Work Text:
“You are King of Westeros.”
The first words Duncan can remember, over and over, murmured over his cradle and with his first steps.
He dreams of a throne of thorns, and glittering creatures rising out of a gold crown set with deep red stones, white cloaks and silver swords and an island awash with churning waves amidst a dark, stormy sea, and seven chanting voice, dark blood dripping from his hands, and a sword set with flame at its edge yet freezing to touch.
And always his sister, by his side, telling him, over and over, you will be King.
***
“My King,” Viserra calls him, even while she snaps at him, even when her voice is so cold Duncan freezes to his very bones. “My King,” and “Your Majesty” and never anything else.
Ser Willem, though, swings Duncan up into his arms so he can reach the bright yellow lemons growing in the tree outside the house. He chases Duncan around the garden, and lets him climb over his back, and dances in the courtyard with him, and teaches him how to skin a rabbit and hold a wooden sword. He calls him “Little Duncan,” always, unless Viserra is around.
***
The ship is smelly and damp and cramped. Duncan gets the nicest rooms, but the nicest rooms still leave much to want, and he spends a few days huddled miserably over the chamber-pot.
In between, he dozes fitfully, and dreams of another ship, another sea. A fleet of ships, in fact, spread out behind him like a forest, a mountain rising out of the water, and dark shadow-creatures swooping above and in and out of the waves. Land glitters on the horizon, setting his heart racing, and he thinks, with wind in his hair and salt on his lips, home.
***
Viserra lets him onto her bed, sometimes, and tells him stories. Of the Conquerer and his sisters who rode on the wings of a storm to bring unity to Westeros, and of their dragons, the beasts of legend who brought rivers of fire and blood to conquer Westeros. Of Valyria and its dragonlords, beautiful and strong until it fell, and of Daenys who saved their family from ruins.
Duncan asks about his namesake, and Viserra frowns. “Mother named you when she was in pain, but you will be stronger than that weakling,” she says. “You, King Duncan, will rule Westeros.”
***
There is a castle, alone in the woods.
A castle, and a woman at the top of that castle, her hands splayed over cold stone, and a moss-green mist over the castle and the woman and the woods, thick and spell-cast and yet blurring away at the edges of shapes.
Shadow-creatures circle overhead, lower and lower, but their size remains unchanging as they descend, until at last they hover around the woman, and their cries turn to a soft, aching melody.
He wakes to a song that slips between his fingers even as he rubs the sleep from his eyes.
***
He plays games with the merchant children, sometimes. Viserra did not like it, when he was younger. But he is almost ten years old, and knows how to sneak away so she cannot pinch him or snap at him that he is king, and above these filthy children.
The merchant children have lemons like their old house did, tart and sour and juicy, and they share them with him in exchange for his stories of Old Valyria and its dragonlords. They dig through bitter white flesh with their fingernails and play at spitting the seeds as far as they can.
***
“You act like a babe,” Viserra snaps when he tells her about his dreams. Her bed is barred to him now.
He watches the dark sky outside their window instead, glittering gold stars turning to deep red fire every time he closes his eyes.
The fire burns and rages and consumes, circles around him and that thorny chair, and its flames scream in his sister’s voice. My King, my King, you made me a promise.
And he wakes again, and his hands burn hot and yet unmarred.
Above him the night sky is cool and open and still streaked red.
***
Duncan has never seen Viserra cry before. She screams and shouts and rages, but never cries.
Here, though, clutching their mother’s crown to her, she weeps bitter tears. The wet droplets fall onto the ground, shining like new gemstones. Viserra never lets him touch him (unbefitting of a king, she calls it; he does not tell her about the games he plays with the merchant children), so he stands helpless and watches as the crown gets traded through the tears, in return for a pouch of gold.
“For your return to Westeros,” Viserra says. “I will get your throne back.”
***
Viserra wears their mother’s crown in his dreams.
It shines too bright and golden through a dark mist, the gemstones subsumed into shadow so that only her slashing smile and the glittering crown remain. The shadow-creatures are all about her, snarling and snapping, and behind her churns a dark sea stretching to the horizon.
Duncan looks down, and sees his feet on narrow, wet cobblestones painted red. The throne of thorns towers above them both, but even as she takes his hand, the throne shrinks in on itself like a mannequin with its strings cut through, and swallows them both.
***
Duncan is at the market when he sees the man.
The sword, the eyes, the clothes and armour, the pale-red skin. All of them speak of his sister’s stories.
“Are you of Westeros, good ser?”
The man starts. “How do you know to ask that?” There is surprise in eyes, visibly, though at the language Duncan speaks or his appearance itself, he does not know.
“I, too, am of Westeros.”
Duncan covers his hair, in the market, but his eyes reveal his ancestry, and the man’s gaze is fixed on them. A moment’s hesitation, then, “I am Ser Jorah Mormont.”
***
When he tells Viserra, her face twists up. “The stinking horselords and their filthy animals will do us no good. We need men and ships!” She is angry, sharp and cutting as always.
But Duncan has Ser Jorah with him, this time, and he can kiss Viserra’s hand and flatter and cajole her better than a younger brother ever could, and convince her to seek her crown Eastwards.
That night, Duncan dreams of a red star streaking across the sky, red flame across the earth, and the shadow-creatures circling him even as the red takes his sister into its depths.