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The Kingmaker
They were two weeks at sea before he told Asha that the girl wasn’t Arya Stark and the delay didn’t help the news go over well. As a matter of fact, she nearly pummeled him for it, and rightly so, (taking all that risk and making her endure all her whining for what?) but then he actually cringed when she came near him and she found herself stalking back to her cabin and Qarl.
In between strokes, she thought of ways to fit the girl into her plan. She sought him out on the deck to talk about it. There he was, gaunt as a ghost and eyes off beyond the horizon.
“We will say you tricked him, then. It suits our purpose.”
He didn’t even nod. It was infuriating when he was like this. There were other times when he would have whole conversations with her. And if he was strange and he insisted on thoughtless things, at least he was there.
Trying to hold back her frustration, she continued as if he was listening. Whatever thoughts her brother got lost in while staring at the darkened sky and sea, they had a strong pull.
“Does she keep the Seven? We could send her to the silent sisters.”
Only then, when she heard her cry out, did she realize the girl was standing on his other side. She should have guessed. That was her usual spot, a trailing, simpering, pathetic shadow. She felt sorry for the little thing, but only so much.
“Would you rather we marry you off, then?” She sighed, thinking of Tris. “I could find you someone, mayhaps. He would be...gentle-”
Now, she was grabbing him and he pulled away, but only slightly. “I don’t have to leave you, do I, Theon? If I can’t be your wife I can be a...what do you call it?”
His eyes were still on the horizon. “Saltwife. A saltwife. I had one when I last sailed this way. I don’t remember her name.”
“But you remember mine.”
“Jeyne.” He agreed. And this time he did to turn to look at her, but it wasn’t with affection. Just sadness.
They stood in silence for a while and Asha was about ready to head off to sleep and try this again in the morning when he was in a more lucid mood when he turned to her, eyes suddenly full of focus. “I told you her name because I need to keep her safe. And until we go where I mean to, that means she stays with me.”
Asha sighed as she watched them. He couldn’t let it go, could he? No, she supposed not. But whatever he said, if they were sleeping in the same quarters, she was telling them that Jeyne was his saltwife. And if the idea spread that he had fooled Ramsay Bolton into marrying the wrong girl, maybe, just maybe, they had a fighting chance at all of this.
***
During the day her duties were many, but at night, after Qarl was asleep she couldn’t help thinking of them. Was it the name itself that troubled him? Not Jeyne, but Poole? Her fingers trailed absently against Qarl’s bare chest. No, that wasn’t it. The way he looked at her... it wasn’t something as simple as that.
He’s my little brother. I should have...
No. She couldn’t have. She could barely do a thing for herself. Besides, there was too much work to be done in the present to moon about the past. Or so she told herself as she tried to calm her breathing and get to sleep.
***
The first thing they did was find a maester to give him new teeth so he could eat meat with the men. Qarl was impressed with the way he took the pain. He said it boded well. That he was hard. That he was a true Ironborn. She tried to ignore him. Qarl wasn’t usually the type for flowery compliments. If he felt the need for that kind of thing, their situation must truly be dire. And indeed, as she watched him during the procedure he didn’t look strong so much as...not there. By the Drowned God, he was still not there.
She tried to make a jest about the gold plating and the iron price, asking him what he thought their father would say but he only shrugged. “I do not fear the dead.” And that was that.
Next they had a woman dye his hair. He needed to look like a son of Balon. He needed to look like Theon Greyjoy. When it was done though, he looked more like their uncle Aeron. She wasn’t sure what they could do about that, though. She was beginning to resign herself to the fact that he would always have a drowned look. They would have to do with that what they could. Cautiously, she asked him what he thought about saying that he’d been touched by the Drowned God.
“I have been touched by the Old Gods, sister. I’ve told you that. Didn’t I?”
And she had to leave the room lest she begin to scream.
When she saw him next she was surprised to see that he was fighting with the maester. He was an older man, short and stocky, with that soft greenlander look they always had.
“I’m sorry, my lady. We wanted to fashion him a glove with iron fingers for the ones he’s...missing.”
Asha’s eyes darted to his hand. She’d not seen it uncovered before, but she tried not to react. She was past suspecting worse than this.
Jeyne was in the corner, trying to soothe him. The maester was still speaking, now trying to appeal to Asha personally. This wasn’t how it should have been. How was she going to get Ironborn to defer to him if men such as this couldn’t?
“The Kingslayer has a golden hand. Not that your brother...we just...your customs. We thought iron might be more what you wanted...”
“For fuck’s sake! Iron fingers? I still can’t hold a bow with false fucking fingers any more than I can fuck with a false cock, but I’m sure that will be your next creation!”
In the corner, Jeyne gasped. But Asha’s eyes weren’t on her. They were on her brother’s. They were on the eyes she hadn’t seen for a very long time, maybe never. He’d said it were the bloody Stark gods that had touched him. She didn’t know about that. But she couldn’t help thinking of the Drowned God again.
What is dead can never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.
Their eyes met now and he smiled, the gold plating adding an off kilter sheen.
“When this business is done, you’ll get me on that ship.”
“Yes, your grace.”
The Saltwife
When their Kingsmoot was done (Lady Asha had said it wasn’t a proper moot, but Jeyne didn’t know the difference) they tried to leave her behind. But she wasn’t going to stay with those people. Just because she’d known worse didn’t make them any less savage. Even Lady Asha was frightening. Who knew what they’d do to her when she was alone?
Besides, she couldn’t be safe, couldn’t, wouldn’t, there was no way, unless she was with Theon. So she just had to find a reason for him to take her.
Sansa had always been cleverer than Jeyne (and fairer, and higher born and...likely dead) but she wasn’t stupid. It only took a little prying into Theon’s mutterings about going somewhere too dangerous for her (where could they go that was worse than where they’d been?) to piece together that he was looking for something and only a little more to realize that it was actually someone. After that it was easy.
“Someone I know, Theon? Someone Theon and Jeyne both know?”
He nodded, not really paying her any mind. But the surprise on his face was almost worth it when she pointed out that anyone who knew them in their true names had to be from Winterfell and anyone from Winterfell was much more likely to trust her than him.
***
They had to take a ship to catch the ship that was going to the terrible place. She didn’t know why they didn’t just sail there themselves but with Lady Asha back on the Pyke there was no else she dared ask. Well, she could have asked Theon, of course, but she didn’t want to trouble him.
***
He still didn’t eat much with the men. She brought him hard bread at night, but he had no stomach. He made a jest about eunuchs being fat anyway and how that was the last thing he needed. She’d never heard him use that word about himself before. She didn’t like it. It put her in mind of Lord Varys. He had been no friend of hers in King’s Landing. No one was.
***
They still shared a bed, but now she knew why he pulled so far away and never tried to touch her. Sometimes it got so cold that she would lie as close to him as she could, feeling his heat, without touching. She didn’t want to scare him. But sometimes, just the very soles of their feet touched as she turned towards the wall. She let the rocking soothe her and was careful not to get too near his missing toes.
He had trouble sleeping too. He tossed, he turned, sometimes he even cried out. She wondered if it was always from fear, or like her, sometimes he was just angry.
It wasn’t supposed to be her. It wasn’t ever supposed to be. But Arya Stark, the real Arya Stark, was just a little girl. She couldn’t wish that on her. And just like Sansa, she was probably dead by now. Jeyne lived on and that was something.
Some nights her thoughts were even worse. Some nights her body ached and she thought of what they’d told her at the brothel and what her lord (no, not her lord) had made them do and she imagined waking Theon and...and...
Maybe she would go above deck and tell the men of her need. She was sure they’d be up to the task. They could take turns. Ah, but Lady Asha had told her what happened to straying saltwives. She didn’t think the Drowned God’s face would be worse than the one still waiting in her dreams, but she didn’t want to find out.
***
The maester had mended her as best he could, but he wasn’t a very good maester, not like Maester Luwin (surely dead), and sometimes she still had pain. One night she woke with a start to see that she had been sleeping in a pool of her own blood and she started crying before she realized it was her time. Once she’d started, she found she couldn’t stop.
She didn’t mean to wake Theon. He slept little enough as it was. He looked bewildered, though he often looked that way when waking.
“What happened?”
“My moon’s blood.” she said, in her best calm and collected Lady Catelyn voice. (Dead, dead, she was dead too.) “I’ll wash it with sea water. Maybe the men will think you were rough with me. A proper kraken. Lady Asha will like that.”
Theon furrowed his brow. “We weren’t going to get you a husband who makes you bleed, Jeyne.”
Most men make women bleed, even when they don’t mean to. I first learned that in the brothel, but I didn’t really know it until I saw those eyes-
“I bleed anyway.”
He looked at her again, really looked at her. He did that so rarely. It made her nervous.
“I mean to keep you safe. I have to-”
But he didn’t have to say it. She understood.
“Go back to sleep.” She whispered and covered him, careful, as always, not to touch him.
***
When she was young she fancied a knight would marry her. She knew she could never aim so high as Sansa, but a knight marrying just a little below his station could happen. It happened all the time in the songs
How would do something, some great feat for her, and oh, how fine he would look and then he’d take her away (though from what...) and she’d be his lady, always.
Ser Beric (dead many times over, or so they said) had been the face of her knight once but before that, it was Theon. Theon when he didn’t know she was watching, there in the training yard, tall and smiling and different and beautiful.
She knew it wasn’t love between them. Not from him and not from her either. And she knew he didn’t look like he once did. His sister had complained of it often.
But that night, and many others, as she watched him shivering in his sleep she couldn’t help but still see the boy in the training yard and only then could she finally drift off to sleep.
Rhymes With Seek
The sea had been doing him good until now. He hadn’t anticipated what it would be like to be a stowaway. He hadn’t realized what it would remind him of. (The days starving and waiting for punishment because he knew he had done something wrong and if he could please his master, if only he could...)
There was one man who might have taken him there, one ship whose silent crew had sailed through worse waters. But he was raiding in the Reach, and as far as Asha was concerned, he was their enemy. Theon couldn’t bring himself to care much, and he certainly didn’t fear him the way the other men did (he had known worse men than his nuncle) but for Asha sake’s, and his people, (yes, his people, he must remember that), he didn’t bring it up .
Now, when he didn’t care, the Ironborn were starting to like him. Whatever Asha had told them about him, they seemed to buy it. But none of them would go the whole way. His crew, the finest men on the Iron Isles (or so Asha said. The finest men left on the Iron Isles was more to the point) were very clear on that. They were all boasts in the drinking halls but when it came down to it, they’d rather run the risk of smuggling him onto a damned smuggler’s ship than just sailing there themselves.
But now the hull was dark and small and suddenly he wasn’t pretending to be a captain anymore. He could feel the layers getting peeled (peeled) back and he remembered his other name, his true-
NO.
He had to admit. Having Jeyne with him was useful. Just talking to someone helped. Sometimes she made jests, just to keep him attentive. They weren’t bad. That surprised him. How long had he known her, in both of his lives, and he’d never been told she was funny? He thought someone might have mentioned it. He wouldn’t have noticed then, true. But someone ought to have mentioned it.
But no matter what she did, it was still a struggle. He’d started to smell, trapped down there. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than that. Even when he closed his eyes, it never went away. It got so bad that he had to bite his own flesh sometimes to stop himself from screaming.
When they were found, he couldn’t help but to be relieved.
***
He knew the captain by sight. He had seen him once, talking to Lord Stark. But he’d just been a boy then. At the time he’d thought little of him. He was common and he was treating with lords. It seemed wrong. But now all he could think of was the missing fingers that had in common and how much he’d missed the fresh sea air.
Ser Davos knew him too, apparently. “Theon Greyjoy. And the girl?”
“I’m his s-”
“Steward.” he cut her off. He was much too tired to pretend to fuck her. Her eyes widened, but a split second later a grin had spread across her face.
Theon continued. “I already have a woman as my Hand.” And queen, if not in name. She had better pop out a bastard soon or I’ll never have any heirs and they’ll have to do this moot thing all over again. “I thought I might as well make it even. Her father was a steward. She can read, of course, anyone can do that,” Davos’ mouth became a hard line. “But her real talent is that she can write, which I-” he took off his glove “Cannot.”
Unimpressed, Davos eyed her. “I’d heard she was your wife. They were calling her the Other Queen Jeyne. The first one being your late foster brother’s, of course.”
It was, luckily, not the first time he’d heard that, but he still had to grip her arm a bit for support.
“I’d heard you were not a cruel man. I suppose we both heard wrong.”
“What brought you here, Greyjoy?”
Theon paused, his eyes on the sea. “The gods, I think.”
Davos’ mouth became harder.
“And why would they do that?”
“Justice. I was made to suffer and now I am given a chance to set things right.”
“What are you setting right, exactly?”
That was a strange question.
“I’m Theon Turncloak, aren’t I? I betrayed House Stark.”
For some reason, that seemed to make Ser Davos angry. He didn’t yell, he didn’t lunge at him, but he was suddenly, clearly, quite furious. And of course, Theon had been through too much to really be scared of this man, of all men. But he couldn’t help jumping back a little when he next spoke. As always, his body betrayed him. Or what was left of it.
“I have three young sons. I had more, but they were lost to me. They are noble, my boys. But they might not have been. Everyone thinks you killed the two Stark boys, but we know better than that. I don’t know what gods sent you here and I don’t want anything to do with any more of that, but if you did suffer for something I hope it wasn’t the two high born boys you did not kill. I hope it’s the other two boys, whoever they were, who no one mourns but me.”
He didn’t say anything. How could he? He simply bowed his head.
But Jeyne, useful little Jeyne, came towards him, her voice all soothing and said.
“Please. I held Rickon as a baby. I know him. I cared for him. I think he would trust me. I think he would go with me.”
Ser Davos didn’t say anything else, but after a moment he went away and left them alone on the deck.
And as he watched the waves lapping, he knew there would be more horrors in store for them. And he knew he should not have brought her here, useful as she was. Saving her was the only thing he had done worth the kind of honor Lord Stark used to talk about and that he and Robb had died for.
But at least he was out in the air now and somehow, impossibly, he could feel the stirrings of hope once again.