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Peaches
Justin Massey wiped away the peach juice running down his chin with the palm of his hand. The very same hand that had been handling the peach juice he then used to push back his hair that had fallen down over one eye. Asha watched, amused and repulsed at the same time.
She had kissed away the juice running down Qarl’s chin, that first time he ever tasted a peach. That first time she had him in her bed. But Massey was not her Qarl, and she was no longer Balon Greyjoy’s heir, but a prisoner.
His prisoner. The man calling himself a king who was not watching anything except the flame. Looking for his red god? Or his red priestess whose absence Justin Massey had often lamented?
Careful, Justin, thought Asha. Your king might begin to suspect that you lack faith in his own ability.
The king was watching, in truth. Watching from the corner of his eyes. Watching his prisoner who was watching the knight with designs on her lands. Watching Massey messily devouring the peach.
Messy. So very messy, just like someone else. Renly had wiped the peach juice running down his chin with his hand as well. The back of his hand, instead of the palm.
“Are you certain you would not like one, Your Grace? These are the last of them, the last of the peaches and the fruits,” Justin Massey spoke, offering a peach to Stannis.
“A man should never refuse to taste a peach,” Renly had said, at the parley. “He may never get the chance again. Life is short, Stannis. Remember the words the Starks are always spouting. Winter is coming.”
Winter had arrived, and life did turn out to be short for his little brother. Stannis refused to think of this in his waking moments, for his dreams, night after night, were already haunted by it, unceasingly. But the sight of Justin Massey holding out a peach to him reminded him so much of Renly doing the same.
“No!” The word came out loud and harsh, amidst gritted teeth and clenched jaw. Justin Massey was unperturbed. He smiled and offered the peach to Asha Greyjoy instead. “What about you, my lady? Would you like a peach?”
She is wed. She is Ironborn. She will not fall for your frivolous smiles and your silly japes, Stannis scoffed, expecting the offer to be rejected, disdainfully rejected, possibly even furiously rejected.
But to the king’s surprise, Asha Greyjoy accepted the peach from Justin Massey. Accepted it with a grin on her face, in fact. Would wonders never cease?
“Why, thank you, ser,” Asha said, before biting into the fleshiest region of the peach, seemingly with great relish.
Justin’s grin was even wider than Asha’s. “Call me Justin, I insist,” he replied, sounding sickly sweet and cloying to Stannis’ ears.
Like a lovesick puppy, Asha thought, working hard to maintain the smile on her face. She was inundated with lovesick puppies wherever she went, it seemed. But this one was not lovesick like Tris. Ser Justin was not lovesick for her, only lovesick for titles and lands, and for the prospect of ruling the Iron Islands through her. He was bound to be disappointed, like so many men had been before him.
My mummer’s farce of a husband will never allow it. My nuncle will never allow it.
And most importantly, thought Asha, I will never allow it.
But Justin Massey was one of the very few who treated her well on this desolate march, and Asha was not about to jeopardize that in the name of pride by rejecting his ridiculous peach. She took another bite of the fruit, and spotted the king watching her with his hooded eyes. She wondered what was preoccupying his thoughts.
Hawking
“Summer, that was her name,” Justin Massey announced with a broad smile. “A goshawk, my lady. One of the best in the Seven Kingdoms, if I may say so myself.”
Asha Greyjoy raised her eyebrows. “Summer? How lovely,” she said, but Stannis could hear the mockery underneath. How very like these soft and weak greenlanders, she must be thinking, to name a goshawk Summer. “Was she good for hawking in spring, autumn and winter too, or would she only do it when it is summer?” Asha was asking Justin.
Justin laughed so hard that spittle flew from his mouth and bits of food dribbled down his chin. Stannis watched with great distaste. You fool! She’s making fun of you. Can’t you see that?
Massey’s attempt to woo their prisoner was becoming more and more pathetic and transparent by the day, thought Stannis.
“She was not named after the season,” Justin said, when he had finally stopped laughing.
“No? Let me guess, she was named after a woman,” Asha said, with a sardonic smile on her face. “The first woman you ever bedded, perhaps?”
Justin’s face turned red, redder than the fire burning day and night in their encampment. “It is not kind to tease me, my lady,” he said, but his tone was playful rather than angry. “She was named after a very, very dear relative,” he continued, solemnly.
A relative? Stannis snorted. He found it completely unbelievable. Asha’s guess was probably closer to the mark. Why else would Justin have blushed?
“Forgive me, ser, I did not mean to tease you,” Asha said, sounding almost contrite. Almost.
Justin waved off the apology with a smile, and continued extolling the virtues of his goshawk. “Summer would soar and soar, higher than the treetops.”
Proudwing never soared, not once. She would flutter from room to room, following Stannis everywhere he went inside the castle, a constant companion who incredibly never seemed to tire of his company.
“And she never missed her strike. Never,” Justin continued, with great emphasis.
Just like Thunderclap, Robert’s pride and joy, who had never missed her strike either. Weakwing, Robert had called Stannis’ bird. Stannis had bristled at that insulting and mocking name. And yet …
Her right wing was injured, when I found her. It took a long time for it to heal. Stannis had hounded Maester Cressen daily, asking if there was nothing else that could be done. “You must have patience,” Maester Cressen had said. “If you wish to keep her, you must nurse her patiently and carefully.”
Justin Massey was still going on and on at great length about the exploits of his goshawk. Stannis’ patience was wearing thin. “Some of us would like to eat in peace rather than being hounded with your stories, Massey,” Stannis retorted, even though he himself had eaten not a bite of the onion soup cooling in front on him.
The smile never left Justin’s face. “Forgive me, Your Grace. I thought it is a story that might cheer Lady Asha, during our long and cold march.”
“A prisoner does not need cheering up,” Stannis snarled in reply.
“And where is Summer now, Ser Justin?” Asha asked, while staring defiantly at Stannis. He cursed her and Justin Massey both.
Justin’s face suddenly took on a very different countenance, something Stannis had rarely seen on the face of the knight he had scornfully called The Smiler. Justin was looking glum and very gloomy. “She just disappeared one day. She soared above the treetops, high up in the sky … and never came back. I could not understand it. I loved her, and I treated her very well indeed. It is still a mystery to me, why she did not come home.”
Asha was saying some words of commiserations and sympathies to Justin, but Stannis barely heard them. He was back at Storm’s End on the day Proudwing flew away, never to return. Unlike Justin Massey, however, Stannis knew exactly why his goshawk never came home.
Connections
“Your Grace?” Justin Massey’s voice interrupted Stannis’ contemplation of his long-gone goshawk.
“What?”
“I was requesting permission to be excused, Your Grace. To escort Lady Asha back to her tent,” Justin Massey replied, smiling his persistent smile that irritated Stannis greatly.
Escort. As if she was an honored guest instead of a prisoner. Massey’s way of currying favor with the supposed heir of the Iron Islands, no doubt. Massey would do anything for some piece of land and a lordship.
And yet, the disquieting thought struck Stannis suddenly, Asha Greyjoy had accepted the peach from Justin Massey with a smile. She had listened to Justin’s tedious ramblings about his goshawk with pretend interest and sympathy. She was playing her own game as well.
Now who is really being manipulated, Justin?
In a battle of wills between those two, Stannis had little doubt who would be the victor. The thought enraged him. She had no right. A prisoner, trying to play games with her captors. To what end? Merely to ensure a better treatment during her captivity, or was she planning something more devious?
“Leave us, ser. I would like a word with the prisoner,” Stannis announced. For once, Justin Massey was struck dumb. The smile swiftly disappeared from his face.
“What are you waiting for? Leave. Now.”
“At once, Your Grace,” Justin replied, but his gaze lingered on Asha as he made his way out of the dining tent. If Stannis did not know any better, he would have said that Massey looked almost concerned for Asha Greyjoy.
Asha’s gaze did not linger on the smiling knight who was no longer smiling. Instead, her eyes were fixed on the king. She was scrutinizing him in a way that he found most improper. Improper for any woman, let alone one who was his prisoner.
“Has Ser Justin upset you in any way, Your Grace?” Asha spoke before Stannis did. Another black mark against her. Stannis took mental notes of that.
“What games are you playing, my lady?” Stannis asked brusquely.
Asha raised her eyebrows. “Games, Your Grace?” She sounded genuinely puzzled.
“With Ser Justin. Do you think you can entice him into releasing you from captivity? It is futile, my lady. Ser Justin cares not for you, only for your land and title, and he could not have that if you are no longer my prisoner.”
And Alysane Mormont is a more reliable and dependable guard than Justin Massey, Stannis thought. Not for any great love or a deep sense of loyalty for Stannis or his cause, but due to the long-standing enmity between the Mormonts and the Greyjoys.
“I am well-aware of Ser Justin’s true reasons for his … let us call it his chivalric treatment of me,” Asha said, calmly. “Still, he is the only one who might object if your men try to burn me to appease your hungry red god. I owe him my regard if only for that alone. Would you have me treat him with disdain instead, Your Grace?”
Her candor stupefied Stannis. He had expected her to prevaricate, to dissemble, to feign naivety or innocence. His mind quickly reassessed the woman sitting in front of him.
She is proud, this one. She might have bended the knee, but not because she is afraid of death, only so she could live to fight another day.
Fighting another day for Asha Greyjoy no doubt meant burying an axe in Stannis’ chest. And in Justin’s chest as well?
“If Ser Justin objects to you being burned, it is not for the reason that you might think.” Why was he repeating the same point he had made earlier? Her refusal to cease staring at him was very, very unsettling indeed. “You would be left very disappointed and disillusioned in the end,” warned Stannis.
Asha laughed. “Why, Your Grace, I would never have taken you for someone with such … romantic notions in his head,” she said.
Romantic notions? What on earth was she talking about? The woman was deliberately testing his patience.
Again, she spoke before Stannis did. “I am not a foolish, naïve child full of romantic notions in her head. Ser Justin does not love me, nor does he lust for me. I am well-aware of that. He wants to rule the Iron Islands in my name. That is the only reason why he would want to ensure that I live, that I survive this march to Winterfell.”
Love? Definitely not. Lust, on the other hand …
Justin Massey had not been Robert’s squire for nothing, thought Stannis.
“And what of you, my lady? You will take Ser Justin’s goodwill and his favors, without any intention of accepting his hand in matrimony?”
“I am already wed, Your Grace.”
“To an old man you had no wish to wed, I hear. Your uncle forced you into that marriage.”
“And will you force me into a marriage with Ser Justin, to bring the Iron Islands to heel?” Asha’s gaze was a dare, a challenge.
“You are my prisoner! It is not your place to question me,” Stannis spat out the words through clenched teeth. “Ser Richard, take the prisoner back to her tent.”
Richard Horpe came quickly, looking grim-faced and dour. He was definitely not a smiler, a complete opposite of Justin Massey in almost every way.
Davos could be grave and somber when the situation calls for it, while still smiling and laughing at other times.
Stannis pushed the painful thought of his dead Hand aside. Horpe and Massey were the ones he had left by his side. He would have to make do. He would have to make the best of the situation.
Just as Asha Greyjoy was trying to make the best of her situation.