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Shipbreaker Bay is calm but Renly’s brother is angry. Lord Stannis is always angry, murmurs one of the serving-maids, but Renly knows better: Renly is six, after all, and knows everything. People are never careful of their words around Renly, and they think he doesn’t notice anything, but he notices the people flooding away from Stannis in droves today, all but Maester Cressen. He notices his nurse gather him up when he tries to trundle over curiously to Stannis’s chambers: “Your lord brother is busy,” she says, but she means your lord brother is angry. So she sets him up at the window instead with cushions and a doll and he looks out over the road.
He likes dolls. Stannis is already telling Maester Cressen to try him on books, but he doesn’t like those--he doesn’t understand them and they don’t look like anything at all. He likes dolls, though. Girl dolls are his favorite, with their long hair he can plait (he is already very good at plaiting, a development his nurse mutters which will not serve either of us in life) and the little gowns they always have. Boy dolls aren’t so bad, either, but they’re almost all Sers and Renly doesn’t want to be a Ser. In fact, he wants to be a Prince like Rhaegar.
(“Hush now about Prince Rhaegar,” says his nurse nervously, once, and Renly notices; he’s six, after all.)
Riders are coming. Renly sits up to watch the gates embrace them.
He’s thirteen and his brother is coming to visit. There’s no need to specify which. Only one of them does this.
Renly Baratheon ought to like having two brothers. It positions him well, after all: if he’s never going to inherit in the first place, and he’s not, all the better to be youngest over younger. By the time a second son is born he’s already failed at something. Not so with a third. To be third--and to be so young, too--is to be a baby, and to be a baby is to be the center of attention, which is the place, more so even than Storm’s End, at which Renly has always felt most at-home.
The truth is that he imagines having no brothers. He fantasizes that Robert is his father. Even to this day he entertains a wild story where he was secreted away as an infant, posed as a third brother to give him a legitimate birthright. He finds Robert an uneasy brother, but all the battle-glory and the booming voice would be perfect in a father: and he’s like him, everyone says so. In the face, anyway. Renly even fancies having a fosterling-friend like Eddard Stark. It helps to never have met Eddard Stark.
The hole in this theory, of course, is big and lean and severe: Stannis would never go along with such a scheme. He can’t even tell a polite lie about where he’s been for a half-hour. He’s not like Renly at all: Renly throws off lies without thinking, like sparks. They glint, too. Stannis is a dreadful candidate for a father--his hair is already peeling back on his head. He hasn’t even got an Eddard Stark, just an old smuggler with no fingers, which figures in exactly none of Renly’s dreams. The trouble with imagining Stannis as his father is that Renly knows far too much about him.
He’s not even old enough. Renly sits up tall in his chair and twists his rings on his fingers and waits for him to arrive.
Ser Cortnay Penrose entertains Selyse while Stannis surveys the battlements with Renly, one impersonal hand on the stone. Renly likes Ser Cortnay; Ser Cortnay is one of the first conquests of Renly’s smile. Nothing prurient: just that Renly makes a speculative project of bending the young knight to his fancy, and to his own lack of surprise, he does. He always has, starting with nurses. Starting with dolls.
Stannis is another matter. When he refers to Renly to others as my lord brother, Renly can detect his frosty sarcasm, the way he glances around himself at Storm’s End--as if Robert’s decision was Renly’s doing.
Still. He will come around.
Renly touches Stannis’s arm. “So-- Greyjoy’s certainly done it now,” he says.
“That,” says Stannis, tart, “is a way to put it.”
“Come, now, Stannis. It can’t possibly offend your sensibilities that I’ve referred to an act of treason against the king as though Balon Greyjoy is a cat that’s made off with a custard?” Renly smiles up at him. He is thirteen and knows just how many teeth to show. “I’m sorry, brother. … Think of it, however. Robert standing in a kitchen--haven’t you ever wanted to see it?”
“Lord Balon--” Stannis tries to take the helm of the conversation again, but Renly curls his fingers into the fabric of Stannis’s sleeve.
“Stannis. Just stop thinking for a moment and picture something amusing. I promise it won’t hurt.”
Stannis brushes his hand off easily--but then he takes Renly by the shoulders and stares down at him. Renly blinks. He has no ready response for this. Renly’s brother is angry--but Renly’s brother has never been angry with him before. No one has ever really been angry with Renly before. At most, they leave him be.
Not Stannis. He’s struggling to master something within himself; he draws his breath in and out through his nose. Renly watches in puzzlement.
Eventually Stannis says, “Run along, Renly. I’m sure you can find something to do.”
Renly is a Lord Baratheon, the master of Storm’s End. Renly stares; he can feel his face starting to burn, but he doesn’t know why, can’t put a name to the feeling.
“I said go, Renly.”
Renly stays. At a loss for anything else, he favors Stannis with the same smile.
Balon Greyjoy raises his banners; Stannis goes north with Robert to put it down. Renly prays for them both in the sept--halfway, anyway, he’s distracted by the light and the low harmony of the chanting, the smell of all these people gathered in one place, and the words fall out of his mind. Later he plucks a flower and hums a rhyme instead for them each that corresponds with the petals: bring my brother back in time, it goes, bring my brother back to home. He likes whimsies like this. It’s easier than talking about these things before they happen.
Renly goes to Dragonstone to greet Stannis and his fleet; together they will meet Robert and his army. “My brother, back in one piece?” he says to Stannis and opens his arms to embrace him.
Stannis leans down to accept the embrace, but he doesn’t return it; Renly can feel his body straight and taut. “I assume you’re keeping up with your studies,” he says next to Renly’s head.
“Always,” says Renly sing-song.
Stannis snorts. “How wonderful to hear,” he says, and Renly imagines they have it sorted.
People and things don’t stay inside of Renly. He is fourteen. One of Robert’s sers falls to him in full--with his head bent down to meet Renly’s lips, in a corner, his dry mouth. Renly doesn’t like his dry mouth, or his leathery face, and certainly not his bald head, but he likes Ser Karlan: and Ser Karlan is good to him, he treats him like beaten gold. Renly decides to seduce him early in the year, at a tourney in King’s Landing when he’s bored and no one is paying him any mind. He’s never seduced a man before but he imagines it’s easy. It’s-- Well. It’s easy.
Afterward he’s empty, but he knows all about that. He imagines it’s passed through him like everything else. The only thing for it is another.
Stannis comes to Storm’s End again. You would think he lived there. Renly embraces Maester Cressen and glances over the maester’s shoulder at his brother; but Maester Cressen shakes his head at him and gives him a strange look, as if to say no, Renly, no. As if Renly should know what he means.
Renly sits in the crook of a tree’s arms in the godswood; “Do you like it here?” he says.
Stannis stiffens.
“Oh, I know how everything is with Robert,” says Renly, as if he can swallow up the matter of ownership in a gesture of his hand, “but you could live here half the year if you liked. Cressen would like it. He thinks I’m a masterless boy.”
“You are a masterless boy,” says Stannis with eyebrows lifted.
“So I am.” Renly scuffs the toe of his boot against Stannis’s shin, gives him a tug.
Stannis gives him a look. “You never do know when to stop, do you, Renly?”
Renly thinks about that later. He doesn’t stop--other things wear out their welcome with him and he does something else, but he doesn’t stop. Perhaps he doesn’t know when. Stannis could be right. Stannis is often right, Renly muses; but what has rightness ever done for him?
Stannis thinks Renly wouldn’t have offered to host him at Storm’s End if there were the slimmest chance that Stannis would accept. Maybe Stannis is right about that too. Renly sits in the godswood after his brother has departed for his guest chambers; he wonders why he feels unfinished, like something’s been made to halt.
All the same, his brothers have presents sent to him for his name day. Robert gives him a white destrier. Stannis sends a maester--Olric is the man’s name. He’s meant to be good with tutoring sums. But Renly’s never in fact had trouble with his sums, he muses; it’s histories that bore him out of mind and soul. Let Stannis try him on those.
He lays with his back in the grass as Maester Olric makes another failed attempt with him. “I wonder,” says Renly to the sky.
Maester Olric heaves a sigh: as if to say, and what, if not Aegon the Conqueror, does young Lord Renly wonder about?
“I wonder what my brother is doing,” he says.
“Most likely attending to his own wife and daughter,” says the maester, pointed; “And maintaining high hopes for your studies, Lord Renly.”
“I don’t know which of those pastimes sounds more wishful,” laughs Renly; it’s out of his mouth before he thinks about it. He doesn’t mean to be cruel about Shireen; the maester looks at him, very sharp, and he thinks about a way to trot the words back in. He says: “Shireen. I haven’t seen her since she was a babe. I didn’t mean to be light.” And he waits for the maester to forgive him.
Which he does--grudgingly. “Maester Cressen looks after her,” Olric says. “But her father’s looked in on her often, ever since her illness.”
Renly tries to picture it. It’s a funny tableau. The last time he remembers Stannis being near at hand to look in on him was when they were shuttered up together during the siege, and he barely remembers that at all. He imagines Stannis holding the child in his sharp awkward arms: praying for her in the sept. It makes him uncomfortable to consider. He giggles, for no good reason--and undoes all his good work; Olric gives him an edged look.
“When is Stannis’s name day?” Renly asks.
“His name day?” Olric is taken aback.
“Yes. I’d like to make a gift.” Renly already sends gifts to his eldest brother. Everyone knows the king’s name day.
For Stannis he purchases a golden-feathered tiercel, thinking of what he knows of Stannis and falconry; what he receives in return is a polite, shortly-worded note and Renly realizes that what he knows is very little. It is the finest gift he ever gives his brother; he is never a reliable giver, he seldom remembers the day.
Dragonstone is a close, haunted place. Not that Storm’s End isn’t--when he can justify it Renly prefers to travel with his household to King’s Landing, where the wine is better, where the water is something you can play in. But even being shut up in Storm’s End for days while the wind howls from the water is not like Dragonstone.
Little Shireen toddles up to see him when he arrives. The sight of her face sinks into him all at once. He knows he mustn’t show it. This is for no reasons of kindness--he is sixteen, mostly a man now, and must be made of stronger stuff. His brother is watching.
Robert never comes to Dragonstone. Just now, Renly wishes he were the king and had the excuse.
When he beds down in the unfamiliar keep he’s ridden by a terrible nightmare: nothing interesting. His bad dreams are almost always the same--the storms, the fleets, the faces and hands of unmemorable men. Shipbreaker Bay calm and his brother angry: there was only ever one true nightmarish part of his life. He must call out in the night, because he wakes up and can hear the footsteps of a nurse--probably Shireen’s--and then Cressen, bless him, damn him, shushing him with a hand on his brow.
Robert is going to make me Master of Laws, Renly wants to snap; but what he really wants is fussing, so he fights the little flare of spitfire and lies abed and obedient until the nurse and Maester Cressen are finished with him. Then once they’re gone he rises from his bedclothes and goes in search of somewhere in the keep more settling to his mind.
He curls up in the crook of a seat where a window ought to be and listens to the wind buffet the Stone Drum.
In the morning--it must be the morning by then--his brother finds him. Renly uncurls a little and looks up at Stannis over his knees. Stannis looks like he’s slept ill; but then again, maybe Stannis always looks so. In Renly’s memory he always has. But in the dim moments of first wakefulness Renly distrusts his own memory--it all layers over the present time, it all converges.
Aegon the Dragonknight. Aegon the Unlikely. Interchangeable Targaryens from Maester Olric’s lessons float through his head. He stretches his arms.
“Hello, Stannis,” he says.
“You-- don’t sleep well here,” says Stannis, as if this needs saying.
Renly says nothing to that. He blinks up at Stannis like a young owl. It works on all the rest.
“You don’t sleep well here,” says Stannis again. He shifts his weight on his feet, looks away. “It’s not uncommon. Most-- don’t, at first. I recognize that this is no place for a girl or a boy.”
For a moment Renly thinks Stannis is confiding in him about Shireen for some reason. Then he realizes that this is some kind of concession; sleepily, he tries to make sense of it. He can’t, so he shrugs it off with a smile: “I’m not a boy, brother. But I am sorry for cluttering up your hallway.”
He reaches out a hand to Stannis. “Sit with me,” he tries.
And it almost works. But something sours it--there must be something too cloying, too overworked in his voice, or the way he holds out his fingers, or so he tells himself, because he can’t make sense of Stannis’s reaction: he’s suddenly repulsed, physically, he draws back like something disgusting has just come near him. “--Go back to bed, Renly. I won’t expect you until after noon,” he says and turns on his heel again to go, leaving Renly to blink sleep and confusion away from his eyes.
In the same year they see one another on the Small Council. Jon Arryn has yet to present himself today; Renly is drunk. He tips his head back to look up at Stannis, which is a long far way up. “Hello, brother,” he says.
Stannis stands over him, arms crossed. “Master of Laws,” he says.
“The very man.” Renly reaches up to brush the tips of his fingers against Stannis’s arm; Stannis pulls back like he’s been burnt. “Master of Ships. You look so surprised.”
“I am surprised to see you bothering to put in an appearance, Renly,” says Stannis bluntly enough, “though considering your state, I suppose that I shouldn’t be. What led you to believe coming here like this,” he gestures, “would be acceptable?”
“We’ve nothing to do today. Come, now. The Hand is late.”
Stannis says nothing.
“The Master of Coin isn’t even here,” says Renly with a disbelieving laugh. Behind him he hears a chortle.
“Renly--”
“But by all means, be at your leisure to sit,” Renly makes a grand motion with both hands, “an exceedingly temperate council with us.”
Stannis strikes him. Across the face, with the back of his hand. The ring nicks him minutely, though for some reason this surprises him the most; he raises his own fingers to his face to feel it. An appalled silence has fallen; if the king’s brothers are quarreling, the likes of Pycelle and Varys have no inclination to interfere, although Renly has heard the little metallic shift of Ser Barristan’s armor.
Renly knows that if he were sober, he and Stannis would not be transacting this in public. He gets up to leave. He brushes past his brother when he does and the two of them go outside--Renly doesn’t fear another blow from Stannis, however, Stannis isn’t like that. That’s not the course of his anger.
Nor is it Renly’s. He leans up to Stannis’s head once they’re outside, his hand light on Stannis’s shoulder like the two of them are conferring.
“Do you know why you would have made a dreadful king, Stannis?” he murmurs into the shell of his brother’s ear.
Stannis is still and silent.
“It’s not just that no one likes you,” says Renly. “You don’t like anyone, either.”
He pulls away and goes, still steady enough on his feet. Stannis will never go shouting after someone, he knows. It’s beneath people like them.
Shipbreaker Bay is calm but Renly’s brother is frightened. Renly is hungry. He’s never been hungry before. He doesn’t know if he’s frightened. He’s never been frightened before either.
His nurse is sick, so there’s a maidservant set to mind him, but she’s busy--so he wanders alone, looking for his doll. He’s put it somewhere, but he doesn’t remember. His mind wanders more now.
He finds Stannis stooped over a table with a map on it. His hand is covering his face. He only looks up when Renly’s footsteps patter in. “Renly--” he begins.
Renly runs to him; Stannis lets out a long painful sound, maybe a sigh, and he bends down to gather him up in his arms. He hefts Renly up onto his hip.
Renly rests his head on Stannis’s shoulder and shuts his eyes.
“Renly,” Stannis says again with his fingers in Renly’s hair. “It’s all right.” He’s not good at this. He doesn’t have to be. Renly hiccups and tightens his grip.
Stannis shushes him. Against Renly, his chest is bony and tight. “--Renly, I’m going to break them. All of them. You just have to wait.”
“I’m hungry,” says Renly.
“You just have to wait,” says Stannis again; but Renly puts his hand flat against Stannis’s stomach and feels it shudder too. “Renly-- Come, let’s go.”
So Stannis takes him for the first and last time to the little godswood within the walls of Storm’s End and kneels down with Renly in his arms, where Stannis offers up a brittle prayer for them both. Renly cries. The old gods hear.