcloaks and Grenadiers gathering to slaughter all Stannis's enemies and proclaim Red Rhllor the one true god of the seven kingdoms, Renly aims to kill Stannis and take his throne…

    He kept his mouth shut. He needed to know what happened to Gared before he acted. He'd been impatient before, at the Ocean Road and the Inquiry, and it had cost him dearly. He had to play this carefully.

    Tane strode across to Stannis, pacing at the base of the throne. Davos joined her.

    "We should leave." Meredyth Crane murmured beside him.

    "Look how running worked for Gared." Margaery said.

    Oh, just shut up-

    It didn't matter. Stannis had ordered everyone to remain in the throne room and barred the doors until the matter was resolved. It was probably already crawling with Grenadiers and Silvercloaks out there.

    Loras marched over, his helmet off and his gauntlets speckled with blood.

    "What happened?" Renly asked.

    "Tane wounded Gared, then I caught up. He beschmirched your honour, so I killed him."

    "What did he say?"

    He could guess well enough what Loras meant by "besmirch his honour."

    "He told me you did what he told him to, and that you promised him a knighthood."

    "Bastard." Renly muttered. Both himself and Loras knew well enough what was going on, but he had to put just the right spin on it to the court. Gared going and blabbing would not help that. At all.

    Stannis beckoned to him from his position across the hall. Renly marched across, using every inch of willpower he had to stop himself limping. He'd been standing for hours now, and his leg was aching with pain.

    "What did the gaoler do?" Renly asked.

    "He went to make water in the Red Keep's cellars, and there attempted to attack the Captain-General. She wounded him mortally, and Loras then slew him against her orders."

    "He was uttering the vilest slanders against me." Renly said. "That whatever he did was at my order. I ordered him only to use any means necessary to secure a confession about who had hired the assassins, and then to gather any other evidence."

    "And the knighthood?" Stannis asked.

    "The killers maimed my wife, murdered the High Septon and nearly killed me. Any man who helped find the killers deserved a knighthood."

    I'm sure you'll understand, raising the lowborn high. Better a gaoler than a smuggler.

    Stannis took his arm and guided him to the base of the throne, with only the kingsguard within earshot. "If this was the only irregularity, I could assume that you were manipulated by our enemies or that Gared was a base opportunist looking to elevate himself at the expense of the Queen. Robert certainly was. If that Inquiry was the only irregularity, or seizing Selyse without orders, then I could assume mistakes were made in your rush for justice. But together…"

    "You are accusing me of treason?" Renly asked in his most innocent voice.

    "Mayhaps."

    "Trusting a man who took my orders perhaps too literally is not treason."

    "So you knew nothing of this? Incompetence is only a small improvement over malice. And that does not explain your own actions."

    Stannis loomed over him. "First you deny anyone but your own men access to the prisoner. Then you ignore every sign that your man has falsely accused the queen, disobeying my commands and getting hundreds killed with your "inquiry'. And now you have attempted to cover for this traitor up to the very last moment, before your goodbrother kills the traitor when he accuses you of treason."

    "Mistakes were made, I will be the first to admit, but I deny any treason. Gared's cowardice betrayed his true loyalties. He tried to flee through the same route that Varys's agents were like to use. And I can assure you, I have no love for Varys or his creatures."

    "And how do you intend to prove this?" Stannis asked.

    Renly turned back to Stannis and strode into the middle of the crowd of courtiers. This had been the plan, one of them, all along, but confessing fault in front of the entire court… it stung his pride. It stung to the core. He could laugh at himself with the best of them, but begging forgiveness of Stannis in front of the entire court-

    It had to be done.

    He raised his voice, to a pitch where it would carry throughout the courtroom.

    "It would seem some think me guilty of treason. There might very well be treason afoot, and I may have had some part in it, to my shame. Gared is accused of forging evidence and then fled, where he was slain after making the vilest accusations against me. I assure you I had no idea of what Gared was alleged to have done, though it may well be that trusting him was a mistake. As a show of goodwill, I will resign from the handship and retire from King's Landing, until Stannis determines whether or not Gared was guilty and whether to reinstate me. Indeed, I had already ordered the gathering of 5,000 Stormlands Horse, to be sent to the aid of Oldtown. Now, I will personally lead these knights against the enemies of the realm, and prove my loyalty to the realm, my family and to my King and Brother."

    There were murmurs of shock amongst the courtiers. Oh, I am loyal to the realm and family. Stannis?

    Stannis had burned what little loyalty Renly had once borne for him like kindling.

    "In the meantime, I trust that Stannis will complete a thorough investigation of the great matter." Renly said. He turned to Queen Selyse, still standing surrounded by guards.

    He walked over to her and took the knee in front of her.

    "When I come to Oldtown's defence, I will pray for your wellbeing and forgiveness in the Starry Sept."

    Selyse looked down on him, contempt dashed with a taste of fear. "You did not misjudge. You meant me harm all along. You, and all those who aided you."

    She looked like she was gripping her own leash tight, holding herself back from going for his throat.

    "You wound me." Renly said. "What I did, I did for the realm and with only the purest intentions."

    He turned back to Stannis, his brother's eyes boring into his. "I will accept your resignation of the handship." Stannis said, his voice raised. He strode over to Renly. "Now, I would like you to swear me your allegiance. Now and forever."

    Renly blinked. Stannis actually had him there. Profess his allegiance to Stannis then rebel and be known as an oathbreaker, or openly declare his disloyalty, here and now.

    He ground his teeth. Words were wind, and oaths sworn under duress were no true oath. Once again, he took the knee and raised his voice.

    "On my honour as a Baratheon, by the Old Gods and the New, I swear my loyalty to the one true king of Westeros. From this day to my dying day."​
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Genna III
  • Threadmarks
    • She was practicing sums with Tommen when there was a knock on the door.

    "M'lady, Magister Nelyn wants to meet with you." The slave said. Genna nodded.

    "I'll be back. You can finish doing the sums, if you want."

    "Of course." Tommen said. He'd always seemed a tad slower than his sister, but he was a dutiful study nonetheless.

    She stood up and followed Essie, one of Magister Nelyn's slaves. She was a short woman, Westerosi by the looks of her and her familiarity with the common tongue, and deferential to a fault, even more than Westerosi servants. She did not act like she feared being beaten or cast out. She had been beaten and sold, probably more than once.

    Fucking ironborn, in the rebellion. Or raiders out of the stepstones. She supposed it had been long enough since the Dragonstone Usurpation for slaves taken by Ironborn at the sack of Lannisport to have filtered into the Essosi trade. She took off down the corridors, Essie struggling to keep up with her long strides.

    This could be another meeting about how uneasy the other Magisters were with making themselves a target for both Aegon and Stannis, and trying to convince her to hurry up and invade(with what army?). Or it could be Littlefinger's mission to acquire a Targaryen groom for Myrcella, with no explanation for what would happen to Tommen.

    "Do you have any idea what Nelyn wants with me?" Genna asked. "No, M'lady." Essie said, nervously. "His Excellence only told me to find you and bring you to him."

    "Well, I suppose we are equal in our ignorance, at least." Genna said.

    Essie didn't respond to that.

    They came up to the doors of Magister Nelyn's study.

    Genna knocked twice, then opened. "You wanted me?"

    "Oh, of course." The magister sat behind his desk in his finest robes. "It is about the letter that Aegon Targaryen has sent, in response to a missive I sent. In secret."

    "Show it to me." Genna said.

    Nelyn pushed the letter across to her with a meaty hand.

    Aegon is willing to take a second wife. Aegon wishes his dragon to have three heads. He believes himself the conqueror come again. Marrying Myrcella will bind the Lannisters and the Baratheon's Valyrian blood to his cause(though not, he says, their royal claims, for those are invalid). He will proclaim Tommen Lord of Casterly Rock. Daenerys has assented to such a union. Come with all haste east. Volantis has risen up against the Masters, and their fleet was taken intact. We will sail soon for Westeros.

    Her eyes narrowed. If this was sincere… they would have Casterly rock back again, Myrcella on the throne, Tommen in a position to reclaim what was his(though she suspected Myrcella would be a rather better queen than he would be a king). If it wasn't… it could be a trap, to lure out rival claimants to the Targaryens. Or she could simply end up with her grandniece, scarcely ten, married to a madman while competing with Daenerys for his affections. She'd been married off younger than that. It wasn't an experience she would let Myrcella go through, of that she was sure.

    "I will talk to Tommen and Myrcella about it." Genna said. She'd already spoken to them half a hundred times about this. Tommen didn't really care to be a king, but he seemed like he would be easily manipulated by anyone who wanted a war, and that would pit him against his own sister. Myrcella was insistent that she would do whatever was necessary to help Tommen his throne back, but Genna could tell she was scared.

    "And if they refuse, will you remain here forever?"

    Genna shrugged. "If they refuse, I will try and convince them. And if that does not work, no, I will not surrender Baratheon crowns to the Targaryens without good cause."

    "This is the best opportunity you have had since coming here. The other Magisters grow impatient. They do not wish for Myr to be sacked by Daenerys's mob of rebels and criminals. My men overheard a bravo in the city trying to recruit men to break in here."

    She'd heard of the Magisters getting impatient, but outright planning to attack her was new.

    "So they scheme openly against us?"

    "My men feigned interest in the offer, lured him away, then cut his throat. He's no threat now."

    She breathed a sigh of relief.

    "There are other, subtler, schemes against you as well. Sooner or later, one will succeed. You are not the only Westerosi exile here either, and the other Magisters, the Iron Throne and the Targaryens all wish to see you dead."

    "Then we'll move to another city, and then another after that." Genna said. "It worked for Daenerys and Viserys. Look where she is now. This marriage… Aegon is a fool if he would let someone who is first in line for the throne become a Lord Paramount. And what will the faith think of a polygamous marriage? Nothing would rally Stannis's lords more easily. Besides, it means sacrificing Tommen's crown."

    Nelyn paused for a long while.

    "Mayhaps Aegon is a fool. Does it matter? He will take Westeros with his dragons and unsullied and Golden Company, he will marry Myrcella like he wants, and then Myrcella can undermine him from within and Tommen can raise the west to his name."

    "And what if his advisors are no fools? This is dangerous. Very dangerous. Lys sounds a lovely location to wait out the winter."

    "I'm afraid this situation is too important for that. If you leave, I have gained nothing from hosting you."

    "Besides offering the Myrish fleet gunpowder." Genna said. "Surely that pays for sheltering a pretender or two."

    "The one who gave me gunpowder is the one who wants this marriage. He is also the one who's men rescued Tommen and Myrcella and who had you brought here after you escaped." Nelyn answered. "If you stay, well, Aegon or Varys or the other Magisters will cause problems sooner or later. But if you go… it could be a trap, certainly. Petyr trying to jump ship to a more likely king. I would not put it beyond him. But it could put you and yours in position to reclaim the throne. And if you did… I'm sure the Conclave of Myr would be willing to help throw down the dragons, when the time comes. Daenerys's slaver's bay adventures have already caused us considerable grief. if you fear a trap, well, I will give you the gift of five good war galleys, fully crewed and provisioned with marines. Dependent entirely on you travelling to Slaver's Bay. And not attacking Myr, though I doubt the crew will be in much of a position to do much about that. I am not a patient man, but no one will ever say I am not generous."

    Genna sighed. "I will think on it." Seven be damned, why couldn't she just have buggered off to the Summer islands? They were being forced into a trap, or binding themselves to an idiot.

    *

    She was awoken that night from her dreams by screaming. She thrashed for a moment, thinking of going for her dagger, then stopped herself. Just a nightmare, not the fight in the high passes-

    But as she awoke and her thoughts unravelled, she realized that it wasn't a nightmare, it was a rather pleasant dream involving several Dothraki. And then there was another scream.

    She froze in place, shocked.

    "Get bloody lanterns lit, secure the Baratheons! Assyrio, take four men to Tommen's chambers. Valyn, take the rest and secure Nelyn. I'm going to the guardhouse and get reinforcements up for both of you, then investigate the noises. Now bloody move!" a guard captain bellowed, barely outside her door.

    The crossbowmen gave a yell that could only be described as a "haroo!"

    She swore under her breath as she rolled out of her bed, grabbed her dagger from the nightstand, and felt her way to the door. Light was flickering under the corridor. She pulled the door open, nearly screaming and shutting her eyes as the glow of a lantern-shield caught her full in the face.

    "It's Genna! Don't shoot!"

    She heard swearing, and Asyrio swung his lantern shield away from her. The wiry bravos was half hunched down behind his ungainly shield, crouching so the crossbowmen had a clear shot past him "Come with us. We're heading to the nursery."

    She fell in with them, scurrying along the corridor. She had to jog to keep up with the guards strides.

    She heard the unmistakable pang of Myrish steel-prod crossbows loosing, down in the courtyard.

    Someone was yelling orders, and there was screaming too. Her heart was hammering faster in her chest, and she felt oddly warm in only her shift and smallclothes.

    Asyrio jerked to a halt, and she nearly slammed into his back.

    "Tommen's room." He said. He pushed at the door with the gauntlet built into his shield, but it wouldn't budge. Myrcella's door, in the room across, hung ajar.

    "I've got guards! Is there anyone in there!" Asyrio yelled.

    No response.

    "Check Myrcella's room." Asyrio snapped. One of the crossbowmen moved off to check her room, resting his crossbow on top of his lantern-arm.

    "Tommen!" Genna called. She thumped on the door.

    "No sign of the girl." The crossbowman said.

    The yelling was coming closer.

    Her heart was hammering. "Tommen!"

    She kicked the door in frustration.

    "Tommen! It's aunt bloody Genna, open up-"

    Something whirred past her head, and then hell broke loose. Asyrio whirled, his lantern beam silhouetting figures advancing down the corridor with crossbows in their hands and swords and daggers on their belts.

    "Right side! To our right!"

    There was the metallic, jarring pang of crossbows loosing, right next to her ear. She cringed on instinct.

    "Loading! Cover!

    She fumbled for the dagger she'd grabbed as the attackers charged, loosing as they came on with crossbows then switching them to their off-hands and drawing swords. Asyrio's men didn't have time to reload before they were on him.

    It didn't matter. Asyrio blinded the first man with his lantern and opened his throat from ear to ear, twisting out of the way of a flailing stab and the man's falling body, then grabbed the second man's blade with the mail-lined gauntlet built into his lantern shield and thrust him through the head, just beneath the eye. A third man tried to jink around his left while he freed his sword, but tripped over the first man's body, clipped Asyrio, knocking him back against the wall, then slammed into one of the crossbowmen. They staggered, tangled, only for the guard to be taken down with some sort of wrestling move and his attacker to end up with a stiletto jammed through his ear a moment later as another crossbowman stepped up-or at least, that was how her mind tried to make sense of the chaos of struggling shapes.

    Just as suddenly, Asyrio was charging with his men coming straight after him, the remaining attackers frantically scrambling back, parrying furiously before they outright turned to run… only for more lanterns to appear behind them, silhouetting broad pavises and razor edged Myrish partizans and bills.

    It wasn't a fight from then on. It was butchery. The last two men tried to surrender, only for one to get a partizan through the throat before Asyrio grabbed the second. She could hear bellowed orders and Asyrio's yelling "Who sent you!" over and over.

    She turned back to Tommen's door, pounding on it. "The assassins are dead! It's safe to come out!"

    For a long while, the door didn't open. Her heart was pounding in her chest. One of the guards suggested he could get an axe to break down the door, but she ignored him.

    They were most likely alive, she knew… but that was no comfort for the part of her was whispering of the attack just being a distraction for a dagger-man to cut their throats. Finally, someone unlatched the door and pulled it open from the inside.

    Myrcella stood in the doorway, Tommen behind her. "I heard the fighting and locked Tommen in here. Then we hid on the balcony."

    Genna dropped down to her knees and hugged her tight. "Clever girl…"

    She couldn't do it. She couldn't put Myrcella through what she'd been through, only worse. But it was too dangerous to stay here. Myrcella and Tommen had nearly been killed. Nelyn could have lost men, and he would use that as leverage. Someone would make another attempt, sooner or later...

    She supposed they would have to take their chances with Aegon.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Margaery X
  • Threadmarks
    • "I was told the told the King demanded my presence." Margaery said to Loras, standing guard outside Stannis's Solar.

    "Indeed he did." Loras said, gesturing for her to go forwards. As he leaned across to open the door, he whispered in her ear. "Stannis wants you to stay in the city. He argued about it with Renly. He is already wroth."

    She nodded as he swung the door open and stepped into Stannis's Solar. It looked more like some merchant's workbench than a king's room, piled high with parchment. Stannis had hung his sword belt and a mail shirt from pegs on one wall, and a shelf full of books lined with aging volumes on the other. He was almost hunched over the desk, his gaunt face perched atop broad shoulders. If Robert ate too much and Renly precisely as much as a man should, then Stannis ate far too little.

    He glared at her, barely concealed contempt written into his features.

    She took the seat in front of Stannis's desk, taking it slow and careful. With her big belly and her splinted arm, even pulling out a chair could be tricky.

    "You wanted to discuss something with me, your grace?" Margaery asked sweetly. She had little experience dealing with the king directly. After her first few attempts to get into his good graces, she'd decided to avoid antagonizing him further.

    "You are bearing my heir's heir, if it is a boy. That means that the matter of your pregnancy is a matter of state."

    "You wish the best for my child? I am glad to hear that. I knew that the rumors had to be false."

    "Your husband and my heir has vowed to march off to war. I do not think you will be accompanying him, as pregnant as you are."

    "No." Margaery said. Her belly was big enough that Maester Nymos cautioned against riding more than was necessary, especially with her arm injured. "Renly suggested that I retire to Storm's End, though that is still a long journey."

    "There are bandits in the kingswood. Riding through there is no fit situation for a woman of your condition. You must remain in King's Landing."

    And be your hostage?

    "There are Silvercloak men already hunting them. Surely I could be given an escort? King's Landing is restive and dangerous, more than the Stormlands. More assassins could be sent to finish what the others started, and there could be more riots."

    She could say that she wanted her boy to be born in the castle of his father, but that would only anger Stannis.
    Much better Highgarden, if the southern Reach was not at war.

    "You have only two or three moons to wait. I will not countenance my heir's heir being placed at risk like that."

    "I could take ship to Storm's End, if overland travel is too dangerous."

    "Shipbreakers bay is called that for a reason. There will be winter storms in this season." Stannis said.

    Stannis was right, leaving the city was a risk and there was no good reason to do it… besides avoiding becoming Stannis's hostage if Renly tried to revolt. Her presence here might act as a check on him, stop him doing anything rash that would get them all killed. Or it might just get her killed, if Renly had another one of his wonderful plans that he did not deign to tell her about.

    "But is it more dangerous than remaining in King's Landing?"

    Stannis grounded his teeth. "Perhaps. It is certainly less well defended. Storm's End is all but impervious to attack when compared to King's Landing, but it will be vulnerable when the dragon's come. King's Landing is defended by men with guns. No, I will not have my heir's heir die in a second Harrenhal. You shall remain here."

    Margaery knew little of siege warfare and less of dragons, but she did know that the Hellholt's defenders had killed a dragon much older than Aegon's. She doubted arguing with the man who had held Storm's End for a year and grew up in the Targaryens stronghold would get her far, though, so she did not.

    "As you wish, your Grace. As for the other great matter…"

    "Which great matter? There are several."

    "The matter of Renly's imprudence. He was a fool, I very much agree. I warned him how reckless his course of action was. He was utterly convinced that Selyse was guilty. I tried to warn him to listen to Davos and Tane, but it was fruitless."

    It could hardly worsen Stannis's opinion of her, and convincing Stannis it was incompetence was better than treason.

    Stannis blinked in surprise. She saw his jaw muscles knot as he ground his teeth. "Renly is many things. Prudent is not one of them."

    "No, it is not." Margaery agreed. "I am truly sorry for the damage your family has suffered." She flicked her eyes down in contrition.

    Stannis looked unconvinced.

    "And I am truly sorry for the damage mine own wife has suffered. You may go."

    She took her leave then.

    *

    "Lady Margaery." A voice said as Margaery took the stairs down from the second floor of the holdfast, Meredyth Crane taking her arm. She glanced back, at the top of the stairs. Selyse stood at the top of the stairs, her hair coifed to hide her healing wounds.

    "Your Grace." Margaery said.

    "I take it you are to remain behind in King's Landing?" Selyse said, stalking down the stairs like a great heron ready to spear her through.

    "Yes, indeed. I am too pregnant to travel with my lord husband, and in these dangerous days it is too, well, dangerous besides."

    "Of course." Selyse said. "Considering how foolish your husband claims he is, he is like to lead you off a cliff like your grandfather."

    Lovely.

    "Thankfully then, I will not be following him." She had no intention of letting Selyse drag her into a mauling. She moved to leave. Selyse stepped to block her. She was tall enough that Margaery only came up to her chest.

    "Good. I am not someone who tolerates foolishness in my household. No, I do not."

    Oh, am I part of your household now?

    "That is very good. Neither do I. Tane did us all a service by taking down Gared." Trying to reason with Selyse was a waste of time, but at least she could get her to stand aside.

    "I will be keeping a most careful eye on your health, good sister." Selyse said. She stepped aside, glaring daggers.

    "Where in the world did Stannis find that woman?" Meredyth muttered as soon as they were out of earshot.

    "Probably not anywhere on this world. Then again, I could ask just as much where Selyse found Stannis."

    Meredyth laughed. "I think you should ask Robert that. A very poor joke on his part."

    Loras stood guard on the drawbridge to Maegor's holdfast.

    She stepped around past him. "Dear brother? Would you care to sup in my apartments, once you are relieved?"

    "Of course." Loras said, sounding singularly bored. She would be to, if she was expected to stand still in the cold for hours each day wearing 50 pounds of armour.

    *

    "Stannis has decreed I must stay in King's Landing." Margaery said, when they were done eating.

    "I know. Renly told me all about it." Loras said. She had seen him often enough in recent days, but Stannis and Renly had occupied enough of his time that she had little time for the conversation they needed.

    "Stannis ignored every argument, rational and nonsense, that I threw at him. He wants me in King's Landing come hook or crook, that much is clear."

    "He fears Renly. He knows he would make a better king than he ever would."

    I know. But alas, acknowledging that is treason…

    Stannis's demands of her brother were harsh, but not entirely unwarranted to a member of the Kingsguard.

    "Stannis thought it better that I come with him to stare at old buildings and an overgrown icecube than that I protect his brother, my sister and his unborn heir. If I had been in the south, this never would have happened. And know that the realm and Renly actually has need of my sword, he holds me back like a leashed dog! He knows little of a knights duty, to not shrink from the fight, to defend his lord with his life." Loras continued. He stood up, pacing, hands clasping and unclasping. Her brother had always been hot blooded, but his trip to the north had made him even worse.

    "No, it would not have happened had you been in the south." Margaery said. "But that is past. What matters is
    now. I need you here, in the Red Keep."

    "If only there were two of me." Loras said, sitting down with a sigh, deflated.

    She leaned forwards, squeezed his hand. "There isn't, brother. You will have to make do. Renly has not yet left. You should enjoy what time you still have with him. And besides, he will return soon enough. He is fighting Ironborn on land. They are no great threat, faced with southern chivalry."

    "I know." Loras said. "It is no great consolation. Stannis won't let Renly back into the capital, and he won't let me leave his side."

    "Love can survive distance." Margaery said. "It can survive time."

    "Love can survive, yes, but can it reach full bloom?" Loras asked. "Once the sun has set, it will rise again, but until then, no candle can replace it."

    "You knew what you were getting into when you took the Kingsguard vows."

    She regretted it immediately when she saw the hurt that flashed across Loras's face.

    "I did not know that Stannis would try to hurt his brother out of nothing more than spite!" Loras said, standing up.

    "But you did not know Stannis, a man obsessed with duty, would insist on you doing your duty?"

    "I knew, and I did it anyway, because I was a fool." Loras said.

    "Perhaps it was at the time. But perhaps it is good fortune. I am pregnant. Stannis has forbidden me to leave the city. Renly will soon be gone. Selyse already hated me, and now I am isolated and she will smell blood. Aegon will soon be upon us. I need all the swords around myself that I can, and I have few enough."

    "And I am your sword, and Renly's. Not Stannis's. Now and always." Loras said.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Tane XI
  • Threadmarks
    • All the silvercloaks where arrayed in fighting order on the King's Landing tourney grounds, four tall stands of pikes flanked by arquebuses and crossbows with a squadron of demi-lancers on either flank and the Grenadiers forming an honour guard on the road. Between them came Renly's troops. Only a hundred or so Storm's End and Highgarden men, all mounted, with another hundred volunteer knights, squires and men-at-arms coming after them. She'd politely declined Renly's request to let her bring the Demi-lancers with him. Considering what had happened to the last cavalry force under his command, she didn't trust her new troops with him.

    And if he gets killed by Ironborn, I for one won't be mourning she thought darkly. The rational part of her knew that Renly not setting off a civil war just yet was the best outcome, but the part of her that stabbed men to death for looking at her queerly and covered herself in steel before hurling herself into close action was rather disappointed by the whole thing. It was like a play where at the moment of highest drama, the actors just got bored and went home. She'd wanted some goddamn blood.

    Stannis stood besides her on the wall, and Margaery too, the short woman wrapped up so much in furs that her belly barely showed. She'd already said her goodbyes to Renly as she watched, face full of fear. Tane had seen it before. Not the face of someone worried for loved ones going off to war, but fear for what could happen to themselves.

    Gryff bellowed orders down below, and the grenadiers fired off a salute, swinging muskets off their shoulder slings and firing a blank volley. She'd commanded honour guards for the great and powerful often enough, back in garrison in Trarabac, but watching them from a wall next to a king was a new experience. Renly's men snaked off into the fields around the city, their lance-pennons and standards fluttering, light glinting off armour, lance-tips, steel crossbow prods. As they came in amongst her masses of foot they seemed almost pathetically small, scarcely a reinforced squadron or a badly understrength regiment to her soldier's eye. At least the Stormlands force Renly had been massing sounded formidable enough.

    And is to be turned against our enemies. There was little doubt in her mind that Renly had intended to turn that force against Stannis, if need be.

    Stannis abruptly turned away from the wall as they came past the last of the silvercloaks. "Ready my escort. I shall be returning to the Red Keep." Tane nodded in assent. A few quick words to a Baratheon runner, a few minutes wait, and the Grenadiers and Demi-Lancers were filing back in through the gate, forming up in escort to the Royal Party alongside the Gold Cloaks while the rest of the Silvercloaks began to march off to their tourney ground quarters.

    Tane swung herself up onto the back of her warhorse as she reached the base of the gatehouse, scanning the crowds held back by lines of spearmen. They were sullen, restive. Terrified into submission by the violence unleashed by and against the mob during the last riot. That will not keep them back long. Terror only worked so long as they believed they had something to lose, and it would do nothing to dispel the resentment that led to the riots in the first place.

    At least we don't have Renly to whip them up anymore. Or Selyse to provoke them. She'd insisted on remaining within the red keep, having developed something of a fear of crowds since the last riot.

    "I have a mind to speak to you, when we are back in the Red Keep." Stannis said, reining in his warhorse next to hers.

    "Military or political?" Tane asked.

    "They are both the same thing." Stannis grumbled, "And always have been."

    If that were true, wars would be much less bloody, politics would be much simpler, and we'd all be much happier.

    *

    She met Stannis in his chambers, in Maegor's holdfast. Grim and sparse, it looked more like the solar of a burgess than of a king. Melisandre sat at his side, just as Morgan accompanied Tane.

    "War is coming. That much is certain." Stannis said, as she sat down in the solar. "Not only against the living. Tell her what you told me." He nodded to Melisandre.

    The Red Priestess pulled herself up to her full height-even Tane felt dwarfed around much of Stannis's household-and loomed over the table. Her eyes seemed as alight as her red hair and red dress.

    "The Great Other is gathering, his strength growing as winter deepens. He is calling, screaming now, to all greenseers and anyone else with a third eye who would listen, begging them to let him south. The undead can only pass through the Wall if they are invited through. With such an invitation, it is only a physical barrier, and those can be breached."

    Normally, she would have dismissed it as the garbled prattle of imperfect theologies if she was in an intellectual mood, or superstitious bullshit if she were in her usual mood. But she remembered what Morgan had told her when she'd returned, of how through her third eye the wall had seemed a single, colossal disturbance in the aether, and of how there been a singularly vast object beyond the wall, like a colossal soul both very near and very far away, and how the aether there seemed to be almost sucked north like water around a whirlpool. She had heard the call, too, a wordless scream.

    "Who are potential Greenseers, then?" Tane asked.

    "No one knows. The Great Other's agents are always hidden." Melisandre said.

    "Best not risk upsetting anyone, then." Morgan said with a slight smile.

    There was a long moment of silence. Dealing with gods and mystics was not something she had much experience in.

    "Lord Baelish will need dealing with, sooner rather than later." Tane added. She had no desire to harm the children-she still considered her promise to Cersei binding-but they had to be left isolated, on the run, not allowed to gather a power base.

    Stannis nodded. "That will be dealt with in due course. I am considering my options."

    He paused in thought for a moment.

    "You handled the matter of the killings well. You and Davos both. And I reward those who do me good service."

    Oh bloody hell, I'm going to get my fingers cut off for going behind Renly's back.

    "I need the largest army I can to face down the Targaryens. And weapons that can kill dragons. You have those."

    "Maybe. I've never tried shooting a Westerosi dragon."

    "Longbow and crossbow shafts wounded young dragons sorely at close range in the Dance. Your weapons will too. Aegon's dragons are only a few years old. So that your army has lands to recruit men and revenues from, I intend to make Harrenhal and it's surrounds the Royal Guard's fief. It is currently in the hands of the Crown and I have been looking for a suitable means to dispose of it. Does that suit you?"

    "Of course." Tane said. She still had no land and little property of her own, but that had always been the case, and getting stable funds for the Royal Guard rather than having to rely on whatever Stannis could squeeze out of his lords would be a godsend.

    A knock came on the door a moment later.

    Ser Balonn Swann pushed the door open and leaned into the door. "Your Grace. Someone wants to see you. One of Margaeries handmaidens. The Myrishwoman. Lady Merryweather."

    "I can vouch for her. She's Davos's source on Myr." Tane said.

    A moment later, Taena all but slid into the room, still wrapped up in her dark furs.

    "I have most urgent news for his Grace." She said.

    "There was a merchant in this morning." Taena said. "From Myr. My contact at the docks, he told me that Volantis has fallen. They have risen up, the elephant and tiger parties are both slaughtered, the galley slaves are now free oarsmen."

    Tane detected no small amount of satisfaction in her voice.

    "Some of them are already promising to head west, to a land without slavery." Taena added. "The merchant who told me this said he said a four week's journey from Myr to here. Aegon could already be on the move."

    Ironborn to our west, Dragons to our east, Fae to our north. They were surrounded.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • The King, the Priest and the Rich Man: Lancel V
  • Threadmarks
    • "Who are you?" Lancel called, holding his dragonglass dagger and lit torch ready.

    He could hear the wet, sputtering coughs of Hargrey behind him. He needed to get the fire lit, it was so cold.

    "A man of the night's watch." The ranger in the cave mouth said. He was all in black: his cloak, his coat, his hose, even the scarf over his face and the scabbard of his sword. His ravens came fluttering down, some perching on his back and others on the great elk that loomed in the mouth of the cave.

    The man in black came closer.

    "There's going to be wights coming, hundreds of them. The walkers know you killed two of them. My elk and my birds will lead them away."

    "And us?"

    "Just you. That blue bastard killed me, boy." Hargrey said, still on the ground. "I'm staying here. See how many of the fuckers I can take back to hell with me."

    Lancel turned to look at him, and saw the blood oozing from his mangled wrist and out of the corner of the old man's mouth.

    "Just find me a glass dagger and a lit torch."

    Lancel nodded, searching in the dark. He found the bag of torches Hargrey had grabbed in the rout, then lit one and handing it to him. He was about to go looking for the dagger when the man in black produced an arrow. "It's tipped with dragonglass. It'll do as good as a dagger against the dead."

    Hargrey grunted in thanks.

    Off in the distance, against the sound of the snowstorm outside, he thought he heard moaning. The elk had vanished.

    "We need to go."

    "It's a blizzard out there, the cave is our best-"

    "Not above the earth. Through Gorne's way. The deep ways."

    What?

    "Underground." The man in black said. "We need to go."

    Most of his birds went pouring out of the cave, cawing, into the storm.

    Lancel nodded. "I just need to get my sword…"

    His falchion was near useless against the dead, but it been at his side in two battles now. He found it quickly enough, wiped it down and sheathed it. He'd already gotten the bag of torches, and he picked up the pack full of rations when Hargrey offered it to him. "I'm not going to be needing them much longer."

    He relit the fire, so that Hargrey could see. The man in black strode past him. "They're closing in. We need to move."

    Lancel paused, thinking. Hargrey was right, he was good as dead with a spear through the lungs.

    I can't just leave him to die alone, though.

    He had to. He had to get back to the wall to warn them. That the Others had ice spiders, had wight ravens, that their wights could be put down with dragonglass as well as fire.

    That they hadn't retreated back north, satisfied that they had purged their realm, but were hunting within a few days of the wall.

    If he died, the death of Pyp and Grenn and soon Hargrey and everyone else were for nothing. As it was, it already seemed a tremendous waste.

    "Send as many as you can back back to the seven hells." Lancel said, turning to follow the man in black.

    "Oh, I will. Our blades are sharp." Hargrey broke into sputtering coughs as leant back against the wall, his torch in his one good hand, a tattered and bloodstained cloak with the flayed man of Bolton laying at his feet.

    Lancel went down into the dark, into the throat of the world. Stones crunched underfoot as he went down and down, ducking his head under stalagmites here, clambering up over rock faces. He never let his eyes leave the man in black.

    Once, he heard screaming and yelling behind him for a faint few seconds, before it cut out. His hand went to his falchion. "That came from behind us." The man in black said. "We go forwards." Half a dozen ravens fluttered around him, quorking.

    Lancel nodded, and trudged onwards. There was nothing the glow of his torch, the walls when the caves closed in tight enough, and the man in black's silhouette up ahead. He obviously knew the caves. Whenever they came to a fork, he picked the route without thinking, and more than once he had them slithering down through narrow tunnels or clambering up through rockfalls rather than taking the most obvious route.

    It was warm down in the caves, or at least warmer than the frozen hell of the surface. He felt like he was losing track of time. It could have minutes or hours or days. He didn't know how long he'd been fighting and marching, without stopping. He forced himself to keep moving. He had to put as much distance between himself and the pursuers as possible.

    Finally, the man in black called a halt, at the shores of what had to be a lake. Water ran off into the distance, impossibly clear and still. "You're barely on your feet. Get yourself some sleep. I'll keep watch."

    "But-"

    "They're not chasing us. They killed the Bolton and went off tracking my elk."

    How does he-

    Oh.

    Lancel realized with a start that this man in black had to be a warg. He had to be using his ravens to keep ahead of the wights. That was how he'd survived so long beyond the wall.

    "Then you should sleep too, if there aren't wights." Lancel said. If the wights were gone, there was no need for a sentry.

    "There are fouler things than wights in the deep places of the world."

    Lancel threw his pack down as a headrest and virtually collapsed onto it, falling into fitful sleep.

    *

    When he awoke, the man in black was still standing watch, sword in one hand and torch in the other.

    "I'll stand watch. You can sleep." Lancel said.

    The man in black shook his head. "If you are ready to move, then I am."

    "But-"

    "I am well rested, I assure you."

    Lancel got up and kept trudging. He didn't have it in him to argue if the strange ranger wanted to kill himself.

    It went on for what had to be days, or even weeks. They went through caverns so vast the walls vanished from sight, and tunnels so tight he had to push his pack ahead of him to fit. They waded through underground streams, and clambered over piles of snow that had fallen through holes in the cave roof. Whenever he asked the man in black where they were going, he simply said "to safety."

    Lancel had no choice but to believe him.

    There were caverns with paintings on the wall. Spirals, carved lines, handprints, running horses and mammoths, warriors spearing dragons and feathering direwolves. Worse were the faces, thousands of them in one cave, all staring like the faces on weirwood trees. In another chamber, someone had broken off the great stone icicles and arranged them into spirals on the floor, with a dragonglass dagger at the center of every one.

    Thrice they came across chambers filled with bones. The bones of adults and the bones of children, of bears and wolves, of elk and aurochs. Some of the skulls looked wrong. Brows too thick, braincases too small, teeth too long. One pile of bones was so big it damned the underground stream it was built in, and the pools of water nearby were blood red.

    Stone knives like the one at his hip were scattered amongst some of them, though of flint and chert rather than dragonglass.

    "Graveyards from before there was a wall, and before the dead had to be burned." The man in black said. "If it's mostly animal long bones, that's worse. It means Gendel's folk have been through here."

    "Gendel's folk?"

    "That's what the wildlings call them. Men who tried to use these caves to get under the wall, they say. Some of it is true. They made it through on the attack, but when they were beaten by the Starks they became lost on the way back. They say they took to eating each other, and when they went blind and mad, they came up at night to hunt men and beasts alike on the surface."

    Is he leading me back to the south side of the wall?

    "Is that true?" Lancel asked. He didn't think it a likely tale, but then again, neither was a warrior-witch from another world or an army of the dead.

    "No. There were hunters down here long, long before Gendel's folk. They killed and ate those of Gendel's men who didn't starve or go mad. They're no threat, as long as our torches stay lit."

    Oh. His hands brushed his hilts, all three of them, out of habit.

    Could the Others take that route?

    He had to sleep six more times in the journey through the dark. Every time, the man in black stood watch, without a word and without sleep.

    The third time he woke, Lancel finally got a good look at the man in black's eyes. His face was muffled by black, just like the black leather and cloth he wore. So was the hood, but even when he managed to get a look at the right angle, even his eyes were solid black.

    He isn't a normal man. A warg with black eyes that scarcely needs to sleep?

    He thumbed the dragonglass dagger tucked through his belt. If it comes to it… I'm behind him, and I have dragonglass. He won't get the drop on me.

    They went on nonetheless. More than once, Lancel swore he could see movement in the corners of his eyes, and hear a noise like bats chirping. He had no idea if it was his imagination, or if he was about to add mad blind cannibals to the list of things he'd killed.

    He kept most of his attention on the man in black. He was something far stranger than a normal ranger stranded beyond the wall. Stranger even than a warg. He had no intent to let his guard down.

    *

    At long last, after a particularly difficult crawl, he came out behind the man in black into a cave with impossibly huge icicles of stone dangling from the roof. Not icicles… skeletons. Dragons.

    Before he could think about what on earth dragon skeletons were doing this far north, the man in black halted in front of him.

    "I can go no further. You must take the last steps."

    "Why? You've come all this way without rest."

    "There are wards on your destination. Dead men cannot pass."

    Lancel slipped the dragonglass dagger into his palm, as the man in black turned to face him.

    "What are you? Tell me true, or I'll kill you where you stand. I'm serious."

    "A dead ranger. Raised, but not by the Others. I serve a different master."

    "Who?"

    He motioned at what seemed almost like a staircase cut into the stone. "The route from here on is simple. Climb it, and find out."

    "Not until you tell me what you are."

    "A dead ranger. Raised, by the enemies of the Others."

    "Which enemies?"

    The watch and wildlings seemed unlikely necromancers.

    "The children of the forest and the last greenseer."

    "The children are all dead. Deader than you are." Lancel said.

    "South of the wall they are. The north is different."

    "Nothing fire and glass can't fix." Lancel said, forcing bravado into his voice. He was trapped seven knows how far underground, with only a dead man for company. At least if he turns on me, I'll take him to the seven hells with me.

    "They didn't come back from the dead. They never died in the first place. The cold preserves things that died out long ago in the south. Like the mammoths and the direwolves. Like the Others. Like the Children of the Forest. Like my master."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Tane I
  • Threadmarks
    • "Charge for horse! Form Square!" Bydevere bellowed from horseback, the men of the 1st Royal Guard Regiment scrambling to follow his orders, the pikes turning to face outwards and the shot folding inwards from their position on the flanking wings to crouch under the pikes or slip between files of pikemen. Stannis had arranged it for all the court, both to show the power of his armies, and to assess them for herself.

    She was good at this. Planning, organizing and training soldiers. There was a military problem, you worked out a solution, put it into practise and hoped it stood up against the vagaries of war. She knew how to deal with problems with a pole-axe. With the pen and the tongue… she had some knowledge, but she'd learnt what she knew about intrigue dealing with cateran and reiver clans and acting as a doorkicker in Trarabac, not in high courts. Thankfully for her, and unfortunately for everyone who's trade wasn't violence, war was coming.

    "Come on! They've got lancers coming in! They'd be pacing up to the gallop by now! You want to get spitted?" Bydevere yelled.

    Calivermen and crossbowmen took cover under the hedge of pikes. Tane spurred her own horse up, probing at the formation. Every time she drew in close, the shot levelled their weapons with a yell, while the pikemen braced, their pikes held in one hand with the butt against the ground and their swords in the other to deal with anybody who got in past the point.

    There was no obvious gap she could find; no way to break in besides brute-forcing it by sacrificing her horse for a hypothetical follow-up squadron to break through. Determined heavy cavalry could break in and even through, but at an appalling cost in horseflesh and there was no guarantee they would actually rout the pikemen. Calivermen and crossbows would have even odds, at least, against enemy archers trying to shoot up the formation, and it wasn't as if the Westerosi had the artillery, airships or magic that would seriously threaten a pike square.

    She smiled in satisfaction. "Good work!" she called to the men.

    She wheeled around to the court, her horse's hooves squelching on the snow, her officers and escorts following her like a shadow. Nearly a hundred courtiers and their retinues watched them, ice faced, many unimpressed to be dragged out in such weather. Stannis and Selyse stood at their head, mounted, wreathed in fur cloaks.

    Selyse rode out ahead of her group, a great scarecrow of a woman.

    "You handled the troops very well." Selyse said, looking down at Tane. She was far taller, but she seemed fragile, frail even. The wound had not helped. Melara Crane and Melisandre followed her like shadows. Unlike Margaeries swarm of friends and servants, Selyse had few women she trusted.

    Tane turned her horse, trotting alongside her. The rest of the court followed, making for the river bank where Stannis intended to hold a parade of the royal fleet.

    "I only set out the drill. The company officers and non-coms deserve the credit for carrying it out."

    Selyse sniffed. "You are too modest. A leader is always responsible for their followers."

    There was a pause. Tane had never been much good with anything requiring tact or decorum, and Selyse relied on stiff formality to cover her own awkwardness and lack of regard for her inferiors. Selyse absent mindedly rubbed her head, where her hair had been combed over to cover where she had been trepanned.

    "I do owe you thanks." Selyse said. "For saving my life."

    "I have many enemies." She continued. "They tried to take my life. You helped stop them, and I am glad His Grace has such loyal men and women about him. They will do so again."

    "Aye. Petyr and Varys will try and follow up on this. They nearly started a civil war by framing you, they'll try and do it again. Possibly hit you, make it look like Renly ordered it as retaliation."

    "It is not Renly I fear, it is Margaery."

    "She had no part in this entire bloody mess. She pivoted away from Renly the second she knew how dubious his case was." Tane said.

    "Melisandre has seen what she is capable of in the flames. Shireen will be burnt alive and Stannis cut down fighting against Lannister lackeys while she sits the Iron Throne. She will marry three false kings, and outlive each of them. Tommen will sit the throne, and it will be with her families backing."

    "That is what could have been, not will be." Melisandre chided, her dress sweeping over the snow. "Great Rhllor cut loose those strands of fate when he sent you, his Miracle. The future is too clouded with destroyed possibilities and new ones to see clearly now."

    "You must not doubt yourself so." Selyse said. "You predicted Joffrey's death, you predicted Euron laying siege to Oldtown. Everything you saw could still happen. Margaery is still a threat. She will betray us, I know it. Sell us all out to the Lannisters at the first chance. It is in the nature of Tyrells to do such things."

    "And what does she have to gain from that?" Tane asked. "Her husband and her child are on the line to the throne by command of His Grace the King, your own husband. She is enormously popular with the people of King's Landing. She has two of the largest realms in the Seven Kingdoms backing her."

    "She has everything to lose. That has been known to provoke extreme action when threatened." Selyse said. "I believe she will convince Renly to rebel. He will die in the attempt and she will marry Tommen and sit the throne, then betray him to Aegon. Or the other way round. My point is, she is not to be trusted. The Red God has sent me many warnings to that effect."

    "Do you have any actual evidence for this?" Tane asked, exasperation leaking into her voice. "Besides all this being revealed to you in a dream?"

    "The Red God-"

    "The Red God's ability to send me visions has been clouded." Melisandre said. "That was the price He paid for sending you."

    Well that's just what I need. A mad priestess to go with all the mad priests.

    "Lady Margaery Tyrell had no part in Renly's actions." Tane said. "I was up to my gills dealing with Renly's nonsense. Trust me, if I knew that Margaery was involved, I'd have told you about it."

    That was a lie. She'd have told Davos and possibly Stannis. She'd not have told Selyse. You didn't give help load a known loose cannon.

    Selyse sniffed. "In any case, I do owe you my thanks. You have the favour of a queen. You would do well to capitalize on it."

    "For one thing, you have no lands or incomes beside your pension."

    "Indeed." Tane said. She was living off the royal treasuries, for all intents and purposes.

    "A suitable husband with sufficient lands would go a long way to achieving such an end."

    Tane raised an eyebrow. "I have no intention of marrying."

    "Surely you must care about your legacy?"

    "That won't come from children. Lands and money would be helpful, but what I need most of all is stability. Not starting a feud with Margaery would be a start. Nothing would please Aegon more than coming home to a civil war."

    "Of course. I shall not do anything more than is necessary to defend mine own rights. I am not so reckless as Renly."

    "Few are." Tane said. "Hopefully the Ironborn keep him busy until the Targaryens and Others are dealt with, then we can worry about him. Do you have any clue who the new Hand of the King might be? Stannis hasn't told me anything, but surely you must have some idea, considering you had Margaery pushed out of the Tower of the Hand."

    "Alester Florent would be my choice." Selyse said. Less than useless during the coup. At least Imry had some courage if not the good judgement to use it effectively.

    "He has lamented that Lord Tarly is a reachmen, and that Velaryon grows too distant. Lord Eddard is unlikely to come south again. There are men who took lands in the West, Lord Rolland Stormsong amongst them, that Stannis trusts but they know little but war."

    Tane blinked. That was a better assessment than she had expected from bloody Selyse of all people.

    "And who is he most likely to settle on? If I were in his position, I would pick Velaryon." If only because he didn't have any points against him, mostly down to doing nothing of note for these last few years.

    "So would I." Selyse said, nodding in agreement.

    They trotted down to the river, where the Royal Fleet had been positioned out to sea.

    The fleet came sliding in, the colossal two- and three- hundreds at their heads. The Smoke & Salt and Margaery Rose were purpose built cannon galleys, while Fury and the old two-hundreds where coverts armed with lighter swivel swivel guns and 3 pounders to compensate for their planking not being reinforced to take the recoil of heavier guns. They had two oars and three layers of oars, all of it under fighting decks, not the open-decked galleys with a single layer of oars. The King Robert's Hammer, a barely seaworthy, impossibly large liability of a four-hundred, had to left out at sea since it would require some sort of awkward, three part maneuvered. That also involved backing water.

    The last time they had held such a display, it had been to top off a royal hunt. Now it was a demonstration of raw royal firepower, an attempt to sooth nerves. She had already heard the rumours. It would be Aegon's conquest all over again, the dragons descended on a divided realm that had no weapons capable of fighting them.
    They had plans to counter those rumours.

    The Smoke & Salt pulled ahead of the other ships. An old war galley, too old to be useful as anything but a fireship, had been moored over the deepest part of the blackwater.

    The guns fired, splinters flew, and it began to list. The Smoke & Salt turned away, sailing past the ships behind like musketeers counter-marching. The Margaery Rose fired as well and repeated the maneuver. The Fury and Swordfish both had time to follow up, but by the time the Stag of the Sea had come up, the target hulk suddenly rolled sideways and sunk.

    The rest of the ships completed the evolution, turning out to sea, leaving splintered wreckage in their wake.

    Stannis did not speak. The message could not be spoken louder than it had been said by the cannons.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Triston I
  • Threadmarks
    • The drums pounded as the Hydra rushed forward, a hundred men, reavers and thralls alike, straining at the oars towards the Redwyne fleet. His body barely noticed the rock and roll of the ship beneath him, the crossbow bolts flicking past, the salt spray, the weight of the lamellar on his back. He'd been doing this since he was a boy, reaving in Westeros when Balon deigned to fight and in Essos in times of peace. He was a Farwynd. Sea salt and fire smoke were in his blood.

    "Triston. Want us to them let them have it?" Lars asked besides him. The young but already scarred captain of archers was cradling his crossbow like a child, his men standing ready around him.

    "Save it till just before we hit. Then clear the deck with axe-" an arrow thudded into his lamellar and went spinning away in a shower of splinters-"and sword. We'll be drinking arbor red tonight." He smiled as he said it, in spite of the sting already setting in from the hit.

    It had all gone beautifully so far. They'd burned much of the Redwyne fleet at anchor or picked them off when they tried to respond to the raids in scattered groups. Other groups had hit the Shield Islands to their north, leaving the Mander open to them. The southern element had retreated up to link up with the Shield Islands fleet, luring the Redwyne survivors back in after them, and let them come.

    And come they had. A long low war galley lay ahead, it's oars thrashing as it tried to back water away from a Drumm longship in the tangled melee that formed the center of the battle. His own squadron and half a dozen others had crept in from the lee of the third shield, into their flanks and rear looking to surround them after them they'd taken the bait of chasing the smaller longboats into the channel between two islands. Euron wanted no escapees and plenty of prisoners.

    Only a hundred yards and closing away, he could already see the men struggling across the decks with sword and spear and axe, weapons rising and falling. They must have seen what was coming, because some of them were forming up on the side of the deck facing him, trying to get a shieldwall together.

    "Archers hold!" Their prey rushed in closer, men shying back from the sides as they saw the pointed prow coming at them. It was an above-water ram, flat and broad. A sunken ship was worth nothing. A boarded ship… now that was how you became wealthy paying the iron price. He liked to think he was wealthy. A Norvosi's lamellar armour, a Dornishman's spear, a Myrishman's sword, a Lannister war galley. His nieces and nephews had all they wanted for, back home. All of them seized by his own two hands.

    The helmsmen were bellowing behind him, and the oarsmen stopped and began to back water just before impact.

    "Loose!" Triston bellowed. His archers stood from behind the gunwhales and the shieldwall, unleashing a shower of bolts and arrows. Some Redwynes fell; more cowered behind their shields.

    The Hydra's ram crunched home. He rolled with the impact, barely feeling it; one of the Redwyne's went tumbling down into the water, and more were thrown off their feet.

    Then his men were upon them. He vaulted the rail, pounding forwards across the ram, shifting his spear to a two-handed grip. He didn't need to glance back to know his men were following him.

    The first Redwyne Triston killed without even breaking stride, stabbing the crossbowman through the throat as he fumbled with his weapon. The second parried his first thrust with his shield; so Triston feinted a thrust at his head then when his shield jerked up snapped out a slide-thrust through his belly, doubling the man over. He wrenched the spear back, jerking the man forwards so that he went tumbling into the water. The Redwyne galley's fighting deck had no rails.

    He drew his sword in his main hand, hacking at spears and shields as he jumped up from the ram onto the enemy deck, grunting in pain at the kick of a spear sliding off his pauldron.

    He got one man across the hand and then across the face with his sword, sending blood and teeth and fingers flying, and the rest began to frantically back up, only to be caught in the crush of men behind them fighting off the longship's crew, the hurly-burly of the fight pushing them back towards him.

    "Yield!" he roared. The men he was facing, marines in mail haubergeons, were terrified, even beyond the usual terror of a boarding action. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no room to try and outflank the enemy or time to think. All you could was push forwards and kill or die, unless the enemy wanted to give you a choice.

    He parried off a spear thrust with his sword and stabbed out a kneecap with his spear. "Yield!" His men fell in alongside him, spears jabbing and darting, piercing flesh and punching into wood and iron. "Yield!"

    A man came at him with a longaxe. He slipped his leg back, letting the axe whistle past, then stepped in and thrust him through the face as he tried to bring the axe back on line.

    "Yield!"

    He began to press forwards and swing his men around, dropping spears and drawing sword and axe and dirk, butchering the pocket trapped between his own men and the Drummond's and beginning to clear the ship bow to stern. Those who weren't pinned threw their weapons down. "Take prisoners if you can!" he bellowed, just as much for the enemies benefit as his own mens.

    The Deep Ones alone knew why Euron bloody Greyjoy wanted mercy shown, but he was not a man who was displeased lightly.

    "Yield gods damn you!" someone else was yelling with a reacher accent. He saw a knight in armour pressed forwards along the deck, his helmet thrown off. "Yield! All of you! The ship is lost!"

    "Hold positions!" Triston roared. "Take them alive! No more butchery!"

    *

    That night, Euron Greyjoy supped with his most trusted captains ashore on the shield islands, in a sept above a beach with the great rainbow windows burnt and smashed. They'd hauled out trestles and chairs, and Euron had every captured captain, many with bandaged wounds, forced to act as waiters. Seven captured septas and septons had been tied to the statues, the Stranger with a bag over his head.

    Victarion supped on one side of Euron, sullen and silent except when boasting of the men he'd killed. He'd personally boarded Paxter Redwyne's flagship, although one of his archers had stolen the honour of killing the man himself.

    "A victory to do my brother's memory proud!" Euron said at the head of the table, raised his wineglass. Arbor red, thick and dark as blood splashed across a galley deck. A thin dribble of it ran down from the corner of mouth, past blue lips. The more cunning cackled like hyenas at his joke, the Greenlander girl in his lap loudest of all, and the less cunning cheered for Euron to avenge Balon.

    Euron had it put about that Balon was murdered on Stannis's orders, and that Euron had been rushing to the Iron Islands to warn him. A simple way for Euron to get the measure of a man by how they reacted. Anyone who openly disbelieved it was an enemy. Anyone who truly believed it was a fool.

    "Fifty ships captured, a dozen sunk and the rest scattered to the winds." Euron continued. The Redwyne's had no chance.

    Even mauled at anchor, they'd matched the Iron Fleet in fifty, eighty and hundred oar galleys, and outmassed the smaller longboats the rest of the lords used, while having the only two-hundreds in the sunset sea. Euron had used that to his advantage. He'd used the longships as bait. More maneuverable near the coast, they'd lured the Redwyne fleet into pursuit, only for them to end up facing swift eighty oared galleys and longships that had emerged from the lee of the shield islands and taken them in the flanks and rear. Many Redwyne galleys had beached themselves trying to slip out through shallow water, only to be swarmed by more maneuverable longships, while others had tried to stand and fight. Only the fact that Euron was willing to take surrenders had stopped most of them from being butchered. As it stood, the water was choked with bodies and splintered oars.

    Euron was a kinslayer and a madman, but Triston couldn't say he wasn't a good commander. Certainly better than Balon. He'd only survived Fair Isle by the skin of his teeth, but this… it made what Stannis had done to the original Iron Fleet look like child's play.

    "I wish Aeron could have seen it. Alas, he is… indisposed." Euron chuckled darkly. "Now, before we feast, a toast for Paxter Redwyne! I will never have it said I treat my enemies dishourably, and he was, after all, vital to my-well, our-victory!"

    More cheering, and jeers at Redwyne. Triston joined in, if only out of respect for Euron's victory. He wasn't normally a man given to exuberance, but they had just taken a good chunk of the Redwyne fleet, scattered the rest, and had Oldtown and Highgarden ripe for the taking if they followed up on this right. Bloody Oldtown, the prize many a reaver had tried for over the centuries and that many had failed to grasp.

    Then the chant began. "EURON! EURON! EURON KING! EURON! EURON! EURON KING!"

    Triston ate his fill and drank deep, and was well into his third course when he felt a hand on his shoulder with a grip like iron. "Come. We need to inspect the prizes." Euron said. His face, one-eyed and impossibly young for a man his age, bored down on him. Triston's instincts screamed for him to go for his knife.

    Already in these past few months, he knew well enough that while sailing under Euron had handsome rewards, getting his personal attention never ended well for anyone. Just ask Aeron, "indisposed" with "seasickness" in the hold of the Silence.

    He stood up, following Euron out. The Greenlander girl Euron had been fawning over moments earlier went to follow, but Euron brushed her off without even looking at her.

    "You may noticed that I am a merciful man." Euron said, glancing at a sobbing Septon tied to a statute of the Warrior. "That has it's purpose."

    He could already see the prisoners taken, thousands of them, being carried by small boats from the prizes into seven great merchant cogs.

    "Revealing that purpose just now would be spoiling things, however." Euron said. He smiled, and his cold blue eye shone in the torchlight. Triston shuddered, remembering a night camped as far north as men would go, trading with Thenn's. There had been things in the woods that night. Things with eyes bluer than Euron's, but just as cold and dead.

    "Oldtown will fall, though, and when it does… there will be raping and looting and sacking. I want someone and something found, amidst all that. Come." Euron said.

    Euron strode in silence along the beach, and Triston followed.

    The longships and galleys were hauled out on the beach with the cogs, both prizes and those carrying victuals, out at sea, ship's boats running back and forth bearing supplies and men in the light of torches and lanterns. There were corpses washed up on the beach too, some with bite marks from sharks, others with vast disc shaped wounds like he'd seen on sperm whales when he'd gone whaling in his youth.

    Krakens. Over the last few years he'd heard more and more rumours of the beasts, even of one dragging a Voltantene slaver under when they'd taken to throwing slaves with the bloody flux overboard.

    Up ahead, he could see a stake, and a bearded man, Yi Tish or thereabouts, chained to it. One hand was covered in a black glove. A driftwood fire burned in front of him, fed by a pair of mutes.

    "Another man has come to witness the Lord of Light. Bring him the enlightenment you brought me." Euron said.

    The man spat. "The Lord of Light brings you only fire and death, servant of the Great Oth-"

    Euron slapped the man hard enough that the crack was like the buzz of a crossbow being loosed, then seized his hand and tore the glove off. The man screamed in pain, his hand swollen and pinkish-red from being scalded.

    "Do you want to reach into your fires again?" Euron asked.

    "No." the man said.

    "Then remind me of what you saw."

    "A man of the Watch… a slayer, a warrior of light, though he does not look like one… with an old broken horn. He came to study at the citadel. Samwell Tarly is his name."

    "Not lying, I see. Good. Very good. If you were a dog, I'd give you meat. If you were a god… well, you actually might be worth praying to. Alas, you are neither."

    Euron turned to Triston, smiling. Triston had known many warriors and killers over the years. Cold blooded veterans who treated killing men like they would swatting a fly and blood crazed madmen alike, he'd never met anyone that seemed quite as dangerous as Euron.

    "I want that horn. The watchman, I don't care about. He's in Oldtown, studying in the Citadel. The isle of the great library in particular. That was where my Red Priest said he should be, the night I intent to attack. He could not be more specific. Something about his vision being clouded, by too many possibilities."

    What? Even by Euron's standards, sending men after a broken horn was madness, and not the inspired sort that had resulted in them wrecking the Redwyne fleet and ravaging the west coast.

    "This is not just any horn." Euron continued. "Dug out north of the wall. It has magic in it, old magic. It will awaken the giants of the earth. Don't you think giants would be a helpful ally?"

    Triston would have rathered dragons, or krakens. Giants were useless at sea, and the sea was where any Ironborn with a brain would fight.

    "What's in it for me?" Triston asked.

    Euron shrugged. "A King's favour. Your pick of any other treasure. Anything, really."

    Following a madman's orders and the words of a tortured man wasn't Triston's idea of sanity. But he'd be going straight to the Citadel for the more esoteric sort of loot anyway, and Euron was not a man turned down lightly.

    "Aye, I'll do it."

    He hoped that there was method to Euron's madness.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Margaery I
  • Threadmarks
    • The sky was like cold blue steel as she walked out of the tower of the Hand, Elinor at her side with a dozen guardsmen-all that Renly had left her- coming up behind. She wouldn't have the tower much longer, as soon as Stannis decided on a new hand, but she intended to enjoy it for now.

    The city was dangerous enough, sure, but she intended to keep her guards close and stay in the market near dusk, when it was less crowded. She'd also arranged to have another dozen goldcloaks back up her own guard.

    Lady Merryweather greeted them outside, along with Meredyth Crane. Taena lived with her husband in the city, and Merry had set herself up in the Florent quarters with her aunt. On the one hand, that meant Margaery received all sorts of interesting news about what the Florents were up to. On the other hand, that did make things rather awkward for Meredyth.

    "You need more dresses, yes?" Taena asked. "Yes. And to give the High Septon a loan from Highgarden. For the relief of victims of the riot." Strictly speaking she had no such authority to offer such a loan, but she'd already sent a raven to Highgarden suggesting it, alongside reports of the situation in the capital and a promise that Renly's Stormlands army would be moving to Oldtown's relief soon.

    She glanced back at Megga, Alla and Allysanne Buller, the older girls looking distinctly unhappy to be saddled with Bulwer. "Right, all is ready. We shall meet our guards at the gate."

    They set out at once, heading straight for the gate. Their horses and Margaeries litter were led out by common servants from the towers stables. When they came to the gates, the goldcloaks were waiting, but their leader had a grim look on his face. "What is it? Has there been another disturbance in the city?"

    The man shook his head. "No, it's not that, m'lady. King Stannis has forbidden you to leave the Red Keep. He says it isn't safe in the city and he won't have his heir put at risk."

    Arguing with Stannis was a waste of time, at least for a Tyrell, and no one in their right mind would ignore Stannis's orders because she asked nicely.

    "Is it that dangerous in the city?"

    "We've had a murder attempt and two riots." The captain said with a shrug. He stepped forwards and lowered his voice. "Much as I generally mislike Stannis, he has the right of it here. Noone wants the wife of the heir to be killed on my watch."

    "Of course." Margaery said. "I understand."

    She sighed as she turned back to her handmaidens, trying not to let the annoyance show. She needed to build up relations with the new High Septon, and she needed some relaxation in the form of spending obscene amounts of money on new dresses before everything went to the Seven Hells.

    "What now?" Elinor asked.

    "Oh, you know. Head back to the tower. Get some wine." Margaery said. "Complain at length. I'll need to send someone to apologize to the High Septon and tell him what I was going to tell him."

    "I shall do it." Lady Merryweather said.

    "That would be very helpful." Margaery said. "I shall write you up a letter and explain all the details of my proposal once we are back at the tower.

    Elinor shook her head as they turned back to the tower. She'd gathered everyone in one place; she might as well entertain them there until supper. "it cannot be that bad." Elinor said. "The rioters were outraged that you were hurt."

    "Some of them. Some of the Rhllorites and their friends have formed militia to defend themselves in case another riot happens. They might blame you for the attack." Taena said.

    Just what we need. Street fighting between two mobs of fanatics.

    "How would you know that?" Megga asked.

    The older woman shrugged. "The Captain-General told me. Besides, they meet near my lord husbands manse."

    Margaery sighed. "Politics, politics, politics. Say, Megga, I hear Ser Mark Mullendore has been calling on you as of late…"

    *

    They were taking their supper when the servant's arrived. Selyse's steward and a couple of Florent guardsmen from Brella's description.

    "What would the issue be? Does Selyse wish to talk to me?" Margaery said, as soon as she'd been informed that they were present. Brella, Renly's head servant, shook her head. "They wanted to tell you the news themselves. Wouldn't tell me a thing."

    She sighed. "Invite them in. Ask some guards to be present with me when they visit." She wasn't falling for the same trick Renly nearly did.

    She met them in the solar she had commandeered from Renly, flanked by guards with another two outside.

    "Is this some household matter of Selyse's?"

    "Of a sorts." The steward said. He was a tall, thin man with sharp features-rather handsome, she thought, before slapping that down-and an empty dagger scabbard on his hip.

    "My apologies for the guards taking your blade. You can never be too careful in these dark days." She added.

    "It is of no concern." He said. "What is of concern is that, well, the Tower of the Hand should be occupied by the Hand. Stannis has not yet declared a new hand, but he has said that he wants the tower cleared for occupancy."

    She'd known it was coming, but being kicked out so unceremoniously still stung.

    Selyse's idea.

    She tapped her good fingers on the desk. "How soon?"

    "He would like it done by the time Lord Alester Florent comes back from taking the fleet on maneuvers in the Blackwater. So by the end of the week."

    This was going to be an issue. The Maidenvault was stuffed full of grenadiers, sharing Maegor's with Selyse's family did not appeal, and although there were numerous other apartments throughout the keep she doubted they had room to house all her handmaidens, servants and guards together.

    "Where shall I be housed?"

    "In Maegor's Holdfast." The steward said. "There shall be room for some of your servants. You shall have to make arrangements for the others."

    "Well then. You have my thanks for the warning. How many rooms?"

    "About half a dozen."

    *

    "So in short, you got told to figure out how to shelter a few hundred soldiers and their horses with a barn, two tents and a haystack. Been there, done that. Not fun." Tane said, butchering her steak with abandon.

    Margaery laughed despite herself. "More or less, though my conditions are at least somewhat more luxurious."

    "After that business, I wouldn't call being stuck in a confined space with Her Grace luxurious." Tane said. "Even Melisandre thinks her a fool."

    "Do tell." Margaery, laughing again.

    "Last week. " Tane said. "She is still somewhat hostile, although I tried to convince her that you were not her enemy."

    "That would be most helpful." Margaery said, smiling.

    "Helpful to all of us. The last thing we need right now is to be worrying about politics when there are three armies bearing down on that. Speaking of which, Volantis has fallen. The slaves rose up. I don't blame them, if even half of what I've heard about that place is true. The problem for us is now the Targaryens have a clean run at Westeros as soon as they can get ships, or get organized for an overland march. If the Volantene fleet was taken intact, she's even got herself a navy."

    "Lys and Tyrosh are in the way."

    "Lys isn't a military power. They rely on mercenaries, and most of those will be needed keeping their slaves down. The Tyroshi can be circumvented by landing in Dorne, though they shall make a fight of it if they try to go through the stepstones."

    Margaery nodded along. She had tried to pay attention to the parts of her education that pertained to warfare, and her brothers had told her a fair bit, but unlike Tane she was not a commander, nor had she spent the last two years trying to learn everything she could about the known world's geography.

    "It is a good thing that the crown has an army of its own, then."

    For now. The King having troops of his own rather than having to rely on bannermen could end very badly for her family. Stannis already liked the Tyrells little enough, and if the army where to grow too strong…

    We'll have to survive, for that to matter. And to do that, we need the guns.

    She leaned forwards in her chair, careful not to bump her belly-seven or eight moons pregnant, by now-and began to finish off the meal, eating in companionable silence. She made a regular habit of this sort of meal. Tane was a useful ally, and enjoyably different to her handmaidens, Loras and the other courtiers.

    She took a sip of wine-she found it helped with some of the side-effects of pregnancy-and stood up, smoothing her skirts.

    "When you were a girl, did you ever think you'd end up in another world?" Margaery asked.

    Tane laughed. "Never. The old world was dead history far as I was concerned. I sometimes thought I could be a conqueror like Arthur was, but never that I'd end up in, whatever, you call this situation."

    "An opportunity? You seemed to take rather good advantage of it, in any case."

    Tane laughed. "You can talk. Just another noblewoman, and then a few years later, well."

    "Father's idea, not mine." Margaery said. "And a good thing that was too, because he was planning on marrying me off to Robert before that."

    Tane blinked in sudden, stunned shock. "Your father wanted to what?"

    "Make me Queen. He believed if I seduced Robert, he would set Cersei aside and make me queen."

    "Your father wanted you to seduce a drunkard twice your age for power?" Tane said, still stunned.

    "You were fighting your own father's battles at that age." Margaery said, deflecting instantly. Tane wasn't wrong, though. It had been a reckless and dangerous plan, even if Mace had done it out of his love for her.

    "As a page girl, not in the front ranks, and only because I begged him to." Tane said. "Cersei had some of Robert's lover's killed, and Robert beat and raped her. Mace had to have known the danger he was sending you into."

    "Mace wanted what I wanted."

    To have grown over the generations from stewards to the most powerful family in Westeros. To do our parents proud.

    "And what was that? Power and glory?"

    "For me to be a queen. The queen, as ten year old me put it."

    "If you wanted that… once you'd set the precedent of setting aside a queen, Robert would have discarded you as soon as he grew bored. And that's without the danger from the Lannisters."

    "Olenna had her doubts, but Mace thought if I could make Robert fall in love with me…"

    "Bloody idiot." Tane said. Margaery thought she caught a hint of concern, of protectiveness, alongside the anger.

    "Hindsight is a beautiful thing." Margaery said. "You should not talk about my father so."

    Tane was only half wrong. Hindsight was a beautiful thing, but it had still been dangerous, so dangerous, and her objections… at the time, she'd been half giddy with excitement at the possibilities and terrified at what could go wrong, and even what would have to happen for it to go right. She had pointed those out, and Mace had told her that it would all work out, that it would make her queen, that it would secure her families future. That had been enough to convince her.

    Tane's features softened into her usual half-scowl.

    "I must apologize." she said.

    Margaery smiled in acceptance, nodded. "No one is perfect." she said. "Not even our fathers and mothers."

    "Do you still want the throne?" Tane asked.

    "Who doesn't?" Margaery said. She laughed. "It would still be nice, and I will likely outlive Stannis, so I will be Queen Dowager at least even if Renly dies before His Grace... but King's Landing has soured me on it somewhat."

    "You'd do a better job of being Queen than Selyse." Tane said. "Or Cersei. Granted, I suspect Stannis is a better wartime king than Renly would ever be."

    Margaery snorted. "Renly's lost his own battle, but Stannis… if not for our current abundance of enemies, he would make his own."

    "Of course. Best put him in a closet until there is a war to be fought, then bring him out." Tane said.

    Margaery laughed again, from the belly. Tane really was quite amusing when she tried to be.

    "If only there was such a way to do that to kings."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Alleras I
  • Threadmarks
    • Alleras crept through the half-trampled wheat fields, an arrow nocked to his summer islander bow, a longsword and dagger on his belt and a quiver across his back. A dozen other archers moved at his sides, men in the livery of the Oldtown Shooter's Guild. Their target loomed up behind them, a ram built out of broken-up galleys and a cog's mast the Ironborn had seized. It was already aflame, Ironborn scrambling through the camp like bees in a kicked nest.

    He squinted through the dark, keeping his eyes on Garwyn moving ten yards ahead. A hard old bastard who'd been a sworn sword, mercenary and watch sergeant longer than Alleras had been alive. Alleras didn't have a clue what he was doing, but the sergeant had given them all a long lecture on fieldcraft before setting out.

    Thankfully, Alleras was a quick learner. He'd soaked that up like he'd soaked up everything; leechcraft and history and astrology from the Citadel, magic from the maesters, fighting with sword and spear from his father, archery and knifework from his mother.

    Alleras winced as his footfalls crushed a grain of wheat. Oldtown was far enough north it got snow in winter, but had it hadn't come yet, and the smallfolk had tried to get one last harvest in before then. He could hear hoofbeats off to his left, mounted patrols on stolen horses, and the sounds of fighting to his right as Ironborn pursuers fought with the Butcher's and Jeweller's Guild militiamen who'd formed the main body of the attack.

    Seven above I'm a bloody novice maester, why did I volunteer for this-

    The same reason he'd gone to Oldtown. The same reason he'd gotten dragged into Marywn's game. It was the right thing to do. Considering the circumstances, it was the only thing to do.

    Garywn went flat, and Alleras's heart almost froze in his chest as he saw the silhouettes of half a dozen horsemen trotting towards them through the wheat. They had to be less than forty yards out-

    "You see that!" One of them yelled.

    "Yeah-"

    Alleras went down to a half crouch.

    "Nagga's Bones!" another Ironborn called, just as he crumpled from his horse, a crossbow buzzing.

    Then the rest of them opened up.

    He forced himself to his full height, ignoring the instincts screaming that he should get down and hide. He loosed his first shot slow and steady, leaning into the bow, every muscle straining to bring the weapon to full extent then flinging the bodkin-tipped arrow loose. Crossbows buzzed either side of him. Horses screamed in terror, some falling, one stampeding off. One reared and staggered, thrashing and kicking before it finally toppled over on its rider. Two of the riders lowered their spears and made to charge, but Garwyn leapt up and rushed one, grabbing the reins and gutting the horse, and Alleras shot the second, knocking drawing and loosing once, twice, thrice-

    "MOVE!" someone screamed in his ear, and he was rushing forwards with the rest of them, some with drawn swords. An ironborn staggered to his feet right ahead of him, but Alleras shot him through the chest then knifed him with his loop-hilted Summer Islander dagger as he ran past, nocking another arrow with the bloody dagger still looped around his hand. The others were doing the same, charging not at but through them, hacking at any of the stunned, wounded Ironborn who came within reach. A wounded horse began to get to it's feet ahead of him, but Garwyn killed it with a single, well-placed blow of his falchion then dodged past to rain cuts onto the stunned rider-two fast blows to the base of the skull, just like he'd explained to the rest of them. Alleras leapt the horse, swearing as his brigandine dug into his ribs. He was regretting wearing the thing, and binding his breasts for that matter, when something punched into his back. He turned and saw archers, two of them, silhouetted on a hillock.

    Nock, draw, loose-

    Two shots later and one of them was down, the second running down into the long grass alongside the dozen other Ironborn infantry swarming forwards over the hillock. Alleras turned away, running now, yelling that they had pursuers.

    He came up onto another hillock, pausing just long enough to get his bearings. Oldtown's walls were less than two hundred yards distant, flickering with lanterns. He could hear the thud of springalds and scorpions loosing from the gatehouse, and there still seemed to be fighting going on under the gatehouse. The plan had been for the flanking parties to creep around to the sally ports while the main body carried out a fighting retreat to the gates. There was a sally port a couple of hundred yards from the main gate, and he made for that as fast as possible. The wheatstalks whipped at his face as he ran, and then he was sprinting through open ground, the rest of the company running ahead of him, arrows hissing past though he could not see them.

    Alleras forced himself to stop, turn, loose a couple of shots at the running silhouettes coming after him, kept moving. One of the guildsmen stumbled and fell until a companion caught him up, trying to pull him forwards. Alleras caught the man under the other arm, swearing under his breath, the wounded man's legs dragging. There was yelling up ahead, bellowed watchwords, a torch dropped for light. He let go of the casualty and turned to shoot again. A flaming projectile streaked out, hurled by one of the mangonels mounted behind the walls, and burst amongst the Ironborn archers advancing in open order, sending some staggering, screaming, patting at the flames. More fell as archers on the wall and amongst the raiding party got their range.

    "Sally port's open, leg it!" Someone yelled. He forced himself to stand his ground, showering the Ironborn with arrows for as long as possible before there was a yell of "Everyones through, get out of there!"

    *

    "Stay still." Alleras clamped his hands down on the militiaman, grunting as he struggled. "Stay still! You want to have any movement in your shoulder, you're going to have to let us do this properly." Samwell Tarly had his considerable weight on the man's other arm, while Maester Corbyn was working on extracting the arrow from his shoulder. The man was struggling and spitting with pain.

    Alleras glanced across at Samwell. He looked like he was about to throw up. Though rather intelligent, he was nearly as poorly suited to the role of a healer as he was to being the soldier that his father had forced him to be. Not that Alleras blamed him. His nerves still hadn't calmed from the skirmish, and with a little worse luck or not having bothered with his brigandine he could be up on the table.

    Or taken prisoner-

    He wasn't becoming a bloody salt wife. He'd rather die than that.

    "Look on the bright side. After this, both of us are sure to have earned our links in warcraft and healing." He already had, in warcraft at least.

    Samwell looked like he didn't find that particularly reassuring.

    "A bodkin point, so better than it could have been." Corbyn said, lifting up the arrow, smeared with blood. The barbed broadheads the Ironborn normally preferred where devilishly hard to get out of flesh, and shredded padded and leather armour, though at least they didn't do too well against mail.

    The man was too busy swearing in pain to comment, though most of that was drowned out by a jeweler's guild man having his remaining leg sawn off. One leg had been severed and the other mangled by a single blow of an Ironborn's long axe during the retreat. He was lucky that he'd been close enough to the gate for his friends to drag him back and tourniquet his stumps.

    "Oi, Black Brother and Brother Brown." Leo Tyrell called, striding across to them.

    Well, at least he's not calling my mother a burnt-skinned monkey. Leo Tyrell was many things. Open minded, kind, or courteous were not amongst them. He'd never tolerate the man if not for the pact he'd sworn with Archmaester Marwyn.

    That was more important than petty grudges. Far more important.

    Alleras turned to glare at Leo.

    "What is it? If you didn't notice, we're busy." Alleras snapped.

    "Lord Leyton Hightower. And Lady Malora Hightower. They want to speak with both of you." Leo said.

    He glanced at Maester Corbyn. He was finishing bandaging the man's shoulder.

    "Lord Hightower wants to hold audience with us."

    "Well, you've already done your bit for the night, and if there's one upside to getting wounded in defence of Oldtown, it's that there is no lack of Maesters." Corbyn said. "You can go. And Samwell too."

    Alleras nodded in thanks and turned away from the table.

    The cold night air stung as the three of them stepped out of the guildhall. The guildhall had been turned into a hospital on the west side of Oldtown. Ever since the Ironborn had landed ten days ago, there had been skirmishes near nightly. It had started with cavalry ranging out of the city trying to pick off reivers and burn beached longships, then assaults on the fortified shore camps they'd built, and now a constant back-and-forth as the Ironborn brought their full number to bear ashore and their patrols began to tighten their stranglehold on the city. They were building palisades and fortified camps one by one, working their way inland. The advantage of the Andal forces was in their heavy horse, and horse were no good against even crude fortifications.

    "What do you think Hightower wants us for?" Samwell asked.

    "Why, to congratulate me on my heroism, of course." Alleras said. Sarcasm tinged his voice, but he had just killed at least three ironborn. The exhaustion was catching up, his limbs growing stiff as the rush of combat then of trying to save as many of the casualties as possible began to wear off.

    The Hightower loomed vast and tall over the city. At seven hundred and fifty feet tall, it would overlook even the wall. A signal lamp lit with wildfire blazed green at the top, the signal for all of House Hightower's bannermen to come to their aid. Some said it had been built by the Empire of the Dawn, pointing to the oily black stone in it's foundation, others that Brandon the Builder had built in on a trip south. The Mazemakers of Lorath seemed more likely, as did it being a Valyrian Outpost.

    Leo led them to the dockside, past galley sheds and moored carracks and the swan ship of his mother's homeland. The lanterns of dromonds anchored behind the defensive dooms flickered orange light across the war, playing against the green and white of the Hightower and the moon. The lanterns of Ironborn warships glowed further out.

    No-one noticed a group of armed young men travelling by the dockside. A light galley, a fifty with the hightower banner over it, sat moored next to a quay, a pair of halberdiers guarding the gangplank. "Fetched you back the fellows you wanted." Leo called to them.

    *

    If his legs had been tired earlier, they were killing him now as they climbed up the Hightowers spiral staircase. Lord Leyton Hightower had never left the Hightower-Stranger take whoever called their family that-in twelve years. At least his back was lighter, having left his weapons and armour with the guards at the base of the tower.

    "These are his chambers." The guard ahead of them said, coming to a halt. He knocked twice sharply on the door, and someone pulled it open from the inside.

    It suddenly hit Alleras that they might very well be the first people outside the Hightower's household to have met Lord Leyton in quite some time.

    Alleras stepped in through the doorway. An aging man sat behind the desk, his skin pale and his hair silver. He had been handsome, once, though now his best years were behind him. A woman who had to be nearing forty was perched on the desk beside him. She wore her hair loose, a chaotic tangle down to her hips. "I am Lord Leyton Hightower, and this is Lady Mallora Hightower. I believe you to be Leo Tyrell, Alleras and Samwell Tarly?"

    "You were the apprentices of Archmaester Marwyn, before he vanished." Leyton began. It was not a statement, but a question. "I knew him well, long ago. How much of magic did he teach you?"

    Alleras glanced at the other two. Samwell had arrived at Hightower to train as the Watch's new Maester barely a day before Marwyn had left. Leo Tyrell had been more interested in party tricks than understanding the deeper mysteries.

    Alleras had lit the glass candles, more than once.

    "Depends on what you mean by magic."

    The woman slipped down from the desk. "There is a reason my father has become a recluse. It is because the Oldtower is proof against the insight of glass candles and other means of scrying. That is… valuable, considering the nature of our enemies these days. But neither can a glass candle be used outwards from within the tower."

    Alleras swallowed. He could guess where this was going.

    "Euron would ordinarily have no chance against Oldtown with all the strength of the reach behind it, but he is a sorcerer, of considerable power." The woman said. "He has whole ships full of Redwyne men taken prisoner at the Shield Islands. And magic is fueled by blood."

    "Fire fueled by blood, or blood spilt by fire." Alleras said, reciting the mnemonic. "And I've never known ships to be hard to burn, or a sea battle to be bloodless."

    Mallora smiled. "Precisely. And that is why we seek whatever of Marwyn's knowledge he passed on to you to stop this."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Genna I
  • Threadmarks
    • There were few things in this world she hated quite so much as a sea crossing, and this one was worst than most. A quick trip around the Westerosi coast-say, from Seagard to Lannisport on a cog-was one thing, a crossing from Myr to Volantis on a war galley, snaking through the Stepstones, was quite another. She swore she'd lost weight simply by vomiting up half of what she ate, Tommen had spent of the trip crying, and there had been two battles against pirates, though at least those had been swift and fairly bloodless for the Myrish Eighties and the Two-Hundred she was was on. Her head was pounding from the lack of good air below deck, while the sun up top left her skin cracked even as a cold sea breeze had her break out in goosebumps. The last time she'd been solid land had been over a week ago, when they'd pulled up on a Lysene beach to take on water and get new oarsmen to replace the ones who'd been killed in an outbreak of the bloody flux aboard one of the eighties.

    At last, then, when the Captain had told her that morning they were coming up to Volantis and would be within sight of it by nightfall, it had seemed the sweetest thing she had ever heard.

    "Sails ahoy! To the north!" A lookout called, up from the masts. That was nothing unusual. There were plenty of ships around Volantis, more of them fleeing the slave revolt there than coming towards it.

    She leaned into the rails, trying to keep her stomach down.

    "Sir, they look like war galleys. They came out of a cove on the coast. Their course will cross ours sooner rather than later."

    She peered at the horizon, trying to see them against the sun increasingly low on the horizon. Sure enough, they were there; little brown smudges with red and blue sails above them, slinking out of the haze of Volantis's orange shore.

    "Keep an eye on them. You, you, get the oarsmen fresh water." The ship's captain called.

    Her eyes narrowed as they came closer and closer, and she noticed that the deck-crew were clearing away what detritus they could. The wake swung in an arc behind the galleys; they were turning, she realized, pointing straight at the attackers.

    "Why are we coming at them? Shouldn't we evade them?"

    The captain grunted, pausing as his cabin boy helped him buckle on a brigandine. "If they're peaceful, they'll stay on their course and let us go behind them. If they're hostile, we'll either get behind them or force them to turn and show their hand. Now, I would get below decks, mistress."

    "I'll do that when we're within bowshot. I'll be jumping at every footstep on the deck or yell without that."

    The captain shrugged with a rustle of steel. "You do that, if you want. Just stay out of the way of my men."

    Sure enough, the seven galleys swung around to face them. They were low, sleek vessels, packed with boarders from what she could see. They flew no flag. The drumbeats that directed the rowers, well fed and watered but whipped, exhausted and sitting in their own filth, reverberated up through the decks of the warship. Horns blew, signals of some sort though she did not know what they meant.

    Then the oars stopped thrashing. The captain stomped to the front of the ship, a tin horn in hand. Asyrio moved to usher her below decks. She glared at the bravo. "If we are being betrayed, I want it to be a betrayal I see."

    The galleys were close, what had to be a bowshot, oars thrashing. Marines were massing out of sight below decks and inside the forecastle, half with crossbows and the other half with the vicious array of bills, halberds and partizans the Myrish heavy infantry favoured.

    "It is good to see you, fellow children of Valyria. We mistook you for pirates, until you came closer. We were sailing to the aid of Volantis, but alas we need aid ourselves." His voice was hollow, distorted. It must be nearly untillegible over the ocean. My captain, the sailing master and half a dozen others of my crew are infected with greyscale. If you have a maegi, healer, master or other such who could excise the scales before it is too late, Myr would have your eternal gratitude."

    She nearly had to laugh at the boldness, but then she saw that the lead galley began to pick up speed. White water churned ahead of its snout. It was coming in to ram.

    "Prepare to repel boarders! Engines, loose!"

    She heard the thrum of springalds and scorpions, hurling yard long darts at the galley, and then the thunder of footsteps as men rushed up onto the fighting gangway down the middle of the deck and the forecastle. Arrows flew from the galley, coming down amongst their crew. Men screamed, thrashed, struggled with their chains.

    A wedge of white water slipped away from the heavy bronze ram of the pirate galley…

    And the Myrish galley that surged forwards and smashed into its side. The pirate galley lurched sideways, men going tumbling overboard. There were flashes, jets of fire, a noise like too-wet wood thrown into the fire. More men screamed, and she saw flames flickering up into the rigging.

    Petyr's gunpowder.

    "Best get under deck right bloody now" Asyrio said, grabbing her and tugging her towards the ladderway. She clambered down, an arrow whirring through the air where she had been only a moment before.

    The oarsmaster was hammering out a time, two hundred oarsmen stuffed into the confined space straining to row. She scrambled past him to the Captain's cabin, turned over for her use.

    "What is going on?" Tommen asked.

    "Pirates." Genna said. "don't worry. We've already rammed one and set it on fire. The others should be soon to follow."

    She sat down on the bed, and pulled him up into her lap.

    Myrcella scooted across and squeezed her hands.

    The hull of the ship at once hid everything from view and turned the smallest sound into a cacophony. Drums beat constantly, feet pounded back and forth across the deck, the very timbers vibrated as springalds loosed, and at one point the ship lurched so hard, nearly throwing Tommen out of her arms, that she realized that they had either rammed or been rammed.

    Asyrio stood against the cabin door the entire time, stony faced, watching the gangway. He held a crossbow ready, but she knew that the sword and dagger on his belt were what made him truly dangerous.

    By the time she was allowed back up on deck, it looked almost a different ship. The shields ringing the hull had been snatched up by sailors, the sails were torn in half a hundred places, and there was sand and blood smeared across the deck. The captain was bellowing orders as his ships surgeon moved from casualty to casualty. She saw men pierced through with arrows, faces that seemed to have been sliced off, a man with both hands severed. They were lifting more casualties up over the side of the ship, and it took her a moment to realize that they lay alongside one of the pirate galleys.

    "Keep the children in their cabin." She ordered, turning to Asyrio.

    "We burnt and holed one of them, took two more and sent the rest running." A marine said. He seemed to be smiling unnervingly, though his eyes were unfocused. She noticed that his dagger sheath was empty, and the velvet cover of his brigandine had been slashed open, leaving the steel plates beneath uncovered.

    "The Orange Cape is in sight!" another man called out. The captain grunted. "We won't make it to Volantis before nightfall, and we need to deal with the casualties and make repairs sooner rather than later. Draw us up on the beach."

    *

    There was another attack that night by the pirates, trying to rush in by stealth on land, but they'd been spotted drawing up in a nearby cove just before nightfall by one of the escorts. Their attack had fallen under a hail of crossbow bolts and grenadoes shot from the stern, each of the galleys acting as a miniature castle, with those few that tried to clamber up onto the hull thrust down by wickedly hooked bills and broad bladed partizans. Even with many of the marines off acting as prize crews on their newly captured galleys, the attackers had little chance.

    Compared to the two dozen wounded and dozen dead they'd taken in the sea-fight, the injuries-one man with an arrow in the shoulder, and the captain getting the fright of his life when a javelin stuck in his brigandine but failed to pentrate deeper-it would be comically lopsided if not for the bodies, some smothered by the rising tide, that littered the beach. Blood trails showed were the wounded had been dragged or crawled off. "Bloody persistent, for a bunch of pirates." The captain muttered, as his men sifted through the bodies for good steel.

    "Could be Volantine rebels. They certainly fought like you'd expect slaves to. Brave, stupid and didn't know when to quit. And none of their oarsmen were chained." A marine said.

    "I heard someone yelling during the boarding action. He said whoever seized the Westerosi woman first would get twice his share of the bounty." A third man said, trying and mostly failing to extricate a body from his scale cuirass.

    Genna snapped around to face him. She awkwardly lowered herself over the galley side, slowly and haltingly clambering down.

    "Did you say they were looking for a Westerosi woman?"

    Her skirts were hiked up, but the surf was sloshing over her shoes and hose.

    The man turned to face her. "Yeah. Wouldn't be surprised. Sunset landers go for a lot at the slave markets."

    "I'm too old to make much of a bed slave or labourer." Genna said. "They must have known we were coming."

    Why else would Aegon agree to something like this? Why else would there be a whole squadron of pirates looking for me?

    "It's a trap." Genna said. "That letter was bait by someone who wanted me dead, and I won't be any safer in Volantis. We have to turn back."

    The captain shrugged. "There's a bounty out on you from the Westerosi, you know. Someone must have heard of us and tried to claim it."

    "Only a thousand dragons. Too small to be worth the effort. And if they know about it, how many in Volantis proper will know?"

    "That's what my men are for. We beat off this lot of pirates, we can beat off the next lot."

    "Aegon won't even be in Volantis! We should head past, for slavers bay-"

    "Look, lady. He'll be there sooner rather than later, and the slaves will want to protect their liberator. And Lord Baelish said he'd meet you in Volantis."

    She balled her fists, counted to three, sighed. There was little enough she could do. "Fine, but I want a guard at all times ashore."

    "Of course." The captain said. "You shall have the best men of all five galleys around you, that I promise."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt-Lancel I
  • Threadmarks
    • Lancel glanced up at the stairway, leading out of the cavern.

    He wasn't going up there until he knew what was going on.

    "Your master? Is he undead like you? Tell me-"

    "Go up and see." The man in black said.

    "Stop lying to me. Tell me." Lancel hissed. He stalked forwards, his grip tightening on his dragonglass knife and torch.

    "The last greenseer."

    He vaguely remembered tales of them from his Septon, old pagan sorcerors who cut out hearts before Weirwood trees and possessed wolves to tear apart their enemies. First wildlings, then wights and Others, and now bloody warlocks?

    By the time he got back to the Wall, he wouldn't be entirely surprised if he had been saved from grumpkins by snarks.

    "Why does he want me?"

    "He doesn't want you in particular. He wants a watchman. Any man who can report back to the wall with what he has to tell you. It cannot be me. The same magic that stops the Wights also stops their enemies. Now, will you go forth and do your duty?"

    Lancel gritted his teeth. "Aye."

    He had no choice. He hadn't had many of those, as of late, besides the most important one.

    He climbed up the stairway, keeping his torch ahead of him. He had two more with him in his pack, all that himself and the man in black had between them.

    The stone down here was dry and dusty. Roots, milky white and pale, slithered over the rock.

    He reached the top of the staircase, paused for a moment. The Man in Black stood silent, waiting.

    He tore himself away and pressed on. The top of the stairway was a tunnel mouth, low enough that he had to stoop to get through it. The tunnel was low and dripping wet, with more of those pictograms on the walls. The outlines of hands in some kind of red paint. They had only two fingers and a thumb. The Children of the Forest. Witches and poisoners. They carried off children in the night and sacrificed them before heart trees, with their backwards feet disguising their direction of travel.

    There were more of those spirals, too. At least there were no more no of the rocky icicles, or of the bone dams. The whole tunnel seemed to be a spiral, looping up through the earth.

    He hoped wherever this master was, he was above ground. He'd had enough of caves.

    He came out of the tunnel, into what had to be an open chamber. It was big enough that the light of his torch didn't touch the walls. He began to feel his way forwards, eyes on the ground. He hadn't come this far to break his ankle and die in the dark. Something loomed out of the darkness up ahead, thick and white and almost shining. A weirwood root, he realized, plunging down through the earth and vanishing up into the gloom above. Combined with the roots below…

    There's a godswood up above. A big one. A very big one.

    Off in the darkness, he heard rocks clatter.

    He reacted instantly, passing his torch to his left hand and drawing his falchion with his right. He put his back to the root; sweeping the torch back and forth.

    "I know you're out there! If you want a fight, come and get it!" Lancel shouted.

    More scuttling. Hushed voices in a language he did not recognize.

    "And if you want to talk, I am a man of the Night's Watch!" he added.

    There was more of the hushed speech, then a figure emerged from the inky blackness.

    It was short and lightly built, with eyes that shone gold and brown skin dappled like a deer. It's hair was multi-coloured, all the colours of fall, with a spear tipped with dragonglass gripped in it's three-fingered hands.

    "You were sent by the dead ranger?" it asked. It's voice was female-he supposed the creature was a she, then-and hesitant, oddly accented.

    "The man in black? What animal did he ride?" Lancel asked.

    "An elk." She said. They know him. He glanced at the spears of those hanging back in the dark, decided not to sheath his falchion just yet. He did lower it.

    "The man in black sent me to find someone here. Someone who he said needed to see a man of the Night's Watch."

    "The Three-Eyed Crow." She said. "Yes. He said he had sent his agents to bring him a man of the Night's Watch."

    She stepped back into the darkness. "I will take you to see him."

    Lancel had expected to find The Three-Eyed Crow as some wildling sorcerer king, or a witch of the Children of the Forest.

    He was neither. He was old, half dead, pale, with roots growing through his body, and whispy lank hair all down his neck.

    "Are you…"

    "The Three-Eyed Crow. The last greenseer." The man said. "Or near enough."

    "You sent your man to fetch me. The dead ranger."

    "He is a… loyal servant." The three-eyed crow croaked. "Not all who use the Other's magics serve their goals."

    "You're a wizard."

    "A greenseer. One who bears the burden of saving this cursed world."

    "You want me to help you fight the Others, is that why you sent me?"

    "No. Nothing we have can defeat them. They cannot be routed, for wights are heedless of death and will fight to the end. They cannot be outmaneuvered, for they can march day and night through the depths of winter. They cannot be beaten by attrition, since every one of your men that falls, and every peasant slaughtered in their hovels, is another soldier for the enemy. This is not a problem that swords and arrows or even those newfangled powder-tubes can deal with. Not directly."

    "We'll beat them if they come straight at the wall. You should have just sent your man up to Castle Black, if you wanted to warn us of that. We already know we can't beat them in a pitched battle, that's what the Wall's for!" Lancel said.

    "We cannot defeat them in battle, even with fire and dragonglass. That does not mean that we cannot stop them." The Three-Eyed Crow said. "They slaughtered an entire army of Wildlings right before they would escape through the wall, have routed the Night's Watch in force twice now, but never once have they actually tried to assault the wall. Have you ever wondered why that is?"

    "Because one man on top of a wall is worth ten men at the bottom, and one man on top of the wall is worth a thousand below." Lancel said, pride in his voice. When he'd fought atop that thing, the wildlings hadn't a chance. All three times he'd fought on the ground, he'd nearly died.

    There was a pressure building in his head, not in his forehead like with a migraine, but at the very back, in the deepest, darkest parts of his mind. He heard a voice in there, talking worldlessly.

    He screamed as the man forced his mind into his.

    Get out.

    No. There is not enough time     he thought, but it was not Lancel thinking, it was the man in the tree, The three-eyed Crow. My knowledge of the future is clouded. One of my apprentices has gone rogue, the other is beyond my reach. The unstable equilibrium between fire and ice has finally become fully undone. The Others march again. We are one horn blow away from annihilation. You must bring word south to the Watch of the calamity that approaches.

    "What the fuck are you on about?" Lancel shouted. "We already know the bloody Others are coming, we've got the wall fully garrisoned, we know how to fight them-"

    That only matters if there is still a Wall. The mightiest fortress cannot stand if betrayed from within. When it was first built, Bran the Builder in his wisdom put in certain… flaws into it. Ways to bring down the wall and undo it's magic, in case it was used against humanity. No undead being can pass through without invitation, by the force of the same magic that holds the wall up. He made a horn, that if blown south of the wall would both bring down the wall as a physical defence, and invite the Others through as a magical one. He hid it north of the wall, disguised in the plainest guise he could make, near the fist of the first men.

    And now some fool has dug it up and sent it south, where my other problem lies. Euron Greyjoy.

    Get out of my head.

    No.

    "Get the fuck out of my head!" Lancel screamed at himself again. "Why couldn't you just explain this normally-"

    Because then I couldn't show you this.

    His vision swam, and then he was dragged north, beyond the wall, far beyond it, the farthest north any being could go, into the heart of winter. It was cold, so cold he could scarcely feel his limbs. Souls screamed and wailed, impaled on lances of ice, and he felt pure, unrestrained malice, radiating out of a fortress of glassy white. He could feel it, the cold, the hatred, the snowflakes fluttering past impossibly slowly, as if caught in molasses.

    There are two great forces in this world, both inimical to mankind unless they are kept in check. One would destroy all life by sapping it of all energy, all independent will and keeping it only as dead slaves. The other would annihilate the world, burn it all for a single, solitary rush of power. Once, the entire world threatened to freeze, and the servants of the Heart of Winter tried to wipe out men and the children alike. They were stopped, their own fortification seized from them and enchanted against them.

    Then he was in another time, another place.

    The Wall, the one with a capital W, rose before him. It was made of blocks of ice, stacked and melted together, not yet the single featureless wall of ice it was to become. Men gathered on the top, and creatures he now recognized as Children of the forest. As he came closer, he saw what they surrounded. An Other, screaming in fury, bound by ropes above a bonfire.

    "With frozen fire, I do declare, that no being given unnatural life shall ever shall without invitation pass by this wall…"

    An obsidian dagger was plunged into the Others heart by a Child of the Forest. It screamed as it died, melting, merging down into the wall, chanting surrounding it.

    *

    He was in battle, then, fighting shoulder to shoulder with wildlings, arrows and slingstones and vaned war-darts flicking over his head, armour of bronze and bone rattling. The wildlings were swarming up earthen embankments built in the shadow of the north side of the earth, grappling with the defenders. They were men in black, with spears tipped in bronze and swords of wood and obsidian, hewing down their opponents with terrible blows.

    The Night's Watch, before the Andals, before the Seven… he realized. The wildlings were pushing on, but they were flagging, giving ground, those pockets who'd forced their way up onto the ramparts being steadily driven off or cut down.

    He almost smiled as he watched, remembering the terror and chaos of the battles beneath the wall, how much easier it might been if they had proper fortifications beneath the wall.

    One of the watchmen was knocked to the ground by a blow of a stone-tipped mace, and Lancel saw his eyes shining blue. Not the blue of a human, but the blue of a dead man, of an Other.

    His jaw had been smashed loose, sent flying, but there was no blood, and the wight-it had to be a wight-was up and fighting again within moments, stabbing away with a dagger of copper at the nearest wildling. Horn blasts blew, echoing back and forth across the ringfort, and even those fighting, or lurking behind their shieldwalls trading arrows, began to fall back away from the walls. As they did, he looked closer at their shields. Some of the wildlings had bloody jawed wolves, chained giants, rearing white horses upon their shields. They seemed better drilled than the rest of the wildlings, their spearmen rushing back under a shower of arrows from their archers.

    Then a Giant stepped forth, tall and shaggy and covered in cured mammoth hides, and raised a horn to his lips. It was not the great horn of Joramun that Mance's giant had borne before he died, but instead it was small and simple, almost comically small in the giant's hands.

    The horn blew, and the world was silent. The ground shook in an earthquake, what his smallfolk nanny had said was giants kicking at the foundations of the earth.

    And the wall… the wall was shaking too, shedding snow that rained down like a hunting dog shaking itself off. Then he saw the debris coming, fist sized chunks of ice rushing down at first, then larger and larger until it was raining hail the size of boulders. They were plunging down on the half ring fort, smashing in the roofs of longhouses, turning the watchmen into bloody pulp, kicking up a haze of snow and dust. Then came the splinters, whole solid chunks of it from top to bottom peeling away and crashing down, flattening everything for a hundred yards or more.

    Mance Rayder's threat to bring down the wall. He wasn't bluffing. The wildlings have done it before.

    The wildlings cheered, even as the wave of pulverized snow and dust washed over them.

    *

    There was a bite out of the wall, a vast pile of slowly melting ice that formed almost a sort of ramp.

    He watched as a wildling leader of some sort, a wiry, bearded man in scale armour of horn and copper, clambered up the slippery ruins, the giant who had blown the horn coming after him.

    Atop the rubble, their other leader stood waiting. His armour was a bronze breastplate and helm, while his shield, nearly as tall as he was, had a wolf with bloodied jaws painted upon it.

    "Joramun" the man with a wolf upon his shield said.

    "Brandon Stark." The wildling answered. They stood in the wall, in the middle of the mound of melting rubble that had formed in the hole in the wall. Joramun had the giant who had blown the horn behind him, and Brandon half a dozen warriors, every one of them with copper scale armour and bronze tipped spears.

    "I hope your men weren't being mauled as badly as I was." The man called Joramun said.

    Brandon laughed darkly. "Worse, I fear. You did well. Saved me from being a kinslayer as well. Not that I'd shed a tear if I had to kill that cunt. Who the fuck sells out their own brother for the bloody bastards who tried to kill us all?"

    "The wall killed him, not I." Joramun answered. "The Seers were right. There would come a day when bringing down the wall would be necessary."

    "The horn is too bloody dangerous. It has served it's purpose-" Brandon began, but he was cut off with a laugh by Joramun.

    "No. I think not. It is safest beyond the wall. If it was in the south, any new Night's King could blow it. You saw what it did here, when the giants beneath the earth awoke. In the true north, the white walkers have only themselves for allies, and they can hardly bring it south on their own. So I think I shall keep it."

    "Or destroy it?" Brandon said. "That would be safest-"

    Joramun shook his head. "If another man like the Night's King tries to use the wall against us, we would regret that." He turned back down the icy rubble, his giant with the horn dangling around his neck turning to follow him.

    Brandon shook his head, and turned back to his army on his own side of the wall. He glanced at one of his men. "Tell Fern to see if her witches can regrow the wall as well as fix the wards. The last thing we want is the Others taking advantage of this bloody mess."

    *

    Then he was in a forest, watching soldiers-women as well as men-make camp, a man with a thick golden moustache he vaguely recognized barking orders. They had muskets, and strange-looking leather and plate armour. The Horse Grenadiers he realized with a start. The ones who started all of this.

    Evening turned into morning, the autumn pines into summer evergreens, and the shouting began. The soldiers were up, a woman who had to be Tane Bayder barking orders-armour on, get a headcount, push out pickets, try and link up with the rest of their column.

    Soon enough, the pickets came back in, reporting spotting what looked like a hunting party coming up the kingsroad. Strangely dressed, not Commonwealth or any other nation the scout recognized.

    Orders were given to assemble a small party to meet up with them, with the rest of the company hanging back with orders to stay out of sight and avoid shots.

    I had plans, before that. The Three Eyed Crow said. The pieces were lined up. Brandon Stark would go north, become my apprentice. Euron would be stopped like the last Night's King. The agents of fire and ice would destroy each other.

    Then they were all thrown into ruin. Too many pieces in the game.

    The prophecies are undone. I cannot see the future, only the past and the present and possibilities that will never be. There is now no fate but what we make.

    "So what do you actually want me to do? And what the hell does some Ironborn warlord have to do with all of this?" Lancel asked.

    Euron was my apprentice. The next three-eyed crow. He was already cruel and heartless when I took him on, and he went mad with power. He is a tyrant now, who seeks to aid the Others to come south of the wall.

    "So how do I defeat him?"

    It is simple. You must warn the Watch of the Horn of Joramun and the threat of Euron. And they must warn the king, take the Horn north of the wall, and safely bury it once again.

    "Where is the Horn of Joramun now?"

    Up until recently, it was safe beyond the wall, but a ranger took it south, to Oldtown. His name is Samwell Tarly.

    "And where is Euron Greyjoy?"

    Besieging Oldtown.

    Well. Fuck.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt: Tane II
  • Threadmarks
    • Another day, another bloody small council meeting. They'd stuffed the lot of them into the hall. She'd been crammed in at the base of the table, next to Lord Randyll Tarly, Master of War. Davos had one seat next to Stannis's empty throne, Alester Florent, newly minted Hand of the King and inordinately pleased about in, the other.

    Her fingers tapped on the desk as she waited. Guncer and Alester were talking about something or other, of little import-the cost of mail shirts, as far as she could tell.

    Stannis entered, Selyse, Melisandre and a couple of Kingsguard knights with bags under their eyes following him. He sat down, cleared his throat and paused for a moment.

    Then he began. No time wasted on smalltalk or greetings, just straight to business. "In light of the assassination attempts on my brother and my heir, it would seem necessary to retaliate against the Lannisters and the Myrish who have sheltered them."

    She'd known this was coming. She would have suggested it carried out herself, sooner or later, if not for, well…

    Two years ago, now, and Stannis never listened then.

    "Demanding that the Myrish turn them over or face consequences would seem the best way." Alester said.

    "That is possible, but directly threatening them could drag us into another war. This must be done in an altogether subtler manner." Guncer Sunglass said.

    "And what would that be?" Stannis asked.

    He shrugged. "Triple the bounty for their heads. And stop taking imports and exports from Myr and her allies until they turn them over, dead or alive. That would put the screws on them."

    "Alive would be preferable." Tane said.

    "And why is that so?" Lord Florent asked mildly.

    "Firstly, as hostages for the cooperation of the Westerlands. We cannot afford a rising in the west at the same time as an invasion in the east. Secondly, so that if we look set to lose against the dragons, we can turn them loose to cause trouble as rival claimants while we rally."

    It was an absurd, desperate claim, potentially condemning Westeros to another war to save a couple of children in the unlikely event that it worked, but she had to try. She'd made Eddard swear to protect the children and Cersei if she'd fought for them. It hadn't worked for Cersei. She would have to try and honour her promise for the children.

    "Tane is right." Davos said. "They should be taken alive, if at all possible."

    "Petyr Baelish must die, however. He is a traitor to the realm and as long as he knows the gunpowder formula, he is a menace to all of us." Tane said. That was not a desperate, absurd claim. She'd quite happily pull the trapdoor lever on Petyr herself.

    "They are one more threat to the rightful dynasty." Stannis answered. "You say they could be turned loose as revenge on the Targaryens. That requires us to first lose. I have no intention of doing that. Triple the bounty on Baelish, Myrcella and Tommen. Dead or alive, preferably alive. I would like them to face the King's Justice. Lords Guncer and Florent, you shall write missives to Myr demanding they be turned over or face sanctions. Offer the Myrish an alliance against Aegon if they cooperate. You are all dismissed." Stannis said.

    She was in close pursuit of him as he left.

    "You agreed that the children would be spared if I fought for you at the trial by combat. I extracted Cersei's confession in part by telling her I'd protect her children-"

    "That was Eddard, not me." Stannis snapped. "And Cersei's confession was and is irrelevant. She was already condemned."

    "You were king, you were present, you raised no objection." Tane said. "Surely a promise before a court of law in front of half the realm is binding?"

    "I was not judge." Stannis said. "Besides, any mercy I may have shown them is forfeit once they fled my protection and now send assassins against my house."

    Tane gritted her teeth. This was pointless.

    "Petyr sent the assassins, the children are innocents-"

    "Innocent abominations whose very existence is a threat to my family and an affront to the laws of gods and men?" Stannis said. He rounded on her. "Unlike you, I have children of my body and a realm of my own to protect. I have already sacrificed enough of Shireen's future."

    "I do not have one iota of maternal instinct towards those children." Tane said. "As far as I'm concerned, this is a matter of honour and of state."

    "And at this point, the needs of state outweigh the needs of honour." Stannis said. "There is much to be said for honour, but more to be said for doing what needs be done. And what needs to be done is lancing this boil before it festers further."

    *

    "Someone broke into my manse." Taena explained, as she finished her glass of wine from were she sat across from Tane.

    "Thieves, or something else?" Tane said. She felt a flicker of protectiveness, concern, then her mind shifted as it always did to identifying and eliminating the threat.

    "I do not know. I have a strongbox, containing my jewelry chained to my bed. I leave an envelope on top on it. If the envelope has moved, I know that there is tampering afoot. It was lying on the opposite side of the bed."

    "Get your locks doubled. And your windows barred." Tane said. "Inventory clothes, plate and jewelry. And get some arms about the house. A crossbow in the closet and some short pole-axes behind the door never did anyone any harm. Besides housebreakers."

    "Of course." Taena purred. "It is only… after the riots, well, I envy you. You have walls about you, and soldiers. I have neither. If the mob where to conceive a hatred of Myrishwoman rather than Rhllorites…"

    "I'd break them. As simple as that. Mobs never had much taste for standing against cavalry."

    "I am glad to know that King's Landing has such a… protector" Taena purred, running what had to be her bare foot up the inside of Tane's calf. Tane pushed her foot away.

    "Something is bothering you, isn't it?"

    "Not now. I've got business to attend. Another small council meeting in a few hours, then I have another round of drilling with my men."

    Taena tut tutted, leaned forwards. "That not's it. You're angry. I can tell. What is it?"

    "He's going to kill them." Tane blurted out. That was a terrible fucking idea-

    Taena's our main source on Myr. She'd find out from Davos if not from me.

    "I promised Cersei to get her confession, Eddard promised before the entire court, that those children wouldn't bloody die, and now Stannis is going to do it anyway."

    Her fists balled. Taena shrugged, sat up on the bed. "It is of no matter. I received word yesterday, from my contact in Myr. They have already fled, with Myrish galleys bound for Volantis."

    She breathed a sigh of relief, some of the tension going out of her muscles. "Davos wouldn't have carried out the orders with much enthusiasm, and Stannis doesn't have much else in the way of cloak-and-dagger men."

    "They had to have known Stannis would retaliate." Taena said.

    "But to Volantis? That is risen in revolt in support of Aegon."

    "The slaves are risen in revolt in support of freedom." Taena said. "They will support anyone that can help them keep that freedom. Mayhaps they think if they can rally them quickly enough, they can bring them here. Or perhaps Aegon or Daenerys wishes to marry one of them. The old Targaryens practiced polygamy. Many Essosi houses still do."

    A marriage alliance made little sense to Tane, besides perhaps trying to tie potential threats to the Targaryens into their cause. If they planned on conquering Westeros, it would make even less sense. The Faith of the Seven had a lower opinion of polygamy than they did of incest, as far as she could tell.

    "Now, Stannis wishing for the death of children… there are those that would say that makes him as bad as Tywin. Or Aerys."

    "Aye. Stannis has wished for it. He hasn't actually done it, yet."

    "Except for Joffrey."

    Another failure.

    She'd asked for mercy for him too, and been denied. Stannis had never listened.

    He likely never would.

    "Joffrey was cruel and a defeated rebel. He needed to be dealt with. Beheading is not how I would have done it. This is different. Those children are too young to have had a hand in the assassinations." Tane said.

    "Who is your source, anyway?" Tane continued.

    Taena smiled. "I protect my sources as you protect yours."

    "It's not a spy. At least whoever's bringing you information. You don't have the money to fund that large a network. You have new information every It has to be merchants hired to relay information to Westeros, working from someone with a spy network based in Myr." Tane said. "Your father? You said he was a magister."

    "Just so." Taena said. "He wishes for greater Myrish ties with Westeros."

    That was easier than expected.

    "And are you loyal to him?"

    Taena shrugged. "Perhaps. He wants what is best for Myr, by working with Westeros. I want what is best for myself, my son and Westeros. If that means working with a slaver who just so happens to be my father, so be it."

    She smiled, her white teeth and dark eyes sparkling.

    "And who are you loyal to? Stannis? I doubt that."

    "The Company." Tane said, without hesitation. "The Commonwealth, if I thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of getting home. The people of Westeros, if only because if I die without trying to defend this realm I suspect I'll have explaining to do at judgement. And Stannis. He is the worst of kings, except for all the others."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Smoke & Salt: Alleras II
  • Threadmarks
    • The galliot in Hightower colours that slid between the piers on the isle of ravens had to be the grandest vessel the isle of ravens had seen in years, not that that was saying much. Sailors scrambled overboard, laying out a ramp and setting up an escort of half a dozen men, armed to the teeth with halberds, brigandines and kettle hats. A woman clambered down the ramp, her loose gown fluttering in the autumn breeze and her chaotic brown hair hurriedly tied back behind her head.

    Mallora Hightower. He gave her his best impression of a commoner's bow. Being the son or daughter or whatever the hell he was of a nondescript dornishman who was not at all Oberyn Martell, he hadn't much practice at imitating the smallfolk until a few years ago. It normally got pegged up to him being a foreigner, though those who knew other Summer Islanders reckoned he was far more Westerosi in his mannerisms.

    Leo Tyrell was down to the pier faster, though he had to be careful to avoid slipping on rocks. The whole place was musty and overgrown, long abandoned by everyone but ravens and mad Maesters.

    "I have seen that everything is in place just as Lord Hightower wanted it, my lady. Our glass candles are ready to be lit."

    Alleras's eyes nearly rolled out of his head. Leo Tyrell had contributed to very little, and of course he was the picture of courtesy when dealing with highborn Andal women. He was a picture of contempt when dealing with smallfolk and foreigners.

    "Why not use the citadel's candles? They have many."

    "I wanted to, but Leyton has his reasons. He distrusts the Maesters. Fortunately, so did Marywn if I am not mistaken."

    "He did. I have my doubts. They are certainly quick to dismiss any sign of magic, and a rogue master poisoning the dragons seems possible, but I do not think the Maesters are united enough for any sort of conspiracy. Put ten of them in a room and you'll end up with twelve positions arguing with each other." Alleras said.

    The woman laughed. "Of course. Where you do you keep your candle?"

    "Marwyn's candle. He left it in my keeping, since he feared it could be used to track him on his journey. I buried it."

    "Why?"

    "Anyone trying to find it by looking through it wouldn't find much but dirt." Alleras said, grinning. He was rather pleased with himself for that. "Don't worry, I dug it up yesterday. No-one noticed. It's only us, Maester Walgrave-and he has lost his wits-and his assistants here."

    "Excellent." Mallora said. She whistled to her guards. "Escort me up to the tower."

    Alleras led the way, up the south tower that had once been Maester Marywn's quarters.

    He had been course, ugly, not good with words, but at the end of the day, he'd been convinced that what he had planned was necessary to save the world. Magic was returning, and with it horrors from the past. The Maesters had forgotten their mission to help shield against those atrocities against nature, he said, instead focusing only on making sure they were forgotten, and now it was it left to him and his acolytes to fight magic with magic. That was what he had left to do, to try and convince Daenerys to turn north against the Others. If all went to plan, fire and ice would annihilate each other.

    He'd set up Marwyn's glass candle in the basement of the south tower, and cleaned it up as best he could, then lit it. He still had a shallow cut on his hand from that. The bloody thing was covered with sharp edges, and besides, igniting it needed blood. Not much, but enough.

    Once lit, a glass candle would burn forever if not deliberately snuffed out. It was doing that as Alleras entered the basement. It's light was unnatural, distorted, leaving the colours too bright and the shadows pitch black. His own dark skin looked sickly green, the green of his brigandine yellow.

    "What information do you need?"

    "How close reinforcements are. What Euron is planning on doing to those cogs. And knowing how the rest of the Reach is holding out would be nice." Malora said.

    Alleras nodded, and stared deep into the flames.

    *

    He was flying, across lands freckled with sheep and furred with wheat. Troops snaked by below him, all mounted: knight, squires, unknighted lancers, mounted archers, what had to be thousands of them. They had wagons with them, and a thousand colours: Morrigen and Caron, Estermont and Swann, and at the front of them in yellow and black a stag with roses in it's antlers.

    His heart almost leapt with joy. They're coming west, heavy horse, they'll punch straight through the siege lines and reinforce the city….

    And his minds eye flew west, past castles and tower houses, villages and walled towns, to Highgarden. There were bloodstains on the grass, arrows stuck through the hoardings, a dozen longships pulled up on the beach. The outer layers of gardens had been razed, to deny the attackers food and cover. For a terrible moment, he feared they had fallen, but then he saw the banners, all Tyrell, and the corpses being heaved into pits by peasants as men with green and gold on their shields and livery coats stood watch.

    Then his view spiraled further out, out to sea past longships and galleys with wounded men stretched out on their decks at the mouths of the Mander and waves reaching out into the sunset, past Ironborn banners flying over the shield island holdfasts. He was flying down the coast, looping back in to what he truly wanted to see.

    The whispering sound was choked with Ironborn like a pond overgrown with weeds. There were galleys and galleasses, cogs and carracks, longships and galliotts. At the center of it all was a colossal four-hundred oared galley with a mast of weirwood, the Lady Olenna. Around her were the cogs. Alleras willed himself to peer in closer. He moved like he was in a dream; slow, clumsy, at once weightless and heavy as lead, but his mind did what it willed.

    He flew at the cogs, accelerating into a dive, passing through a wooden grate. Ironborn soldiers studded the deck, men in mail coats with spears over their shoulders and axes on their belts. Below, it was a different story. There were hundreds more down there. They were in rags, squatting amidst their own squalor, living in gloom. And thrown down, in bales….

    Dried straw. Barrels of what looked like pitch. Incendiaries.

    Hightower was right, it was a sacrifice by fire…

    He lurched up, onto the deck.

    "How much longer do we do have to be stuck on this thing? Can't go below, the 'castles are crammed…."

    "A week. Euron said we have a week. All this for a fucking horn." Another Ironborn said.

    "A week until we pull out to sea, do you mean?" someone asked. "I grow bored with this siege. It was worth a try, but richer prey awaits. Dorne, perhaps, or even King's Landing."

    Alleras turned and saw a man in armour of gleaming scale, one eye patched and a faint smile on his face.

    The two men shot to attention instantly, standing bolt upright and trying not to turn their backs to the ironborn.

    "Though if you want to confuse the Oldtown men as to our intentions and keep them in terror, I will not complain." Euron-it could only be him-said.

    "We're on a ship, it doesn't matter."

    "You never know who is listening." Euron said with a laugh as he stepped lithely past them and grabbed Alleras by the throat.

    He slammed him down through the decking, driving him through wood and iron fittings and human bodies as easily as if they were air.

    The world went blue, thick and heavy, light scintillating and shining from above, silhouetting a hundred dark ovals against the surface. Euron dragged him down, into the black, where krakens and millenia old sharks and leviathans with harpoons of bronze and flint embedded in their hides swam.

    Alleras moved on reflex, driving a palm into his nose, trying to transition into an eye-gouge, going for the loop-hilt dagger with his other hand, remembering how she'd had to pull it on some Dornishman who wouldn't take no for an answer in what seemed like another life. His grinning face, at once ancient and as smooth as a freshly-anointed knight's, just grinned as he slammed him down into the silt.

    "I was wondering who had the cunning to bury their candle."

    "What the hell are you-"

    "I would ask the same of you. A black dornishwoman pretending to be a man in Oldtown? That is something quite special."

    Alleras drove his thumb into Euron's other eye, solid black, cold and hard as glass.

    "Won't work." Euron said. "I am known to my enemies as a cruel man, but I am also known to my allies as a generous man. So I will make you a deal. There are certain objects in Oldtown I want. Objects of great value. A horn is amongst them."

    "What bloody horn?"

    "The Horn of Joramun. Humble in guise, mighty in power."

    "To do that, you'd have to get inside the city-"

    "Which I will. You can give me the horn. Or I will sack oldtown. I will butcher the soldiers, I will kill the Septons as I intend to kill their gods, I will make the peasants thralls. I will cut out the tongues of your lords and make them serve on the Silence. I will rape the women, you first of all. I will burn the city to the ground, and then I will salt the ashes. And that will be only the beginning."

    He shrugged, an easy smile on his face. His hair floated around his head, and bubbles came from his mouth as he spoke.

    "Or you give me the horn, and I will let the city surrender in peace. Either is an option."

    Just as he said it, Alleras was wrenched back out.

    Samwell stood over him, half his face sickly pale and the other pitch black in the candlelight.

    "What happened! You had a seizure and-"

    Alleras realized he was gasping, struggling for breath. "He saw me. He saw me in the glass candle."

    "Who?"

    "Euron. He's, he's… not just a pirate or a king. He's a sorcerer…"

    Alleras pulled himself up. "Get that thing back into the basement. He could be looking through it, back at us." A pair of soldiers scrambled to pull the glass candle away.

    He forced himself to take slow, careful breaths, to try and bring his hammering heart under control.

    "I got a good look at the ships. They're stuffed full of prisoners and incendiaries." He glanced at Mallora. "They're definitely a sacrifice. Some of his men said they were going to attack the city in a week. Euron said he wanted to pull out in a week, but I think he knew I was listening when he said that…"

    "I'll have to have Father tell the captains of the militia. They'll decide what to do. Them and Gunthor Hightower." Malora said.

    "And there was another thing. He wants a horn. The horn of Joramun. He threatened to destroy the entire city if he did not get it…"

    "Some northern horn from the age of heroes. If anyone has it, it would be the wildlings." Mallora said.

    "I did not think I would ever find a use for that horn of mine…." Samwell said.

    Alleras laughed nervously. "Not even the Ironborn could find a use for that thing."

    He hoped to ignore the fact that his hands were still shaking. That bloody eye...

    Samwell had a horn from north of the wall, battered and broken, and he'd taken it south. A memento of things Samwell would rather forget.

    "I'll inquire about any horns we have as artefacts at the Citadel." Alleras finally said.

    "So shall I." Mallora said. "My father has plenty of books of lore that were suppressed by the faith or maesters at some or another. They may explain what Euron wants and why."
     
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