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i.
“He knew! He knew!”
Robert is raging. Rage is safe, rage is familiar. He rages at Ned, for warning her, for warning Cersei to flee and take her bastards with her. Flee right to her father, that’s what she would have done. He rages at the things inside their cells that just hours ago were his children, until Ned (good solid Ned) drags him away. He cannot rage at Ned for long.
That damnable honor. Maybe Ned would have made a better king.
Ned’s own children are weeping, he’s sure of it. Half the castle seems to be, sobbing or hiding or barking out orders. Renly and Baelish and the rest of them are trying to have some council meeting. But here Ned is, by his side.
His oldest friend. They’d fought a war together. They could kill an old lion together. Ned was his brother. His blood kin… Renly would still be a child at ninety. And Stannis.
Stannis knew.
He knew and he fled, while Jon Arryn died and Robert offered an abomination the hand of Lyanna’s niece. Fled as good men died. Fled like a coward.
“I would hear his reasons before you judge him, your Grace.”
Your Grace. Your Grace. As if he needs any reminders of how this all began. He should have run away to Essos. But he stayed, and Stannis- dutybound, honor-prattling Stannis- had left him here in the lion’s claws.
“He knew. I’ll drag him from his island if I must. He knew.”
ii.
He does not feel guilty. He does not feel triumphant. Sometimes he feels a certain dull unease, but, when he thinks of his brother, mostly Renly feels nothing at all.
Stannis. Poor, brave fool. His little army had carved a gash through Renly’s first charge, but numbers had told, in the end. He doesn’t know who slew his brother. He doesn’t want to know. They’ll bury him in Storm’s End, by the marker for Steffon and Cassana.
Renly cannot attend the burial. He has seven kingdoms to win, and besides, he does not want to watch a few old men pretend to mourn for Stannis. In that, at least, his brother deserves better. He’ll leave him alone in death, the way he always wanted to be.
He beds Margaery. It is not much fun for either of them, but he is the last male branch of House Baratheon, and he needs an heir. Margaery smiles at him, and doesn’t take offense, lets him know if he is hurting her or if he has managed to bring someone some pleasure out of this, at least. “There have been many less fortunate wives,” she’d said with that smirk, that smirk that makes him think he may have at least found a friend from this marriage.
“Many less fortunate wives” includes the Florent woman, who had to be dissuaded from declaring her daughter Queen. Certainly, Renly agrees magnanimously, she is Lady of Dragonstone, “at least until such time as a son shall be born to me. “ Letters and messages. The air is black with ravens as they ride on King’s Landing.
They had found Stannis with a sword still locked in his cold hand. Bodies of his men and his foes surrounded him. Dead and wounded, knights and squires and common men. If, hidden in their cloaks, he had squeezed Loras’s hand, no one would speak of it. One of Stannis’s squires was dead. The other still breathed, and Renly had sent his own Maester to see to the boy’s arm.
“Kinslayer!”
He himself has seen to the boy’s father.
“Kinslayer!”
Two of Davos Seaworth’s older sons pull him back. Renly gestures for his Guard to sheathe their swords.
“You saved my life, Ser Davos. I do not forget a debt, and I do not forget those saltfish and onions.” Renly blinks away at other memories threatening to come to the fore. He does not know whose blade slew Stannis. He only knows it was not his. “Take your son, and go home to your keep and your wife.”
Kinslayer. It eases that unease, somehow. Kinslayer.
At least someone mourns for Stannis.
iii.
His army rides.
Every lord in the Stormlands, every knight, every farmer or laborer or smith who Renly once smiled at. They ride for vengeance. They ride for justice. They ride as the North rides, ride for a lord butchered on the word of a false king.
They fly their new king’s banner. They follow his commands. When Stannis sent his Onion Knight to treat with the Stormlords, he was welcomed with feasts, and passed on the roads by companies of men already marching to his king’s command.
But they are not his army, Stannis knows, though they will fight and die on his word. They are a dead man’s army. They are Renly’s.
Renly, young, foolish Renly. Still the boy who cried as the Tyrell host feasted. He had not deserved to die. Nor had Robert, or more than likely Lord Stark. Two Baratheon brothers are dead, and Stannis is still the least of them. He is the rightful King of Seven Kingdoms, and yet he cannot compete with his little brother’s ghost.
He calls a meeting of his advisors as the army camps. He had thought to name Lord Estermont Hand, but an illness has slowed his uncle’s pace. Now, every accursed Florent in the army is angling to steal the position before Estermont arrives. Three of them sit around the table, along with Ser Andrew, a few of his lords, Ser Davos, and (Stannis grits his teeth) Garlan Tyrell.
The death of Loras Tyrell has grown in the telling. He may well have broken his chains and killed half the kingsguard with a mortally-wounded guardsman’s stolen sword when he saw Renly pushed down to the block. The Tyrells like Stannis no more than he likes them, but there are some things that cannot go unavenged.
“An army of vengeance,” he remarks, later. All the squabbling fools have left, and only Ser Davos remains in the tent.
And who better to lead it? he thinks. They have murdered half my House. They have murdered all in it that was good and bright and merciful.
I am all that remains. And I will see them pay.
iv.
She takes the steps slowly.
The guard at the bottom is still there, with his nods and his “Lady Selyse.” She knew nothing of the names and faces of the guards. Could she trust this man? She feels a sudden understanding, now, as to why her husband had kept the Onion Knight in his employment.
Poor Ser Davos. Ambassador for a dead King. She has never much cared for the man, and yet she hopes the Fat Flower’s triumph wasn’t the first Seaworth heard of the news. Perhaps Maester Pylos had sent him a raven. Old Cressen would have.
But that’s letting her mind wander. She must have strength. She must grasp the blade.
She must… The door to Shireen’s chamber is just visible now around the wind of the stairs.
They had burned her uncles, her cousins, the Bastard of Driftmark and a man who liked to boast that his grandfather was a dragonseed. They had screamed at their new birth, screamed and howled and finally fallen silent, left Selyse alone with the crackling of wood and the cracking of bone and the harsh bite of her own breath.
Because Stannis had not risen.
King’s blood in every piece of ash on her tongue, and still from the flames of her husband’s pyre came nothing but spitting sparks. The flames might have died completely by now, leaving nothing but melted armor where Azor Ahai should have walked.
The red woman had come to her, when there was nothing left in the flames but the dead. Selyse had wanted to wail, to curse her for her failure, her god who could not stop a single Faceless Man, could not stop a useless upjumped Steward from claiming the throne of her fathers and killing his own true king.
Her priestess had been still, and sweet. “Oh, my queen.” Her eyes, then. How could men say her eyes were cold, were terrifying? In her eyes was all the grief that Selyse could not let swallow her. The hand on her face had been warm. “You know what must be done.”
And so she had turned to the tower.
The last three steps. Her feet are heavy.
Because she had tried, she had raged. Her own kin, where they not the blood of the Gardener kings? The Velyarons had boasted oft enough of Old Valyria. Not her little girl. There was another way, there had to be another way. And Stannis would rise, the True King, the Reborn, and he would strike down Tyrell usurpers and Stark usurpers and all they thought their little marriage could buy.
Azor Ahai had failed twice to temper his blade. His wife, Nissa Nissa. The one he held most dear. Nissa Nissa for Stannis could never have meant his wife.
And so she stands, now, before Shireen’s chamber door. She does not know what she will do. She does not know what she will say.
There is no answer to her knock. Asleep, she tries to tell herself. Asleep.
And indeed, her daughter is asleep. Asleep in rocky coils, her head resting in the shadow of a statue’s wing. Her eyes move under their lids, lost in dream. She does not hear her mother’s voice, because Selyse does not make a sound.
She is silent, frozen, as the thing curled around her daughter opens one golden eye.
v.
Catelyn has little to say to Lord Stannis as they wait for Renly to arrive. They exchange greetings, but his voice is distant, his eyes still scanning the horizon. There is no fear in him that she can see, but something about him is desperately sad.
He had half-raised Lord Renly, she remembers.
Finally, riders approach, and then more. Stannis tenses his hand on his sword. Catelyn can see at least two dozen horsemen behind Renly, each in shining armor and bearing bright insignias as though they were at a tourney. Estermont, Morrigen, Selmy, Tarth… High houses of the Stormlands, and some of the Reach as well.
Renly raises both hands as soon as his horse slows. “We bear no arms, brother.”
“Brother.” The word is a festering wound.
The red hooded woman speaks. “You address your k-“
“Indeed I do.” Renly sleekly dismounts, throwing back his arm to the gathered riders behind him. Two follow suit, and others stare around them. “Lords all! May I present to you Stannis, first of his name, King of the Andals, the First Men and the Rhoynar, Defender of the realm!”
Renly kneels. And then he smiles.
“Brother. I have brought you your army.”