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Highborn men and low alike in King’s Landing used half a hundred evocative words to describe the king. Only a handful had the ring of truth to those who served him – hard, steadfast, prudent, unyielding, and tactical, were but a few of the praises, often grudging, that seemed as raw in their honesty as the king himself. Neither men in the king’s service nor those whose antipathy for his rule simmered uneasily would deny Stannis Baratheon’s possession of such particular exemplary qualities while riding at the head of an army or sitting in judgment of traitors. Beyond these few, simple truths, much of the rest of the flattery laid at the feet of Stannis of the House Baratheon, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and the Burned Lands Beyond was pure fantasy – wistful and empty paeans mouthed by those who had not paid enough attention to the more accurate descriptions of qualities the man actually possessed that would prove him unmoved and unamused by hollow words. Accustomed to that knowledge after a decade in His Grace’s service, Lord Commander Snow found his brow creeping inexorably toward his hairline despite his best intentions toward impassivity as he looked at the graying, modestly-dressed man who sat across the polished table from him, unselfconsciously appraising a page in the storied White Book.
“Nostalgic? His Grace?” Jon ventured finally, repeating Davos’s own peculiar choice of words back with doubt coloring his voice. Davos looked up from his son Ser Devan’s thus-far brief entry in the aged text, the expression creasing the skin around his eyes almost edging into amusement from its usual careworn level of preoccupation.
“Of a sort, I said, to be sure,” the King’s Hand cautioned, holding up a finger to forestall further inquiry for the moment, a slight smile curving his lips briefly. “The past weighs on his mind these days. He has spoken to you of his plans to journey to Storm’s End with the coming of spring.” Though it was hardly a question, Jon inclined his head.
“Right after Steffon was born, he mentioned his intention of going, once the cold breaks, as it ought soon. I expect he ought to wait longer yet, as the seas will still be treacherous for another moon…” Davos cut him off with a gesture.
“I know,” he said, and Jon grimaced at himself for appearing to lecture the former pirate in his own trade. “But no mind. He’ll want to go by the roads, long though it may take, you can be certain. And you will accompany him, not one of your brothers-in-arms?” This time, the Hand actually asked the question, and waited intently on Jon’s answer.
“Of course. Some of the Kingsguard will remain, for the Queen, Princess Shireen, and the children, but I will go with His Grace. Will you not come as well?” Davos was already rising from his seat hard on the heels of Jon’s affirmative response, humming a non-committal noise vaguely at the question.
“I can’t, not now. His Grace is of course responsible for seeing to his lands and properties, and now that there’s a second grandchild to inherit all things Baratheon he has every reason to go, but while he’s gone, I’ll need to see to the administration of the realm, as best as my simple mind can manage, anyway.” The old joke still coaxed a half-smile from Jon, though the Hand’s countenance sobered.
“But mark me, Jon Snow. Storm’s End is a hard place, like enough to some of the places you knew on the Wall. The keep has broken waves, armies, and kings alike. You mind your duties there. And the king,” he added, closing the White Book with care and departing, leaving Jon to ponder the Hand’s varied warnings in the silence of the tower.
As the monstrous black crouching beast that was Storm’s End began to grow in the slowly-dimming skies as the ungainly party closed the distance to the immense keep, Jon conjured the immensity of the Wall in his memory in comparison. The Wall’s towering heights would have dwarfed the mighty fortress, certainly, but with the Wall only existing in his mind’s eye, Jon found himself feeling a touch of the wonder and awe he’d once experienced under the Wall’s shadow for the first time as the details of Storm’s End’s protective coils of dark stone arose, waning sunlight reflecting in its polished surface. Though the train of travelers and baggage was tiring rapidly and ready to make camp, Stannis had arisen and readied himself even earlier than his normal daybreak ablutions that morning, and still seemed untouched by weariness. From his pallet in His Grace’s tent, Jon had dutifully arisen and shadowed Stannis in silence through the morning dark, as the king’s curt commands roused the rest of the party and set into motion the painstaking process of breaking camp.
“We will arrive today, if we push our speed.” Those had been the king’s first words upon waking that morning, and though they remained true when repeated again now, Jon glanced sidelong at Stannis’s sharp profile. This time, they were not a statement of fact. This time, they were something else. Only years of training in the art of half-silent conversations prompted Jon to speak.
“How long has it been, Your Grace?” Jon asked, his voice rough from the early spring cold, his gray gaze keen on the king. Stannis reined in his striking and eager blood bay gelding and they paused, just ahead of the trudging train of baggage, and Jon followed suit, carefully easing his restive mount to stand, though it tossed its head, bit rattling against teeth. The horses were bred and trained for speed over the long march, and the sedate pace chafed at them nearly as much as the party’s slow progress frustrated the king.
“It has been thirteen years and more since I was a guest here last, though only eleven since I took it in battle,” Stannis said evenly. “But it has been far longer since it was first taken from me – twenty-seven years, or nearly, since my brother first took the Iron Throne and sent me to guarding Dragonstone’s jagged rocks, so different from the steel-smooth walls of Storm’s End. He gave our family’s home and the coddling of his bastard, my nephew twice over, to Renly. To me he gave a rock and responsibility for all his toy ships. Sometimes I wonder briefly what might have been if I had been Prince of Dragonstone in fact rather than just in form, as Robert perhaps half-intended, should I extend his memory the generous courtesy of believing he meant some symbolic gesture on my behalf.” The king let out a steady breath, blue eyes narrowed against the glow of the waning sunlight, while Jon let the moment of silence that followed deepen.
“Little enough different, I expect,” Jon finally said, addressing the implicit question. Nostalgia…of a sort. If Davos had not suggested it I might not believe what I heard. “I have not found comfort or meaning in guessing at how the past might have been changed. Nor do you, I think,” he ventured.
“Storm’s End is mine again, since Renly turned against me, and yet not truly, not ever truly mine again. It will be Steffon’s, in turn. Like my father, his great-grandfather, the last Baratheon for whom Storm’s End truly his place. It is fitting that Shireen chose to give him my father’s name – it is better to imagine an unbroken line between them. Robert became a child of the Vale too easily, and Renly fell to the Reach, when they were young. It marked them, and this place. It was never theirs,” Stannis replied grimly.
“All of Westeros is yours, Your Grace,” Jon said diplomatically. The king’s face tightened, his jaw working under taut, wind-roughened skin.
“As Casterly Rock is mine? As Highgarden? As Winterfell?” Stannis asked sharply, the words themselves meant to cut.
“Like them all. And the Wall’s ashes besides.” Jon’s face was a mask as he offered a retort sharper than he thought appropriate before he could close his mouth on it.
“Studded with shards of dragonbone, to be sure. King of ash and bone is my fitting title. King of ruby fragments and the withered stone from an overripe peach,” Stannis growled, his gloved hands flexing on the reins as his mount sidestepped anxiously.
“Your Grace,” Jon began, only to be cut off with a curt motion of the king’s hand.
“Enough. To dwell on what might have been is bad enough, but to spend time imagining again and again what did happen is even worse. What is in the past must stay where it is.” Stannis urged his mount forward, and Jon followed, his horse eager to keep pace, the words bubbling up from his chest equally unbidden.
“Then recall it clearly. The realm prospers, Your Grace. The Wall is ash because it served its purpose. The bones of men and dragons are buried within it because they served you to preserve us all. Winterfell is yours, because without you there would be no fragments of Winterfell to be rebuilt, nor any other corner of the Seven Kingdoms. Storm’s End will pass to your grandson, in time, but it is now yours. We are in your place here, and everywhere, but this, like every standing stone, growing thing, and living man, woman, or child in Westeros, will be your legacy besides,” Jon finished, his voice low and intent. The sharp planes of the king’s face remained unmoved for long moments, an unlikely stillness settled over his mien in contrast to Jon’s quiet-voiced passion.
“Lord Commander Snow,” Stannis said finally, his gaze fixed on the distant keep’s tall black walls. “Tell this trailing parade behind us to make haste and catch us as they can. We will ride on. I would see the next sunrise from Storm’s End’s seaward wall.” Given their heads, their horses made haste, their strides lengthening as a low echo of thunder rumbled across the darkening skies, and a faint mist of rain began to fall. Racing ahead of the storm, Jon wondered briefly how he would be remembered as a Kingsguard who lost his king, a great warrior and savior of all Seven Kingdoms, to a horse’s fall in slippery grass. He made no attempt to forestall their speedy chase, however. Stannis had his mind set on the end of this journey, and the great keep loomed up large ahead of them, close enough to loom tall, now briefly lit by lightning fit for the home of the Storm Kings of old.
The two lathered horses soon clattered up to the gate, foam dripping from their necks from the brief, intense exertion, and Jon himself drew deep breaths as if he had run, but the king looked implacable, even as rain plastered his graying fringe of hair to his scalp, setting every bone and sharp-edged plane of his skull into sharp relief in the faint glow of covered torches flickering from the guard tower. He reached out to lay a gloved hand flat against the gates for a moment, as Jon watched silently.
“More than a few stones here managed to stand, for all it was sieged and battered time and time again. Its weaknesses I know too well, just like its strengths.” In the near-dark, Jon felt the king’s gaze heavily. “A fitting legacy, I suppose, if I must have one.”
“May it be so, Your Grace,” Jon replied fervently, before knocking hard on the door’s supports, setting the metal bars to ringing, as low and echoing as the rolling thunder overhead.