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They were eating the last of the onions. The straggly, pitiful little pieces of onions swimming in the thin, watery broth felt like a rebuke and a painful reminder to Stannis. He ignored the onion soup cooling before him, fixing his gaze on the nearest candle, watching its flame dance, sway and flicker, searching for the answers to a thousand different questions and the questions to a thousand different answers.
Davos would not come, this time. He would not come with his salt fish and his onions to rescue them. He would not come, because while the sea might have been able to return to Stannis his knight of the fish and onions, nothing could return the dead to life. Not grief, not sorrow, not rage, not fury, not prayers to the gods, not even curses directed at the gods.
I sent you to your death, Davos.
There was no arguing with that, and Stannis did not even try. He had sent Davos to White Harbor to treat with the Manderlys, and they had chopped off the onion knight’s hands and head, and stuck a whole onion in his mouth for good measure.
Years ago, Davos himself had stuck a whole onion in his mouth, skin and all. He had taken a large bite of the raw onion, chewing slowly and deliberately, before washing it down his throat with a cup of water. Raising his eyebrows and holding out the rest of the onion towards Stannis, he had said, “My onions are neither poisoned nor tainted, m’lord. This is not a trick or a plot devised by your enemies to force Storm’s End to surrender. Lord Tyrell and Lord Redwyne have nothing to do with this at all. I manage to breach the Redwyne cordon at sea because I am good at what I do, not because I am in league with your enemies. It is my choice to come. My own, and no one else’s.”
It had not been Davos’ choice to go to White Harbor. “My place is by your side, Your Grace,” he had insisted, but Stannis had commanded him to go, nonetheless, and Davos had obeyed his king.
I sent you to your death. It was my choice to –
“Will you not eat your soup, m’lord?”
Startled, Stannis tore his gaze away from the flame.
“Will you not eat your soup, Your Grace?” Justin Massey repeated.
Stannis sighed. No, it was not his onion knight after all. He resumed his weary contemplation of the flame, his mind roaming years and years in the past.
“Will you not eat your soup, m’lord? Are you still suspicious of the true origin of those onions? Very well, then, I will finish my bowl of soup first, to show you how good it is.”
The smuggler slurped the onion soup with great relish, like it was the tastiest dish he had ever tasted in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms. The broth was thin and watery, and the onion pieces were sparse and meagre. That was precisely the way Stannis had instructed the cooks to make the soup. There was no telling how long they would have to make those onions and salt fish last, before the long siege was finally lifted.
The smuggler swallowed his last spoonful of onion soup. He licked the spoon and made a smacking sound with his lips. “Mmmm, tasty. Very tasty indeed,” he pronounced, as if he was a father trying to coax a reluctant child to eat his supper. With mounting irritation, Stannis snapped, “You are not my father, smuggler.”
The smuggler stared at Stannis with astonishment. “I am not old enough to be your father, m’lord.”
“That is not the point. You … you –“ Stannis sputtered, too furious to continue.
“I have four sons of my own, but they never have to be convinced to eat, especially if they have not eaten for days. But perhaps the onion soup is too humble a dish for a man of your noble birth and lineage, m’lord?”
Stannis laughed, bitterly. “We have been eating rats before your arrival, smuggler. Gnawing on their little rat bones and feasting on their stringy rat flesh. Do you really think onion soup would give me pause?”
The smuggler stared meaningfully at Stannis, as if to challenge him, Well, prove it, then, m’lord.
Riled and incensed, Stannis swallowed a spoonful of onion soup, too hurriedly and hastily. He coughed and spluttered. The smuggler handed him a cup of water, which Stannis finally took, reluctantly.
By the fourth spoonful of onion soup, however, Stannis had almost forgotten that a stranger was watching him eat. The thin and watery soup tasted as delicious to his long-starved tongue as his mother’s favorite soup – a thick, creamy broth full of slowly-fried browned onions, served inside a hollowed out bread.
When the smuggler asked if the onion soup was to his liking, in a moment of weakness he quickly regretted and cursed himself for afterwards, Stannis found himself telling this stranger about his mother’s favorite soup.
“But what happened to the rest of the bread?” the smuggler asked.
“The rest of the bread?”
“The pieces scooped out to make the bread bowl, I mean. Were they thrown out with the trash?”
“Of course not. My mother would never have allowed the kitchen at Storm’s End to be that improvident and wasteful. The leftover bread pieces were used to make bread puddings.”
His mother had been a prudent and vigilant mistress of the castle. The Estermonts never had coins to spare, and Lady Cassana did not lose the habit of counting each silver stag and golden dragon even after she became the Lady of Storm’s End. “The man who does not know the cost of anything understands the worth of nothing,” his mother had taught Stannis, and he had taken that lesson to heart.
“Bread pudding? Ahhh, that sounds like a dish my Marya would love,” the smuggler remarked, with a smile breaking out on his face.
“Your … Marya?”
“My wife, m’lord. She is very fond of trying out new-fangled dishes. Perhaps your cook could give me the recipe for that bread pudding.”
Incredulous, Stannis exclaimed, “We are at war! How could you even think of bread pudding recipes at a time like this? Have you taken leave of your senses, smuggler?”
“Nay, I am sane enough. But what is life without hope, m’lord? When you have ceased to hope, then you might as well cease to breathe, my wife used to say. I hope that this war will end soon, and Marya can bake that bread pudding for our boys. And perhaps one day, I will be able to taste the delicious onion soup served inside a bread bowl at your table, after Storm’s End has been liberated.”