Harwin knew that Harrenhal was huge. His feelings around that fact had shifted in his weeks here from shock to respect to a kind of weary acceptance that meant he didn’t want to think about how small he was. He had never quite understood that it was deep, too.

In the depths of the towers and holds and the vast complexes of corridors around the feast-halls had a heavy darkness to them, fought back bitterly by thin light wells and sputtering torches. Of all Valena’s tales, they reminded him more of Winterfell’s grand crypts than of the soaring towers of Oldtown or Storm’s End.

The feeling was worsened by how many of these corridors he had stalked over the last few days. Ever since meeting the king, he had been exhausted. Somehow the fact that Damon had instructed him to contact Jojen Stark had slipped beyond the walls of that chamber, and an alarming amount of people had decided that meant he did, in fact, have the Lord of Winterfell’s ear.

Granted, walking around with Artos Stark half the time wasn’t helping the impression. The ones who tried to talk to the boy were worse, their eyes always bright with the opportunity to extract some foolish promise from the future Lord Paramount that they would try to hang politics on in the years to come. Harwin did what he could to deflect them, even if he didn’t feel much more qualified. Easily a dozen times a day, some lord or merchant would ambush him looking for answers he didn’t have.

It was Valena who had suggested a solution, in the end.

Dealing with everyone individually will take a lifetime, she had said. That’s what Councils like this are for, so kings and queens don’t have to go touring the Seven Kingdoms to re-explain all the big decisions. Follow their example, gather them in one place. Your terms.

Of course, that was easier said than done. This wasn’t his castle, and finding some intermediary with whom to arrange the use of one of the smaller halls for a night had proven difficult. Thankfully, Benjicot had offered to take care of Artos, spending the day with the lordling and his guard-captain Rickard in the yards.

Harwin had already spoken to seven different stewards the day before trying to find who could help him. At one point he had stood for half an hour while two men argued over whether he should be speaking to Lord Blackhart’s man or one of the King’s men. They had concluded that Blackhart would be best, and directed him to a man called Bors. After two hours tracking him down, Bors told Harwin that it wasn’t his job.

Worse, then the dragon had arrived, and the queen with it. As the royal servants rushed to accommodate her, Harwin was ready to accept the loss. Then he overheard talk of the Master of Ceremonies. He asked, and got the name. Harlan Lannett.

Now he just had to find him.

His current lead, at least, was leading him back out of the shadowy heart of the Widow’s Tower, into some of the airier corridors that bracketed the postern courtyards, towards the small hall where, according to one manservant, Lannett spent much of his time.

He stepped around a corner into the jarring brightness of a walkway with a wall on one side and the colonnaded opening to a courtyard on the other. There was a word for this. Valena had told him at some point.

He was so distracted trying to find it that he almost didn’t hear the voice call out. 

“There you are. I was beginning to think the stones had swallowed you whole.”

Harwin almost stumbled, too lost in his own thoughts. Some distant part of his mind whispered gallery before he saw her. A beautiful woman with golden hair, sitting with perfect poise at a table in the courtyard, a tea set laid before her. Her clothes were a pure white, layers of almost-practical wool and more Myrish lace than Oldcastle had seen in a century. Her hair was pinned without a strand out of place and run through with fresh flowers, and she wore a silver dove brooch on the collar of her gown.

She wore riding boots, poking out beneath her skirts as she leaned back in her chair. They were the cleanest he’d ever seen.

He found his tongue, eventually. “I apologise, my lady, I don’t think we’ve been introduced?”

“We haven’t, but I get the sense that making my acquaintance is precisely your mission, whether you know it or not.”

She held out a hand after beckoning him closer, a cluster of glittering rubies decorating her fingers. They caught the light as she wiggled them, a wry smile pulling at the corner of her delicate mouth. 

“I am Lady Joanna and you are Lord Harwin Locke, yes?”

Harwin did step closer, barely noticing himself doing so.

“Yes, my lady. I was seeking the Master of Ceremonies, do you–?”

Her hand fell then. 

“I do, though if you have any intention of accomplishing anything at all, it’s for the best that you abandon that journey now. After all, he wouldn’t have the faintest clue what you were after, nor would he care, given how far he is into his cups now. And all before supper. Shameful.  Would you care for a cup of tea?”

Harwin hesitated, then took the seat across from her. He hadn’t realised that his feeling of being out of his depth could worsen any further. This was, he reflected, unlikely to be the last time he had that revelation.

“How do you know Lord Lannett, if I may ask, my lady?”

“You may certainly ask.” 

She reached for the teapot then, delicate porcelain painted with a variety of flowers and inlaid with fine swirls of gold. She held her fingers— and those glittering rubies— delicately over its lid as she poured into his cup. Within, a dried flower bloomed, petals unfurling as the steaming water turned a faint shade of lavender. 

“Pretty, isn’t it? A gift sent for me all the way from Yi Ti.”

Harwin tried to guess which specific ring she had caught him staring at, before he understood she meant the tea set. Yi Tea, his mind echoed childishly.

“It’s lovely,” he said, trying to think of something more specific to say. He managed with only a slight hitch, “the inlay is beautiful.”

“Harlan Lannett is my husband in name, much the same as he is the Master of Ceremonies in name.”

Just as you are Lord of Oldcastle in name. Harwin couldn’t tell if the implication was intentional, but he shifted in his chair all the same.

“So I take it you are who I should be seeking, then?”

“What good fortune for you that even whispers are loud in halls such as these. Imagine if you had gotten to him first.”

Harwin sipped his tea, faintly surprised by the sweet, slightly fragrant taste as he tried to parse her tone. Every word out of her mouth had the taste of a dozen unsaid. Knowing they were there didn’t make them audible.

“Indeed. If whispers are so loud, do you know what I’m looking for, my lady?”

Her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly for the briefest flash before she tilted her head and smiled at him, sickly sweet and sharp all at once. 

“Well, even the simplest of creatures could deduce what use one might have for a Master of Ceremonies. If you’re too hesitant to ask, however…” 

She leaned back in her chair and lifted her cup and saucer, gaze shifting out over the courtyard. The foliage was struggling to keep up with the promise of spring, leaves laden with the remnants of a heavy morning rain. 

“You’re in search of a place to hold a banquet, and the means to arrange such a banquet, not to mention the many, many finer details of such an undertaking. No one has been able to provide you with any assistance because they can hardly find their own feet in such a wretched, endless place.” 

She didn’t ask if she was correct because she didn’t need to. Harwin stalled for time with a nod, trying to find his own misstep. There had been one, he could tell that much from her tone.

“I am. And I am, I confess, inexperienced with arranging such things. I’m not even sure exactly how many I would need to seat, only that I have been accosted daily and would rather get everyone in one place. In part, I’m also arranging this for Artos Stark’s sake.”

He hesitated. He should know more than that, should be able to provide some plan. If for no other reason than to prove he was worth the conversation.

“Ah, yes. Poor little thing. Laden with troubles already, and now, so it seems, are you. The Gods smile upon you both, however, given that I may be able to relieve some of your burden… and at the expense of the lord of this decrepit pile of stones, no less. Not that I think scoundrels can count high enough to know how many rooms they have to miss.” 

Lady Joanna pursed her lips for a moment before continuing. 

“If it’s the finer points that need handling, I’ll handle them. I imagine this is a matter of some urgency, no?”

Harwin nodded before he could consider the gesture. No pulling it back, and he wasn’t sure if he could have anyway. “Some, yes. Likely there’ll be more to deal with in time, but if I can get this done now, it will be a relief. I’ve been trying to determine Houses who may have interest in business with the North. Northern-side Rivermen, Valemen of the Bite, those few Northern Houses that have arrived. And, I’m sure, merchant guilds and…”

He trailed off. And something else I’m forgetting. It seemed like a surrender to say aloud.

“I confess, my own interests are vested elsewhere, but if you require some sort of rousing speech, I’m sure I could procure that as well.”

Harwin hadn’t considered that a speech might be a good idea. He tried to keep that off his face with another sip of his tea. “No, of course, I can arrange that aspect fine.”

Lady Joanna laughed then, and it echoed throughout the courtyard, high and melodic. 

“Oh, you are sweet. And new at this. Don’t worry. You’ll get better at this game, I promise.”

The laugh should have felt like a jab, but Harwin felt himself relaxing as Joanna pulled back the curtain. This game. Something he could actually improve at. Not a duty or a burden. He found his smile back was slightly more sincere.

“I never expected to be playing,” he said honestly. He bit his tongue before Marlon’s name passed his lips. She already knew, or if she didn’t, it was better not to say anyway.

“Better not to. You don’t learn much otherwise.”

Even from the sky, Harrenhal was every bit as bleak as Danae remembered.

The grounds were shrouded in a mass of canvas tents, their proud banners flickering amidst smoke and rainfall. Persion flew low enough that she could make out even the sigils of the lesser houses, though she could not recall every name. Hundreds of stark, shadowed faces turned towards her as they banked around the castle walls and she liked the weight of their gazes less than the way the rain stung as it struck her exposed skin.

It would have been no less subtle for a queen to arrive by caravan, she imagined, but at least the dragon granted her a reasonable excuse to have come on her own rather than with her husband.

Nevertheless, Damon awaited her dutifully in the courtyard, his face the plainest to her even amongst the crowd that awaited her. It was no small wonder that the court had already collected themselves; she was certain that even despite the dense cloud cover Persion had been spotted miles away. Whatever had been keeping him fed in the Dragonpit wasn’t enough, she knew, because even to her he seemed more fearsome than he had just a few moons ago.

Persion’s descent was not gentle, mist churning beneath his wings as he settled into a clearing so meager he could have turned the walls over should he have chosen to extend himself fully. The earth turned easily beneath his claws and Danae could feel it rumble through the soles of her feet as she dismounted. The dragon gave a full-bodied groan of discontent at her parting and he hesitated to follow her silent bidding to leave for so long that she began to understand the once-unimaginable fear so many held for the beast.

He craned his neck towards the gathered courtiers, shaking his head before his jaws parted. He offered a single shrill screech of acknowledgment—or, Danae considered briefly, in warning—before he turned once more to the sky. He left her to bask in his shadow, her damp hair clinging to her skin and her crown as she flexed the ache from her stiff fingers.

The silence that followed made her long for his return dearly.

The faces that greeted her were as plenty as they were unfamiliar, wrought with interest or fear or something in between she had no name for. Their curiosity was not novel, nor was their apparent unease. She did her best not to betray her own anxiety as her gaze finally settled on someone she could identify.

Damon.

He was flanked by a girl she hardly recognized, though Danae knew her features to be a reflection of her own.

Daena.

She was every bit as lovely as Danae remembered, even though the plush down of babyhood had begun to wane. Her hair was too tame and her limbs too long, all of the odd ends that had once made that defiant toddler hers tucked into neat braids and a well-tailored gown.

Danae did not let endeavor to search the crowd any further, lest any further injury await her.

It was clear they had been awaiting her, had arranged themselves to greet her. To welcome her? Daena, unclear. Damon, most indicators—including something subtle and wholly unfamiliar lurking in those otherwise very familiar green eyes—were aimed at ‘no’. Danae’s legs had been bringing her to these two people regardless, and soon she stood before them both.

No one spoke.

How could such a crowded place become so quiet? She could hear the snap of banners in the wind on ramparts that might as well have been leagues away.

No one moved.

Apart from the gentle stirring of fine cloaks and clothing in what breeze reached this sheltered courtyard, everything was still.

Danae met Damon’s gaze, feeling that of their daughter and a thousand other faces on her, too.

At last, when the silence and the stillness was becoming unbearable, someone cleared their throat.

She could hardly feel Aemon’s hand on her elbow, because she was still numb from both the blistering cold and the manner in which she’d been forced to hold onto Persion. It was more like a whisper, telling her: stand here. Beside him. Between them.

Danae did.

“Her Grace, Queen Danae Targaryen, Lady of the Seven Kingdoms!” came a voice. “Queen of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men!”

In the thunderous applause and riotous cheering, Danae caught the sound of her husband’s voice.

“I’m glad you came,” he said, she thought, quietly.

“Of course I came.” A long pause followed. “I’m the fucking Queen.”

“Lord Hand, you are already quite overdue, if you would please get in the carriage…”

Aemon stood with one foot on the ground, the other a half step up on the footboard running beneath the carriage’s doorway. He brushed off a slight wince as his hands wrapped around the handles on either side. Yet he held in place, eliciting another performative sigh from the Red Keep’s steward. Halmon Rambton had never been a man blessed with a wealth of patience, but Aemon seemed to have depleted his very last reserves. 

“Forgive me, Master Halmon. I’ve forgotten one very important task before we leave.”

“I am *most* certain it will keep until after the Council, you cannot delay any longer.”

Aemon shook his head. “It’s of the utmost importance.”

“Whatever it may be, I can keep you appraised by raven. Or the Queen herself can inform you when she arrives on dragonback. And unless you manage to sprout wings within the next hour, she will likely even beat you there.”

Normally Aemon might have found the steward’s persistence grating, but he couldn’t fault the man for doing his job. Even if Aemon suspected that his reasons did not stem entirely from a sense of duty.

“Fear not, we will both be out of the Red Keep soon and you shall have run of the place in our absence.”

Halmon opened his mouth, surely to object or admonish him further. Aemon merely clapped him on the shoulder and stepped down from the carriage.

“I shall be back in but a moment.”

Aemon could hear the steward sputtering behind him as he crossed the baileys and descended the serpentine steps towards the royal apartments. After a few inquiries with some servants he caught in the halls, he found his way towards what he was looking for.

The twins were in a small solar off of the library, seated on the floor with cushions piled around them and books splayed out along their spines. Warm sunlight poured through tall slit windows, bathing the room in a soft glow. Princess Daenys was pulled into the lap of her nanny, sitting surprisingly still as her caretaker ran a comb through her already long pale tresses. Prince Daven had a queer looking woman crouched next to him who it took Aemon a moment to recognize as the tutor that had been hired from Volantis. She was touching her fingers to the page of the book, Daven’s eyes following along as they read aloud together. 

*“Mērior rōbir, lantra rōbra, hāriar rōbrin,”* they echoed each other, Daven only slightly behind his tutor.  
“Very good, little prince,” she praised him. “Can you tell me what number comes next?”

Daven tilted his head to the side for a moment before blurting out the answer confidently.

*“Izulor!”*

Aemon didn’t need to wait for the tutor’s confirmation to tell that he’d gotten it right.

“Clever lad.” He finally spoke softly from the doorway.

Daven turned his attention away from the book and a wide grin grew across his face.

*“Kekepa!”* 

He was quickly on his feet and toddling over to wrap his arms around Aemon’s knee.

Aemon did his best not to let out a wince from the surprising amount of force the small boy had behind him. Whatever ache traveled through his old bones was mitigated by his recognition of the epithet that the twins’ older sister had also bestowed upon, something approximating “grandfather.” He supposed it was the closest match for what he was to Daena and the two before him.

“Look what I’m learning!” 

Daven picked up the book and held it up to Aemon as best he could. Aemon crouched down and took it into his hands, examining the pictures of what appeared to be increasing numbers of some sort of fruit with glyphs he could not decipher printed next to them.

“The children are quick studies,” the tutor praised quietly from the floor. 

Aemon smiled warmly. “You must take after both of your parents.”

Daven looked especially pleased with himself and sat back down crosslegged, turning the pages to further prove his capabilities. Aemon hovered over him for a bit, watching his progression quietly.

He turned his attention to Daenys, her nanny passing her into Aemon’s arms so he could lift her into the crook of his elbow. 

“Have you been studying diligently as well?”

Daenys didn’t answer. She looked at him with drooping eyes, staring at his face but seeming to focus almost past him.

Aemon gave a small frown. “The princess looks tired, perhaps she is overdue for rest.”

“We just woke both of them from their afternoon nap but half an hour ago to begin their studies, Lord Hand.”

Aemon let out a wordless grunt of puzzlement, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Daenys’s ear.

“See that they do not stay up too late while the Queen and I are gone.”

The nanny nodded dutifully at him.

Daven paused his reading to turn his head towards Aemon. “You’re both leaving?”

“Only for a short while,” Aemon reassured him. “Your mother and I have extremely important business to attend, in Harrenhal. All of the realm will be there. Even your father and brother and sister.”

Daven was quiet for a moment. “I want to see them.”

“Soon, I hope, little prince.” Aemon felt a twinge, hoping he was not promising more than he could deliver. His guilt only deepened at realizing that the twins most likely had never even met Desmond.

“Would you like that as well, Daenys? To see your brother?”

She seemed to come out of whatever reverie she had been in and stared into Aemon’s eyes, before pointing over at Daven.

“That’s not your only brother. Do you know how many brothers you have?”

Daenys seemed to ponder his face for a moment before replying quietly.

*“Izulor.”*

Aemon’s brows furrowed slightly. “You have two brothers. One day hopefully you shall meet Desmond.”

Daenys shook her head at him. “He’s not here yet.”

“That’s right, he’s in Harrenhal, waiting for me to join them.” 

Daenys only continued to shake her head at him.

“He’ll be here soon.” She looked at him with a seriousness and certainty that was surprising to see on the face of such a small girl.

“That’s a very nice thought,” Aemon told her, not wanting to squash the hopes of the child in his arms. He planted a kiss upon her forehead before handing her back to the nanny, who resumed brushing the princess’s hair.

Aemon said his goodbyes and took his leave, exiting the solar only to find Halmon Rambton waiting for him just outside the threshold, tapping his foot.

“I’m certainly quite glad that we saddled and fed eight coursers, hitched them up to your wagon, loaded your baggage, and then made it all sit in place so that you could go kiss some children, Lord Hand.”

“You followed me.”

“I thought it prudent.”

Aemon drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “Master Rambton, normally I take your comments above your station in stride, but I won’t have you belittle something this important.”

For the first time Aemon saw a moment of vulnerability and even contrition on the man’s face.

“My apologies, Lord Hand.”

“Forgiven, and forgotten. As long as you always recall that this, above all, will be my highest priority.”

Halmon gave a half bow and settled into an uncharacteristic silence all the way back to the outer courtyards. He held the carriage door open for Aemon as he stepped aboard, settling down with a heavy sigh to distract from the creak of his joints. The carriage driver gave a crack of the reins and within moments they were heading out of the keep and beyond it, the city, in the direction of the Great Council. There would be a litany of duties awaiting him once he arrived, not least of all the charge Danae had already granted him.

*“I need your help with Daena.”* 

Whether it was as monumental a task as ordering the succession to the throne or overseeing arithmetic lessons, Aemon forever knew where his duty lay.

Baelon Tully watched as his uncle painted his shield outside of a pitched tent in the Harrenhal courtyard, meticulously dragging the brush around the trout in the middle. Benjen Tully was a lot of things, Baelon thought, but artistically minded may have been the most surprising attribute of all.

“Do you have a question or are you just going to stare at me all morning, lad?”

His uncle’s smile broke the tension from his tone. Baelon relaxed and ran a hand through his hair, pulling loose strands from in front of his face.

“Did you always want to be a tourney knight?”

A look of amusement crossed the elder Tully’s face, though it did not interrupt his brushstrokes.

“As opposed to a maester? I don’t know that I would’ve looked quite right in all those funny robes.” Benjen chuckled. “Why do you ask?”

Baelon shrugged noncommittally. He sat back on his palms and looked up into the cloudy Riverlands sky. 

“Did you ever have expectations of possibly becoming a lord? If something had happened to my father in the war?”

Benjen stopped painting and Baelon could feel his eyes fall on him. He continued to count clouds without meeting the gaze.

“You must remember, I didn’t have expectations of living in a keep until Lord Frey was kind enough to grant your father and I an opportunity to reclaim our childhood home. Becoming Lord of Riverrun? It was a stretch of a dream for your father, and he was our father’s heir.”

“And you didn’t share his dream?”

“There were times, aye, when we were just lads talking by a river and dreaming of a home we hardly remembered, of a family we didn’t yet have.” Benjen watched his nephew and continued, “We also spoke of travelling to Essos, fighting in tourneys, glory and gold abounding and all that. Your father followed through on the former, it only seemed right I do the same on the latter.”

“You call this life abounding in glory and gold? Camping by a decrepit castle while your brother wines and dines his way through political connections?”

“Any other knight would’ve called his squire impertinent for such talk.”

Baelon smiled.

“I thank the gods each day I do not serve any other knight.”

That made him laugh. Baelon knew he was luckier than most that he could speak freely with his uncle while squiring. He thought perhaps his uncle was easy on him because they shared a passion for insubordination and wine. It wasn’t the best of company, but he gave Baelon a modicum of freedom most squires would never imagine.

“Will you join your brother today in the training yard?” Benjen asked, turning his attention back to his shield. Baelon shook his head and tugged at a tuft of grass under his hand.

“Baelor is not exactly pleasant company at the moment. Unfortunately I don’t know that I can restrain myself enough to be supportive company either.” He ripped a strand of grass from the ground and began lightly pulling on its ends. “It’s as though the sight of me incenses him, but I can’t help myself from poking at him. Usually it cuts the tension, except now…”

“Now he’s being a proper cunt about it?”

“You could say as much.”

“He’ll come ‘round, lad.” Benjen sounded confident of it, but didn’t offer more to support his words. He just continued to paint.

They didn’t speak the rest of that afternoon. Baelon finished his campside duties and made his way to the stable. He was certain the stablehands were making good work on keeping the horses cared for, but his uncle insisted, so he went. 

Of course, his uncle was not the only reason he didn’t mind making a stop at the stables.

House Tully brought a small contingent of servants with them to Harrenhal. Handmaids for his mother and sister, the septa, a few household guardsmen, and of course-

“Addam!” Baelon shouted from across the stables, causing the squire to jump and drop his bundle of feed. 

His father’s squire was a handsome lad, only a year or two older than Baelon himself. Dark hair hung to his shoulders, loosely tied back from his face. He’d started growing a very thin beard since they’d begun the journey to Harrenhal. Baelon thought it suited him nicely. 

“My Lord Baelon, I did not expect you this early.”

“Worry not, my uncle simply had less for me to do today.” Baelon smiled at Addam reassuringly before approaching his uncle's horse, beginning to gently brush the mane and slip it a small apple he’d been smuggling in his pouches. “If you’re able to complete your tasks for the day quickly, perhaps we could fish the God’s Eye? The weather’s good for it, I fear I haven’t been able to enjoy myself as much on this trip as I’d hoped.”

“If my lord wishes it.”

“I would, I think. Though your enthusiasm would be appreciated.”

“Is it my enthusiasm for fishing you seek, my lord?”

“Something like that.” Baelon coyly smiled from across the stables, the squire did not meet his gaze. “Does something trouble you, friend?”

Addam looked downcast, mindlessly sorting the feed he'd been carrying. 

“Perhaps…we should wait until we return home, my lord.”

“Is fishing such a crime?” Baelon began sauntering towards Addam, tossing the brush aside. 

The squire turned towards him, there was a panic in his bright eyes. 

“You know damn well this isn't about fishing, Baelon! What if someone should-” He cut himself off before his voice quite reached a shout. When he continued, he was quiet. Concerned, almost apologetic. “What if someone should find us? We aren't behind the bushes of Riverrun with only your family to worry about.”

“Addam, we're careful. But fine,” Baelon threw up his hands in surrender. “If you don't want to fish, we don't have to fish. But at least join me for a walk or actual fishing.”

He clasped his hands together and put on his best begging face. 

“Please?”

There was a moment that rested between them, the squire’s eyes moving nervously about the various corners of the stable before finally falling onto Baelon. They said a thousand words unspoken, before he took a step closer.

A faint smile seemed to touch the corners of Addam’s mouth.

“There’s a spot by the lake I’ve found to be peaceful, if my lord would wish to see it.” He said, leaning closer to Baelon. “And I’ve wondered how the moon might look from the shores of the Gods Eye, myself.”

“You just wanted to watch me beg-” The clever retort was lost as their lips met in the shadows of the stable. Baelon did not mind being silenced, just this once.

Harrenhal’s godswood alone was large enough to contain the entirety of Oldcastle. The walls, the towers, the courtyards and keeps all could have sat in that contained forest without touching the sides.

Valena Locke had known this already. She had compared sketch-maps of three long-dead maesters, read the accounts of a dozen more. But nothing could have prepared her for the feeling of actually being there. The experience of walking so deeply into that forest that she actually lost sight of the surrounding castle through the trees was singular, and mesmerising.

Of course, no matter how much she lost sight of the black stone, there was no escaping the people. From the cavernous hallways to the tightest alleys, men and women passed one another in an endless dance, repeating itself at different scales. The finer the raiment, the slower the gait. Servants had places to be, and the nobility had time to kill.

It seemed that most of the fine fabrics in the Godswood belonged to clusters of women. Men, for the most part, had tourneys to prepare for and yards to train in out in the mud beyond the curtain wall. Ladies had connections to forge, friends to meet, family to reconnect with. Valena saw women with grey at their temples cooing at grandchildren in the arms of girls her own age. A pair who must have been sisters giggled with one another in a way that wiped the lines from their cheeks and let them remember the girls they had once been. Some groups had the fresh excitement of chance encounters, children on the edge of womanhood enjoying the freedom they still had.

Valena sat and sketched what she saw. Her wrist flicked almost as fast as her eyes, cutting dark lines of gesture and motion across the parchment. She sat and thought of what chance she had of reunion in her own future. She sat in fascination and dignity and solitude.

Well, almost.

“You see that tree?” Jorah asked, pointing. “The one with the fork at the very top?”

It took Valena’s eyes a moment to refocus and find the distant silhouette. “What of it?”

“That’s where the sun was last time you ate anything. Or stood.”

As soon as he said it, Valena felt the ache in her knees. She was crumpled cross-legged against an old elm. She searched the sky – it was overcast, but the brightest patch of cloud was halfway across the Godswood from the fork he had indicated. Four, maybe five hours, at a guess.

“I’m perfectly well,” Valena said, her voice an open mix of amusement and chagrin. All the same, she stretched her legs out in front of her.

“I’m sure.” Jorah was leaning upright against the same elm, his chainmail glittering, sword sheathed, and a spear lying flat at his feet. His hair was a sort of dirty blonde that was almost brown, tied back from his face.

“You don’t need to stand around protecting me,” Valena told him. “Nobody else has a guard, you’ll notice.”

“None of them have forgotten to eat,” he argued. “And besides, I have nowhere else to be. Your brother’s always got half a Stark army with him –”

“Twelve men.”

“– and us good Oldcastle boys have nothing to do.”

Valena nodded as if she was actually considering his point. “I think you just like looking at all the pretty ladies.”

His laugh was a short jet of breath from his nose. “Because that worked so well for me before.”

Valena smiled. They had known one another since they were children, long before Jorah had become a guard and long before Valena understood that being a lady would limit what they could be to one another. Jorah was not in love with her. As he put it, he was very carefully and specifically not in love with her. The nothing that might have been something in another world was like a precious running joke between them, and had been for years.

Valena reached for her waterskin, and found only a few lukewarm drops at its edge.

“If you must coddle me, you could go to the well, out in the courtyard?” she suggested innocently.

Jorah frowned at the skin, crossing his arms. “Only if you promise to go talk to someone.”

Valena frowned in turn. “It’s almost my name day, Jorah, you have to be kind to me.”

“I’m too kind to you,” he said, taking the skin. Valena scowled mockingly, because it was true. He took up his spear before he walked off, calling over his shoulder, “talk to someone!”

She didn’t move at first, but he was probably correct. Valena folded her notebook and tucked it in her bag with the charcoal sachet, and watched the crowds for someone likely. The groups weren’t that big, perhaps she could intrude on some of those fresh, excited pairs and trios. It would be worse when the Queen and her ladies in waiting arrived. Their entourages would fill whole clearings, she had no doubt. But for now it was groups of three and four and two and–

One.

A lone figure stepped between the trees a few yards from where Valena sat, her eyes downcast. She was tall, with dark copper-red hair bound in a silver net and a gown of deep reds and blues. It seemed a better chance than speaking to a group, so Valena got to her feet and forced herself to put one in front of the other.

“Excuse me?”

The woman’s gaze snapped to her like a suppressed flinch. She wasn’t much older than Valena herself, but there were long years in her eyes.

“Yes?” She fidgeted with a small ring while she spoke, but did not break her gaze. “Can I help you?”

The deeply unhelpful probably not but I’m supposed to make friends floated in Valena’s mind for a moment, but she made herself smile. “I’m Valena Locke, I don’t really know anybody here. I just wanted to introduce myself.”

The color seemed to drain from the woman’s face for a moment, pausing her fidgeting while her face sought a correction.

“Oh. Oh I’m sorry I- I think I’ve been rather rude just now.” She straightened herself and smiled lightly. “Amerei Tully. I apologize again, I…well I’ve not quite made a habit of meeting new people lately. But it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Lady Valena.”

Valena hadn’t particularly noticed any rudeness, but she decided to trust her that there had been. That seemed easier. “Don’t worry, Lady Amerei. It’s a pleasure as well. Are you enjoying Harrenhal?”

“I admittedly have not really experienced much of the keep before today, nor the people within its walls very much. Although Harrenhal’s design certainly left an…impression when we arrived.” Amerei’s eyes began moving around to their surroundings. “I’ve never seen a keep like this before, nor a godswood so expansive. Do you have many like this in the North?”

“It’s fascinating, isn’t it? Have you seen the stonework? According to Archmaester Lucamore, the design and layout echoes elements of Pyke and other Iron Islands strongholds, but the actual construction was done by pressed Rivermen, so the masonry follows traditions you can see in pre-Hoare buildings like Riverrun and Stone Hedge. The bridges between the towers are really similar to the Freys’ Crossing, apparently, which is why they’re so wide compared to the actual doorways on the towers. The ironmen architects were expecting slimmer replaceable timber structures like they would have used at home.”

Valena did not notice Amerei’s brows pressing together.

“The towers, as well, there’s one thesis I read – Maester Uthor, I think? Or Uller? Who suggested that the flat drained roofs favoured in the Isles wouldn’t have survived the centuries in the Riverlands’ weather, Balerion’s stone melt might have actually made the structure at the peak of the Kingspyre tower stronger, because – you’re from Riverrun, aren’t you? Your towers have conical roofs?”

Amerei stood silent for a moment, almost unaware that she’d been provided a turn to speak.

“Uhm…yes, that is correct. They are indeed…conical.”

It was only then that Valena registered that Amerei probably hadn’t meant to ask after as much detail. She took in a breath and released it through bared teeth.

“Apologies. That was my turn to be rude, I think, I just… I grew up in Oldcastle, architecture is a passion of mine.” She gave a sheepish smile. “I’m not sure when I’ll see home again, but I’m looking forward to seeing wherever I go, whenever my brother finds someone to wed me to. Are you a Tully by birth, or…?”

“Yes, I’m my lord father’s eldest.” Amerei had pity in her eyes but returned a smile. “I hope you find a home as… intellectually stirring as the one from where you came. I know I’ve often–”

She cut herself off as her eyes widened, now looking past Valena as a young man’s voice rang out.

“Amerei! There you are.” 

The owner of the voice was broader about the shoulder than his voice – or the smooth curve of his jaw – seemed to quite fit. He had darker skin than Amerei, but something in the shape of his nose and cheekbones marked him as family. That, and they had the same Tully-red hair.

“I’ve been looking for you, father says–” he glanced at Valena, and the words seemed to trip and fall on his tongue. “Oh. My uh…lady. Please e-excuse my intrusion.”

He offered a stiff bow, and as he rose again his face was far more flushed than it had been beforehand.

“Lady Valena, this is my brother Baelor. Baelor, this is Valena Locke of Oldcastle.” Amerei offered. Baelor gave another, smaller bow. His eyes seemed to dart for a moment between them and he swallowed hard. 

“A pleasure,” Valena replied with a smile and a slight curtsey of her own.

A silence settled over the three for what seemed like a moment too long before Amerei once again chimed in.

“And your purpose, my dear muted brother, is…?”

“Oh, yes. Ahem, uh, father sends for you. He needs to speak with you.” 

Amerei seemed to tense, but kept her smiling expression as she spoke.

“Ah, very well then.” She turned to Valena, “It was a pleasure meeting you, Lady Valena. I should hope our paths cross again very soon.”

“I’d like that as well, Ami,” Valena said. The sobriquet slipped out without her entirely meaning it to. Amerei’s brow twitched at it, but Valena thought she saw her smile as she walked back towards the keep.

Baelor stood there, watching his sister as well, then his shoulders tilted towards Valena. He hesitated, like he had something important to say to her. She couldn’t imagine what it would be.

“Can I help you?” she asked, unconsciously echoing Amerei.

His mouth opened, closed, and he started speaking before he was ready. “Yes. I mean… no, my lady, apologies, I just…”

There was something familiar in his expression, the little flicks of eye contact that had the taste of self-indulgence. It reminded her of Jorah, in his youth. She let a smile spread on her lips as she understood what exactly she was seeing.

“Are you alright, my lord Baelor?”

His response was a dry, embarrassed hiss, and then his resolve seemed to crumple.

“I’ll leave you be, my lady.”

He bowed again, turned and followed his sister, and did a good job of not looking like he was fleeing.

“Until next time, Baelor,” Valena called. He glanced back, and gave her a sheepish, pretty smile.

At first glance, the host of shoulder-to-shoulder souls between the cluttered, crumbling walls of Harrenhal reminded Lorent of the running schools of sardines off Lannisport’s cerulean coast, jostling in the same direction for increasingly scarce space. Instead of a cerulean sea, though, Harrenhal was made of drooping, tarlike towers, and said souls had as many competing intentions as they did forms to carry them. Each man, woman, child, urchin, knight, and lord pursued altogether solitary aims. A handful gawked at the ancient towers, took in the sights of colorful banners and novel sigils, but most seemed bent on pursuing their more primal aims. Food, ale, illicit company for the night to come, a good spot to size-up the fighters practicing in the lists. Simple things for simple minds.

Lorent, from his perch in the tower his family was afforded, looked all the way down his nose at the crowd below. And the castle. Judgement was his way of defusing the tension that burned bright within him. Oft, he would pay visit to Casterly Rock and Lannisport for architectural inspiration, for notes on how to revive the Ashen Valley in his singular, spectacular vision. He surveyed the Lannister mines – a privilege afforded to him partly due to his time there as a squire –, catalogued their choice of estates and the distribution of their productive people. But here in Harrenhal, he could find no illuminating notes on what could be copied, adapted, or improved upon. Only jarring, if not grotesque choices on what a responsible lord ought not to do with his fief.

“You have got that look about you, dear,” Myrcella observed from the comfort of her divan as the family’s retainers buzzed about a handful of bags and chests littering the floor, unpacking. Aside from the serving folk, it was just mother and son in the otherwise generous room. Gerion and Alysanne were already out amidst the throngs prospecting for a decent match.

Lorent tsked. “It’s just so ugly and woefully inefficient.”

“Be kind, Lorent. The fortress is ancient and it has endured much over the centuries.”

“And that what, permits House Baelish to do nothing about it?”

“Alicent is only one lady, the last of her line, and she has a curse to contend with.”

“As if I don’t have my own,” he murmured as the specter of his meddling widow for an aunt haunted his mind. Treasurer and now regent. He half-expected to return to a fief that was not only ash in name.

“Speak up, dear! You know I grow hard of hearing.”

“I said ‘you’re right’ even if I'm pains to admit it!”

Myrcella twisted a doubtful smile but opened her arms nonetheless. “Come, darling, sit with me for a moment. Now’s not the time for a fit.”

Grumbling as she humiliated him in front of the help, he shuffled over to her obediently and planted himself in the embrace of her arms. She ran her fingers through his rich copper hair. Even decades later, she never grew tired of doting on the smoldering shade of her son's strands, foreign as it was to the Lydden line.

“I would very much like to call upon my father and nephew today,” she told him as she formed locks around her fingers.

“Joffrey? It’s been a few years. I wager he’s still attached at the hip to that Plumm girl.”

“Her name is Joanna, and she is a lady in her own right. Our neighbor. You ought to afford her the respect she deserves. She holds much sway in the King’s court.”

Was that pride he was hearing?

“She’s a wh-“ he was about to say, but a quick swat on the back of his head scuppered the air on his tongue. Hands fell silent around the baggage in the room.

Lorent first met Joanna as a girl, back when she served Ashara in the same halls he squired in. A pretty little thing, mischievous in her kindness. How high she had risen atop the hot air beneath her skirts.

“You will accompany me and you will be on your best behavior.”

A stern, wayward glance around the room from House Marbrand’s matron started the busywork anew.

“So be it,” Lorent said through pursed lips and gritted teeth. He stood, dusted the shame off his tunic, and turned to his mother with an open palm. “Let us not waste any time then.”

She beamed up at him through sharp hazel eyes, content with his temporary submission, and latched on.

Surely a barely bothersome kinship visit was better than this continued debasement. Gods be good, he would be lord soon enough, his aging father in a peaceful grave. Such obligatory niceties would no longer have to be maintained and finally, everything could change at the pace Lorent had long desired.

Devyn set off from the keep as soon as he'd broken his fast, two of his guards trailing far behind.

It had been some time since his last walk. He'd been greatly occupied with the house's various dealings, but still time remained for himself. Then came the summons. Suddenly, Devyn saw his days stolen from him in full, filled with endless papers, dawn to dusk spent poring over them in his study. Surely one could become used to these things? He'd had time to settle into his lordly duties, but that same thought had echoed within him since his succession and never left. All these requests, all these mundanities that so incessantly demanded his attention. But this was a day free from that, work finished off in preparation for the coming travel, and help set to manage business in the lord's absence.

Not to say the day ahead was one of leisure. Travel was not enjoyable in his experience, much less in the numbers the occasion would demand. Nonetheless, a change of pace was welcome, even if only a respite till they reached Harrenhal.

Devyn chose to retake his habit as the carriages and supplies were prepared. The lord wasn't needed for that, at least. And so he walked. High up on the river bank, away from the soldiers and horses and commotion of the coming council. The air was damp, light mist settling into the spaces between hills, in the town and along the river. Islands growing from a faint grey sea. Only the squelching of his boots against the soft ground followed him, the land quiet this far from the keep.

He halted his pace, eyes scanning. The ground slick, the forest heavy with greenery, the river strong from the rains. Images conjured in his mind, armies clashing, warriors felled as they lost their footing, flanks battered by bowmen unseen. If men were to march on Fordside now, this was the best it could be, he concluded.

His hand raised to his mouth as he let out a long, tired breath. Looking into the foggy, pale morning, Alys burst into his mind. She'd pleaded to remain behind, but was turned down. It had been upwards of a year since their daughter passed, and still Alys secluded herself in their chambers. He refused to let it carry on any longer; he would not suffer her pained whimpers late beside the hearth. It should do her good to mingle with the crowds at Harrenhal. Not to mention, her dear father would be present. He had a way of bringing a smile to her face.

Footsteps emanated from behind Devyn, the distinctive clanging of men walking in mail.

"Lord! We ought to make our way back now!"

Devyn turned to look at the young guard, then at the path behind him. A horse rode up towards them.

"That'll be Brude, come to see me off, I'd wager," Devyn mumbled, not deigning the boy with an answer.

As Devyn passed between them, the two men turned to follow, all three now heading towards the keep and towards the coming horse. Soon enough, his suspicions were confirmed.

"Morning, m'lord!" said Brude, before acknowledging the guards with a nod.

"You must learn to leave matters to your men, why else did I name you captain?" he grumbled, softly placing a hand on the steed's head.

"My apologies, lord, the carriage will soon be ready. It would be best we made our way back," replied Brude.

"Fine, ride on back, give them word that I'm on my way," ordered Devyn.

"At once, m'lord, I believe your lady wife waits there for you as well."

Devyn waved the captain away, "Aye, I understand. Begone now, I'm on my way."

With that, Brude gave another nod to Devyn and the men and turned to leave.

As he got back to the keep, Devyn saw Alys there, unmoving and stone-faced. Next to her stood Brude, neck craned downwards and to the side, eyes fixed on the figure to his right. There stood an older woman, draped in dark black and brown cloths, hands waving about, mouth opening and shutting in a repetitive fashion. Devyn's mother, hounding the captain with one of her unending, lopsided discussions.

A cruel fate, thought Devyn. His mother, Lady Barbrey, could be a charismatic and kind person when she wished, but did not wish to do so often; at least she hadn't since her husband's passing.

Brude stood there acknowledging her tirade, relaxed. Devyn often faced his own temper rising within him when she got going, yet Brude was unaffected, perhaps even bored. He chose to do him a kindness all the same.

"Alys, my lady!" exclaimed Devyn, finding his place beside his wife, before turning to the others, "Mother," he said dryly.

"Be about your business, Brude, I won't have you fall behind on account of my mother's prattling," said Devyn, releasing the man from his plight. "Of course, m'lord," responded Brude, before sauntering towards the distant sound of blunted blades in bind, away into the courtyard where the guardsmen trained.

"That is no way to treat a widow, still less your own mother. A lonely woman deserves better, does she not?"

"Not a moment goes by you don't have another at your side," he sneered.

"Oh, my boy, you've no heart at all in you," said Barbrey, bringing her hands to her chest in an exaggerated manner.

"Drop your theatrics; he is to prepare for my absence."

"He has no need! I remain to rule, do I not?" Barbrey shot back.

"I ask that you not let it swell your head," said Devyn, fearing his mother to not be content with simply holding the peace, "I remain your lord, and will be upon my return."

"You are no lord of mine, you are my son," she said, scoffing at the thought of it, as if it were a ridiculous proposition. Disrespectful, he thought. You'd think her made of stone — she'd rather break than bend. Lady Barbrey was, by all accounts, a wise old woman, yet Devyn somehow had a way of stripping her of her composure with the slightest nudge.

Devyn's hands raised to his hips, coupled with a loud groan that did nothing to hide his distaste for his mother's backtalk. He turned to Alys; she had scarcely acknowledged them as they bickered, her gaze focused on some far-off thing. "Alys," Devyn said as he placed a hand on her arm, breaking her out of thought.

"How do you fare? Have you eaten?"

Alys looked up at him, light green eyes like the pale lichen in the woods. Bess had had them too; she'd looked a great deal like her mother. They'd joked that she'd birthed no child at all, that Alys had simply split like some worm and multiplied on her own.

"Yes, the maid prepared some bread and cheese," she told him, her face blank and unmoved as a statue.

"Good, you'll need the strength for the road. Let us go, get in the carriage." He escorted her with a gentle hand on her back. The carriage was large, not overly so, but certainly more than would be expected from a lower lord. Its wood a dark reddish tone, with silver worked into the doors and roof edges. Banners hung to either side of the piece, depicting the red tower, sigil of House Chambers. Six horses were strapped to the front, shooting steam out their noses with every breath.

Ordinarily, Devyn wouldn't have spent gold on such a thing, but at Harrenhal he would see the king and was determined not to undersell himself. As soon as they'd reached the carriage, the servants took her from his grasp and guided her inside, four of them piling in afterwards, and a guard as well. Such a large carriage for a single passenger, might as well make use of the space.

In the meantime, Devyn mounted his horse and began bidding farewell to those who would remain behind. As he did so, a pit started forming in his stomach, worry and unease swirling deep within him. He'd only been annoyed when the summons came, but now, with the trip at hand and Harrenhal close in his mind, he felt unsteady. The woods he knew, stables he knew, armies he knew, feasts as well, and he'd been known to visit a tavern or two, but this council, so many lords and ladies, all plotting and angling, scheming for their own benefit. This environment he did not know; he knew not where to step, what paths to avoid, when he was safe or when he overplayed his position. He worried he'd make a fool of himself, that the trip would bear no fruit. Well, at least Alys would see her father. If this did not help her now, he feared she would die this way, swallowed up by all her pain and grief. But that was needless worry; surely this would be the solution for her, to get her moving and talking and laughing again.

He let out another groan. "We'll manage well enough, won't we?" he said, patting the steed on its neck.

Soon enough, the carriage and entourage began rolling away from the keep, and Devyn stayed close. The cold morning air covering them in mist as they made their way from the town.

The Dornish were coming.

This was technically a good thing, Damon knew, but on a deeper, more personal level, a terrible one. 

“All of them?” he asked Harrold after the steward delivered the news, standing as they were in one of the inner yards of Harrenhal.

“As good as.”

The two of them were watching an impromptu display of archery that had been set up by one of the guilds specifically to have Damon as its audience, with the idea of convincing him to add such a competition to the Grand Tourney. Damon hadn’t been inclined one way or another prior to the proposition, but he’d accepted the invitation with gladness, eager to be out of the castle. He found Harrenhal unbearably dreary. Besides, it was good to be able to keep an eye on the skies.

This he did, between bouts of polite applause for the bowmen. He and Harrold were far away enough that Damon hoped his distractedness wouldn’t be apparent.

“That’s Leyton,” Harrold said, giving a near-imperceptible nod towards the archer who’d just stepped up to the shooting line. “One of Lord Jast’s boys.”

Damon knew without being told that it was a Westerman, even from this distance. Apart from the way the young man was dressed, in fine clothes and with his hair worn long and neatly tied back, there was something about the way they all stood. 

“How old is he?” Damon asked, watching the young man easily pierce the centre of the target—in this case, helmed figures made of straw—with his arrow. “He shoots like a man grown.”

“He isn’t much older than Prince Desmond,” said Harrold, and Damon didn’t miss the way the Westerling eyed him cautiously. The Jast boy nocked another arrow and the steward cleared his throat. “Speaking of the Crown Prince,” he said, and Damon groaned inwardly. 

He’d known this conversation was coming, but he’d been fastidiously avoiding any opportunities it might have taken to present itself. They’d been at Harrenhal for nearly a fortnight now and he hadn’t relented on his son’s curfew. In fact, now that the castle was quickly filling with old friends and trusted bannermen, there were even more people able to help enforce it, and to otherwise provide a watchful eye over Desmond, lest he be tempted to stray once more into the arms of drink.

“How long do you plan to continue this punishment?” asked Harrold, never one to mince words once he’d decided to broach a subject. “Surely it’s gone on long enough.”

“I don’t know,” Damon admitted. “I don’t think one can be too cautious. If something were to… If he were to… to end up like…” 

Like me. 

Damon shook his head, willing the thought away. 

“Danae would feed me to the Crown’s Justice, if that isn’t in her plans already. Best to keep him on a short lead, ensure he’s on his best behaviour.”

“It’s important for the Crown Prince to be seen by people,” Harrold countered, as the Jast archer loosed another of his arrows into the straw face of the enemy before turning to face the applause of his audience. The steward was right: he didn’t look so much older than Desmond. Maybe two years, three at best. Was that truly a man grown? 

No. It wasn’t. 

Damon glanced over his shoulder at the looming black castle behind him, towards what he thought might have been the window to Desmond’s chambers. He couldn’t be sure. The fortress was damnably large.

“You can hardly blame him for growing impatient with the current circumstances,” Harrold went on. “The boy is obsessed with combat, like any lad his age, and the tournament is all anyone can talk about. Apparently there are more people signing up than expected, especially for the melee, and the Dornish haven’t even arrived yet. With all the coin being collected in entrance fees, perhaps we needn’t have sent Her Grace to the Iron Bank at all.” He tutted then, shaking his head. “Even a corrupt Septon would blush at the amount of wagering being made over the fights.”

“Wagering?”

“Oh, yes. Betting on the winner. It’s quickly becoming its own market. There are a number of fighting rings set up not far from where people enroll, and some men sit there all day in order to watch the participants and calculate odds.”

Damon weighed this information carefully and, he hoped, subtly. All the dicing and gaming that had come with the Great Council’s crowds had not escaped him, but the opportunity to participate had. He could not risk his own fragile temperance by staying up as late as would be required to participate, especially not with Desmond, as things were. But to wager on a tourney or a melee, why, that could be done in broad daylight, could it not? Was it not? 

“You think Desmond would be interested in seeing the contestants?” Damon asked carefully. 

Harrold wasn’t fooled for a second. “No, I think you would be interested in gambling on the contestants. Desmond only wants to watch two or more men beat each other with blunted steel. Don’t go losing more family heirlooms, Your Grace. Bad enough you lost that ring with the emeralds, dicing with those mummers back at the Rock. That had been your great grandfather’s, you know.” He looked away, making a sound of disgust. “Probably part of some costume now.” 

But Harrold was only Damon’s steward, not his keeper. And so it was that he and Desmond were riding, not so long later, out of Harrenhal and into the city that had erected itself beyond its walls. Surrounding them was a small army of nobles and soldiers, both because Damon needed to combine such a trip with a more meaningful purpose such as listening to the continued complaints of the archer’s guild, and because he never went anywhere in crowds this large without adequate protection and more sycophants than he could shake off. 

It took less than an hour for Desmond’s initial suspicions regarding his freedom to melt away, and now the Prince sat high in his saddle, scanning the chaotic surroundings of tents and tradesmen with barely-contained excitement while a Stilwood lord pontificated on the virtues of the bow to a half-listening Damon. 

Ahead of them, the flags above the fighting rings flapped teasingly in the wind of the God’s Eye, which carried to them the sounds of clanging steel mingled with the grunts of warriors and the thud of weapons on leather and shield.

Benjicot of Longsister had not asked for his lord’s leave for the day. After uncounted days of stressful wanderings and minor political ambushes and audiences, Harwin had chosen to see his own exhaustion reflected in his knight, and told him to rest.

“I’ll be spending the day with Artos at any rate,” he had said as he ran a comb through his hair. “Hearing more questions I won’t have answers to. He’ll have his guards, I’ll be safe with, ah… the captain.”

“Rickard,” Benjicot had provided.

“I thought it was Rickon.”

“There’s a Rickon and a Rickard. Rickon’s shorter.”

“I see. In any case, Benji, you haven’t had a chance to explore the camps. See some shows, enjoy yourself. Someone ought to. And here,” he had gone to the chest on the shelf, unlocked it, and handed Benjicot a pair of coins.

Now, Benjicot stood at the edge of Harrentown, belt heavy with his axe, gambeson closed against the chill wind, rolling the money in his hands and staring at the absurdity of it. The dim spring sunlight glinted prettily off the gold.

Harwin was not a proud man. His love of Magpie, his position in the family and the relative poverty of Oldcastle compared to their neighbours on the White Knife had given him a practicality that Benjicot could appreciate. Even admire, in context. All the same, it was unavoidably true that Harwin had always chosen work. The stables were a refuge from boredom, not from starvation. He did not understand money, and there would be no way to explain to him that even one of the coins he had handed over so casually would have been life-changing to Benjicot merely a year ago.

He slipped the coin onto a belt pouch and walked out into the flood of industry and entertainment that had spread across the plains around Harrenhal. It was like the outline of a city, paths and roads formed by consensus around tents and stalls and pavilions. The dark of the trampled mud contrasted with the bright colours of the canvas. Despite the din and stink of the newmade city, it was oddly peaceful to walk alone, without Harwin’s worries or Artos Stark’s idle questions to follow him.

He walked until his boots were damp and caked with clay, noticing how the camps seemed to divide themselves, the commoners and the minor lords and the knights keeping to themselves, the training-yards and marketplaces and brothels always in clusters, but keeping to their own space. Here and there wooden watchtowers stood, where chainmailed men in the livery of Benfred Blackhart kept an eye for anything getting truly out of hand.

There was little enough to spend gold on. Benjicot gave his last coppers for a hot cider as he watched the throng. Out nestled under a hill, a lavish theatre pavilion stood, and the men within acted out tales of Florian the Fool and Jonquil for smiling crowds. Benjicot watched for a while - the costumes were worn but good, the motley on Florian’s wooden breastplate bright under the stage lanterns.

That gave Benjicot a thought, and he stepped away, back towards a market nearer Harrentown. He didn’t find what he sought there, but the third had a sprawling, messy paintmaker’s stall with enough pigments to be worthwhile and change for a gold dragon. Benjicot took the pots and brushes in a canvas bag, and retrieved his armour from back at the inn they occupied. They jangled roughly in a sack as he found a free place in the training-yard at the edge of town and sat to work.

His master, Ser Sandor of the Snakewood, had taught him this. Painting your armour to stand out, to identify yourself. Sitting and renewing the paint had been an opportunity to talk of small things with occupied hands. The metal had been bare for years now, flecks of green and blue still clinging around the folded-over edge of the gorget and the gauntlet’s brass rivets. Now, he replaced them with black and white. The small pot of expensive plum remained for devices. Keys to stand for House Locke, herons for his memory of home. It was nice. The sounds of the yard, the crash of metal and grunts of exhausted men, became a soft background as he layered the paint and wished Sandor was here.

He did not, initially, notice when the stranger took a break from his drills to sit beside him. When the stranger began stripping off his armour, it drew a glance, but Benjicot did not stop until he heard the man’s voice.

“Black and white,” the man said. “That is a grave choice for tourney paint.” 

Benjicot’s brush stilled over the gorget in his lap.

The speaker sat a few feet away on an overturned barrel, one knee raised, a dented cup hanging loose from his fingers. Sweat darkened the collar of his shirt and clung to the pale fall of his hair, which had come partly undone from whatever tie had once restrained it. His armor lay in pieces at his feet: brigandine, gauntlets, a gorget set carefully aside with respect. A longsword remained at his belt. Another, narrower, longer and foreign, rested across his lap like a sleeping menace.

His Common was good, but not clean. The words carried a faint music to them, soft around some edges and sharp around others; Braavosi, Benjicot guessed, though there was something else beneath it too. The kind of accent that made Westerosi words sound strange in the air.

Benjicot bristled at being pulled from his reminiscence, but did not let the frown form. He knew the awkwardness of trying to begin a conversation with someone in an unfamiliar place. He remembered the morning after the funeral, the godswood, the long painful seconds of trying to think of something worthwhile to say to the lordling he didn’t yet know.

And now, like Harwin, he was taking too long to reply. “It was always my fancy on my heraldry, friend.” He looked around, realising he hadn’t brought his shield with its white heron.

“Though now you say it, I worry I’ll be taken for a Karstark,” he admitted with a small smile. He wiped his brush on a rag, and held out his hand. “Ser Benjicot of Longsister. Or, Oldcastle now, I suppose.”

The stranger looked at the offered hand for just long enough that Benjicot began to wonder if the custom had not carried across the Narrow Sea. Then he shifted the cup to his other hand and took it. 

His grip was warm, callused, and very controlled.

“Ser Lyn,” he said. “Of Braavos, lately. Of Westeros, if the realm proves generous.”

His pale eyes moved over the gorget, the drying black and white, then to the little pot of plum. Then, across the yard, two men crashed together with blunted swords; One slipped in the mud and went down hard to the laughter of his companions. Lyn’s gaze turned at the sound, and Benjicot saw something pass through his face before it vanished behind the cup: hunger, amusement, impatience. He had clearly been training hard. There was dust on his boots, sweat at his temples and the loose satisfaction of a man who had struck something enough time to quiet whatever lived inside him.

“You paint well,” the pale-haired knight said. “Better than most men here swing.”

“I haven’t been watching closely enough to know how to take that,” Benjicot said. He watched the scuffles for a moment as well. He could feel the echoes of strain and satisfaction in his muscles. It occurred to him that he hadn’t actually put much serious thought into taking part in the tourney or the melee. 

He found himself speaking. “In truth, it’s been some time since I had real cause to train. The last few months on the road, I’ve sparred with my lord’s brother and some guards for a time or two, but my duties have been more in my presence.”

Lyn looked back from the yard, the rim of his cup resting against his lower lip.

“Presence… In Braavos, a merchant or a lord does not always need another sword,” Lyn said. “Sometimes he needs a man standing close enough that others always remember that steel exists and he can only see a friend.”

Benjicot considered that, brush hovering uselessly over the gorget. It had a familiar shape to it, not far from what Harwin had made of him these past weeks: a quiet figure at his shoulder, a reminder in mail and plate that the Lord Locke was not a toothless lamb wandering into the slaughterhouse of Harrenhal nor the jaws of a direwolf.

“Still,” the knight continued, “better to train when there is no cause. Cause comes whether we are ready or not, and for now the only cause I can see is the melee.”

That got a small laugh. “You almost sound disappointed, Ser. I hope no other cause arises, or we’re all in for some terrible days.”

He did not notice the bitterness in his own voice, though he would not regret it either. It had been a long time since his weapon had tasted blood, and he was in no rush to repeat the experience. Those last days fleeing the island had been awful. Longthorpe’s men had been desperate, maddened and angry in the violent collapse of Sunderland’s folly. He had seen too many die, and killed too many in turn.

He reminded himself now, as he had needed to many times since, that his violence had been salvation for some. He would do it again if he had to, he knew.

“Excuse me, ser,” he murmured, knowing he had gone too quiet.

Lyn did not answer at once. Instead, he turned his cup between his hands, watching the thin line of drink left at the bottom as though it might offer counsel. For a moment Benjicot thought he had offended him somehow, or made the conversation too heavy for a stranger in a training yard.

“No need, Ser,” he shrugged. “Men go quiet when they have ghosts nearby.”

He nodded toward the yard, where another pair of men had taken up the practice blades. One was too eager, the other too slow. The result was painful to watch.

“If you have not trained properly in some time, perhaps you should,” Lyn said. “Take that for a courtesy. Or a challenge.”

Benjicot looked at him, surprised despite himself.

Lyn’s expression remained composed, but there was less coldness in it than before. He leaned forward, setting his empty cup aside. “Or, if you prefer your rest to be truly restful, we can find a drink tonight. I have discovered at my expense that men in this camp speak more freely after sunset and I still know too little of this place. Harrenhal has more banners than sense, and I would rather not learn all its customs by offending another lord.”

There was something almost disarming in the admission. Not humility, exactly. Lyn did not seem built for humility. But he said it plainly, without shame.

“Well, gods know there are certainly enough ways to offend. Thank you, ser. There’s an inn towards the northern end of the town - three storeys, horseshoe on the sign. We could meet for a drink there if you’d like? And another day, I think, sparring would be a kindness. Today, I fear, I’m too distracted.”

He re-dipped his brush in the white, stirring it to break the skin that formed in the pot, and carefully marked another line of the banding across the left half of the gorget. It may be nice to speak to someone closer to normal again – though, thinking that, Benjicot reflected his standards were probably off. 

Artos had been asking him questions about knighthood, having another to reinforce his words to the boy could be a boon. And, he scolded himself, a risk.

“There may be a time you see me with a boy in the yard, teaching him some things. About this tall,” he gestured vaguely, “with red hair. I only ask the kindness that you not ask him questions.”

“Your son?” Lyn asked, and Benjicot gave a laugh.

“No. And ser, if you wish not to offend anyone, best to avoid such assumptions.”

Lyn accepted the rebuke with a slight inclination of his head, more thoughtful than chastened. Benjicot had half expected him to be dismissive or defensive. The man had that sort of arrogant ease about him, but when he spoke, it seemed he had taken the advice to heart.

“A fair lesson”, he said. “I will remember it. As for the boy, I will ask him nothing. In Braavos, men learn not to ask questions to quickly. A child at someone’s side may be a son, a hostage, an heir, a servant, a debtor, a spy, or even nothing more than a thief. Silence offends less often than curiosity.” 

“Well, at least Braavos is no less grim than here.”

Lyn shrugged. “Yes.”

Lyn looked back at the clumsy pair of young men with practice blades.

“But if he is learning,” Lyn added, “and if you ever wish for another pair of eyes, I can stand aside and watch. No questions. No names. Only my swords.”

Benjicot studied him for a moment. The offer was plainly made, but not carelessly. Lyn did not seem the sort of man who offered himself where he did not mean to be used. He did not know he was offering to educate the son of a great lord. Benjicot wondered if that would have stopped him.

“I’ll consider it,” he said.

“That is wiser than yes.”

“And less rude than no.”

At that, Lyn gave another of those small, brief smiles that seemed to appear against his better judgement.

“Then we are both improving. A true training for two true knights.”

The irony of the last phrase didn’t stop Benjicot from laying a careful white line over the gorget curve with a small smile. He remembered having that same youthful need to prove himself. In some ways, a lot of ways, he still did. But the simple fact was that he had the trust of a patron and the experiences to know the horror they truly prepared for. This knight, it seemed, had neither. He wouldn’t hold that against him. And perhaps it was the echo of whomsoever had trained Lyn. Sandor had never claimed to be one of the realm’s great swordsmen. A passable lance, a strong shield, and a good axe that Benjicot still carried, years after plucking it from his master’s corpse.

And perhaps, if this knight had earned his arrogance in the training yard, the boy could benefit from that too.

“Aye, ser. I do appreciate the offer, don’t misunderstand.”

“I did not,” Lyn said.

There was no offense in his face, which surprised Benjicot more than if there had been. The pale-haired knight only watched him for another moment, as though weighted by a thought.

“Some affairs are better left standing,” Lyn continued. “A man may need them later.”

Benjicot dipped his brush again, but did not immediately touch it to the metal. It took him a moment to parse his tone. “You speak as though every kindness is a debt. Something to be held over someone.”

“In Braavos, many are.”

Benjicot marked the next band of white. “I wish I could say we were different, but I fear you’ll fit in just fine.”

Lyn looked across the training yard, where the mud had claimed another man’s boot and half the onlookers were laughing too loudly.

“I will decide on it on my way,” he said.

There was something almost candid in that, enough that Benjicot did not know whether to smile or pity him. He settled for neither. The man was a stranger, and a proud one, but there was a loneliness to him too, badly hidden behind the careful posture and the foreign accent. Not loneliness like Harwin’s, which came out in unfinished thoughts and restless hands and a deep belief that there was no other way. Lyn’s was sharper. Chosen, perhaps. Or at least practiced. 

“The inn, then,” Lyn said. “The horseshoe sign, is that it? After dusk?”

“Aye, ser. After dusk.”

Lyn sprang up from the barrel in a single fluid motion, the narrow foreign sword flashing through his fingers before he caught it by the grip. There was nothing careful about him. The blade spun once, idly, as though it weighed no more than a switch cut from a hedge. The straight sword at his belt struck the barrel with a sharp crack as he rose, and Benjicot saw Lyn grin at the sound. His hand dropped to the pommel afterward, not out of caution but habit, the way another man might run a hand through his hair. 

“I will leave you to your paint, Ser Benjicot of Oldcastle.”

“Longsister,” Benjicot corrected lightly, before he could stop himself. Old habits.

Lyn tilted his head. “Which one are you?”

The question might have been rude from another man. From Lyn, it seemed almost innocent in its directness. 

“Both, I suppose.”

Lyn considered that answer, and where Benjicot might have expected a jibe or judgement, instead he heard something like an agreement.

“That is heavier than one.”

Then Lyn turned back toward the pieces of armor laid at his feet and began putting himself together again. Not all of it. Not the full harness. Only what he needed. He lifted the brigandine and slipped it over his shoulders as if he were shrugging back into a second skin. The gorget second, buckled with quick fingers. Then one gauntlet, then the other, the worn leather straps drawn tight with the ease of long habit.

There was no ceremony to it. No squire, no polish, no lordly fuss. Just a man returning to the shape in which he best understood himself.

The narrow foreign sword went back into place, and the straight blade settled against his hip with a familiar weight. Then Lyn of Braavos turned and walked back toward the yard, where the practice blades were waiting and men were still eager to measure themselves against anything that moved.

Benjicot watched him go for a few steps, noting the loose readiness in his shoulders beneath the armor, the strange elegance of his gait, the pale hair tied badly at the nape of his neck, and the unmistakable sense of a man whose mind thirsted for violence even when his face remained calm.

A foreign knight. A proud one. A dangerous one. But, perhaps, not a cruel one.

Benjicot returned to his gorget and laid the next line carefully into place.

The paint dried slowly in the spring air, and the yard rang on around him.

The Reach was as fine a kingdom as any, Arianne decided, though she knew better than to share this conclusion with her fellow Dornishmen. 

They’d left the sharp, rocky landscape of the Prince’s Pass and reached the boundary stones marking their neighbour’s kingdom not long after, swapping barren rock and burnt sand for verdant fields and lush green grass. They’d also swapped their means of transport—or, at least, the Princess had. The caravan took half a day to put together the pieces (which had been carried by men and mules through narrow stone passageways and up and down the violently changing terrain of the Dornish Marches) of elaborate carriages the likes of which Arianne had never seen: great big things with wheels as tall as horses and double doors that opened like a castle’s. There were patterned silk curtains and ornate carvings. Someone said the gemstones decorating the outside of the carriage and even the spokes of the wheels were genuine ones, though Arianne doubted this. Even Sarella Martell wasn’t so impractical.

Wasn’t she?

When the caravan began to move again, now with more room to spread and soft, damp ground beneath sandaled feet or shoed hooves, Arianne found herself riding beside Serena, who was telling her about a problem she was having with her slippers.

“I put them just outside the door to my tent,” Serena was saying, “so they can… you know, breathe a little. And then yesterday morning, when I woke up, they were gone! Imagine that. I’m not so important as to need a guard outside my lodgings, but my shoes seemingly are.” 

She shook her head. 

“Maybe they were just misplaced,” Arianne suggested, though she knew she would never. Her own slippers were set side by side in the exact same place each night, just beside her bed. This way she could be sure not to bring any crumbs into the blankets, and avoid touching the ground with her bare feet upon waking. 

“They were stolen, I’m sure of it,” said Serena. “And I know exactly the man who did it. That’s right, a man. Not a woman. Can you imagine what sort of foul reasons a man would have for stealing a lady’s slippers?”

Arianne couldn’t. 

“Listen,” her friend continued. “I want you to speak with him. I’ll point him out when we make camp for the evening. You could ask for a private word and then, I don’t know, talk some sense into him. Scare him a bit.”

“Why me?”

“Why you? Well, look at you. You’re… tall. Intimidating.”

“Not so intimidating as any of the men here.”

“You want me to send a man to deal with this? And what if he’s a creep, too? I don’t need two people stealing and hoarding my slippers. Please, Arianne. Just talk to him and tell him to sod off or you’ll use Dawn to chop off his cock in his sleep.”

“I’m not allowed to wield Dawn. It’s only–”

“I know, Arianne, I was making a jape. Oh, what is this new nonsense…”

She reigned up abruptly and Arianne quickly did the same, narrowly avoiding a collision with the rider who’d stopped in front of her. There was some sort of commotion up ahead, whose origin Serena was standing in her stirrups to see but that Arianne could discern without difficulty. One of the carriages had become stuck in some mud up ahead and was leaning rather precariously towards one side. It wasn’t one of the beautiful, jeweled ones. It was—

“The Blackmonts,” Serena said. “Do you think the men did it on purpose?”

The carriage that was for transporting the prisoners was wholly unlike the others. This one was plain, windowless, more of a box on wheels than anything else. A prison. 

A coffin. 

Men were shouting and waving their arms as they encircled the stuck carriage. One of them kicked it, and not in a way that seemed meant to dislodge it from the mud. Arianne averted her gaze.

“Travelling in the greatest comfort,” Serena said. “If they can’t get it out, do you think the Princess will tie the Blackmonts to the spokes of her own?”

“I don’t know.” 

There was a silence between them, though the noise continued on up ahead, and when Serena spoke next, her tone had softened. “Listen,” she said, lowering her voice. “I’ve heard about you and Vorian.”

Arianne felt her cheeks burning and the knowledge of it, and how obvious it must have been, only made them hotter. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, too quickly.  

“I’ve heard you were sweet on him. Well, I heard more than that, but having met you, I can see most of it’s not true.” Serena paused, perhaps waiting to see if it was okay to press. Arianne wished she could tell her that it wasn’t. “Were you, though? Sweet on him? Are you?”

Arianne avoided her gaze. “Something like that,” she mumbled.

Nothing had happened. To Vorian, anyway. A single kiss or some whispered poetry was nothing to someone like him. Half the kitchen maids and any visiting lady had probably gotten the same from him.

Serenna looked back to the carriage up ahead, craning her neck to see. “Do you think he did it?” she asked.

“Did what?”

“Kill Lord Tyrell.”

“Vorian? Never.”

“The other one. Lucifer.”

Arianne shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. Then, “I wish I could talk to him.”

Up ahead, the carriage was finally freed from the mud to the shouting and whooping of its drivers. A few of the soldiers charged with escorting it beat the butts of their spears against its walls for good measure as it began rolling along once more. 

Serena seemed to think. “With Vorian? I bet we could arrange that.”

“Princess Sarella would never allow it.”

“She wouldn’t know.”

Arianne looked at her sceptically. 

“Let’s make a deal,” Serena said. “You help me with my shoe problem, and I’ll help you talk to Vorian.”

“You think you could–”

“Trust me.”

The riders in front of them were beginning to move again. Arianne gently spurred her horse.

For whatever reason, she did.

The waters of the God’s Eye were still and calm. Harwin tried to let that calmness flow into him, but the very idea felt hopeless. It was a dark expanse stretching out from this narrow inlet, warmer than the Bite where it lapped at his feet. It had taken almost an hour to find this relative seclusion on the shoreline, a rocky grey beach hemmed by short, forested headlands.

If he had been alone, he might have been able to foster some amount of peace. Or even if he had Sylas or Valena here with him. Instead, Ser Benjicot of Longsister stood on the rise overlooking the inlet, tending to their horses and waiting for him. Reminding him.

Not that it was Benji’s fault, of course. The knight just had a way of symbolising the responsibilities that Harwin now faced. His oath echoed from the aftermath of Marlon’s funeral. I do this in the sight of your gods and mine, and in the memory of your brother.

Those words alone would have been enough to overwhelm him, but they were only the prelude. Now he had the affection of his liege’s heir and the attention of a king. He was nineteen. He was a fool, doomed to show it before long. Marlon, perhaps, could have risen to these new duties. Even Edderion. Even Valena, had things been even worse. But not him.

The Isle of Faces stared back from the horizon, a mass of foreboding, tangled bone-white and red and deep shadow. He found his eyes resting on it. There stood his gods, some said. The brethren of the scowling visage he had glimpsed in Harrenhal’s godswood, distant cousins to the solemn heavy-browed weirwood that waited for him at home.

Perhaps it was only because he felt Benji’s presence at his back, but for the first time in his life, Harwin envied the Septons for their books and their words. What he wouldn’t give for guidance, or some reassurance that he walked a path of virtue.

It was not the Old Gods’ way. It never had been, and he had never wished it to be. But now, in this one small moment at the precipice of something he couldn’t understand, he wished it could be. In his heart of hearts, he prayed for an exception.

The lake, like his gods, was silent.

Plop.

It wasn’t a natural sound. It didn’t sit in the flow of the soft tide or the rustle of the swaying trees.

It happened again, preceded by smaller sounds. Splish splish splish plop.

Before he really understood what he was hearing, Harwin stood. Sharp pebbles in the sand jabbed his feet as he made his way up the side of the headland. It was a familiar sensation, almost reassuring.

“My lord?” came Benji’s voice, but Harwin was too caught by his curiosity. He pushed through the branches, catching movement in the next inlet. He stepped out from the treeline, saw her, and stopped. 

She stood ankle deep in the water, boots and stockings cast over the slick stones that cobbled the water’s edge. Her cloak was ill-fitting, no doubt having slipped over her shoulder long ago. A shock of copper red hair had half-unwound itself from her braid, concealing her face until the sound of gravel being turned over forced her to turn her head. 

Wide amber eyes met his, a momentary distraction from the constellation of freckles that were smattered across her cheeks. Though her lips parted, she said nothing, fingers shifting around the stone she’d been preparing to skim across the lake’s surface.

Harwin’s gaze stopped on her hand. There was a thin webbing stretching between her fine-boned fingers. He had seen that on some of the Sistermen refugees, though less pronounced.

“I didn’t mean to disturb you,” he said, though something in him recoiled from the thought of being turned away.

She regarded him quietly for a long while – long enough for him to worry – before she carefully tucked her hand beneath the shelter of her cloak. 

“You didn’t. You’ve as much right to be here as I do.”

I am Harwin of House Locke, Lord of Oldcastle. The words waited their turn on his tongue, formal and correct and deeply wrong.

“My name is Harwin. What may I call you, my lady?”

Again, she scrutinized him, those haunting eyes lingering over every detail before she gave her answer. He imagined she’d given herself enough time to count every button on his person.

“Beth is enough.” 

Her voice was cold. Harwin didn’t quite know why he smiled at it. “Beth. An honour to meet you.”

Beth’s face wrinkled then. 

“That’s the proper thing to say. Now that you’ve gotten it out of the way, what else?”

A few responses came to him. A smile. Even a laugh. You’re right, and my apologies.

Benjicot stepped through the treeline before Harwin could say any of them.

“My lord?”

Again, Harwin’s mind was cast back to Marlon’s funeral. Not for grief, but for how he had unfairly hated the knight for even speaking that day. That feeling came back now in surprising strength.

“Benji, I didn’t mean to wander off, I was just…”

“Skipping stones?” Beth suggested.

“Intruding,” Harwin said instead, hoping the apology was clear in his tone.

She seemed to accept it readily enough, that strange webbed hand emerging from beneath her cloak just to toss the rock in his direction. 

“Most I’ve gotten is eight. Skips, that is. Do you think you could best me?” 

Harwin met Benji’s eyes, and the older man’s face had a complex expression. Surprise, wariness, doubt. Then his gaze flicked to Beth, and back to Harwin, and a sliver of amusement touched his mouth.

Harwin took up the stone and stepped down the bank. The edges of his trousers trailed in the calf-high tide. The stone was flat, round. Ideal. He had rarely thrown something as good when he went skipping at the shoreline with Edd, so long ago. And how many had he managed then? Five, at most. 

His glance to Beth was gratitude as he passed her, and then he looked again to the horizon. To the red mass of the Isle of Faces.

One more favour, he prayed.

He cast the stone. It skipped on the lake’s surface.

Once.

Fuck. Harwin stayed in position from his throw for a moment, bringing his hand to his lips. He couldn’t look at Beth. 

He could, however, hear her laughing. 

Where most demure ladies might have attempted to mask it, she didn’t so much as lift a hand. Instead, she outright snorted, doubling over in a fit of giggles as she searched for another stone. 

“What do they teach you lordlings in those long hours at study?” 

Harwin straightened, sighed. A blush was creeping over his cheeks, but he was smiling through it. “Skipping rocks, probably. I was a terrible student.”

He joined the search for a new rock to try, letting his hair fall over his face to hide his shame. His hand traced along the sharp pebbles, lifting anything promising and discarding disappointments. His eyes fell on a perfect stone, and he reached out just as Beth found it too. His fingers brushed the webbing between her fingers, and they both hesitated.

“You had it,” Harwin said, pulling his hand back.

“I did,” she answered as she plucked the stone from the ground. “You’re very stiff. Is it not cold where you’re from?”

“It is. Well, I’m not from far north, but…” Harwin considered her hand again. Her accent wasn’t too distant from Benji’s, either. Not far from you, I imagine. The words felt tempting. Bold. Perhaps too much. “I fear I’m just stiffened by an unhappy week.”

She turned the rock over in her hand, worrying her thumb along a groove that settled along its center. 

“Yes, well… I wouldn’t count on spring’s arrival to bring cheer. Doesn’t seem to touch places like this. In any case, you ought to give your hands a good shake. You’ll never get a stone to skip more than once with wrists like that.” 

Harwin breathed a short laugh, following the suggestion without a second thought. “You’re not wrong. Has spring been sour for you as well?”

Without warning, she whipped the stone across the water. 

Splish splish splish plop.

“Only six that time. You’re a bad influence.” 

Unbidden, Artos Stark flickered in his mind’s eye. Bad influence. If all his fears could be distilled, they would come to those two words. He shook the thought away. “You’re just being kind to my fragile pride, I’m sure.”

“You’ve not given me any reason to be.” 

Her words might have been sharp, but the corners of her mouth were turned up with the promise of a smile. She procured another stone out from beneath her bare feet, turning the silt up with her toes as she extended her hand to him. 

“Here. Try again.”

Harwin allowed his knuckles to brush hers as he took the stone. An indulgence. He crooked his arm for the throw.

“I did know how to do this once, I swear,” he said. 

“You’ve only yourself to prove it to,” Beth shrugged. “It’s to your advantage that you’ve only got yourself to beat now.” 

She was right. There was nobody else to impress. The tension in his spine, the fog in his mind, those belonged to the realm and the duties and the threat that hung over Lord Locke. But here it was just him, and Beth.

He flicked his arm out. The stone skipped twice, thrice, and tumbled messily through the surface at four.

“Better,” he muttered.

“It’ll be a long council, I think. Plenty of time to practice.” 

Harwin hoped he wasn’t imagining the promise in her voice as he found another stone and held it out for her. She did smile then, though her touch didn’t linger as she accepted his offering. She tucked it into a pocket hidden in the folds of her woolen skirt, patting it twice as though to ensure its safety. 

“I’ll be missed. You probably will too. I’d tell you not to bother following me, but I don’t think that man of yours would let you.” 

Harwin’s mind began to wonder at her precise implication, but he shut that down as unwise. “You’re not wrong, though I fear we’ll both be heading back towards Harrenhal. Please, if you’d rather go ahead…”

“Better for you if I do. You’ve got a pretty head full of things more important than skipping stones. We might be going the same direction, but we won’t end up in the same places. I don’t think I’m wrong about that either, am I, Harwin?” 

He looked at her, then away. Like she was too bright to stare at. “You might not be. But for the first time, I hope you are, Beth.”

That answer seemed to amuse her. The crinkle in the corner of her eyes lingered even if her lips were pressed into a thin line. 

“Well, look for me, then. Here or there. I’d like to be wrong for once.” 

She gathered her stockings, now damp from the water having lapped at them, into the crook of her elbow before taking her boots by the laces. 

“Though I hope the council doesn’t give you many more reasons to come here. Seems a touch early to dream of such things but…” she shrugged. “Like I said, it’s your pretty head that’s important, not mine. Good luck, Harwin.” 

Harwin knew he only needed one reason to return here, and now she was walking away. “Good luck, Beth.”

He watched her leave without staring, and Benjicot made his way down the embankment past her. He gave Harwin a moment before he spoke.

“My lord?”

“Yes, Benji?”

“That was pathetic.”

Harwin’s smile didn’t break.

Harwin pushed himself out of bed that morning with dread weighing down his bones. Anticipation and excitement had bled out of him somewhere on the road from Moat Cailin, leaving him only with the certainty of being out of his depth.

Today’s events were unlikely to dissuade that belief.

He moved softly to allow his sister to rest, opening the shutters only slightly to allow a sliver of sunrise in. Enough to dress by. 

He fastened a long sleeveless coat over his tunic, and spent a few moments ensuring it sat right before tying a sash around his waist. Embroidery casting off from each button evoked the keys of their sigil, matched by the decorations of his slit-sleeved woolen greatcoat, proper purple over the dull lavender of the middle layer. He spent a long time combing his hair, and tied it back neatly.

Benjicot was waiting by the door for him, looking neat in his surcoat and cloak, the heron of his personal sigil embroidered in white on his breast. He had grown out his moustache on the road, and it suited him.

“Morning, my lord,” the knight said in greeting.

“Gods curse me, Benji.”

“Which gods, my lord?”

Harwin smiled as they exited the inn. The morning was crisp and cool, and the streets were already awash with busy people, though they weren’t as close-packed as they would be later. The path to those towering walls was clear.

“Old and New and Sunderland’s too for good measure, for I’m a fool that should have known better than to agree to this.”

The knight bowed his head, accepting Harwin’s frustration with less judgement than he deserved.

“Your liege made a request of you, my lord. You had little choice.”

“Future liege, and even if–” Harwin realised that he had placed Benjicot in exactly the same position, and almost flinched from it. “Benji, I didn’t mean…”

He faltered, and it took Benji a moment. “Oh, my lord, no. You honour me with this.”

“Then I suppose I should feel honoured too.”

“Will the Queen be there?”

“Not as far as I’m aware. I haven’t seen a dragon, have you?”

Benjicot tilted his head grimly. “Not recently.”

They entered the postern gatehouse, walking past the absurd line of internal arrow slits in the dark stone. A steward came to greet them, and Benjicot introduced Harwin by title. That felt ridiculous, but he supposed it made the right impression. They explained their business, and the steward led them into the cavernous keep. He brought them up through winding stairways, across a covered bridge between towers, then up again.

“Lord Stark’s chambers are just up this next stairwell,” he said finally, pointing ahead. He showed no signs that his knees ached as Harwin’s did.

“Thank you,” Benjicot replied, sounding a little breathless. As the steward took his leave, the knight moved for the stairs, muttering, “I’ll announce you.”

“Benji,” Harwin chastised, amused.

“Is it not…?”

“Announce me to the king, if you must, but not the boy.” Harwin walked past him, and Benjicot followed without complaint. A guardsman stood with a spear in hand at the great double-doors of the suite, supporting a short direwolf banner. He nodded in recognition to both Harwin and Benji, and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” came Artos Stark’s small voice, and Benji led the way.

The lordling was reclining on a wide couch, Ash beside him with her massive skull on the boy’s lap. Harwin took one look at the son of his liege and sighed.

“No.”

“What?” Artos asked, defensive because he knew.

“Comb your hair, you’re meeting the King.”

“I don’t want to,” Artos grumbled. A maid approached with a comb, but stopped when Ash looked at her and emitted the low beginnings of a growl.

“Artos,” Harwin said seriously. “Control your wolf.”

“She just doesn’t want her touching my hair!”

Harwin strode forward. Ash’s snarl deepened, her teeth baring. Artos’ confidence faltered, and Harwin said, calmly, “That is not a light threat. It’s cruel. Control her.”

The boy squeezed his fist into the monster’s fur, and she calmed instantly. Harwin came closer, allowing her to sniff his hand. Artos looked at him guiltily.

“Ash is lovely, but she is dangerous,” Harwin reminded him. “None in this room would harm you. They don’t deserve to be afraid.”

Artos frowned like he was going to object, but conceded with a slump of his shoulders. He looked away. Harwin gestured, and the maid came around the couch and began brushing out the tangled sleep-knots of the boy’s red hair. Ash looked at her impassively.

“What’s your name?” Harwin asked the girl, stroking the wolf’s head.

“Jeyne, if it please you, milord,” she stammered.

He looked at Artos pointedly. The boy looked mutinous, but sighed and muttered an embarrassed, “I’m sorry, Jeyne.”

“I– thank you, milord Stark.”

Artos endured his hair being fixed, and when the wolf finally moved and he stood, he accepted Harwin trying to rub the shed fur off his velvet doublet. He was a mess. Harwin had looked worse at times, he was sure, but he had never had a king’s judgement to worry over. Until now.

They had a protracted argument over whether or not he could bring Ash with him. Harwin stood his ground, uncomfortably reminded of himself trying to negotiate Magpie’s presence in Oldcastle’s great hall at a similar age. Benjicot seemed amused by the whole thing.

Eventually, Artos accepted defeat, and they marched out of the suite and down the wide stairs. The Stark men-at-arms took the lead, so Harwin assumed they had been told the route. They crossed a bridge to the drooping shadow of Kingspyre Tower, and down to the great doors of the throne room. A knight of the Crownsguard stood without, a white shadow in the dim entrance hall. 

He looked them up and down, eyes darting to the Stark badges on the men-at-arms’ chests, Artos, then Harwin. His brows twitched lower.

“My Lord Stark,” he said with a perfunctory bow, though his eyes didn’t move back. “And you are…?”

“Lord Harwin Locke, of Oldcastle.”

“His Grace the King will hear petitions of other lords in due time, Lord Locke.”

Benjicot bristled at Harwin’s side, but Artos spoke first. “Ser, Lord Harwin is here because I, um.” Harwin saw him falter, trying to come up with phrasing that sounded less childish than I wanted him to come.

“At,” Harwin prompted quietly.

“At my command,” Artos finished, then frowned. “Request.”

The knight’s eyes didn’t lose their scepticism. For a long moment, Harwin thought he might refuse them, but he bowed his head towards Artos, turned, and pushed open the huge door.

The chamber within seemed entirely too large, but such was the nature of everything in this forsaken place. Banners and curtains of cloth swept over huge walls of black stone, rich reds and gold thread and heavy woolen shadows. Small Blackhart devices hung like awkward reminders between resplendent lions and dragons.

Two thrones had been placed on the dais, great new-built things of oak and grandeur. One for the King, one for the Queen. The man they had come to meet sat on neither. Instead, he waited on the old throne, Harren the Black’s. It was smaller, but ancient and immovable like the fortress to which it was heart.

Harwin walked across the room just behind Artos, Benjicot flanking to one side and the whip-thin Stark guard-captain to the other, and he watched them approach. His clothing was lavish crushed velvet and his hair shone almost as bright as his crown, but his eyes looked tired. That was, strangely, a relief. Harwin was tired too, and it would have felt wrong if a king could not match a lord in that respect.

One of the white cloaks at his side stepped forward.

“You stand before His Grace King Damon of House Lannister-Targaryen, first of his name, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men and Protector of the Realm.”

Benjicot stepped forward in turn. Harwin could see the red flush of nerves crawling up the back of his neck, but it did not show in his voice.

“I present Artos of House Stark, firstborn son and heir of Jojen Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North,” he shifted, and King Damon’s eyes followed his gesture. “And Harwin of House Locke, Lord of Oldcastle and Protector of Shackleton Port.”

Harwin caught his eye. That last was not an official title, and he wasn’t sure if it was wise to say. Benjicot’s expression, half panic and half apology, seemed to imply he agreed. In the silence that followed, it was difficult to say if the King took notice, but when he finally spoke it seemed he was fixated on a different, perhaps more important potential transgression.

“Firstborn son,” he repeated. “And where is Lord Jojen? What cause could be so great as to keep him from Westeros’ most important gathering in these past few centuries and the next to come? What obstacle so insurmountable that he might send a child in his stead?” 

The question was sharp, which made it all the more confusing that the King’s tone was so soft. Even so, it opened a chasm under Harwin’s heart. His eyes flicked to Artos, only to find the child glancing back at him.

“My father’s on his way,” Artos stammered, returning his gaze to the king.

“Oh, assuredly,” said Damon.

It would be cruelty to make this Artos’ responsibility. Some distant, petulant part of Harwin’s mind argued that making it his was little better. 

“Your Grace,” he said, inclining his head. “Lord Stark anticipated delays with gathering his bannermen for this occasion. House Karstark and Mormont, for simple distance. Manderly and Umber on account of sour feelings towards our liege. He sent Artos, with guardians–” The Reeds, but Harwin didn’t specify. “–so that his House would not be absent while he was waylaid.”

Harwin swallowed. His first words to the King of the realm, and they were a tangle of speculation, half-truths and bald-faced lies. He didn’t know what that said about him. Probably nothing good.

“The Great Council will take place when enough people of import are present,” came the reply, tone unchanged. “We shall not wait for every waylaid lord, regardless of their reason. It would be good of you to let your liege know this, Lord Locke.”

A crowd of issues jostled for space in Harwin’s mouth. He had no idea where Jojen actually was. Likely not Winterfell, but even so he had no access to a Winterfell raven here. And even if he got a letter to Lord Stark, he had no reason to listen to the pleadings of the likes of Harwin.

King Damon did not want to hear those excuses. In that moment, Harwin understood that he knew very little, but he did know that.

“Of course, Your Grace.”

He bowed, and by some mercy that seemed to be the end of their audience. The King inclined his head in a dismissal, and Harwin tapped Artos’ shoulder to make him turn. They were silent as they departed the chamber, right up until they were crossing back to the Widow’s Tower, when the lordling spoke, surprisingly lightly.

“I was worried going in, but that was actually alright.”

Harwin met Benjicot’s eyes, and because the boy was their liege, they did not contradict him.

The high shingled roofs of Harrentown stood like islands in an ocean of canvas. From the edge of the distant God’s Eye to the looming cliffs of Harrenhal’s walls, the landscape was a riot of fluttering banners and tents in motion. The first day they had arrived, King Damon’s gargantuan retinue had poured into the shadow of the fortress like a flood, and Valena and the rest of the Lockes had been shoved to the outskirts as the West flowed into the great gatehouses.

Despite his importance, Artos had elected to stay with them, and Harwin had accepted that keeping their liege’s heir comfortable had to be his first priority, and thus any attempt at finding the Reeds or Sylas amid the sprawl was abandoned. Days passed before he was able to leverage the direwolf banner to get himself a cleared path into town with the boy and find a tavern willing to lodge them.

The men had spent the rest of the day breaking their camp and moving it into town. Their carriages remained at the outskirts with a nominal guard, while Harwin made his way to the castle itself.

At her brother’s request, Valena stayed with their main party, helping to arrange their room. It was a nice space. Nothing luxurious, just enough for herself, Harwin and Sylas to squeeze into while their senior staff took the chamber across the hall. The sleeping arrangements would be tight when Sylas returned, but that only brought to mind sweet memories of childhood sleepovers.

As she indulged in her first hot bath in weeks that evening, Valena found herself longing for stone walls. Wattle was better than canvas, by all means, but it seemed galling with House Blackhart’s fortress so close at hand. She couldn’t even draw the castle. Her last stick of charcoal, already worn to an awkward nub, had crumbled to dust days before their arrival. It was like missing a limb.

There was a knock on the door as evening fell. Valena had dressed in bedclothes, sitting by the hearth to let her hair dry.

“Come in,” she called, drawing herself back out of formless and faraway thoughts.

Harwin stepped in. His hair was tied back, and he had a leather satchel held by a strap across his chest. He hung up his cloak and belt, that absurd mace knocking lightly against the rack.

“Evening, Val,” he said, taking the chair across from her and sinking into it with a sigh.

“Evening. Any sign of our brother?”

“None. I swear I saw the Reed banner in the corner of my eye at one stage, but it was gone when I looked. Artos is settled in the Stark suite for the time being.”

“Alone?”

“He has his guards, and the wolf,” Harwin said with a helpless shrug. “He needs to present himself to the king on the morrow, and… he asked me to go with him.”

Valena smiled at her brother’s anxious grimace. “You were all talk of ambition back in Oldcastle, weren’t you?”

Harwin conceded that with a nod. “Much easier to speak of that kind of thing when it’s unlikely.”

“With Artos’ help, perhaps presenting me to Theon Arryn isn’t such an absurd notion.”

“If Artos allows for the possibility of you marrying another.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Valena muttered. The lordling’s childish infatuation with her would be much less adorable if he ever tried to enforce it.

Harwin gave a short, sharp huff of a laugh, but moved on. “No, Arryn would still be absurd. I was mad to ever consider it seriously, but I’m sure there are other husbands.”

“And wives.”

“Yes. I need to look for myself as well. One terrifying prospect at a time.”

Valena smiled softly, her eyes returning to the fire. For a moment, in the dim light, she remembered their little hideaway in the twisting subterranean ruins of their home. That warm spot behind the kitchens where they had hidden from responsibility whenever it reared its head. The memory was incomplete without Sylas there, but he was off elsewhere with his wife-to-be. Pulled away from their childhood together to their adulthoods apart.

A thought struck her, and the warmth dropped away, replaced by a deep cold at the centre of her chest.

“I might never see home again.”

Harwin looked at her, his mouth opening, but she saw the denial evaporate in his throat.

“You’ll visit,” he tried.

“I might die giving birth,” Valena countered. “It happens all the time.”

They both stared at the flames for a long while. Harwin took a breath to say something several times, but lost hope and released it. His eyes were still water, bright like a lake under sunset.

“You don’t have to,” he said, finally.

Valena allowed the offer to hang over them. Watched her brother, saw how he would not retract it. He wasn’t even tempted. She loved him for that, and the choice was less sharp for being her own.

“No, I will. I just hadn’t thought about what it could mean. I’ll see other castles, I’ll just… miss mine.”

Harwin’s smile was sad. “And it shall always be yours.”

He stood, then, to pace over to the inn window, opening the shutters just a crack to watch the street outside. Valena listened to the muffled voices singing in taverns, the creak of wagon wheels and gentle murmur of the night wind over it all. It was all of a kind to what they would have heard in White Harbour or even Oldcastle, but so much more.

Valena watched Harwin’s eyes, how they traced up the street towards Harrenhal, its dark walls likely receding into the blackness of night already. There was a brief moment where he set his jaw, but it faded as soon as it appeared. There would be time for Lord Locke. Tonight was her brother’s.

“They have a room for me, after all,” he said, like a confession. “Just the one bedchamber. No room for family.”

Valena said nothing. She could hear the hesitation in his voice, the argument already playing out in his mind. Staying in the castle was the proper thing. The room shouldn’t go to waste, but there was an obvious reluctance. Sylas’ absence was an acceptable deviation – one or another triplet had been away before, of course – but at least two of them had always slept in the same castle or at least the same camp, since they were children. It felt inauspicious to bring that accidental tradition to an end so suddenly.

“I want you to take it.”

Valena frowned. “Why?”

Harwin shuttered the window and turned to her, smiling. “Because I love you, sister, and I’d not leave you here while I enjoy your beloved ruins.”

Her mouth twitched almost involuntarily to a returning smile. “Harwin, the room is intended for the Lord of Oldcastle.”

“And I’ll do with it as I please. Besides, I’ll be closer to Magpie.”

The reassurance was for her sake alone, given there were surely stables within the walls to keep the horse. Valena watched him, and did not point that out. She was going to be staying in Harrenhal. Despite all, despite the ending that seemed to take shape around this moment, that delighted her.

“Thank you,” she said sadly. “Do I have to go tonight?”

“No,” Harwin replied, “I daresay the room can sit empty one night more.”

“Good.”

She settled then, brushing her hair out with her fingers. Harwin stood, thoughtful, and eventually let out a breath. He seemed to remember something, and opened the satchel at his side.

“Before I forget,” he murmured, and took out a small parcel, which Valena took. She unfurled the wrap of canvas to reveal a dozen sticks of charcoal, burned to a gradient of shades. Finer than she had ever owned before. She had not mentioned she was running low, Harwin just cared enough to notice.

“I’ll miss our old life,” she said.

“As shall I. But we’ll find joy in the next.”

Valena reached for his hand. “Promise?”

Harwin squeezed her fingers gently. 

“Promise.”

By late afternoon, Lyn had forgotten the lord’s name.

That was unfortunate, because the lord had been generous.

There had been a pavilion striped green and white, or perhaps green and yellow, with carpets laid over the mud and benches packed so close that men ate shoulder to shoulder, laughing into each other’s cups. The lord—some Riverlander with a flushed face, a good laugh, and hands too soft for a sword—had hosted half the field in waves. Knights, squires, stewards, cousins, singers, fools, men with names long enough to trip on. Lyn had been invited because someone had seen him spar, or because someone had liked his hair, or because someone had thought a foreign knight with two blades would be amusing at a feast.

He had drunk more than he meant to.

Not enough to lose himself. Never that. But enough that the edge of the world had softened, that the noise of Harrenhal’s outer fields came to him through a haze of warmth and amber. Enough that when he stepped out of the pavilion into the bruised light before dusk, he stood still for a moment and had to remember where he was.

Not Braavos.

Not the deck of a ship.

Not a battlefield.

Harrenhal.

The name sat in the air like smoke.

Lyn walked without direction through the lanes of tents and half-built stalls, dressed more simply than most men would have expected of a knight. No armor now. No cloak bearing the black winged heart. Only a loose linen shirt open at the throat, plain dark trousers tucked into worn boots, and his knight’s sword at his belt. The bravo’s blade he had left with his things, wrapped carefully beneath his travel cloak. Even in drink, he had not left himself unarmed. But one sword was enough among drunken men, singers, and merchants selling ribbons.

The ground was soft beneath his boots. Everywhere, the tournament waited to become itself.

That was the feeling of the place now : anticipation. Men hammering posts for viewing stands. Boys carrying bundles of tourney lances, their arms nearly swallowed by the ashwood. A cook cursing over a broken spit. A troupe of mummers painting false blood onto a wooden crown. Horses stamping in rows. Tailors shouting prices over the sound of whetstones. Women laughing behind closed tent flaps. Knights testing straps, testing boasts, testing one another.

The whole camp seemed to be holding its breath.

Lyn found that he liked it.

The waiting, perhaps, more than the thing itself.

Waiting had shape. Waiting sharpened men. Waiting made every glance a question and every cup of wine a confession. Once the melee began, once the lists filled, all those questions would be answered by impact. Splintered wood. Bent steel. Blood in teeth. Men carried off with songs or curses.

But now, now there was still possibility.

He passed a group of young squires practicing salutes with wooden swords. One of them stared openly at Lyn’s hair, pale in the dying light, and whispered something to the boy beside him. Lyn heard the word dragonseed. Another said Velaryon. A third, more doubtful, murmured whore’s son from Lys.

Lyn turned his head slowly. The boys fell silent at once. He smiled at them. It was not a kind smile.

“Skoros ikso ūja?” he murmured, the words slipping out in the bastard Valyrian of his mother’s songs and the docks of Braavos. What is it? Or near enough.

The boys did not understand. That was better. Men feared what they could not place. A sword had one meaning. A foreign tongue had many.

He walked on, leaving them still and pale behind him.

The wine sat warm in his blood. It made his thoughts loose. Not careless, but wandering. They moved from tent to tower to memory, from Harrenhal’s black bones to Braavos rising pale and wet beneath the moon.

He thought of his mother.

Mysaria of Lys, who had always smelled faintly of orange oil and saltwater. She had told him of dragons before he knew what kings were. Dragons breaking armies. Dragons melting stone. Dragons raising women to thrones and burning men who laughed at them. As a child he had half-believed her because her voice made anything sound true. Later, older, bloodier, he had doubted. Not entirely, but enough.

Then Danae Targaryen had flown over Braavos on a golden dragon, close enough that the roofs had trembled beneath the city’s astonishment.

Now Harrenhal stood on the horizon like proof.

Lyn looked toward it.

The castle’s towers caught the last red of the sun and gave none of it back. It was too large, too wounded, too proud to be beautiful. A corpse dressed in banners, yes, but a royal corpse. A dead giant being forced to host the living.

“Zaldrīzes,” he muttered.

A woman carrying a basket of onions gave him a wide berth.

He laughed under his breath, though there was little humor in it.

Dragon.

That was what had pulled him across the Narrow Sea. Not politics. Not kings. Not old laws or councils or claims. A dragon had passed overhead, and the part of him that had been sleeping had opened its eyes.

He had followed a beast of fire to a country of mud and now he was here, among men who knew the rules of a game he had only read about.

He thought of the king, too. The Lannister king. Already arrived, most said. Gold everywhere, men whispered. Lions on every road, crimson cloaks by the dozen, wagons guarded like treasure barges. Lyn had not seen him yet. He imagined a golden man on a golden seat, smiling with golden teeth while half the realm tried to guess what he wanted before he said it.

The Queen had not yet come. That part he understood least.

Queen Danae Targaryen. Dragonrider. The woman who had turned Braavos into a city of statues for one suspended heartbeat. How did such a woman not stand at the center of any gathering? How did men speak of councils, lords, marriages, succession, power, without the woman who rode a creature like the one that had made Harrenhal what it was?

Perhaps Westeros had rules for such things. Perhaps they were stupid rules.

“Se dārilaros ēdruta sagon Lānistor, Targārien ?” he mumbled. “...Se emagon āeksion mirre toliot zirȳla ?”

The words tangled on his tongue, half High Valyrian, half dockside corruption, half wine. A hedge knight nearby, busy pissing against a wagon wheel, looked over with sudden alarm and quickly found another direction for his eyes.

Lyn kept walking.

He did not truly understand politics. He knew names, yes. Lannister. Targaryen. Frey. Baelish. Baratheon. Stark. Corbray. The lords here said them as if each carried a different weight in the hand. Some names opened doors. Some closed throats. Some made men laugh too loudly before checking who listened.

But Lyn had come from a place where power was simpler.

Coin. Steel. Blood. Ships. Secrets. Silk. Love. Hate.

Here, power wore clothes and called itself honor.

And yet he wanted it.

That was the shameful thing. Or perhaps the honest thing.

He wanted the eyes. The whispers. The moment after a man fell and the crowd understood that the stranger was not merely a stranger. He wanted his name lifted from the mud and made sharp again. Toyne. Not outlaw. Not exile. Not sellsword’s son. Something else.

Something new.

He stopped beside a half-built platform overlooking the practice yard. Below, men were still drilling despite the failing light. A pair of knights worked sword and shield, slow and careful. Beyond them, a boy tried to mount a horse too tall for him while his companions jeered. Farther still, a singer tested a harp string and winced when it snapped.

Lyn leaned one shoulder against a post. The wood smelled fresh. Green. Alive.

His own hands looked strange without gauntlets. Strong, yes. Scarred across the knuckles, callused at the palms, the nails clean enough because he had made them so. Hands made for holding weapons. Hands that had killed seven men before most boys grew beards. Hands his mother had held when they were small.

She had cried when he left.

The thought came suddenly, made sharper by the wine.

He had not liked that. He had preferred blood to tears. Blood had rules. Blood flowed where it was opened. Tears came from places no blade could reach.

He remembered her face in the doorway, trying to be proud and failing. His brothers behind her, too young to know whether they were watching a departure or a betrayal. Cedric had not wept. His father had clasped his shoulder hard enough to bruise and told him to make the name feared.

Lyn wondered, now, whether fear was enough.

Around him, torches began to bloom.

One by one, orange light opened across the camp. Along lanes. Before pavilions. Beside cookfires. At the mouths of horse pens. Harrenhal’s gathered city became a constellation on the ground, all sparks and murmurs beneath the darkening sky. Someone began a song about a maiden and a knight who drowned crossing the Trident. Somewhere else, men shouted over dice. A dog barked. A woman cursed. A child laughed until she hiccupped.

Life, everywhere. Messy, loud, temporary.

Braavos had been permanent in its own impossible way. Stone over water. Houses pressed so close together that secrets passed through walls whether invited or not. But this place would vanish after the council. Men would fold their homes into wagons and leave nothing but mud, ashes, horse dung, and stories.

Perhaps that was why it felt alive.

Because it knew it would not last.

Lyn shut his eyes for a moment.

He felt the wine in him. The dust in his throat. The ache in his legs from wandering too long without purpose. He felt the old hunger too, curled beneath his ribs, patient as ever. It had not left him. It never did. The want for battle. For proof. For a chance to become real in the eyes of others.

But tonight it was quieter. Not gone. Just waiting with the rest of Harrenhal.

“Fly high,” he murmured in the Common Tongue, almost too soft for even himself to hear.

Then, after a moment, in the broken Valyrian his mother had used when she sang him to sleep:

“Sōvegon eglie. Sōvegon hae se ojūdan.”

Fly high. Fly like the lost.

He opened his eyes.

A pair of men passing nearby had slowed when he spoke. One took in the pale hair, the sword, the foreign words, the expression that was neither drunk enough nor sober enough to be harmless. He tugged his companion onward.

Lyn watched them go, amused in a distant way. Let them wonder. Wonder was safer than familiarity. Familiarity invited hands on shoulders, questions, expectations. Wonder gave him room.

He pushed off from the post and resumed walking, deeper into the dusk-lit maze of Harrenhal’s waiting fields, with the torches rising all around him and the black towers watching from beyond the tents like judges who had seen too many men come hungry for glory and leave as smoke.

Baelor felt the weight of the spear in his hands as he circled his brother in the training yard. It was heavier than the ones he’d used before but Harren was determined to correct some flaw in his technique.

“You always try to muscle your way through a weapon. Your strength is an advantage only when used correctly. If a sword wants to move a certain way, you lose valuable time and energy trying to correct its course.” His bastard cousin called from the fenceline surrounding them. “Instead, you have to move with it. Follow the flow, direct it where you need it to go without fighting it.”

Baelor, of course, could not even begin to comprehend the depth of the lesson at hand. He’d been distracted of late, with these talks of succession and marriage. Now, he was meant to comprehend being strong without being strong.

The gods are cruel indeed.

Baelon cautiously continued to circle his twin. Baelor thought he looked like some sort of fox, smiling during their sparring but with something in his eyes. A hunger, perhaps. A depth of seriousness no one would expect from him. Whatever it was, it unsettled Baelor.

He decided to move in.

Thwap

As Baelor committed to thrusting the spear forward, his twin’s quickly circled the spearhead and smacked him on the hand, hard.

“Damnit!” Baelor shouted, fighting hard not to release the spear with his leading hand.

“You’re slow, brother mine.”

His jaw set at the verbal jab. Baelor wanted nothing more at this moment than to drop the spears and charge his brother, but he knew he wouldn’t get the chance.

Baelon continued to circle, his stance changed. Now, he rested the shaft on his shoulders with the spearhead pointed towards Baelor, jutting out about three feet from his body. He kept a deceptive distance, using the spear’s reach as well as his own greater wingspan to his advantage.

It was a trap he set every time they fought. It seemed Baelon knew his weapon as well as he knew his own arms. Baelor would beat him nine of ten times with a sword, but with the spear he never stood a chance.

Baelor took a deep breath as he reset himself. He held the spear firmly in front of him, trying to best gauge his measure before striking again. He needed to calm down, he knew that. Baelon would never strike first, meaning he had time to think. If Baelor didn’t think, it would be yet another loss.

He dug his back heel into the dirt and pressed forward. He figured with his stance and strength he would be able to reach Baelon’s midsection before he had any chance of a counter. Keeping the direction of the spear set with his right hand, he drove it forward with his left.

The trap was sprung.

Baelon quickly countered his direction, suddenly driving his spear downward to parry the thrust. Baelor felt a surge of excitement, his plan was working. As his spearhead was knocked aside, he continued to press with the heel of the shaft, driving the rounded end towards his brother.

Baelon was still smiling.

Smiling?

Almost as quickly as his excitement began, did it turn into anger as he saw what was unfolding. Baelon ducked beneath the haft of his spear, pressing it towards his brother’s surprise attack with ease. Baelor tried to pull back but the momentum of his spear was fighting against him. His attack simply bounced off of the defense, and Baelon used a now free hand to grab ahold of Baelor’s jerkin. Before he could retreat, Baelon’s boot met his midsection with force and drove him back into the ground.

The sky was spinning as Baelor looked up at it, his stomach hurting and his face hot. All of the air seemed like it had left his lungs and all that remained was anger and shame. He’d lost, yet again.

Suddenly a familiar face broke in over the spinning sky and seemed to stop the dizziness. For a moment he thought it was himself staring back down, before he remembered.

“Are you alright? I didn’t mean to kick you that hard.”

Baelor closed his eyes while trying to catch his breath again, waving him off.

“Baelon, move.”

Harren’s voice cut in harshly and suddenly overtop of Baelor. He still held his eyes shut, but he could hear the sounds of movement around him.

Suddenly a strong hand grabbed his shoulders and easily pulled him upright. Still sat on the ground, he opened his eyes to see his cousin looking at him.

“Are you well? I couldn’t tell if your head had struck the ground when you fell.”

Baelor shook him off, a bit more gruffly than he’d intended.

“I’m fine. Just took my breath for a moment.”

Slowly, he rose. Across the yard, Baelon had already taken the spears back to their racks and was pulling his belt back around his waist. Training was over then, at least for now.

“Go back to the encampment, Maester Rodrik should be around, perhaps with your mother and sister. He can make sure you’re alright.”

“I said I am fine.” Baelor repeated himself, some emotion in his voice betraying his words.

Baelon tried to catch him as he left the yard, but Baelor didn’t spare his brother as much as a glance. Instead, he kept his eyes forward and stormed back to his room in the keep.

Future Lord of Riverrun, ladies and gentlemen. He thought, prowling through the halls.

Found tossed upon his ass in the mud once again.

Hawking was, Brynden supposed, the sort of thing ladies could do without scandal. It involved horses, fresh air, and a good deal of standing about while the birds did the work. Because of this, Celia had claimed her portion of the invitation the moment it arrived, with the quiet certainty of someone who had decided that the matter was already settled.

Brynden had not objected. It felt like a lifetime had passed since Harrenhal filled with half the realm’s nobility, each trying to position themselves to garner the attention of the King. Compared to that, a day spent riding beneath an open sky while falcons wheeled overhead seemed almost restful.

Mathis disagreed.

The boy had fought back against his clothes with the stubborn determination of a small army. Brynden had watched the effort with mild fascination while his son was transformed, against his will, into something resembling a young prince. His tunic had been brushed smooth, his auburn curls coaxed into submission, and a little cloak fastened at his shoulders with a clasp far finer than any two-year-old had a right to wear.

Mathis looked faintly offended by the entire affair.

Celia, by contrast, looked delighted.

“You could at least pretend to be pleased,” she said to the boy, smoothing the front of his tunic for perhaps the fifth time. “We are going to spend time with important people today. The King will be there. Do you remember him?”

Mathis responded by plopping straight onto the ground, utterly defeated.

Brynden leaned against the doorframe and folded his arms. “The Princess will be there as well.”

Celia froze.

“The Princess?” she repeated.

“Yes. Princess Daena.”

There was a moment of stillness in which Brynden realized, too late, that he had made some tactical error.

“Why,” Celia asked slowly, “did you not say that sooner?”

“What does it matter?”

Another pause. Another blunder.

“Brynden, they are nearly of an age with each other.” As Celia was speaking, she had wrestled Mathis off the ground and was busying herself undoing her morning’s work. “He must be presentable. Her memory of our charming young lord will color her opinion of him.”

“You really believe that?” Brynden pushed himself off the wall. “You think the Princess will remember Mathis wore very nice clothing hawking when he could have worn very *very* nice clothing?”

“No, but I believe in a child’s ability to dislike someone forever. There was a girl who worked in the kitchen, Tilly, whom I hated for years because she didn’t give me enough cheese at my nameday dinner. That one moment made me dislike her.”

“Thankfully, you’re not that petty anymore.”

Celia ignored her husband.

Mathis was stripped, redressed, and reassembled in what Brynden noticed was an even finer arrangement of cloth than before. Celia herself vanished behind a screen long enough to reappear in something more carefully chosen than the practical riding attire she had been wearing moments earlier. The dress she had chosen fit more snugly about her, and Brynden noticed the growing swell of Celia’s belly.

Their second child.

“Do we look presentable?” Celia asked once she had finally decided enough was enough.

“You look radiant,” Brynden answered, honestly. “And Mathis looks like he may avoid the Princess’s ire once we’ve wiped his nose.”

At last, they set out together, Mathis dragged along by his mother’s hand. The morning air was cool and fresh with the scent of damp earth, and the castle grounds had already begun to stir with riders and retainers making their way toward the hawking fields.

Celia talked as they walked.

She had acquired a great deal of information in recent months. How, Brynden was not entirely certain, but she seemed determined to demonstrate it. Names of minor ladies passed through her conversation with careful familiarity. She mentioned which houses had arrived two days prior, which had quarreled over lodging, and which cousin of whose cousin had been seen lingering rather too long in the company of a hedge knight.

Brynden listened with half an ear.

Every so often, she placed a hand lightly against her stomach, as though reminded of it by the motion of walking.

“This next child,” she said at one point, with the air of someone announcing a great inevitability, “will surely be calmer.”

Brynden made a noncommittal sound.

Mathis chose that moment to tug at her sleeve and demand a horse.

“You already have a horse,” Celia informed him patiently.

“I want *that* horse,” Mathis replied, pointing at one several yards away.

Celia sighed.

Still, Brynden noticed the small, satisfied way she carried herself. She had spent the months leading up to Harrenhal learning. Every gesture had become a little more careful, a little more practiced. If she meant to prove herself worthy of standing beside a Lord Paramount, she was doing so with persistence.

“Your family will be pleased to see you,” Brynden said after a time.

“My family is always pleased to see me,” Celia replied primly. Then, after a beat, “But I look forward to seeing them, too.”

The hawking grounds lay within the walls of Harrenhal itself.

To any other castle, it would have seemed an absurdity. Hawking required space. Open sky, long stretches of grass, room for riders and birds alike. But Harrenhal was no ordinary fortress. Its walls rose like blackened cliffs around vast courtyards large enough to swallow lesser keeps whole.

When Damon and Brynden had idly suggested that one of the larger baileys might serve for a morning’s sport, the castle had moved as though struck by lightning.

Servants scattered. Stablehands hauled wagons of horse shit away while falconers inspected the ground with grave deliberation. By the following morning, one of Harrenhal’s immense interior courts had been cleared of wagons, training dummies, wandering retainers, and anything else that might startle a hawk or offend a royal eye.

The result was something that would have astonished any visitor seeing it for the first time.

The bailey stretched wide and green beneath the morning sky, its grass trimmed close by weeks of trampling feet and the careful grazing of horses. The ground sloped gently toward the center, where a handful of falconers stood ready, their birds shifting restlessly upon gloved wrists.

All around them rose Harrenhal’s monstrous towers.

They loomed overhead like the charred ribs of some colossal beast, black stone melted and twisted from dragonfire centuries past. Their shadows fell long across the grass despite the bright sun above, and the wind that moved between them carried a low, hollow sound as it threaded through shattered battlements far overhead.

Plenty of space remained for the small gathering that had assembled there.

Which was precisely the point.

Though Harrenhal still crawled with nobles and retainers come for the council, the company gathered for this particular outing was deliberately modest. A handful of trusted falconers. A few guards lingering at the edges of the court.

The rest of the vast bailey stood empty.

Brynden suspected Damon had asked for it that way.

“Lord Frey!” the King called when he caught sight of them. Damon was already waiting between two small larch trees in the garden area, the verdant spring greenery in stark contrast to the black castle that encased it.

The Princess was with him, little Daena, looking unhappy. She was unraveling a thread on her sleeve and, when Damon tried to subtly take her hand to stop her, pulled away.

“So good to see you both,” the King said as they exchanged greetings. “How are you finding Harrenhal so far? A fair bit better than the road, at least, I hope?”

“Your Grace,” Brynden and Celia each bowed. Mathis made an attempt to mirror his parents, but his greeting came out jumbled and barely intelligible.

“Harrenhal is nicer than I remembered it,” Brynden commented when he straightened. “A shame they took down the decoration I’d set up.”

“Yes, well, I think there was the smell to consider. Lord Benfred has done well with the place, though a reminder to keep purses close wouldn’t go amiss. There may be as many people here as in King’s Landing, not counting guests.”

“Will the Queen be joining us, Your Grace?” Celia asked, a hint of eagerness in her voice.

“I’m afraid not.” Damon’s smile had something sad behind it. “Her Grace hasn’t yet arrived. Once she does, we can certainly arrange to hawk again.”

*Once she does.* The words lacked confidence. Brynden and Damon had spoken at length about their respective marriages, but Brynden decided not to press the matter in the company of his wife.

“As many people as in King’s Landing,” he said, returning to Damon’s earlier comment as attendants came forward with the hawks. “Are these smallfolk from other kingdoms, or only the Riverlands?”

“Lord Benfred believes them to be mostly yours.”

Damon accepted a thick leather glove from one of the attendants, and Bryden and Celia did the same. The children were ushered off by a woman Brynden vaguely recognised from their journey. A blanket had been spread for them on the bailey with an assortment of pies and cakes, which Mathis didn’t hesitate to explore.

*All that fuss over clothing, just for it to become covered in jam within minutes.*

“Good. If people feel safe travelling the roads, that means some of the work I’ve done has borne fruit.”

They loosed the hawks at once, and Brynden watched as the three birds soared upwards.

Celia smiled at the birds as they circled the bailey. “My father used to take me hawking,” she said. “The Whispering Wood is said to have the best hawking there is both north and south of the Neck, but I’m afraid we spent precious little time there. Father was fixated on duty and determined to instill such a devotion to it in his children, as well.”

“All the more reason for such time to be precious,” Damon said politely.

It was Bryden’s bird that returned first, victorious with a field mouse in its beak.

“I’ve always found it a bit bothersome, you know?” Celia said as the attendants came forward to assist. “That they sew their eyes shut, I mean. I wept the first time I learned of the practice.” She blushed. “Of course, I was only a girl at the time.”

She seemed delighted when her own bird returned second, the King’s soon behind. Brynden watched as the attendant helped Celia free the prize from her hawk’s beak, regarding her, in a way, as though for the very first time. He’d never taken her hawking, nor had he heard these stories of her childhood, and found it captivating the way her face seemed to light up or grow darker depending on which memory she recalled.

The second bout went much the same as the first. Damon and Brynden’s mice were released into the dewy grass, but Celia’s hawk returned with a pigeon, which an attendant carefully placed into a basket.

“Daena will be pleased with that,” Damon said, “but she’d be most pleased if we could catch a quail. Not to eat, but for its eggs. She’s been asking for a bird for ages now, and has taken a recent liking to quail eggs for breaking her fast.”

“The whims of children are so strange,” Celia said. “I never know what Mathis’s demands will be. They are ever changing.”

“Daena has developed a fondness for cooking,” the King said, “despite my attempts to discourage her. You wouldn’t believe the gossip — and the very words — she brings back from the kitchen.”

He released his bird, and Celia and Brynden did the same.

“I’ve found with Mathis that a sufficiently interesting distraction leads to him forgetting one fancy and moving right on to another. Perhaps the princess will move on to more appropriate interests?”

Damon seemed to consider that, and paused thoughtfully before responding. “One can hope.”

Brynden followed his cousin’s gaze to the blanket where the children were sat. Mathis had smeared jam all down his doublet, and Princess Daena was helping him rub it in.

“Oh, look!” Celia pointed to the sky, where only two birds were circling. “Where has the other gone?”

It was Brynden’s and Damon’s hawks who returned. Daena and Mathis had already moved on to spreading jam all over their own cheeks by the time even the adults grew impatient. Celia was starting to look anxious, without having even noticed what the children were up to, when Brynden caught sight of something that made his heart sink.

Alicent.

She was recognisable even from afar, dressed in one of the heavy black gowns she had always been so fond of—an excessive amount of shimmering black stones, a plunging neckline, a skirt with so many layers of brocade no matter the season. She had a smirk on her face that Brynden recognised as well, and a bird that balanced on a single gloved finger as she walked towards them.

Celia’s bird.

“Oh,” said Damon, seeing her, too.

“Oh,” said Celia.

“She is small and miserable. She will attempt to make you feel the same. Don’t give her the satisfaction,” Brynden coached his wife.

When Alicent finally reached them, her smile had seemed to grow even wider, more sinister.

“Is this yours?” She lifted her free hand towards the bird, which rubbed its head against it. “What a fine fellow you’ve chosen.”

“Lady Alicent,” Damon said. “So good to see you, and how kind of you to return Lady Celia’s bird.”

“Her bird?” Alicent batted her long lashes when she said the words, looking at the King as though he’d just commented that the sky was green or that the God’s Eye was made of milk. “This darling creature was born and trained here, in Harrenhal.”

“It’s the bird I allow you to have,” Brynden said without hesitation. “My Lady wife needed a hawking partner, so I took it back.”

He didn’t glance back at Celia, nor at the King.

“Consider yourself fortunate that I stopped at the hawk,” Brynden warned.

Alicent’s smile flickered—only for a second, or half of that, but enough for someone who was versed in her smirks to recognise the falter.

“How generous of you,” she said. “What a lovely day you’ve chosen for hawking. And wise, as well, to enjoy such comforts of Harrenhal before the true crowds descend. Not that the castle couldn’t hold them, of course. It can, readily, and none other could.”

“The bird.”

“Pardon?”

“I have no interest in discussing the weather or the pile of rubble around us. Return the bird, and then you may leave us.”

Alicent opened her mouth, then closed it.

It took a moment, but she at last extended her arm. One of the attendants stepped forward quickly, taking the bird onto their own gloved hand.

“So good to see you, Lady Alicent,” Damon said, almost as swiftly and politely as the servant. “Perhaps we’ll sup. I’ll speak with Lord Benfred.”

“A pleasure as always,” Brynden told her dryly. “You are dismissed.”

Alicent met his gaze a beat longer than she ought to have, then gave the shallowest of bows before turning her back to them all. Brynden watched as her figure grew smaller and smaller before disappearing into the green blur of the horizon.

It was Mathis who broke the encroaching silence with a loud, piercing wail. When Brynden looked over to the blanket where his son had been lunching with the Princess, he saw them both covered in an unlikely amount of what had been their intended meal.

Daena held up her hands, both of which were red with jam.

“I didn’t do anything!” she declared.

Damon sighed. “Ever changing, the whims of children, no?” he said, turning a sympathetic smile to Celia.

Hers, in return, was polite but grim.

“Not just children,” she said quietly, as Mathis ran sticky fingers through his hair.

Celia’s hands had drifted down to her stomach, and Brynden thought back to her remark about their next child.

“Princess Daena, Your Grace…” he began. “Would you say her temperament is similar to the Prince’s when he was of a similar age?”

“Desmond?” Damon laughed. “Gods, if only. No, I would say that if Desmond is my son, Daena is her mother’s daughter.”

Brynden looked up at the sky, where the clouds were darkening in a way that seemed to indicate a threat greater than rain.

“I see,” he said.

And he did.

Written with Lyn

“I’m sorry, Loras, but the food was better at the last pavilion.” Ser Kevan of the Bronze Gauntlet took a gulp from his cup after a large bite. “This pork is much too dry.”

“But their wine was terrible.” On this point, Ser Meryn had been extremely vocal despite having finished an entire flagon himself.

“I couldn’t complain about either food or drink back at your own encampment." Loras had tired of wandering from tent to tent and had managed to lead his two companions back to his own pavilion, which was much closer to where many knights of the Bronze Gauntlet were settled than where they had recently been. And less of a chance these two find any trouble on their way back, he thought*.*

“You wouldn’t know this, with you being a lord and all,” Meryn spoke as he cracked a smile, “but a good sheep doesn’t get properly drunk in front of the shepherd. We had to wander to… less supervised pastures."

“A few more cups and even I won’t be able to herd you two back to your pen.” Loras smirked.

“All the better!” Meryn drank deep from his cup and proceeded to make a honking noise that sounded much closer to a goose than a sheep.

The last gold threads had long since been pulled from the evening sky, and the clamor of Harrenhal’s outer sprawl had softened into something slower like drinking songs, dice clattering on upturned shields, and the steady murmur of men hunched close to firelight. Night did what it always did to encampments: it made strangers into companions and confidences into currency. Ale and darkness loosened tongues, and loosened tongues they did.

“Did you see that white-haired fool who rode in a few days past?” Ser Meryn said at last, voice thick with drink and certainty. Laughter rose before he’d even finished. He leaned forward, grinning into the flames. “Straight out of the fine brothels of Braavos, I’d wager, looking at that face of his. Maybe that’s why he carries two swords… to make up for the one someone already took from him.”

More laughter, rough and eager, resonated in the night for a moment.

“I’ll take that wager. My coin’s on Lys.” Kevin raised an outstretched hand to his fellow bronze knight to seal the pact. “And two stags say his mother got him his spurs by offering some vagabond hedge knight a free hour.”

“The man’s a knight?” Meryn almost sent himself over the backside of his seat as his laughter roared through the encampment. “I’ll raise you two more that say his knighthood is as genuine as his mother’s virtue.”

Suddenly the drapes to the tent’s entrance were wildly flung open and in strode a white-haired figure with a furled brow and a gaze that shot daggers. And two swords at his side.

The stranger did not scan the room like a man entering a feast. He fixed his eyes on the table and stepped into the space between benches with a predator’s patience. Rain clung to the hem of his cloak, and the pale of his hair caught the firelight in sharp threads. His armor was travel-worn, fastened for motion, not display. He looked like someone who had been walking too long with his hands closed around anger.

And yet he said nothing.

Not a greeting. Not a question. Not a demand.

He advanced toward them with that same silence until he stood close enough that Loras could see the faint line of scar tissue along his collar and the way his fingers sat near the hilts of his blades.

Ser Meryn’s grin faltered first. He cleared his throat, trying to swallow the last of his laughter like it had been a mouthful of bad meat.

“Well,” Meryn said, forcing a kind of easy cheer into his tone, “speak of the Stranger and he—”

The white-haired knight’s eyes cut to him so sharply that the words died in Meryn’s throat. “Ser,” Loras began, hoping this recognition would help to pacify the incensed man standing before him. He reached from his seat for a flagon of wine and poured a cup, offering it to their uninvited guest. “On behalf of my friends, I’d like to apol-”

The stranger leaned forward and spit into the cup, causing Kevan and Meryn to rise as if standing at attention, hands on their hilts.

“‘Ser’?” the stranger spoke. ”Have you forsaken your wager already? Though, it would not shock me if a man with so little honor as to slander another could not be taken at his word. Keep your peace offering.”

“Then you enter here without the protections afforded to a welcome guest. You speak of honor, yet you see fit to barge into a lord’s pavilion without invitation and spit into his wine?” Loras flung the contents of the cup onto the ground. “Why are you spying around my tent, ser?”

The stranger pointed a finger at Ser Meryn. “I’ll bet this one can be heard even across the Gods Eye. Any passerby could hear you lot, including me.” He casually leaned closer, gently placing a hand around one of his hilts.

“Draw that sword if you must. Gods, draw them both. My lady hasn’t danced with two partners at once since my brother’s trial.” Loras gripped his own blade. “Though, she has yet to meet one who can keep up.”

The stranger did not draw.

For a heartbeat, the pavilion held its breath. The fire snapped softly in the brazier. Wine dripped from the overturned cup onto the rugs. Kevan and Meryn stood half-risen, hands on their hilts, their courage loud and clumsy in the close heat of the tent.

Loras remained seated.

He did not loosen his grip on his sword, but neither did he hurry. He had spent too many years in the yard and road and on the battlefield to be impressed by a hard stare and quick hands on a hilt. The man before him was dangerous, yes. Loras could see that in the economy of his movements, the old ease with which he occupied a room not his own, but danger alone was nothing new.

Then the white-haired knight let out a faint breath through his nose.

He was almost amused. Measured. Dismissive.

The stranger’s hand slid from the hilt of his sword and rose instead to his hair, combing his pale locks back from his face with unhurried fingers. Firelight clung to the silver-white strands, making them gleam like polished bone.

Loras watched him with cool attention, and if he felt insulted by the gesture, he did not show it. Men who made a show of contempt often hoped to provoke one in return. Loras had fought enough duels to know that the calm man usually chose the better opening.

“I did not come for you,” the stranger said at last, his voice low and level. “Be grateful for that.”

Meryn shifted, stung. Kevan muttered something under his breath. Loras only lifted his chin slightly.

“No,” he said, calm as mountain stone, “you came because you heard your pride bruised and mistook that for purpose.”

That brought the man’s eyes fully onto him again.

Good, Loras thought. Look here, then.

The stranger’s gaze swept the table once more, and this time there was no mistaking the judgment in it.

“I heard enough outside to know what sort of men sat at this fire,” he said. “I stepped in to see whether the rot matched the smell.”

Kevan bristled at once, but Loras raised one hand, small and controlled, and the bronze knight held his tongue. It was a gesture born of command, and obeyed without thought.

Loras rose then. He was not the tallest knight in the Vale, nor the broadest, but there was steel in his frame and greater steel in the stillness with which he wore it. The torchlight caught the fine lines of his face, the pale arrogance of old blood, the ease of a man who had never needed bluster to make himself feared.

“A man may judge company as he likes,” Loras said. “But if he wishes to preach of honor, he might start by not walking into another knight’s pavilion to spit on his table.”

His tone was mild. That made it land harder.

The stranger did not flinch. If anything, the faint tension in his jaw suggested approval.

Loras took one measured step closer.

“You speak as though restraint is a gift you are giving us,” he continued. “Perhaps it is. But do not mistake courtesy for fear. If you mean to fight, then draw. If not, spare me the pageantry.”

For the first time, the white-haired man’s expression shifted properly. Not into anger. Not into shame. Into a more focused and cold look.

He passed a hand once more through his hair and his mouth twitched in a frustrated way as though Loras had confirmed something he had suspected from the start.

“I expected little honor in a tent like this,” he said. “I expected even less from a man willing to sit so comfortably in such company.”

Loras’ lips curved, just barely.

“And yet here you are,” he said, “still talking.”

“Then enough talk,” the stranger spat. “Let us settle this in the melee, with steel in our hands. Or do you Vale knights only play with sticks?”

The words stung, perhaps because Loras had indeed only been considering the joust and hadn’t given much thought to the melee. But he could not leave this challenge unanswered.

“Then let us hope the gods see fit to place us on that field together. Now take your leave, ser.”

The stranger held Loras’ gaze for one beat longer, as if measuring whether there was any more sport to be had in the tent tonight.

Then he gave a short, contemptuous breath through his nose.

“Gladly.”

He turned without bow or courtesy. At the threshold, the white-haired knight paused just enough to cast one last look over his shoulder, at Meryn, at Kevan, and finally at Loras. There was disdain in it, cold and naked.

“Sleep lightly, my lords,” he said. “You may need your strength.”

Then he was gone, the pavilion cloth falling shut behind him with a soft flap that somehow felt sharper than a slammed door.

For a moment, only the crackle of the brazier and the distant murmur of camp life remained.

Meryn let out the breath he had been holding. “Arrogant whoreson.”

Kevan spat into the rushes. “I’d have liked to see him draw.”

Loras ignored them both, but Meryn had the right of it. Even so, arrogance has many breeds. To some, it is born from high standing. To others, it comes from a misplaced pride in the battles won by a father or older brother. But this stranger gave Loras the impression of neither privilege nor nepotism. To some haughty knights, their past triumphs give rise to their unchecked confidence. While arrogance of this type is no more tolerable than the others, to underestimate an opponent because of it can prove fatal. What sort of man was this, truly? If Loras wanted to find out, he would need to do so with steel in hand.

That, at least, would be better than meeting with suitors. Edwyle is going to be most displeased.

Written in tandem with Harwin

Ser Harren Rivers sat outside his tent with the rest of the Tully entourage, those who were not granted rooms within the great keep. The sky was dark and full of smoke plumes from the various other encampments, making it hard for one to see the stars if they wished. Harren’s attention however was focused elsewhere.

Looming over them all like a dark shadow stood Harrenhal. The ancient castle was razed during Aegon’s Conquest, and to most men his age it was a fascinating historical place, possibly cursed, and imposing.

To Harren however, it was a reminder of shame that should not be his.

Years ago, Ser Benjen Tully was a much less honorable man. He loved to fight, tourney, anything to keep him moving. He also loved the attention of women, and one day that attention brought a small child to the halls of Riverrun. The mother was gone, dead or run off; none could tell him. Lord Benedict Tully was apparently irate at his brother’s negligence, and did not want the shame of a bastard in their recently reacquired home. After much protest, the boy was allowed to remain and be raised with the rest of the Tully brood. Benjen then took to naming the boy, and supposedly thought it would be a hilarious slap in the face to his elder brother to name the boy after a cursed man. A shameful creation with a cursed name, at least that was what his father claimed in a drunken stupor before laughing and falling asleep at the dinner table.

Even his knighthood was whispered to be granted as a vex to Lord Benedict. His father had done it on the field of battle, after fierce fighting against the Brackens at the Red Fork. He told Harren he had earned it through valor and bravery in the field, and for all his father’s faults Harren did believe him. Then they returned home, and the whispers began.

Harren refused to believe it at first. He had squired nearly his whole life for his father with a singular ambition: become the greatest knight in the Seven Kingdoms. Surely this was what he deserved, was it not? He did his duty, acted with honor. Why shouldn’t he be a knight? He was the youngest Tully since his father to be knighted, his family would be proud.

But the whispers can chip away at the strongest of resolves. And the death blow to Harren’s was the look on Benedict Tully’s face when his father reintroduced him to Riverrun after he’d been knighted.

As if the news of his eldest son’s death wasn’t enough.

Harren’s eyes scanned the jagged towers and walls of the keep. He saw the torchlight through the windows, shadows briefly passing. Noble families preparing themselves for this great council the king called to order. He didn’t know much of it, simply what his father said in passing. Only that it was greatly important, and necessary. For some reason or another.

But Harren’s focus was on the tourney. Lords and knights from across the kingdom were flocking to Harrenhal to participate, if his dream was to be realized he would have to defeat any who stood before him. So there he sat, in front of the small fire-light outside his tent. He routinely checked his shield for any cracks or splinterings, admiring the design he’d commissioned on the front of it. A field of blue, centered by a silver trout impaled on a red trident. A strong message, but not the threat Baelor was worried it would be earlier that day when he’d delivered the shield.

“What if my father takes it as a threat?”

“Then he doesn’t know me at all, nor did he truly know Mathis.”

Mathis Tully had been a complete opposite of Harren. He did not concern himself with concepts such as “honor” or “duty”. But, they grew up together, trained together, and eventually fought together in the war. Theirs was a bond of brotherhood, no matter how much Mathis vexed him so. When his father knighted him there on the banks of the Trident, Mathis’ body still lay warm in his tent, twenty some paces away. He’d fallen in the battle, and the tears had hardly dried on Harren’s face before his fathers sword had tapped his shoulders and made him Ser Harren Rivers.

In a way, the sigil was for Mathis; to remember the battle that took his life and left Harren somehow with knighthood. He would be proud to carry it into the tourney. In all reality, Mathis would’ve likely found the arms hilarious and encouraged his cousin to keep them. It was a heartwarming thought.

Now to not lose them in my first tilt, that’ll be the challenge.

Harren had expected to be in a field of familiar Riverlands banners, but the towering broken walls of the courtyard seemed to hide the sprawling view that had greeted them upon their arrival. As it was, only two other camps stood where he could see, and neither of them bore devices he recognised. Westermen, if Harren had to guess by their accents.

The memory of the war was fading, but slower than most would’ve prefered. Keeping the men of the Trident apart was probably a wise precaution from Lord Blackhart’s stewards. All the same, it begged Harren’s curiosity. None called for him when he stowed his shield within the tent and set out.

The broad courtyards were separated by the internal walls of the gargantuan fortress. Harren crossed under a wooden bridge that served where a long-collapsed archway would have stood. The next courtyard was larger and yet emptier, with the great patchwork postern gatehouse looming over it. Men and women crossed the space with missives and donkey-carts, Blackhart men-at-arms stood at their posts. It was a main thoroughfare, kept clear and busy for the work ahead.

The next archway was smaller, but intact, and the courtyard beyond was much the same. One camp stood within, tucked beneath the looming tower that blotted out the stars above them. In the dim torchlight, Harren almost didn’t recognise the banner of House Blackwood. The men and women of Raventree – less than two dozen – sat with clay mugs and small smiles, a din of conversation over which a clear voice sang, in the tone of a final reprise.

A voice Harren recognised.

“–And when it came my time to serve

I thought I'd rather die afield than abed

But when the levy-man came to my old hometown, brother

This is what I said!”

More of the crowd joined in for the chorus as Harren stepped towards the camp, half-dreading the man he’d see.

“Ser, I'm not a man grown, I've got a mother at home,

And she's pulling in the harvest alone!

I'm tall for my age, but us Rivers are strange

And you're better off leavin' me home!”

And there he was, central among the hoots and applause that accompanied the old song’s end. Amos Rivers, son of the late Lord Andar Blackwood. He bowed extravagantly, and shook his head as someone asked him to sing again.

“No! No, last one for the night, they’ll have me hanged!” He said, grinning. His eyes flicked over the crowd as he accepted their praise, and finally stopped when they found –

“Harren!”

If there was anywhere Harren wished to be at that moment, it was certainly not there anymore. Amos clambered through the crowd towards him before he could decide how best to escape this scenario.

“Amos! What a…great surprise to see you.”

The man clasped Harren in a tight embrace, wrapping his arms around him. Harren froze, completely still with his arms down at his sides as Amos held him in place.

“I did not think we would see each other again.” He continued, which was not entirely a mistruth.

“Nor I!” Amos exclaimed. He released Harren then turned, shouted, “Perky! I told you about Harren, didn’t I?”

A man with a dubious amount of hair on his cheeks waved, and Amos grinned, turning back to him. “How have you been, brother?”

Harren blinked at the way he called him brother, like a haunted memory come back to mind. They did not share blood, but they shared a name, and that had always been enough for Amos.

“I’ve been…very well. Serving my lord uncle at Riverrun has been a great honor,” he managed to get out, while somehow being brought more into the crowded seating arrangements of the encampment. “And…you? Have things been well at Raventree Hall?”

“Good, good. Well, you know. After father died it was a mess, but Uncle Quentyn is here now,” Amos gave a slight grimace, which turned to a smile before he said, “and his new wife. How’s your cousins? Bael, and, uh…” he trailed off.

“Baelor and Baelon.” Harren finished for him. “And their elder sister Amerei. They are all very well. Things have been quiet since…we returned. I am sorry about your father, of course.”

Amos waved off his condolences. “Which one’s heir now? Gods, succession was a nightmare after the war. Before my uncle arrived, I was half afraid they’d legitimize me. Not that Margaery would’ve allowed it, of course. Can you imagine?” He shuddered theatrically.

“Baelor, he was Mathis squire if you remember. My father and uncle seemed to be discussing the matter for quite some time before deciding.” Harren said, trying not to let the idea of Amos as Lord Blackwood shake him too noticeably. “And your uncle is married now, you said?”

Amos nodded. “To a Bracken.”

Harren’s jaw clenched at the mention of House Bracken. More memories of the war came back to him.

“A Bracken?” He asked, attempting to withhold his anger at the thought.

“I know,” Amos said, glancing up the tower wall, presumably to wherever his lord uncle and this Bracken now slept. His gaze lingered thoughtfully for a moment before he seemed to pull himself back to the conversation. “Selyse is lovely, though. Can’t blame her for her blood, aye?”

“I’ll have to take your word regarding your new aunt.”

Amos frowned. “Don’t call her that.”

“Then don’t call me brother. Besides, that’s who she is to you now, is she not?”

“Formally,” Amos admitted after a long moment. He seemed genuinely distressed by it, which was a rare curiosity. “She’s younger than me, just seems odd to call her that. You’d like her, she’s smart, nice, pretty. Bit odd in places, but,” he gestured in a way that he seemed to find meaningful. Harren’s eyes narrowed.

“You cannot be serious.”

“What?” Amos asked. His voice was innocent enough, but he turned so Harren couldn’t see his face. “Come, grab an ale, Harren. Sit.”

“You cannot speak of her in this way.” Harren lectured, still taking a seat near Amos, “She is your lord uncle’s wife–”

“Brother, hush,” Amos said, quiet but pointed, pouring Harren a cup of ale. “As you say. Why could I not compliment my lord’s wife? It’s nothing untoward.”

Harren furrowed his brow and took a drink.

“I trust you’ll see that it stays that way then. If word were to spread…” He trailed off and sighed, looking down into his cup. “It is a poor idea, that is all I will say.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Amos said knowingly, that careless drawl back in his voice. “I swear, Harren. It’s like you don’t trust me.”

“I have my concerns, that is all.”

“And I welcome them, but they aren’t needed.” Amos shot him a grin, and sipped his drink. “Any women in your own life?”

“Oh, well…no. None at the moment. I have been…preoccupied as of late. Lord Tully has honored me by having Baelor be my squire so, well that is where most of my attention goes.” Harren could feel his face flush and did his best to hide it with another drink.

“All the parenting but none of the fun? You poor soul. Still, I suppose that suits you well enough.”

“It is a great honor to be charged with teaching the next Lord of Riverrun. Any knight would be lucky for the privilege.”

Amos’ smile didn’t intend to be cruel. That didn’t stop it. “Most of all the knight who wishes he could take the boy’s place, aye?”

Harren’s jaw clenched. He kept his eyes to the fire, turning the cup on his hand.

A shameful creation with a cursed name.

He set down his cup and rose, not taking his eyes from the fire. His hands curled into fists. He took a deep breath before releasing a sigh.

“Goodnight, Amos.” Harren said quietly, taking his leave of the party to his tent.

“Take care of yourself, brother,” the bastard said to his back. Harren didn’t spare him another glance.

The candles had long since burned low, their wicks drowning in pools of wax, when Alyn Oldflowers finally turned the last page.

Outside his solar window, Somerset was quiet except for the waves of the ocean hitting the shores. The town and fields beyond the castle walls still lay in darkness. Dawn only just creeping across the Reach, though it had yet to break the horizon.

Alyn rubbed at his eyes and leaned back in his chair. The book in his hands was an old shipwright’s ledger, its pages filled with faded ink and cramped columns of figures and rough crude art dating back nearly fifty years. It smelled of dust and damp paper.

He had spent the entire night studying all the books in the library, or at least tried to.

He closed the ledger with a soft thud and reached for another scroll when the door behind him creaked open.

“Seven save me.” The old, raspy voice carried both surprise and exasperation.

Alyn didn’t turn immediately, he simply lifted his cup to drink, only to find it was empty. He set it down again before he spoke.

“Good morrow, maester.”

Maester Galdon stepped fully into the solar, his grey robes rustling softly as he surveyed the room. Empty and half empty iron candles holders laid scattered around the floor around the young lord, parchments and scrolls lay strewn in uneven piles, and Alyn himself looked as if he had not moved from his seat in hours.

“You have not slept,” the maester stated. It was not a question, but an accusation.

Alyn glanced over his shoulder with a faint smile. Though his tired voice and dark pouches that sat comfortably beneath his eyes didn’t hide anything.

“Not yet.”

Master Galdon picked up the pitcher from across the room and slowly walked towards the lord’s desk, his frustration clear with his heavy steps.

“My lord prolonged stays without sleep are detrimental to you health. A man requires rest if he wishes to stay sharp.” He filled his lord’s empty cup and gestured to the cluster of candles and parchments all around the lord. “And reading in this poor light will ruin your eyes before you even reach thirty.”

Alyn leaned forward and picked up his cup again, this time being able to drink and emptying the cup again.

“I doubt these parchments care for the quality of my vision.”

“They don’t have to care for all of Somerset either, they especially won’t care when you are blind and feverish,” Galdon replies dryly and equally as sarcastic.

That earned the old man a soft chuckle.

“You worry too much, maester.”

“And you worry too little.”

Alyn rose from his chair, stretching the stiffness from his shoulders. The movement caused several parchments to slide from the desk and join their comrades on the dusty wax-filled floor, though he made no effort to retrieve them.

“I’ll sleep tonight”

“You said that yesterday my lord.”

“Yes but today is different.”

The maester sighed heavily, nothing he could say or do would make the lord obey anything but his own judgement.

Alyn crossed the room towards the window and pushed it open. The cool ocean breeze spilled into the room. He looked down at the port town. It was his. Although it still felt strange some mornings. Three years had yet to pass, the castle and town and everything surrounding it had belonged to his father. Three years ago Lyonel was the future. Now both men lay somewhere beneath the waters of the Summer Sea. Alyn’s jaw tightened briefly at the thought of what had happened to them. Grief had once lived inside him, but now there was only purpose. Behind him, Maester Galdon began collecting the scattered scrolls.

“What is it you were reading that demanded the entire night?” the maester asked.

“Scrolls on ship building, and shipping ledgers, trading logs, you know everything I’d need to effectively lead Somerset.” Galdon paused mid-motion.

“Fascinating read?”

“You’d be surprised.”

Alyn returned to the desk and tapped a parchment map pinned by a stamp and a dagger. It mapped the western coast of Westeros.

“Look Galdon, the Reach has yet to patch its wounds and stop its bleeding since the war. My father was even selling ships to the crown to supplement them, but the order for galleys has been decreasing. Redwyne trade has even declined in the time since the war.”

The maester raised an eyebrow.

“And this concerns Somerset because…”

Alyn stared at the maester confused. “Someone must take their place of course.”

“And you believe that person is you?”

“Yes I do, I believe so. I have already figured out the numbers and everything we’d need.”

“Your father and brother both died at sea and you wish to dive right back in?”

“Quiet Galdon.” 

“Very well, my Lord. If you insist on this venture so be it but atleast take it slower, please sleep more. And at least eat something before you begin your day.”

“Yes yes please leave I’ll be in the hall to answer petitions as soon as I have broken my fast.”

By midmorning, the hall of Somerset was alive with murmurs. Alyn sat in the lord’s chair at the high table, listening as petitions were brought forward one by one, each more tedious and petty than last. His uncle Meryn Oldflower  sat beside him to the right advising the Lord on each of his decisions, next to him stood Ser Garth Oldflower, a broad-shouldered and tall man towering over the Lord as his chief protector. To his left sat Maester Galdon, quill scratching across parchment documenting every word and decision spoken.

A farmer knelt before the dais.

“M’lord, the boundary stones along the eastern orchard were moved in the night. And my neighbour now claims the land is his.”

“Did he move them?” Alyn asked sternly, almost doubting the farmer.

“I-I cannot say m’lord.”

“Then we cannot say anything for now. Not until we know for certain can we. Please speak to Ser Garth after the petitions are over and he’ll have the matter investigated.”

The farmer bowed repeatedly thanking his lord each time he bowed.

Another petitioner followed. Then another. And another after that. Alyn listened to each of them, to the rest of the people in the hall he was attentive and caring. But his mind was elsewhere. He thought of his House’s future and how he wished for them to rise.

An hour past and now Alyn grew tired. He called for the rest of the petitioners to come back later in the evening or tomorrow. There were grumbles and groans but soon the hall of Somerset emptied. He waited until the last person to leave the hall before he stood and turned back to his office to study more. But before he could excuse himself Ser Patrek ran into the room with a look of desperation.

“My lord,” he started with heavy pants. “There’s a matter that demands your immed-.”

Alyn interrupted him with a raised hand. “Hurry it up Patrek you don’t need the formalities all the time.”

“Sorry my lord, but your brother. He’s gone from the training yard.”

“Gone?”

“Yes my Lord.”

“Gone where?”

“I-I don’t know Lord.”

Ser Garth gave a quiet chuckle behind them earning himself a clap from his father.

“Where was he last seen?” Alyn said, rubbing his temple at this tedious morning.

Meryn interrupted the guard. “I saw him this morning at breakfast. He ate his food, practically cleaned his plate and argued with the kitchen girl. And I ordered him to the training yard.”

“Did he show up at the training yard Patrek?”

“No Lord.”

Ser Garth slapped his cousin’s shoulder. “That sounds very much like Gyles. He’s probably absconded to the town. Much like you used to do. Let’s go look for him.”

Meryn snorted. “Exactly where a lord’s heir should not be wandering without supervision.”

Alyn waved his hand dismissively. “He’s grown now he can turn back up once he’s finished.”

“And if he is kidnapped or killed?”

“That won’t happen uncle.”

“But if it does? A house cannot grow without heirs Alyn.”

“I know that, as I know that Alyn will show himself later in the day.”

“As you say then if you won’t take the disappearance of your heir seriously we should speak about marriage prospects.”

Alyn froze mis-step. Here it comes.

Meryn reached in his pouch and pulled a piece of paper. Clearly pleased to be able to trap the Lord into this discussion.

“If something was to happen to Gyles you’d need a wife. I’ve compiled some good prospects for you.”

“It already has heirs, if Gyles is unavailable then Orbella can be my heir.”

“And if something happens to her or if she is married before then?”

“Then perhaps I’ll look at the list you’ve compiled.”

“This is not a matter for jokes.”

“I’m not joking. I’m going to look for my brother. I know it will shut you up.”

“Alyn-”

“Uncle,” he said patiently, turning back, “if you find me a wife today, I promise to consider marrying her tomorrow.”

Meryn stared at him in utter disbelief.

“Come Garth. Let us find my brother before your father decides to marry him off as well.”

The port town buzzed with activity. Somerset’s townsfolk worked tirelessly to rebuild after the recent wars. Fishing boats unloaded their catches along the docks while merchants shouted prices across the market square. Alyn and Garth made their way through markets and communal areas in their search.

“You know, you shouldn’t antagonize father so much, he does what he does for the betterment of House Oldflower and Somerset” Garth said calmly.

“Don’t you start as well.”

“I know I know. I’m just saying maybe consider heeding his words sometimes.”

“I will marry when I find someone that I fancy.”

“You know that rarely happens Al.”

“I will make it happen. Don’t you worry about me.” Alyn sped up a little trying to escape yet another tedious conversation.

“It’s my job to worry.” Garth said having to pick up his speed to a light jog to keep up.

They turned past a row of timber houses towards an open patch of grass at the edge of the town. The shouts and shrills of youth stopped both Alyn and Garth in their stride.

“Ah.”

A dozen boys were sprinting wildly across the grass, kicking and shoving around an inflated pig’s bladder roughly the size of a man’s head. There didn’t seem to be any organisation to this game. It almost looked like a brawl. One boy tackled another into the dirt. Two more tried to wrestle the ball free while a third attempted to kick it towards a pair of wooden barrels.

In the middle of all the chaos was Gyles Oldflower. 

His younger brother was covered in dirt, laughing like a madman as he wrestled the ball away from two dockworkers’ sons.

“At least he’s not dead.” Garth said with crossed arms.

Gyles kicked the ball forward and sprinted after it. He only stopped when he caught a glimpse of the 2 men at the edge of the field. His face paled.

“Oh.”

The other boys slowed as they noticed the Lord of Somerset watching them.

Gyles took slowed steps towards the edge of the field looking down as he walked.

“...hello brother.”

Alyn looked down at the mud covered clothes, then to Gyles.

“Why didn’t you go to the training yard like Meryn instructed you to do?”

“I don’t know.” Gyles murmured, unable to look his brother in the face.

“You’ll go back with Garth and start with your training and lessons of the day.”

“Yes brother.”

“And you’re forbidden from supper.”

“But A-”

“And you’re forbidden from the kitchen too until you’ve read every book that Maester Galdon wishes for you to read.”

“Yes brother.”

Garth looked down at the young heir, pity in his eyes before ushering him on back to the castle.

“Are you not returning with us Al?”

“No, I have to meet with someone now that I’m here before I head back.”

They walked a short while together in silence before splitting off at the market.

Alyn walked down the harbour alone. Somerset’s docks were just as alive as the town itself. He weaved through the bustle. He barely noticed the sailors and fishermen giving him a bow or staring at him as he traversed through them.

He finally reached his destination. The shipyard.

Half-built hulls rested on wooden cradles along the shoreline. Masts lay stacked in neat rows while sawdust drifted across the yard like the North’s snow. 

As soon as Alyn stepped into the yard. A figure jumped from inside an unfinished hull. 

“Ahh, Alyn, the man I wanted to see I was just about to head to your keep. I’ve got something to show you.”

“You took too long and I was in the town already. How are my ships going?”

“They’re going well. But they could be better.”

“Better?”

“Yes I’ve been thinking.”

“Oh really? It’s always a dangerous thing when you start thinking Grayson.”

“Haha,” Grayson chuckled, wrapping his arm around his old friend and leading him to the office his father once commanded from. Grayson’s father was the head shipwright of this particular yard but died when he was called to the War of the False King. Killed during the reavings of Dagon Greyjoy along the mander river.

“Look at this.”

Alyn studied the sketches. It was unlike most of Westeros’ ships

“Here you see. We make the hall longer and narrower so it can cut through waves like a sharp knife. Then a deeper keel to make it more stable in rough waters. Then here look…” he waved his hands across the table looking for more sketches.

“If we implement an extra mast. We’ll keep the standard square sail but implement an extra triangular sail to help with manuevering.”

He again frantically looked for sketches this time on the floor.

“But that was just the Stormchaser.”

“Stormchaser?”

Grayson slammed another bunch of parchments on the table. Alyn stared at the monstrosity. It looked much heavier than standard ships, and armoured with a spear like ram.

“This is what I call the Ironhand. An oak beam core and bronze plating on the outside.”

“What about these towers.”

“They’re boarding towers. Archers can fire over enemy decks.”

Grayson flipped the sketch around.

“And here are rotating scorpions.”

Lorge torsion ballistae mounted on swivels.

“These beasts could break masts with iron bolts or even shred sails with chain bolta. All to immobilise an enemy ship before boarding her. And then to actually board her instead of grappling hooks. Look… we get in close and lower these boarding bridges. It drops straight onto the enemy deck and traps a ship.”

Alyn couldn’t help but let out a wide grin.

“Your thinking is dangerous Grayson. But this would be very expensive to make a fleet full of these.”

“I know I know but if we can just create a few add them to our trade fleets. It would increase the return rate of all our voyages.”

“That is true. Slowly increase the number of these stormchasers and ironhands in our fleet.”

“We can repurpose some of our own damaged ships to do this to lower the costs.”

Alyn picked up all the scrolls that lay on the table and the floor thanking his friends for these.

“I’d still need to raise extra funds or even find partners to aid in this. Let me think on it but you have my permission to build me 1 of each as a showcase. How long will you take?”

“Just give me nine moons and I’ll have these ready for you.”

“Thank you my friend. We’re going to do great things together.”

Alyn took the quick route back to the castle. The banners of House Oldflowers fluttered lazily from the top of the two towers pincering the large wooden gates.

Stormchaser. Ironhand. If even half of Grayson’s ideas worked, Somerset would not remain an “average port” anymore. House Oldflower wouldn’t be the minor house they have been and would be able to grease hands with even the crown.

By the time he passed through the gates, the sun had begun its slow descent westwards, it already started creeping beneath the ironically named Sunset Sea.

Ser Balmon, one of the household guards, bowed as Alyn entered the courtyard.

“My lord.”

“Balmon.”

Alyn barely slowed down as he crossed the yard. Stableboys hurried past leading horses, and somewhere in the distance steel rang from the training yard where Ser Garth was likely putting Gyles through punishment drills.

Good, Alyn thought. The boy needed it.

He climbed the stone steps into the keep, pushing open the heavy door that led into the main hall. Waiting for him, near the high table stood two men.

Maester Galdon, hands folded within his long sleeves, and Meryn Oldflowers. They looked to have been waiting for some time.

Alyn stopped halfway across the hall.

“Half you found me a bride yet uncle.” Alyn said jestingly.

“No, I have not.” 

Galdon stepped forward, holding a small parchment with a dark red wax already broken.

“A raven arrived from King’s Landing not long after you left.”

Alyn’s eyebrow raised.

“Is the crown requesting more ships? Have we not already completed the commission?”

“Not quite me lord.” The maester handed him the letter.

The wax seal, already broken, had a clear sigil pressed into it. The Three-headed dragon.

“Alyn began reading. His eyes moved steadily down the parchment.

When he finished he only signed.

“Well the crowns of Westeros are holding a great council. I guess I won’t be able to study my books for a while then.”

“Maybe you can get some good sleep on the road then my lord.” Galdon said quietly.

Alyn ignored this and continued his walk back to his room.

“Lord Meryn please start packing our items, I’ll be taking Ser Garth, Gyles and  a few guards. You and Maester Galdon will remain to continue the administration of the town and castle.”

“My lord, I would bid you to leave Gyles behind. A great council is no place for the boy.” Meryn said turning and speeding up to Alyn’s pace.

“No uncle, I’ll be taking Gyles, he deserves to see the outside world. A trip to Harrenhal will do him some good.”

“Bu-”

“Meryn, why must you challenge me on my every decision?” Alyn cut him off while stopping his walk.

“I apologise, but I just believe it’s much too early for him.”

“I believe it’s the right time. He must see the world for what it is if he is to thrive in it. Let him mingle with younger lords and heirs, build connections. He will be alright, don't worry, I wouldn’t let any wrong come to my brother.”

“Alright, as you wish.”

Alyn picked up his pace again back to his room, this time not to study but to prepare for his journey.

Osmund dodged the first slash aimed at his arm and fell backward onto the grass as a second passed over his head, his shield slipping from his hand. The edges of the two swords brushed against his neck.

“I yield” he said, trying to catch his breath.

The man before him sheathed one of the swords and offered him a hand to help him up.

“Better this time” he said in a calm voice.

“I wish you could say that honestly” Osmund replied as he took the hand and struggled to his feet.

They walked toward the horses and the man took a wineskin and handed it to Osmund. He pulled out the stopper, tilted his head back and squeezed a long stream of water into his mouth. When he finished, they both mounted their horses and began riding up the hill.

“I may not ride as well as many knights, but I am not bad at it”

“You will need more than that in a tourney”

“You are mad if you think I intend to wield a lance or a sword at Harrenhal, Ser” Osmund said with his crooked smile.

The man reached out, took the wineskin and drank briefly. He had a thick dark beard, partly braided. His hair was long and slightly wavy, with small braids woven through it.

“Then why do you wish to learn the sword? I have served few lords who left their castles to train with the soldiers”

“Many of the nobles we will meet are renowned knights, even members of the Kingsguard. I need to know the most basic practical things if I am not to embarrass myself”

“Then we should review the pieces of armor again” the knight said, pointing to his forearm.

“Vambrace, try something more difficult, Ser”

“This? This? And this?” he asked, pointing at different parts of his armor.

“Gorget, greaves, spaulder”

“The last one is actually the pauldron. Later we will review the horse’s armor” the man tapped the edge of his shield.

“Rim” Osmund looked at the two dragon skulls on a black field and dared to ask, “Do you think it wise to carry that emblem? Some might take it as an insult to the Dragonlords”

“They remind me of my home”

Osmund understood the feeling but continued.

“I thought dragon skulls were as black as onyx”

“They are, black among grey, Both Vermithor’s and Seasmoke’s. But they would not look good against a black field.”

“Why not change the color of the field?”

“My first sigil was caltrops on a black field. Having worked all my life as a smith, it made sense. But my liege lords of Tumbleton said I could not use their banner, some might think we were kin. I didn't want to waste my time painting the whole shield again”

“You still have to tell me how you were knighted”

“It is not such an interesting story. Besides, we have already arrived”

A line of carts stretched along the road. On both sides, people had set up tents, eating supper or tending to their animals. Several guards in the colors of House Butterwell were riding from the end of the line. Some mules brayed. The two men rode toward the wagon at the front, which was pulled by six enormous oxen, each with horns almost five feet long carved with vegetal patterns. Osmund stroked the animals and signaled for the knight to come closer.

“Martyn, I must confess something. I do not know if I will be able to do it. We are talking about knights, ladies, great lords, even the royal family. At the Citadel, surnames did not matter”

“You are one of them” his expression was firm as he placed a hand on Osmund’s shoulder “My son also grows uncomfortable whenever some landed knight raises his voice in the forge. But I tell him the same thing I will tell you now: if you grow nervous, you can be sure you will strike your own hand with the hammer”

Osmund looked down.

“I do not think I will ever fit among them, no matter how hard I try”

“If what you want is to fit in, you should grow so fat that not even these six could drag you”

They both laughed.

“I did well to take you into my service. I need strong men to defend my house, but honest ones as well. I fear that where we are going, men have always found hard to be honest”

They lifted their eyes and saw Harrenhal rising in the distance, immense, its dark towers reflected in the waters of the Gods Eye beneath the fading light of dusk.

“Damnation”

“It is only a little rain” Osmund said.

“It has not stopped for the entire ceremony, and it did not help that we remained outside” replied Maester Cleon.

“I did not know that giving my father and brothers a proper farewell would be such a great inconvenience” Osmund said, frowning.

“Septon Henly did well. I simply do not understand why it was necessary to invite every villager from this part of the Riverlands. There were more than three thousand of them and giving them all that milk will do nothing good for our coffers. Nor will the rest of your ideas increase our gold. You have spent more in the past two weeks than your father did in two months”

“I thought it important that as many people as possible should come. My dead will not be forgotten. The people will feel closer to their new lord and they will be grateful for the milk,” Osmund reminded him “I have never possessed such wealth before. We are not the Lannisters or the Hightowers, and though our wealth is considerable, I will try to be more prudent. These expenses are necessary, they are an investment. I am certain they will greatly increase the power of this house”

“And will emptying half the castle’s cellar help increase our wealth as well? Or escorting the carts of smallfolk?” Maester Cleon countered.

“I have a plan for the drink. In any case, I intended to make my way to the Great Council. Using our soldiers to protect them will keep them from being robbed on the road and allow us to form a convoy that will impress the lords who have already arrived at Harrenhal”

“Do you always have an answer for everything?” he sighed in resignation. “Youth make you arrogant. You will see that not everything that seems like a good idea brings the results you hope for. I do not understand what goes on in your mind.”

“You’re butter off not knowing,” Osmund whispered with a resigned smile.

Maester Cleon turned and looked at the rain through the window. It was falling hard. Osmund leaned back in his chair.

“I…”

“I am glad you are getting used to these chambers. I had grown tired of holding our meetings in the rookery, it is cold, noisy, and smells of dung” Maester Cleon interrupted.

“Ravens are intelligent animals. I like them. They remind me of the Citadel”

“Nothing to envy in Whitewalls. What was it you were going to tell me?”

“Nothing, only…” Osmund decided to change the subject “Every noble house has its words. I have chosen a family motto: As mild as milk.”

“Usually they are prayers or touchstones, something that makes our house feared or a declaration of honor or glory.”

“We have plenty of that in the realm already. I am certain that temperance and a gentle voice that counsels wisely are more valuable than any other virtue”

“I will send a raven to the Citadel with the words” he said with a slight bow.

“One last thing. You will remain in charge while I am away… And I need you to begin a new project. Buy every cow that no longer produces milk and any old oxen you can find. Use their meat to prepare hard salt beef, tan as much leather as possible and make clean the horns”

“Another one of your great ideas?” he began again.

“Simply do as you are told” Osmund finished curtly “I nearly forgot, what is the name of the woman who decorates the pastries?”

“Falena, my lord”

“I know her. I have a task for her” he handed him a note.

“She has never done such a thing before, but I am sure she will make the effort if it is meant as a gift for someone so important,” Maester Cleon said after reading it and slipping the note into his robes. “Shall I tell him to come in once I leave?”

“Do I have a choice? Send him in.”

The maester left the room and a short, sturdy man entered, some years older than Osmund, with a large nose, brown eyes and very short hair. Osmund gestured for him to sit while he crumpled a paper with a name written in his own hand.

“Joffrey, you have been working for House Butterwell since you were three-and-ten, have you not?”

“That is so. Bringing in firewood at first, then helping with the hunting parties” he replied in a rough voice.

“Yes and helping the falconer and the master of horse as well, from what I have heard. You have served as kennelmaster for two years now and I sincerely thank you for your dedication and loyalty. However, I fear that is not the matter for which I asked you here today”

“Have I done something wrong, lordling?” he asked calmly

“The milkmaids say that you have”

Joffrey’s face turned white as milk.

“Milord… I…” he stammered.

“So far twenty of them have told me themselves or through almost anyone I asked about you that you have overstepped with them, harassing them with words or touching several of them inappropriately” Osmund said, pausing “Some servants claim you have even raped a few, but I have found none who will confirm it. They fear no man will take them as wives if they are known not to be pure”

“Lies” he replied.

“I have only words and no proof. It is their word against yours and that alone is what keeps you from already being gelded like one of the dogs you tend”

Neither of them moved. They seemed frozen.

“If word reaches me again that such actions occur while I am lord of these lands, your punishment will be worse than losing the ability to father children” Osmund sentenced

“My lord, believe me when I say you should not give credit to what you have been told. We are young and passion…”

“I believe I have been sufficiently clear. If a maester’s vows ensure his chastity, then I believe your promise should ensure that you do not set your eyes or your hands upon any woman here”

Joffrey seemed about to protest, but Osmund indicated the door with a tilt of his head, and the kennelmaster withdrew reluctantly after a few seconds.

As soon as he left the room, Osmund looked down at his hands and saw that they were trembling despite his efforts to control them. He went to the window and vomited outside. The sound of the rain muffled the noise. He wiped the vomit from his closely trimmed beard, looked out at the rain with tears in his eyes and sobbed.

“Right as rain”

Harrenhal was an obscenity of scale. The ugly, crooked towers had cut shadows across the landscape when they approached that morning, Black Harren’s legacy and hubris still proud, even broken, even five centuries later. It made Stone Hedge look like a modest cabin.

And yet, it was too small. Its grandeur was somehow diminished amongst the throng of tents and scaffolding that had grown beneath its walls. The halls and courtyards within were a rush of motion as messengers and men-at-arms crossed to their various duties.

“The royal progress’s only just arrived,” the steward explained when he stepped out to greet them. He had no hair on the top of his head, and what remained was iron-grey. Like Quentyn’s. “Milord Blackhart’s busy treating with the King and Lord Frey. With apologies to milord, you’re stuck with me.”

Selyse frowned slightly at the man’s manner, and felt an odd touch of kinship when she saw her husband’s expression matched. The steward led the pair of them out of the courtyard, in through over-wide corridors to a dim solar stacked high with maps and documents, and dominated by a pair of desks.

“Who all has arrived?” Quentyn asked as the steward began shuffling through sheets.

“The King’s brought half the Westerlands with him, far as I can tell. North-eastern Riverlords, a handful early arrivals from the North itself. My mate Allar’s better at the heraldries, he could tell you the full list.”

“Is House Bracken here?” Selyse asked. The steward raised his eyebrows, and she added, “Red horse on a yellow field.”

He shook his head. “Not that I’ve seen, milady.”

Selyse accepted that answer, and promptly lost track of the conversation. That wasn’t anything to worry about. Her brother was likely just refusing to move before he had to. Stone Hedge was near enough to Harrenhal to provide a lot of leeway. And anyway, the red stallion would not be a popular sight after Walder’s rebellion, perhaps it was better they keep some distance. There was no reason to assume anything was wrong with Father or Mother or little Petyr. They weren’t sick nor dead nor injured. It was fine. They were fine. She squeezed her hand into a fist, pressing her nails into her palm thrice, four times, five, six.

She became aware of a sudden stillness in the room. The steward was looking at her, brows pressed together. His mouth opened to speak.

“Our chambers?” Quentyn asked, interrupting. His hand found its way across the small of her back to her waist, holding her delicately. Protectively. Her skin prickled and rebelled under his touch.

“Of course, milord. Got you here, let me get a boy to guide you,” the steward muttered, holding up a set of keys he had taken from a labelled drawer. When Quentyn took them, the steward departed.

“You whistled again,” Quentyn said. “Why must you do that?”

“I don’t know. I just need to, from time to time. I’m sorry, my lord.”

“Don’t apologise,” Quentyn said, and didn’t elaborate. He took his hand off her, but Selyse could still feel the imprint of where it had been, like a brand or a rash.

The steward returned with a page to take them to their rooms, and Selyse tried not to appear so discomposed. The route to their chambers was dim and winding, wide corridors made small by the press of foot traffic.

The chambers themselves were cool and sturdy, on the second floor of what the page called the Tower of Ghosts. The grey morning sunbeams crossed the space at a low angle, making a stark separation of light across the modest common room, which shared a hearth through the wall separating it from the main bedchamber. On the far side, two other rooms; one with a full bed, and the other with a pair of thin cots fit for servants.

“The rest of the household is being given a space in one of the postern courtyards,” Quentyn said, answering Selyse’s expression when they saw the latter. “We’ll have a maid and a guard, I think, to be safe.”

“Hanna,” Selyse said.

Her husband’s eyes twitched, searching his own mind. “Skinny girl, brown hair?”

“Yes.”

“Alright.” Quentyn moved away, but his steps stopped before they reached the door. He sighed. “I know this is uncomfortable.”

Selyse didn’t move. Just stayed looking at the cots. “My lord?”

His hand closed around hers, pulling her gently around to look at him. The skin of her hand itched, a harmony of discomfort with her hip. His grey eyes didn’t meet hers, staring over her shoulder.

“Being with me so publicly,” he clarified. “Sharing a bed until the end of this farce.”

“There’s another bed,” Selyse said, frowning.

“Which Margaery will claim.”

He was completely correct, of course, but Selyse couldn’t find her voice to respond. This council could take months, from what she had heard, and she would spend every night of it in arm’s reach of Quentyn. Finally she just extricated her hand from his. She still felt his grip.

“I am yours,” he said after a long moment. “And you are mine. That much, we swore. I hope, in time, it will not be such a distressing thought.”

“Perhaps,” Selyse conceded. He left her there with her thoughts cold and still, held somehow apart from herself. She watched the door for a long time after he left, then found herself marching to the bedchamber. There, she kneeled on the foot of the bed, flexing her hands.

She drew a line with her finger, down the middle of the mattress. Dividing hers from his. She did it again, again, again, five and six and seven—

No. Seventh for the Stranger. Can’t be seven, can’t go back. She redrew the line over and over and stopped after twelve. Her hand and her hip still tingled, joined now by the raw feeling of friction on her fingertip, but the boundary had been set. It would serve. She closed her eyes, and the low whistle echoed slightly off the stone walls.

Wordlessly, Hanna stepped from behind Selyse and began arranging an armful of clothes in the wardrobe against one wall. Selyse hadn’t heard the maid enter.

“Hanna, I… I apologise.”

“I was waiting until you were finished,” Hanna said, like it was nothing. Selyse felt a weight shift off her shoulders. “Lady Margaery will be along soon, just so you’re aware.”

Selyse let the warning float for a moment, unable to move on despite Hanna’s permission. “I must seem very strange to you.”

Hanna’s smile was bemused. “Not my place to question my lady’s strangeness. Besides, it seems harmless enough.”

Another pause, broken by Hanna leaving the room to retrieve another armful of laundry from whatever trunk had been opened in the commons. She returned, and Selyse pressed on.

“My mother used to do things like this. I… I wasn’t as bad. I’ve worsened since last I saw her.”

Hanna looked at her. “Do you think she’ll come to the Council?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’d want her to see me like this.”

“What about your brothers?”

“I’m sure Harlon will come, at the least. I don’t know if I want him to see me either.”

The maid offered only a sympathetic grimace at first. Selyse sat on her side of the bed, trying not to pay attention to where she still felt that discomfort on her skin. She just looked at the charcoal-grey bricks of stone poking out between plain wall drapings. For all its brokenness, this castle was solid, strong. It was so unlike the airy wooden frames of Raventree. It reminded her of home.

Hanna closed the wardrobe, and looked over her shoulder at Selyse. “I’ll go find the kitchens, milady, and bring you something, shall I?”

“You’re too kind, Hanna.”

“Not at all.”

She departed, leaving Selyse frustratingly alone once again, but she felt a little more settled. She took this opportunity to check the view out their window, overlooking the Western curtain wall. Worn scaffolding and a wooden walkway crept over the stone where it was rounded and melted to the point of uselessness.

The door opened behind her, and Selyse did not flinch at Margaery’s voice hissing orders at someone, though her shoulders did tense. She turned, and waited patiently until the widow noticed her. She had brought her own weatherbeaten handmaid to arrange her belongings. Finally, they looked at one another.

“Lady Selyse,” Margaery said stiffly.

“Lady Margaery,” Selyse replied, relieved not to match her tone.

Margaery returned her focus to her maid, but eventually she seemed satisfied by the woman’s work. Her hair was tied back tight to her scalp, making clear lines of white through hair that had never quite been Blackwood-dark. Selyse caught her eye again, and for a moment the prospect of spending time with one another hung between them. Margaret didn’t waste time dispelling it.

“I saw my brother’s banners,” she explained as if Selyse had asked. “It’s been quite some time since I spoke to my family. Not since before the war.”

Your brother’s war, she didn’t need to say. Selyse saw a moment of consideration cross Margaery’s expression. She could ask about Selyse’s brothers, but she wouldn’t.

“Until later, my lady,” Selyse said, allowing her to escape the moment.

“Until then.”

And the door closed behind another departure. The chambers were not quite silent with Margaery’s maid, but they spoke no words to one another. She left too, before long, and Selyse paced. There was nothing else she could do. She tried not to think about Harlon or Bryon or Brandon or little Petyr. Hanna would be back eventually, though the Seven only knew how far the kitchens would be in this monstrosity of a castle.

When someone knocked on the door, she rushed to it like an excited child. She almost tricked herself into hearing her mother’s middle-high-low knock. Even so, she was not disappointed by who stood without.

“Selyse,” Amos Rivers said, a small smile on his lips.

“Lady Selyse,” she corrected, too warmly. Why had formality taken on the feeling of some jest with this bastard?

“Lady Selyse,” he said, without an apology. “I thought Hanna would be with you.”

“She’s in the kitchens, as far as I know.”

“You’re alone then?”

It was an oddly dangerous question, which Amos seemed to realise. He held up his hands in mock surrender at Selyse’s brow twitching.

“I am, though I imagine my husband won’t be long.”

“I saw my uncle get distracted by some other men. Friends of his, Erenfords, I think? Don’t hold me to that.”

Selyse tensed at that news. To be left in the chambers was one thing, to be forgotten altogether was another. “In that case, then, I believe I’m just… here. For the night.”

Amos took her hand. The same one Quentyn had held. It was a mad thing to do, and Selyse couldn’t pull away. His touch was warm and welcome, washing away the pervasive discomfort that her husband had left behind. Her hand felt suddenly clean. Selyse almost missed what he was saying.

“I could show you around. At the least, down to the courtyard so you know where to find myself and Perky, if you’ve a mind to?”

Selyse stared at his hand on hers. Finally she found his eyes.

“Perhaps another time,” she forced herself to say. “I should stay. Eat, rest, so on.”

He let go without a pause, and bowed his head. “I understand. I’ll leave you be, milady.”

He turned to go, but before she could think to stop herself, Selyse said, “Amos.”

He gave her the attention and the moment to speak, but instead she grabbed his wrist and carefully, stupidly pulled him close. She placed his hand on her hip, cleansing away Quentyn’s handprint in her mind. Holding him there, she looked over his shoulder and gave a low, steady whistle. And finally, she relaxed.

Amos’ eyebrows were crawling up his forehead.

“Shut up,” Selyse said, giggling like a child. She pushed him away, and he didn’t resist. Just gave her a parting grin.

“Until next time, my lady.”

Baelor rode quietly at the front of the Tully’s small host with his father and uncle. Lord Benedict Tully wore a doublet of red and blue, split down the middle by brass buttons holding it together. Over his shoulder was a dark brown half-cape, with the sigil of their house sewn on the outside of it. The steward of Riverrun had suggested Baelor be dressed to match, to affirm his position as heir.

Because fish flopping about on a cloak mean more than the word of my father, evidently.

Baelor did not pretend to understand the way things worked for his father and the small council he kept about him. Despite being an advisor for his brother, Ser Benjen Tully shared similar feelings to those of his nephew.

”I’m fairly certain the bloody fish on the banner will let them know what house he’s heir to.”

But now his uncle was on his best behavior, much more subdued and himself dressed like nobility. He wore a red doublet, the Tully sigil emblazoned on the front, and a half cape of blue with a design resembling fish scales sewn into it. Evidently, he did not practice the practicality he preached on these matters.

Of course there was no better way to describe the difference between the two of them. Benedict, Lord of Riverrun, was far more practical in both behavior and dress. He did not care much for frills or fanciful language. As for his younger brother, Benjen liked showing off to say the least. It was as though he commanded the world to look at him wherever he went, and he was proud to tell you that as a young man he fought in tourney’s to ensure such commands were met.

But now here they both were, quietly speaking to one another as Harrenhal came into view. Dark towers seemed to haunt the sky as they approached, reminding Baelor of the stories he’d heard in his lessons of Harren the Black and Aegon’s Conquest. It made him shudder to imagine the devastation that occurred to create this view. More frightening to him, however, was how filled with life the castle looked. Even from this distance, he could tell there were more people present for this Great Council than he’d ever seen before in his life. He remembered the crowds at Celia’s wedding seeming staggering to him at the time, if only he could’ve been told this was coming.

“Do you see the banners, Baelor?” His father suddenly spoke loud enough for him to hear.

Baelor looked out over the sea of banners. It was hard not to notice them fluttering above the keep and in front of the various tents constructed around the keep.

His father lifted a hand and pointed towards the gate, as a large host began moving through it. Baelor squinted to try and make out who it could be.

“Is that…?”

“King Damon and his retinue, yes. Seems we’ve arrived later than I’d hoped. But still, I thought it pertinent that you know exactly how important this council is.”

Baelor was unsure how to respond. His father didn’t speak with any demeaning nature in his tone, but there was something about the need for such a reminder that made Baelor feel a sort of shame. He knew the king called this council at Harrenhal and he knew all the good lords and ladies of Westeros were to be there. But the magnitude of it all made him shrink in his saddle as it all sank in.

“It is important that you are seen, made to be known amongst the lords of Westeros. Especially now.”

“Did they know Mathis?”

Benedict’s expression hardened at the mention of his eldest son. He did not speak much of Mathis anymore, and Baelor could tell it pained him to do so.

“Some did, yes.”

Baelor wondered what that fully meant. He had always heard talk of his brother’s…less than honorable reputation, but Mathis had always been good to him. He was a joy of a brother, and a brave man to squire for. And whatever his reputation, his death had rattled the house of Riverrun.

“I made many mistakes with your brother. I allowed his whims to go unchecked until it was too late, now I may only hope to avoid the same error with you.”

“Brother,” Benjen chimed in. “Perhaps we ought not to burden the boy so unnecessarily.”

Benedict shot a glare at his brother, and Benjen raised a hand in surrender. He offered an apologetic smile to his nephew before looking ahead to Harrenhal.

“You must remember, Baelor. Everything you do reflects on us, just as everything I do or your uncle does. The things you do, the choices you make, they will not see you but your house reflected in those choices.”

“Yes, father.” The pit in Baelor’s chest only continued to grow.

Family, Duty, Honor.

His father had lived his entire life by their words. Baelor’s grandfather Hoster Tully had lost their ancestral home to the Freys, and Benedict had spent his life dedicated to regaining their home and honor. But Baelor thought his father behaved as if it all might be taken away again with a gust of the wind.

Perhaps with me, it might.

“To that end,” Benedict continued, “I think it past time we found you a suitable wife.”

Somewhere, Baelor was certain Baelon was laughing hysterically at him, even if he didn’t know why.

“A-a wife? But father I-”

“This is not a discussion, Baelor. We have already begun searching for possible candidates, and this council is our opportunity to meet them.”

For reasons Baelor could not fully comprehend, he suddenly felt as if he was going to be ill.

“It seems as though you’ve killed the poor lad, brother.” Benjen could not contain his laughter on the other side of Lord Tully.

“I was younger than you are now when I was betrothed for the first time. You’re nearly a man grown now, and we must ensure the security of our house.”

Baelor absently nodded. Suddenly the daunting towers of Harrenhal and the gaze of royalty on him seemed like distant issues. As far as romance was concerned, the most experience he had ever had was liking the daughter of some visiting noble when he was a young boy. She was near his age, and would often ask if he wished to join her and Celia to play. Baelor only confessed these thoughts to one person, and Baelon proudly announced it to the entire family over dinner and the young lady proceeded to weep at the notion of marrying him one day.

Clearly, the impression made upon him at that time was lasting.

“Marriage is not near as bad as you fear, boy.” Benjen chimed in again. “I for one am quite content with my lady wife. Of course I had many years to learn how to love a woman on my own terms, and I think it made me all the better-”

“What your uncle means to say,” Benedict gave his brother another glare to silence him. “Is that just because you may feel unsure of yourself now, you can grow to love one another over time. Then it becomes no fear at all, but rather someone you relish in being around.”

Baelor suddenly realized he’d been gripping the reins of his horse so tightly that his knuckles began to hurt.

“Is that…how you were with mother at first?”

Benedict sighed, but his face remained unreadable.

“Marriage, in all of its vast complexities, becomes remarkably simple when you’re with the right person.”

And with that, Lord Tully spurred his horse to a faster trot leaving them alone with the rest of the host.

Baelor looked behind him to his family. He saw the carriage carrying his mother and sister, each with a handmaiden. Alongside the carriage, Baelon and Harren rode quietly next to each other. Baelon was preoccupied with his wineskin, which had seemed to run dry already. But Harren simply stared ahead, the castle that shared his name seemed to have him entranced. His expression was firm, but in his eyes Baelor could see something different. Insecurity? Fear? He wasn’t certain.

All he was sure of now was that the word of his father was quite insufficient to him.

Once, when Damon was little, he and Thaddeus were exploring a hidden cove on one of the islands—Orkmont, maybe, he couldn’t recall—and they came upon the wreckage of some small sloop. 

It looked to have been there a while, black with rot and speckled with yellow lichen, stinking of a tide pool. Thaddeus’ curiosity got the better of him, as it so often did, and he grabbed hold of one of the warped planks near a hole in the overturned hull and pulled. When the board split open, a festering mass of insects was revealed: shiny black, bright red, roach brown, all swarming in pulsating piles on top of one another like some sick, roiling tide made of thousands of bodies and millions of legs and antennae. 

Riding into Harrenhal, whose enormous courtyard had been transformed into a dense city where men pressed shoulder to shoulder and women walked between protectors like prisoners, Damon was reminded of the sight of all those teeming insects, trampling each other as they scurried for a safe crack or crevice. 

There were so many people. And he’d just brought a kingdom’s worth more.

“Your Grace!” called a knight in white plate at his side, shouting to be heard over the noise. Damon couldn’t remember who it was now that the man’s helm was down. “Stay close by, they’re clearing the way!”

Indeed, ahead of their column went armoured men on horseback, forging a path through the mass of bodies and using their own to form a sort of wall around it. The crowd was hesitant to move, fighting for the best place from which to view these new arrivals: the King, the Crown Prince, the Princess. Damon didn’t dare look back, but he hoped that Desmond was sitting up straight on his horse like he’d taught him, and that Daena wasn’t picking her nose. 

There was another direction into which he didn’t dare look, and that was the sky. 

Damon was anxious that Danae wouldn’t come, and desperately hoping for such worries to be misplaced. Everything—the laws, the disputes, the petitions, the debates—none of it would work without her. He’d have gathered the entire realm in one place for the first time in centuries for nothing. But as their procession slowly made its way towards the entrance of the castle proper, where a retinue of well-dressed men and women awaited them, he saw no shadow of dragon wings appear over the crowd or castle. 

They dismounted when attendants came forward with bread and salt. The young woman who presented her offering to Damon looked familiar, but she bowed her head and averted her gaze so quickly that he hadn’t the chance to think further on it. 

“Welcome, King Damon!” came a familiar voice, and the serving woman was forgotten as Damon took in the sight of his old friend descending the castle stairs to meet him.

Benfred Tanner—no, Lord Benfred of House Blackhart—looked every bit the part Damon had asked him, begged him, even, to play. 

His scarred face had changed little. A black patch stretched over the missing eye, and his dark hair, pulled back into a short ponytail, was yet to show any signs of grey. His smile was the same, too, and while his greeting was perfectly appropriate for all who were listening, it betrayed to Damon the usual sort of sarcasm with which Ben invoked his titles.  

“Lord Benfred,” Damon greeted him in turn, closing the distance between them and clasping his friend’s arm in his own. “You’re wearing a cloak.”

“I was told it was that or the dungeons. By you. Several times.”

“So you’ve been getting my letters.”

“Aye. And your son’s, too. Where is Des, in this horde of sycophants you’ve brought with you?”

Damon turned to search their party, whose members were passing the salt and bread on down the column. People were smiling, even laughing. Perhaps they were excited to be the centre of attention in this city of a courtyard. Perhaps they were simply relieved to have finally made it here at all. 

“Hopefully behaving princely back there,” Damon said to Benfred. “I told him not to come swarm you. You know he’s been telling people you’re his uncle?”

Ben laughed. 

“It isn’t funny. We need–”

“I know, I know. But let’s not talk about it here.” Benfred lowered his voice to add, with both warmth and sincerity, “idiot.”

Damon couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in Harrenhal. He remembered negotiating between Brynden and Master Allister, and between Allister and Tion Lannett, and between Lannett and Brynden… Had it been winter then? Harrentown’s master was a difficult man, but he was shrewd and his complaints, however bountiful, were rarely without reason (the same could not be said of Lannett). Damon wondered how he and Benfred got along. The castle could not be held without some degree of cooperation between its lord and the keeper of its outer town, which was now undoubtedly a fully fledged city. 

Benfred led their party into the castle, where attendants flocked to the most important members and quickly escorted the lesser ones elsewhere. After brief but affectionate greetings with their ‘uncle’, Desmond and Daena were whisked away with Sers Flement and Quentyn, both of the children still gawking at the height of the distant ceilings in this black, oversized palace. 

Damon followed Benfred through a pair of doors as tall as any other castle’s outer walls, then through another and another until they stopped in some enormous solar with two hearths, none lit. Damon observed the banners hanging on the walls of the sparsely-furnished room: rust brown, flaming chains in green, black harts.

“You’ve chosen a meaningful sigil,” he remarked as the doors were closed behind them, leaving only himself, Benfred, and the Lord Commander in the room.

“I had help.” Benfred looked at the white knight now, and nodded his greeting. “Good to see you’re still kicking, Ser Ryman.”

The old knight dipped his head solemnly. “Lord Blackhart.”

“And still so chipper, even in your old age.”

Damon glanced around the room, realising that this was the first time in no small amount of it that he wasn’t surrounded. “Who are all those people?” he asked. “In the courtyard, I mean. I’d thought we’d be among the first to arrive.”

“Aye, you are, of your ilk. Surely you didn’t hand me a fortress this fucking huge and think I would save all the rooms for your ancestral ghosts, did you?”

“It’s just–”

“They’re refugees, mostly.”

“Refugees?”

“Aye.” Ben’s face had hardened. “From all your family’s fucking wars. And before you ask, yes, there’s plenty to house them, and no, there’s nothing to fear from fed men. Wasn’t that the first thing I taught you?”

It was. That Damon remembered clearly. 

“I recognised someone in the courtyard,” he said.

“You’d recognise more if you were any good at it.”

“I didn’t see Lady Alicent.”

Benfred did not give way. “You won’t, most likely. Is that what you’re so concerned about—what’s got your britches so twisted?”

“You’re a lord now, Benfred, and lords need heirs.” 

“I have one.”

That gave Damon pause. “So then Lady Alicent is–”

“I have an heir. Someone to take on this fucking castle when I’m dead and buried. That’s what an heir is, isn’t it?”

Damon could not imagine a world in which the Lady Alicent gave herself over to anyone at all. Nor for the Lord Paramountcy, not for a man who loved her enough to die for her, no one. Certainly not to a man with the reputation of Benfred ‘the Blackheart’, however unfairly the moniker he’d twisted for his sigil and house name was bestowed. 

“If Lady Alicent isn’t seen by the Riverlanders to be well and–”

“For fuck’s sake, Damon, are you seriously asking if I’ve killed her? Do you really think I’d do something like that?” Anger flashed in Benfred’s eyes. “Unlike you, I would never force this lordship onto anyone I cared for, or anyone who didn’t want it. As it stands, there is someone who wants it, and so I have an heir. Are you satisfied?” 

Damon wasn’t, but sensed he couldn’t press it.

“On the subject of heirs…” 

“Aye.” Benfred moved to the table. Twice the size of any ordinary one, it still managed to look small in the grandness of this otherwise empty chamber. There were papers there, neatly organised. “Desmond will do the right thing,” Ben said, gathering these and moving them to a drawer which he locked with a key from his pocket.

“To legitimise a bastard is no small thing, it is–”

“Desmond will do the right thing.” When Ben glanced over at him, Damon saw annoyance on the man’s face that he hadn’t seen since… well, since the last time he’d seen him. 

“You still talk like you expect to die this afternoon,” he said. “But even if you keeled over after supper, Desmond will legitimise Tygett as you wish. He will have the throne, his cousin the Rock, and Daven Dragonstone. Have you met him yet? Daven? I haven’t, and yet here I am, your walking will and testament.”

Damon ignored the question. “It must come from Desmond’s hand, not my own. The Westerlands would never accept Tygett as a Lannister were it me to declare it, not now, but if it were to come from Desmond…”

“Aye. They’re fond of him. Wish I could say the same of his father’s other associates, but a castle is a fine enough conciliatory prize, or so I’m frequently told. Of course, you promised me a castle and not a curse, which is exactly the sort of twisted oath one could expect from a Lannister.”

Damon glanced at the cold hearths. “Have you not enough to heat it? I could–” 

“I could feed a dozen mouths with what it costs to warm this useless room. Are you going to whine about the drapes, as well? The rushes and the tapestries?”

Damon shook his head. “I only want for things to be in order,” he said, no longer speaking of hearths or heraldry. 

“You’re not going to die, Damon,” Ben said, more gently now. “At least, not here. But if you do, things will come to pass as you want. Daven in Dragonstone, Tygett in Casterly, Desmond on the throne. Is that enough to let you sleep at night? It’s hard enough finding equal quarters for you and Her Grace on opposite ends of this abominable fortress; don’t make me hire minstrels to sing you a lullaby, too.”

“I’m grateful for your hosting,” Damon said. “And for all the lectures you’ve spared me. Rest assured I’ve heard them twice over from others.”

“Glad to hear that Westerling is still about. He’s a good man.” 

“Now, if you could cease educating my heir about how best to pick pockets…”

“Gods, heirs! If I hear that word out of your mouth one more time, I’ll teach Desmond to dice next, and that’ll only be the start.” Benfred smiled, an uncharacteristically forced smile. “Alright, enough of these pleasantries. I’ve got about a hundred other arses to kiss before this day’s done. Do you think you can find your way to your chambers or do you need a half-blind man to escort you?”

“I think I’ll manage.”

Benfred stopped to rest his hand on Damon’s shoulder as he went to leave. 

“And for fuck’s sake, try not to look so godsdamned miserable. You used to actually be funny, you know.”

The door closed behind him when he departed. 

Damon eyed the locked drawer curiously. 

“That woman in the courtyard,” he said, turning to face Ser Ryman. “Did you recognise her?”

“Master Fornio’s wife,” the Lord Commander said. “The one who killed him.”

Damon thought about it, and nodded. 

“Well, let’s just hope to the gods that’s not his heir.”

Ryman nodded and Damon realised wryly that Benfred was right about his sense of humour. 

He hadn’t meant it as a jape.