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Chapter Text

The evening sun blazed through the leaded glass windows, striking the corpse laid out upon the altar of The Stranger in a way that leant warmth to its pallid skin, making it appear almost as though the Hand of the King still lived.

In the sept’s topmost gallery two golden heads bent together. Although the beautiful faces beneath the blonde curls bore a strong resemblance to one another, their expressions could not have been more different. The man seemed relaxed, almost cocky, while the woman wore a look that spoke of deep anxiety.

“What if Jon Arryn told someone?” Queen Cersei asked her brother.

“But who would he tell?” Ser Jaime replied with a shrug.

“My husband.”

“If he’d told the King both our heads would be skewered on the city gates by now. Whatever Jon Arryn knew or didn’t know it died with him. And Robert will choose a new Hand of the King, someone to do his job while he’s off fucking boars and hunting whores. Or is it the other way around? And life will go on.”

“You should be Hand of the King.”

“That’s an honour I can do without. Their days are too long, and their lives are too short.”

From the far side of the gallery, beside the statue of The Smith and hidden under the shadow of his raised hammer, Tyrion Lannister watched his brother escort their sister down the marble staircase and out of the sept and wondered.

Succumbing to a stomach malady seemed like the wrong end for a man as venerable as Jon Arryn. In his eightieth year, The Hand had been hale and vigorous as a man in his fifties until the illness that had so suddenly come upon him mere hours before his passing. Any astute mind would suspect poison.

Would others suspect Tyrion’s siblings?

Undoubtedly. Protecting a secret was an obvious motive, and while Tywin Lannister remained blindly ignorant of his grandchildren’s parentage, Tyrion had seen the discerning looks other courtiers directed towards his nephews and niece. Varys, Pycelle, Stannis… had Jon Arryn begun to harbour the same suspicions? Could he have found proof?

Who would be motivated to expose the royal children’s bastardy if they knew of it? Robert’s brothers, obviously, and perhaps other great houses with marriageable daughters ripe to take Cersei’s place should she be deposed as Queen. Mace Tyrell’s girl was what, fifteen, sixteen years old now? Doran Martell’s daughter was older than twenty yet still unwed. If Jon Arryn had been in league with any of them in a plot to expose the truth and Cersei had discovered it, a hasty and poorly obscured poisoning would have been a reaction entirely in keeping with her character.

“Wrong.”

Tyrion almost tumbled backward in surprise at the sound of the dismissive baritone. Catching himself on the railing, he turned to see the thin silhouette of a man leaning against the wall at the back of the gallery, face hidden in the shadows.

“You believe your sister murdered The Hand - not that you’d ever publically accuse her, it’s obvious from the horse hair on your hose and the way you’re favouring your left leg that you adore your brother. You find being in the saddle painful, but you go riding with Ser Jaime regularly because it allows you to spend time alone with him. He thinks you like it, so he gifted you a horse for your last nameday. Conclusion; you'd never inflict the pain losing his sister and lover would cause upon him, but nevertheless you think she did it.”

The speaker stepped forward into the light. Even though he was a newcomer at King Robert’s court Tyrion recognised him immediately. With his light blue eyes, fair skin and finely sculpted features, Sherlock Holmes was striking in a way that suggested a strong Valyrian bloodline. He dressed in dark blues, deep purples and midnight black, befitting his status as a high-ranking Braavosi nobleman, but he also had a bravo’s flamboyance about him. Tyrion could read it in the black lotus flower pattern embroidered on his sleeves, the golden swept hilt of the slender sword hanging from his belt and the impudent wildness of a second-born son inherent in his manner.

“You’re taking a rather bold interest in the affairs of the royal family for a Braavosi exile,” he said. “Foreigners usually have the sense to keep a low profile during moments of political upheaval.”

“Do they?” said Holmes. “Dull. The most powerful man in Westeros has been murdered by someone who clearly means to frame the Queen as the perpetrator, destroying the alliance between the Lannisters and the Baratheons and plunging the seven kingdoms into civil war. I wouldn’t dream of removing myself from such a tremendously fascinating situation when it seems as though the fun is just beginning.”

Holmes had been a popular subject with court gossips since his arrival in King’s Landing two moons ago, and seemed to have developed a reputation for being something of an eccentric. Watching him all but rubbing his hands together in excitement whilst talking of war and murder, Tyrion began to think the man’s burgeoning notoriety might be well deserved.

“There’s been speculation at court as to what caused the Sealord to banish you from Braavos. I wonder if your notable tact and sensitivity had a part to play in the matter?”

Holmes snorted, “I wasn’t banished, I left because I was bored. Do you know how many interesting murders are committed in Braavos? None. They’re all carried out by a cult of religious assassins whose chief criteria for membership seems to be an utter lack of creative flair.”

“So you like ‘interesting’ murders?”

“The murder of a powerful man is always a singular event, a fixed point from which a man with a talent for observation can reason not only the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which will follow from it. Such a man can unravel the strategies of the greatest players of the great game and once he has done so he has them in his power.”

“Ah. Then you’re a man who enjoys the game of thrones?”

“As I said, I like things that are interesting. My mind rebels at stagnation. I need problems, mysteries, riddles to solve. My elder brother plays the game of thrones to win. As a child, I used to sneak into his solar while he was at supper and re-arrange the pieces on his Cyvasse board in a manner that would subtlety alter the outcome of the game in accordance with my own carefully calculated projections with no motivation beyond my own amusement. It used to drive him to distraction.”

“The joys of being a younger sibling,” said Tyrion. “Once when my sister was a girl I persuaded her maid to lengthen the hems of all her gowns by an inch or so every moon until she was convinced she was shrinking in height.”

“You dislike her,” Holmes observed. “She’s always been cruel to you, yet you can’t quite find it in yourself to hate her as she hates you.”

“How are you so certain she didn’t kill Jon Arryn?”

“You heard her as well as I did; ‘what if Jon Arryn told someone?’ She’s anxious, so anxious that her mind is beginning to crack from it. She’s afraid a secret’s about to be exposed, but it’s the secret of her incest, not the secret that she’s just killed a man. If she’d murdered the King’s Hand, especially if she’d killed him reactively without proper time to plan it, she’d be terrified that someone would find out and expose the deed.”

Tyrion found he could not fault Holmes’s reasoning. He had often wondered what would happen if King Robert were to become aware his wife was fucking her own brother and that his supposed heirs had in fact been sired by Jaime. Just how many Lannister heads would end up on spikes? Jaime’s and Cersei’s certainly. Would Robert have the mercy to exile or imprison the children or would he execute them as well? Would House Lannister itself survive, or would Robert attempt to strip Tyrion’s family of their lands and titles in retribution?

“Do you think you know who the killer is?” he asked.

Holmes shook his head. “One shouldn’t theorise until one is in possession of all the available evidence,” he said, “but there are a number of interesting avenues of inquiry I intend to persue and there is no doubt in my mind I shall know soon enough.”

“And then what? Will you tell The King?”

“No,” Holmes said plainly, “I’ll tell you.”

“Me?”

“I detest repeating myself.”

“Why? Do you want gold?”

“You know my heritage,” said Holmes. “I have gold enough without needing to extort more from the Lannisters.” While most men spoke Tyrion’s family name with the utmost reverence, Holmes seems to spit it as though it was a great slur. “I’m going to tell you who’s trying to frame your sister and you, my dear Lord Tyrion, are going to use that knowledge to prevent a civil war.”

Perhaps there was more to the Braavosi’s interest in Jon Arryn’s murder than a predilection for mysteries and intrigue, then.

When he had come of age at sixteen, Tyrion had begged his father to be allowed to travel the free cities, and although he had been disheartened by Lord Tywin’s refusal it had not stopped him from exploring the more remote parts of the known world through the libraries of Casterly Rock, King’s Landing and any other great house or city he had the opportunity to visit. So he knew something of Braavos, and of the eminence of the name ‘Holmes’ in the history of the richest and most powerful of the free cities. A Holmes had been among the original twenty-three keyholders of the Iron Bank and had established the wealthiest house in the city by wedding one of his compatriots. Tyrion had never seen Sherlock Holmes wearing a ceremonial key, but his name and bearing left Tyrion in no doubt that the man was a powerful affiliate of the bank.

The bank to which the Iron Throne had been sinking slowly further into debt since the beginning of King Robert’s reign.

Holmes released a heavy sigh. “Must you think so loudly?” he asked. “Yes, it’s in Braavos’s interest to avert a civil war in the Seven Kingdoms and to keep the current regime in place so that it may be held accountable for its debts, although I fear that may change as the Iron Bank’s patience begins to wear thin. But are we not both men who would avert the slaughter of three children, not to mention a war that would take countless lives, as an end in itself?”

Tyrion started at Holmes. “That remains to be seen,” he said eventually. “Nevertheless I shall await the findings of your inquiries with avid interest, although how you expect me to use them to avert war is a mystery.”

“You’ll figure it out,” said Holmes, adjusting the collar if his cloak. “I’ve been watching you, Tyrion Lannister. I’ve been watching you watch this nest of vipers you call a court and I think you have a talent for politics. Do start to think on it though; our opponents are cunning and treacherous men, and you’ll need to be clever in order to outmaneuver them.”

With that, Holmes bowed to Tyrion and turned to walk away, his footsteps on the marble floor echoing through the sept. “I’ll see you again very soon, Lord Tyrion,” he said. “Good evening.”

Chapter Text

The first time John Watson came to King’s Landing he was a boy of thirteen marching in a conquering army.

He’d been wounded at The Battle of the Trident, a deep gash across his right thigh courtesy of a loyalist archer. Maester Walys had seen him quickly, and in time the injury healed well, but it had left him limping about with the aid of a crutch for several weeks and slowed him down enough to prevent him from riding on to the capitol with the rest of Lord Stark’s force.

He traveled with Lord Robert Baratheon’s troops instead. They arrived at King’s Landing some days after the sack when the stench of rotting flesh had overwhelmed the city and carrion feasted on the dead. The corpses of soldiers dressed in Targaryen red and black had been strung from the city walls for half a mile either side of the Dragon Gate, some of them boys no older than John. The other dead – the women, the old men and the children – were still being carted out and burned in the fields beyond those walls. As he’d ridden past the mounds of bodies, John had put an arrow in a fat crow he’d seen plucking an eyeball from the head of a dead child. If any of the men marching with him had thought the shot a wasteful one, they had not said so.

When he marched out again later that year, part of a company bearing the body of a Dornishman through the River Gate and south along the Boneway, he never dreamed it would take him fifteen years to return, nor that those fifteen years would take him further from his home than any man he’d ever known had ever been.

The John Watson who sailed up the Blackwater as the bells rang out for Prince Joffrey Baratheon’s twelfth name day was not the same man who’d left King's Landing behind fifteen years earlier. This John Watson was half-broken cripple; a sellsword who couldn’t hold a sword, an archer who couldn’t draw a bow, and a healer who couldn’t heal himself.

Maester Stamford found him leaning on the gunwale of the Criterion as the ship approached the city’s port. A jovial man with a big belly and a round face, Stamford had been good company for John on his voyage back across the Narrow Sea. They had much in common, from being children of humble parents who had risen to prominence in their lords’ service, to years spent studying at the citadel in Oldtown. John, for his part, found Stamford easy to talk to, and had confided in him some of what had led him to finally take a ship back to Westeros after so many years away.

“Have you decided then?” the Maester asked.

“Decided what?”

“What you’ll do now. Will you stay here in King’s Landing for a time? Or is it still your intention to take the black?”

“They don’t mind so much if you’re broken up at The Wall.” John tapped the butt of the sturdy ash staff he had begun to use to support his limp against the deck. It was better than the crutch he’d had to hobble about on during the first weeks after he’d risen from his sick bed, but still, it made him feel like an old man. “The Night’s Watch will take any man they can get and put him to whatever use he’s fit for. It’s an honourable calling – men may have forgotten that, down here, but in The North, folk take the duty of holding The Wall seriously.”

“You couldn’t give up girls, surely?”

John smiled wryly “Perhaps not altogether,” he admitted, “but there are girls in Molestown, I’ve heard, or else I’ll take pleasure with men. Likely enough there’s some noble lord’s pretty bastard up there pining for me already.”

“Hah!” said Stamford, “Sounds as though the only vice you plan to hold onto is the only one I’ve ever been able to give up.”

“Yes, well. That’s why you’re the one wearing the chain.”

“Have you considered going back to The Citadel? You seem like a clever fellow to me, and it must be a better life than the Night’s Watch. Perhaps the healers there could do something about your leg?”

“Fuck my leg!” John said vehemently. He took a moment to master himelf and then sighed. “Forgive me, Maester. It’s just that this injury defies explanation. If I was a superstitious man I’d say that it was a curse.”

“It may be a malady of the mind,” Stamford said gently. “I've heard of such things. From what you’ve told me, the last months have been distressing for you. It could be that your mental anguish is manifesting as a physical affliction. You were wounded in that leg as a boy; perhaps the traumas you have suffered of late cause your body to remember an older pain.”

“You think I’m going mad?”

“On the contrary, I find you surprisingly sane given what you’ve been through. A lesser man would not have survived.”

“By rights I should not have survived,” said John.

He should have died on the battlefield along with his company; Murray, Morstan, Ser James Sholto and the rest. Men he had been proud to call brothers, who had traveled with him to the edge of the known world and back.

Something of his bitterness must have shown on his face, for the Maester laid a comforting hand on his good shoulder. “Forty thousand of them set upon seventeen of you, John,” he said. “There is nothing more you could have done.”

“The scouts should have seen them,” said John. “Moran was complacent. We were four days from Pentos. Four days from the end of an expedition that took the best part of three years...”

“Did you see this Moran during the Battle?” Stamford wondered, “Or his corpse, afterward?”

John bit his lip. “Moran was my brother,” he said. “We fought together for three years, bled together. He was Sholto’s closest confidant. What you’re suggesting…” he shook his head. “I won’t think that of him.”

Stamford shot him a skeptical look. “We have a saying, here in King's Landing; Loyal sellswords are as rare as virgin whores. Now my Lord Petyr Baelish, he could actually provide you with a virgin whore if you had a taste for that sort of thing, but you’d have to be rich as a Lannister to meet his price. I'd wager that you, John Watson, wouldn’t sell your virtue for all the coin in the Iron Bank, but if you believe the same is true of all your brothers you’re a fool.”

John found himself breathing hard. He clenched his jaw and flexed his troublesome left hand. As much as he hated it, the notion Stamford spoke of had plagued his thoughts since he’d woken from his fever-induced delirium two moons ago. Something about the ambush at Gohyan Drohe had always felt off.

“Whatever happened, it’s done,” he said tightly, “and I’m done being paid to fight for other men’s causes.”

“Well,” said Stamford, “while there’s no doubt you’ve had more than your share of ill luck, not many men can claim to have had their lives spared by a Dothraki horde.”

It was another question that had troubled John when he had first woken. The Dothraki always killed those they defeated on the battlefield, their ‘Mercy Men’ moving among the wounded and dying to offer them a quick death by beheading before burning their bodies.

Initially, he had thought the horde might have somehow known of their company’s errand, and that John possessed more knowledge of it than any of his companions save Sholto and Moran.

He had not spoken of this to Maester Stamford, having sworn a sacred oath to keep the object of their quest a secret, an oath from which the deaths of Sholto and the rest of John’s sworn brothers did not release him. Twenty of them had sworn it in blood before Sholto and Blackheart and the Cheesemonger, in the fat man’s gardens in Pentos on a moonless night three years ago when the whole mad adventure began. Sholto had picked each man himself, from among a company of ten thousand, choosing them for their steadfastness and discretion as well as their discipline and ferocity in battle.

As it turned out, if they had indeed been betrayed it was not to the Dothraki; Khal Drogo’s horde had let John live for a more prosaic reason.

He’d been the last to fall when they attacked, pierced clean through the shoulder by an arrow fired at close range. His final, fleeting thought as he lay face down in the sand had been a prayer to the old gods and the new; please, please let me live.

The Dothraki had stripped him of his armour and weapons and slung him half-naked over the back of his own horse. The first time he woke, looking down at the beast’s hooves as they thundered across the sand, everything was agony. His head throbbed and his shoulder was on fire. Had he been able to remain conscious long enough to retract his prayer he might well have done so.

After that, his mind drifted for days on end. He dreamed of shadows and Dragonfire, and then of ice. He dreamed his father stood atop The Wall, but as John ran to him he stepped off the edge and fell. He dreamed he was swimming upwards through scalding hot water, but when he reached the surface the Shadowbinder who’d guided them from Asshai to the corpse city held him under with clawed hands that drew blood from his shoulders, and then a giant red snake rose up from beneath him and swallowed him whole. Then he was back on The Wall, only this time he was not running to his father but to a pale stranger in a blue cloak.

He woke to find himself lying upon a straw-stuffed mattress in a cool, dimly lit room with stone walls. He felt weak as a newborn foal, his naked skin clammy with dried sweat. The horse hair blanket that covered him below the waist itched, and his throat felt dry and swollen. The wound in his shoulder was badly inflamed, oozing blood and a foul smelling discharge.

A Dothraki slave girl sat at his bedside. A skinny little thing, perhaps twelve years old, with copper skin and almond shaped eyes. Despite the tenderness of her years, she stuck out her chin and looked down at John with an air of imperious pride.

“Don’t worry,” she said in the common tongue, “you will die soon.”

“Why was I brought here?” he asked her. “Why wasn’t I killed?”

“You have Zhavvorsa,” she said.

“Savorsa?” he didn’t know the word.

“On your back,” she explained, touching the space between her own shoulder blades. “Tattoo.”

It was Porimo the Inkmaster’s work, done at his wildly expensive shop on the Long Bridge, from a charcoal drawing John had done at the edge of the corpse city where the Shadowbinder had shown him the terrible things that had haunted his nightmares ever since. A great, red and black creature made entirely of darkness and fire.

“Best ease up on the dreamwine, lad” Murray had told him when John had first shown his friend the sketch. But John knew what he had seen.

“Dragon,” John told the Dothraki girl. “Savorsa in the common tongue is dragon.”

“Dragon,” she agreed. “There was prophecy, made by Dosh Khaleen, when Khal Drogo came of age. They say if the Khal spares the life of man with Dragon on his back, the Great Stallion will give him the power to outrun his own death.” She shot him a pitying look. “You will die anyway,” she said decisively. “Then Rakharo, whose arrow pierced you, will have your sword and your bow, and your Dornish spear. He says he will cut your Dragon from your body and make it into a shield.”

Her words hung in the air between them as she stared down at him

“I see,” John said, once he’d composed himself enough to sound calmer about the situation than he felt. “Well, while it’s kind of Rakharo to want to immortalise me in such spectacular fashion, I don’t intend to die here.”

“All who take such wounds die,” said the girl, her eyes flickering to John’s shoulder. “It is known.”

“Perhaps that is true among the Dothraki,” said John, struggling to push himself into a sitting position with his good arm, “but among my people, it isn’t so. If you get me the things I need, I can teach you how to clean and stitch a wound like this. I can teach you how to make a poultice that will heal the infection.”

The girl’s eyes narrowed. “Is it magic?” she asked, “I don’t want to learn magic.”

“No,” said John, “no magic. No words or spells. Nothing unnatural. Just herbs.”

She seemed to think on that for a moment but then shook her head firmly. “No,” she said again. “Rakharo likes your Dornish spear, and he likes your Dragon very much. If he cannot have these things he will be unhappy.”

And if I die because some preening Dothraki boy wants to wear my skin as a shield, I will be very unhappy indeed, John thought.

“You care a lot about what Rakharo thinks,” he said.

The girl actually blushed before pointing her imperious chin at him again. “You talk like an old woman,” she said.

“I saw him fight,” John continued, undeterred. “He was formidable but impetuous. He takes risks; most men do, when they’re that young. It must be a worry, being so attached to a man who leads such a dangerous life. I could give you training that you could use one day to heal and protect him. You’re very clever. This will save my life, but it will also save lives among your people, I promise.”

She sighed. “I know what you’re trying to do,” she said. “Enough, though. I will get you the things you need.”

True to her word, by the end of the day she had brought him everything he required; leaves of the succulent plant called Kathalai in Valyrian, and ‘the plant of immortality’ by the Dornish, which grew enthusiastically in the gardens of hot, dry Pentos. Comfrey from the kitchen garden of one of the city’s Magisters, and honey from the market, along with clean linen, a fine steel needle, silk thread, and a basin of boiling water.

Once everything was laid out on the floor in front of him, he set to work. He began by soaking four of the biggest comfrey leaves in a small bowl of water. “In Westeros this is sometimes called knitbone. It helps the body renew itself faster, and eases pain…”

It took him an hour to clean and disinfect the wound, and another to stitch the gash where Rakharo’s arrow had pierced the front of his shoulder. The exit wound on the back, though smaller, ought to have been stitched as well, but it wasn’t a task he could accomplish alone, so he had to make do with cleaning it as best he could and applying a honey poultice. The girl watched him intently from across the room as he worked, and he continued to talk softly to her about what he was doing, explaining the properties of the different herbs and how to use them.

“My name’s John, by the way,” he told her as she cleared away the things.

She paused in the doorway, the basin of cool and bloody water heavy in her arms. “I am Irri,” she told him briskly.

The next morning he woke alone in the room. A pitcher of milk had been left beside his bed, along with a small loaf of bread stuffed with dates.

He cleaned the wound and changed the dressings three times each day. By the morning of the third day, the swelling around the shoulder had subsided, and a fragile, tender layer of new pink skin was beginning to form around the stitches.

On the fourth day Irri brought him a bundle of folded cloth which proved on close inspection to be a leather breechclout.

Later the same morning she returned with a boy of perhaps eight or nine who’d fallen from his horse and broken his leg. John showed her how to set the bone and wrap a splint.
On the fifth day, they saw a crone with brownleg, two young children with pox and sheepish blood rider with venereal disease. On the sixth day, he stood and limped into the yard of Khal Drogo’s stone manse for the first time, and delivered a baby who’d turned upside-down in his mother’s womb.

Irri was an insolent student, ever mistrustful of John and irritatingly dogmatic about certain things; if something was 'known’, she was liable to stomp off in a sulk if he tried to contradict it. She was a sharp little thing, though, clever and eager to learn, and John had no doubt that in a world where the daughters of horse lords studied at The Citadel she would have forged a silver link in a matter of months.

Two moons after the ambush, word came to John that a Lysene galley bound for King’s Landing was in port and he made his decision.

“We will leave soon, also,” the infamous Rakharo told him; lessons in the Dornish spear technique had eased his initial disappointment at John’s survival.

“After the Khal's wedding,” Irri added.

“A shame I won't be here to witness that,” said John. He’d been there when they’d presented the Targaryan girl to Khal Drogo though. She’d seemed like a meek little thing. He would have liked to have spoken with her and her brother, but they were under the protection of Illyrio Mopatis and all of John’s instincts were telling him that his survival of the ambush at Goyhan Drohe should be kept from the Cheesemonger.

So after all that here he was, sailing into Blackwater Bay, about to set foot on Westrosi soil for the first time in almost eight years.

“Why not stay in King’s Landing for a while?” Maester Stamford said kindly. “Give yourself time to grieve one brotherhood before going off to join another. Spend a few nights in the wine sinks of river-row telling stories of the Shadowlands beyond Asshai. What’s the point of traveling to the edge of the known world and back and living to tell the tale if you can’t use it to get a leg over?”

“You’re crude for a Maester, you know that, don’t you?” said John. “Look, I can’t afford King’s Landing on what little coin I have left.”

“Sell some of your fancy weapons, then. You’ve more than a crippled crow’s ever going to need.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“You could find work? As a healer, not a soldier,” he added quickly when John opened his mouth to protest.

“I’m no Maester.”

Stamford reached for John’s neck, where he wore a leather cord with the seven links he’s forged at the citadel years ago strung upon it. The links themselves were concealed beneath John’s shirt, but Stamford had seen them when he’d examined John’s shoulder wound. “Three silver,” he said, tugging the cord lightly so that metals clanked together against John’s breastbone like muted bells. “That’s more than most Maesters. Listen, I know a healer who runs a shop up on The Street of Flour. I’d say she’s every bit as disreputable as you are and every bit as skilled.”

“She?”

Stamford grinned, “what’s the matter, never taken orders from a woman before?”

“I've taken orders from plenty of women,” John said wryly, "although it's been a while since I've done so in a professional capacity. What training does she have?”

“She studied at the House of the Red Hands,” said Stamford, “though I believe she was born in The Riverlands. Name’s Molly Hooper.”

“You think she’d work with me?”

“She needs the help,” said the Maester, and then let out a hearty laugh, “and she took a real liking to the last fellow I introduced her to even though he’s a right cunt.”

“Well then,” said John, “When can we pay her a visit?”

Chapter Text

Mistress Molly Hooper was a smart, staunch woman a few years younger than John who seemed as though she’d seen the worst the world had to offer and resolved to spend her days doing her quiet best to set it to rights.

“Your room is in the attic so best get used to the stairs,” she told John as he followed her up the steps that lead from her busy shop to the house above. She had a sturdy bearing and the tread of her feet on the narrow, winding staircase was sure. One side of her skirt was kilted up, revealing wide legged trousers tucked into well-worn leather boots laced to mid-calf. Her clothing was covered with a dark blue apron and her hair was tightly braided and pinned on top of her head. She seemed to run her healer’s shop as a captain might run his regiment and, while her attitude toward John was perhaps a little brusque, he found himself liking her for it.

“You’ll see patrons with me in the mornings for now,” she continued. “Once I’ve established your work is adequate and I have a better sense of your skills you’ll work alone. We treat anyone who comes to our door. Those with the means – merchants, craftsmen, landowners and such – pay the highest fee, those that have less pay less, the very poorest only a halfgroat. You don’t need to worry too much about the business side of things, Mother Hudson sees to that. In the afternoons you’ll assist Maester Stamford and me in instructing my students, and in time I hope you’ll share with us your unique expertise; your knowledge of plants and herb lore, for example.”

“In return for your services you’ll get bed and board. We take our meals together in the kitchen, but you’re free to spend your evenings elsewhere if you prefer. If you bed with whores, you do it somewhere else, not under my roof. Billy will bring you water to bathe each morning.” John had already discovered that Mistress Hooper was fastidious about personal cleanliness; during their first meeting, she’d insisted on inspecting his fingernails, hair and teeth.

They reached the top of the staircase, where there was a small landing with two sturdy wooden doors opening onto it. Mistress Hooper ushered John through the one on the left.

The chamber was furnished with a bed, chest, writing desk and chair all made of solid beech wood. The stone floor had been scrubbed until it shone and covered with a mat woven from fresh green rushes. The lamps and candlesticks had been fitted with new beeswax candles, and bunches of dried lavender kept the room smelling as sweet as anything in King’s Landing ever did.

“It isn’t much…” Mistress Hooper began, but John cut her off.

“… Mistress Hooper, the last time I slept in a featherbed I was a thousand miles away.” It had been at the Merchant’s House Inn in Volantis and he’d shared it with a Naathi silk merchant and a wandering singer from Lys, with whom he had affirmed that pooling the experience of participants from all three continents made for excellent bedsport. New as his acquaintance with Mistress Hooper was he wasn’t sure whether she’d be amused or appalled by the notion, so he kept this aspect of his reminiscence to himself. “This will do very nicely,” he added instead.

Mistress Hooper favoured him with a small, tight-lipped smile. “You’ve yet to see the best feature,” she said, crossing the room to unbolt another door opposite the one through which they had entered.

It opened onto a broad, flat section of the roof. On his journey across the city to Mistress Hooper’s house, John’s leg had made him uncomfortably aware that he was climbing, but he hadn’t appreciated quite how high on Rhaenys’s Hill the Street of Flour actually reached until that moment. In the late afternoon sun, the shadow of the Dragonpit loomed from the North, but to the West, South and East they could see the whole city laid out beneath them, from the towers of the Red Keep to the masts of the tall ships sailing on the Blackwater to the marble dome of the Sept of Baelor.

“I’d wager even the Queen herself doesn’t have such a fine view,” he said.

Mistress Hooper snorted. “I’ve heard folk up there prefer to look out to sea,” she said, inclining her head towards the Red Keep high on Aegon’s Hill. “Can’t say I blame them. This city’s the biggest shithole in the known world, John, but I’ve been here almost ten years now and I wouldn’t live anywhere else.”

John’s days working for Mistress Hooper soon fell into a familiar routine as she had said they would. There were two other healers in the household; the first, a Volantene surgeon and bonesetter named Talisa Maegyr was as competent as the second, a novice from the Citadel named Anderson was bumbling. The rest of the household comprised of Mother Hudson - she had birthed no children yet seemed to be everyone’s mother all the same - who kept the shop; the porter, a lanky boy of fourteen named Billy, and a sour-faced Summer Islander named Sally who served as the household guard.

Mistress Hooper knew more of how to keep the body healthy through diet and cleanliness than any teacher or text John had encountered in his time at The Citadel or his travels in the East. Her knowledge of women’s health and childbirth also outstripped his. They found they were equals in their knowledge of anatomy. Her understanding of plants and herb-lore was excellent but John’s travels and passion for this area of study meant that he was able to add to it, and he began to spend his evenings in her solar, copying passages and drawings from his journals for her so the knowledge would remain in her library when he moved on.

Lady Talisa’s skills extended beyond surgery and bone-setting; she knew techniques that could reliably renew the breath of men who seemed to have drowned or breathed in smoke or foul air. She also had a keen interest in battlefield medicine; John was able to extend her theoretical education here, though nothing could really prepare you for the horrific spectacle of tending the fallen in war.

John had been born on Bear Island and spent much of his youth in Dorne, both cultures where women fought, studied, earned coin and governed alongside men. He’d learned men and women were different but equal before he’d learned most of the world believed the standing of women to be lower than that of men. As he settled into his new life he began to realise that the company of women – not just as business associates or as bed partners, but as friends – was something he’d missed during his time in the free companies. The quiet evenings spent reading, sketching, talking and playing cyvasse with Mistress Hooper and Lady Talisa would begin to bore him in time, he knew, but for now, he enjoyed the solace and quiet comfort they offered him.

He found the flat section of roof beside his chamber served him as a makeshift exercise yard. Although summer was almost at an end, dawn still came early enough that if he rose at first light he could work with his sword and spear there for an hour or more before Billy came to bring his morning bathwater. The privacy of this ritual was important to him; it was trying enough to feel his weapons slip from his own hands when he was alone, and the mere thought of it happening where others would see brought a flush of shame and frustration to his face. His shoulder continued to heal well, and he had regained almost full mobility there, but his grip was still weak, the tremor in his hand making itself known when he least wanted to think of it.

One morning, two weeks after taking up residence on the Street of Flour, he was woken before dawn by the tolling of bells. Rather than attempting to go back to sleep, he collected his spear and stepped out onto the roof. In the pre-dawn stillness, the sombre music seemed to cover the city like a thick blanket.

The spear had been John’s favoured weapon in close combat since he was fourteen years old. With its six-foot oak shaft and foot long double edged steel blade, it gave him the reach and leverage to cancel out the natural advantage taller opponents had over him. The master at arms at his lord’s keep had believed allowing the left hand to grow stronger than the right opened the way for demons and wargs to take hold of your soul, so John had been forced to learn the sword right-handed. Lord Mormont’s Maester held no such superstitions and told John it was perfectly fine for him to hold the pen in his left hand as was his natural habit when he learned his letters. As time had passed, John had found that both his hands became equally strong and dexterous, and this combined with his speed – when you were John’s size you had to learn to be quick at a young age if you wanted to get anywhere in a fight – made him lethal with a two-handed weapon. So when he’d first reached and taken the offered spear from the captain of Prince Doran’s guard at Sunspear, it had felt more right in his hands than any sword ever had.

He spun and twisted his way through familiar forms he’d practised for fifteen years, a dance of interconnected lunges, thrusts and cuts. His exercises grew more athletic as the sun rose above the narrow sea, his weapon moving as though it was a part of him.

He’d worked for longer than he’d meant to when a high-pitched crashing sound broke his concentration. Instincts sharpened by his practice, he spun to face the source of the noise and found himself staring down the point of his spear at a startled Billy. The boy stood slack-jawed in the bedroom doorway, a dropped brass pitcher spinning at his feet and spilling water onto the tiles.

For a moment John saw himself as the boy must be seeing him; the mild-mannered, limping healer transformed into a scarred, tattooed soldier with fierce, hard eyes, pointing the sharp end of a spear at his head. He sighed, and straightened, swinging his spear upright and leaning into it slightly as he rested the steel capped butt on the floor. “Sorry lad,” he said, “I didn’t hear you come up.”

“M… Maester Stamford is here and asks if you’ll see him,” the boy croaked, bending to pick up the pitcher.

“At this hour?”

“He’s got that Braavosi with him. Mad, he is, but the mistress has a liking for him. The Maester says he’s got something he wants you to look at. They’re waiting downstairs.”

John sighed, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. “Alright. Tell them I’ll be down shortly,” he said. “Don’t trouble yourself fetching more water; I’ll make do with what’s left in there.”

Freshly washed and dressed, he found Maester Stamford reposing in one of the cushioned chairs in Mistress Hooper’s solar, breakfasting on bread with figs and walnuts baked into it served with honey and hard white cheese.

“John!” he said warmly, “you look well. You’ve gained weight since I last saw you.”

“It would have been a feat not to under Mother Hudson’s care,” John replied with a pointed look at the thick slice of honey-drenched bread the Maester held in one hand. “I hear you have something you wish me to see?”

Stamford smiled, “I have indeed,” he said, “and an acquaintance I’d very much like you to make to boot. Come through.”

He ushered John into Mistress Hooper’s laboratory. The room was a lofty chamber, lined and littered with countless bottles. In the centre, there was a broad stone table. A young, finely dressed man was leaning over it, peering down at something through a Myrish Lens.

He looked up as Maester Stamford closed the door behind them, giving John a glimpse of his features; he had a handsome face, clean shaven, with sharp cheekbones and ivory skin. A glance was all he spared them before returning his attention to the thing he was examining beneath the lens, which upon closer inspection seemed to be the foul-looking inner organs of some dead creature.

“Maester, may I borrow your knife?” he said, without bothering to greet them, “There’s Manticore venom on mine. One must be careful when dabbling with poisons.”

“Sorry,” said Stamford, in a tone that did not sound especially apologetic. “I, er, left in the ravenry.”

“Here,” said John, unbuckling his own knife from his belt and offering it to the stranger. “Use mine.”

“This is John Watson,” said Maester Stamford, “it was my good fortune to have him as my companion on my voyage home from Lys.”

“The Golden Company or the Second Sons?” the man asked, unsheathing the knife and holding it up to the light for a second before pointing it downward and using it to split open one of the fetid lumps of meat. It made for such a macabre spectacle that it took John a moment to realise he had been asked a question, and another to realise how incongruous the question was.

“I’m sorry?”

“Which was it, The Golden Company or the Second Sons?”

“The Golden Company,” John said. “Forgive me, but is that… are those the inner organs of a man?”

“Sherlock what in the world is that stench?” Mistress Hooper bustled into the room, her hair loose about her shoulders and her apron only half-tied. She strode over to the windows and flung the shutters open, letting in the morning sunlight and the un-muffled sounds of the world outside.

“Why do they ring the bells so incessantly?” Mother Hudson had followed Mistress Hooper into the room, carrying a pitcher of strongwine in one hand and a pitcher of boiled water in the other.

“It’s for The Hand,” Molly said. “The King’s decreed they’re to ring from sunrise to sunset.”

“Pity the poor bell ringers,” Mother Hudson muttered, setting the tray down on the counter-top.

“The Hand?” John asked, shocked. “You mean to say Jon Arryn is dead?”

“Obviously,” their guest – Sherlock, Mistress Hooper had called him – said derisively. “Maester I thought you said this man was moderately intelligent?” John glared at him and suddenly his expression changed from one of disdain to one of curiosity. “Oh,” he said. “Interesting. How well did you know Jon Arryn?”

“Who said I knew him?”

Sherlock straightened and walked around the table toward John. “You did, the moment you realised the bells were ringing to mark his passing. You looked stricken. Jon Arryn was better liked by the smallfolk than most who dwell in the Red Keep, but your face showed more than just the respectful sorrow of an ordinary man morning a great one, you looked devastated. You knew him, personally.”

He stopped in front of John, leaning far enough into his personal space that it was almost uncomfortable. For a moment there was something in his piercing blue eyes that reminded him of the shadowbinder of Asshai, something that made him feel pinned down, spread out and exposed. Then suddenly his features seemed to soften, as though he was consciously re-arranging his expression into something gentler.

“You served him for a time,” he said. “Years ago. During the rebellion?”

Unnerved, John turned to look at Maester Stamford. “You told him about me?” he asked.

The Maester shook his head. “Nothing beyond your credentials as a healer.”

John turned back to face Sherlock, looking him squarely in the eye. “Afterwards,” he said. “When he went to Dorne to make peace.”

Sherlock’s eyes flickered to John’s staff. “Of course,” he said, as though it ought to have occurred to him already. “I did wonder how a man born on Bear Island ended up spending such a long period of his life in Dorne.”

“What killed him?” John asked, his desire to know more of Lord Arryn's death outweighing his curiosity as to how a complete stranger seemed to know so much about him.

“An affliction of the bowels, they say,” said Mistress Hooper.

“Poison,” said Sherlock.

“Honestly,” said Mother Hudson, “those great families, they’re always killing each other in such awful ways.”

“Says the woman who had her husband executed,” said Sherlock.

“I think we have everything we need here, Mother Hudson,” Mistress Hooper said pointedly.

“Execution’s a perfectly respectable way to have someone killed,” John heard Mother Hudson mutter as she passed him on her way out, “nice, clean blow with a sharp sword. Over in a wink.”

John found himself thinking wryly that he ought to endeavour not to be ousted from Mother Hudson's good graces, and a smile tugged at his lips. Returning his eyes to Sherlock's, he found the strange man smiling back, as though they were sharing a joke. His eyes were quite lovely when there was merriment in them.

He cleared his throat and licked his lower lip. “Poison?” he asked.

“Come and have a look at this,” said Sherlock.

Intrigued, John followed him as he returned to where he had been working. A closer inspection confirmed that he had indeed been examining the gut, bowels and liver of a dead man. John was struck by a horrifying thought.

“Are these… did you steal Jon Arryn’s inner organs from the sept?”

“I didn’t steal them, I borrowed them,” said Sherlock, “and I only took the gut, bowels and liver. The heart and lungs were superfluous to my research.”

“Sherlock!” exclaimed Mistress Hooper.

“What? It’s not as though he’s using them anymore.”

“Surely his mourners will notice they’re missing?” said John. The burial of the dead had always seemed like an odd practice to him. In the furthest North, men worshipped the Old Gods and elders spun tales of the cold ones from beyond The Wall who could make the dead their wights if they weren’t burned. Strangest of all was the Southron custom of cutting out a man’s organs and bowels and displaying them in glass vases alongside his corpse, which they stuffed with straw and fragrant herbs.

“I replaced them with pig’s organs,” Sherlock said, “I doubt they’ll notice the difference. Now take a closer look and tell me what you see.”

John picked up the knife and bent to examine the stomach, prying it open with the blade and one finger. The flesh was softer than he expected, yielding like pudding under his touch.

“When did he die?” he asked, frowning.

“Yesterday morning,” said Sherlock.

That was odd. This soon after death the organ should still be firm, yielding and pink, not decaying and riddled with clotted blood. “And when did you go to the sept to take the organs?”

“Shortly before dusk.”

“You looked at the corpse? Was there any discoloration? A purpling around the lips perhaps, or lesions on the face and neck?”

“No. Nor was there any swelling inside of the mouth or throat.”

John glanced sideways at Sherlock; clearly, the man knew something of poisons himself. He moved to look at the bowels. Like the stomach, they were soft as pudding. He opened them carefully with the tip of his blade; the smell was foul, but he’d endured worse. “How long did his illness last?”

“Less than two days.”

“Hmmm. Not Widow’s Bane then, he would have suffered longer. Was he tended by a Maester?”

“His own Maester, Coleman, tended him at first.”

“At first?”

“It’s said that the Grand Maester Pycelle sent him away.”

John straightened, holding his soiled hands away from his body. “Which of them tried to purge him?” he asked. “There’s no… there’s almost nothing in his bowels. Someone must have given him something to evacuate them.”

“Coleman,” said Sherlock. “Pycelle feared his body was too frail to withstand the treatment.”

John turned away from the table, pouring some of the strongwine Mother Hudson had brought into a bowl and submerging his hands in it. “Pycelle did Lord Arryn a kindness, then,” he said. “Purging would have diluted the poison and slowed its effects. If Coleman had continued the treatment his dying might have lasted for days.”

“Then you agree he was poisoned?” asked Sherlock.

“I know of only one thing that could have done this to a man’s organs in such a short time,” said John. “A rare and costly poison, clear and sweet as water, that leaves no trace. It's called…”

“… the Tears of Lys,” Sherlock finished for him.

John turned to stare at him, pulling his hands out of the bowl and dripping strongwine onto the floor. “You already knew?”

“It was the only theory that made logical sense,” said Sherlock, pulling on a pair of riding gloves, “but given that there are only a handful of living Maesters with the requisite knowledge of both anatomy and poisons to corroborate it I hardly expected to be able to prove it. Mistress Hooper, it appears you've engaged the services of a uniquely useful man." He reached for his cloak, which he’d left draped across the back of a chair. "I must go," he said, "Lord Arryn’s killers are still at large and there is more I must know before they make their next move. Good morning,"

With that, he was gone, Mistress Hooper trailing after him and berating his failure to clean up the mess he'd made of her laboratory.

John looked askance at Stamford.

“Yes,” said the Maester, “he’s always like that.”

John sighed, pouring boiled water into a second bowl and beginning to rinse his hands. For a moment, he realised, he had felt more alive than he had at any moment since before Goyhan Drohe. Something about Sherlock – his presence and his wild, quick way of thinking – had made his nerves thrum and his heartbeat quicken.

He looked again at the mess of organs strewn upon the table, supposing that he ought to clean them away. Just as he was beginning to see to the task, Sherlock appeared in the doorway once again.

“You said you came to know Jon Arryn when you went South with him, after the rebellion," he said slowly, "but before that, you did fight in the rebellion, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” said John. “My Lord was Lord Stark’s bannerman. Every man in his service fought.”

“So you know The King?”

John huffed a silent laugh, “I knew him as a commander when he was all of twenty years old. I hear he’s quite changed in recent years.”

Surprisingly, Sherlock grinned. “Perfect,” he said. “Molly, John will come with me to assist with my research this morning.”

“He has patrons to see, Sherlock,” Mistress Hooper said from behind Sherlock, her voice exasperated but resigned.

“Boring,” said Sherlock, “get Maester Stamford to see them instead, it’ll give him a break from making moon tea for Baelish’s whores. Come along, John.”

“I’m sorry, where are we going?” John asked.

“To the Street of Steel,” said Sherlock. “I need to buy a new sword.”