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The heir of Storm’s End is not as Davos expects. He has never met Robert Baratheon, but all say he is the Laughing Storm come again, tall and lusty and godlike in his rages. Some would have the stag over the dragon’s hungry flames, but kings seem a distant thing in the cold dark hollow of Storm’s End.
Davos goes to a knee on the damp stone. He’s never held audience with a nobleman before, only pirate princes with peacock feather crowns. He’d seen Queen Rhaella once, racing another orphan boy up the Street of Looms. At ten, Davos had imagined the queen to be beautiful, a creature strange and sublime, with moonglow hair and amethyst eyes.
He’d been childishly and cruelly disappointed by the pale, plain, unhappy woman he glimpsed in the gilded litter. The queen had been bloated with one of her many ill-fated pregnancies, though Davos had no understanding of such things yet. Not until Marya, her belly swollen with child and her ankles aching. As he massaged those strong, callused feet, her soft eyes caressed him and found no fault, many as they were.
There is nothing soft about the heir of Storm’s End. The rebel’s brother is a stiff young man in a too-large doublet, staring at Davos in bewilderment. His eyes are huge in his gaunt face, and very blue. “Who are you?”
“Davos, m’lord,” he answers simply. “I bring salted fish and onions.”
The youth blinks slowly at that, his heavy brows pinched together. In the black of night, torchlight plays strangely in the hard angles of his face. He seems in one instant eight-and-ten; the next, eighty. Most worryingly, he does not look grateful; Davos begins to sweat.
“So you have.” The lord turns to his grey-robed maester, a shivering old man who cannot weigh much more than his chain. “Cressen. Gather men to unload.”
The maester scurries off at once, chain jingling. The torchlight shifts, and the lord is young again. Davos crouches, knee aching, as the youth takes in his ship. The midnight sails are trembling in the queer, whistling winds that sneak up the tunnel, and the hull gives a shudder. A storm was gathering in the distance when he slipped into the hidden bowels of the castle, thunder growling behind the cage of clouds. Davos has known it since the evening, when the sun fell from the sky as ripe and red as a blood orange.
“Why have you come?” Lord Stannis asks. There are a dozen guardsmen to his back, mantled in gold and bristling with steel. Davos’ own crew are creeping along the gunwale, palming their dirks and daggers. The Mad Myrman is humming some ironborn reaving song, rings glittering on his fingers like eyes of a hundred colors. Though Davos had delivered them from Lord Paxter Redwyne’s prowling warships, the feat had puckered them all. Not a few are surely furious with him, though they love him too well to say so.
“I knew a starving man would pay the best price,” Davos answers, before he can think better of it.
To his shock, the youth smiles, if the dry twist of his mouth can be called such. “An honest answer. That I have missed sorely. Rise, onion smuggler. Fetch me a barrel.”
As if by magic, one comes rolling down onto the carved stone quay. Davos rises and pries it open, feeling as frightened and giddy as a maid on her wedding night. The salt within is white as fresh snowfall, studded with slabs of cod and haddock.
Lord Stannis makes a bed for one such morsel on a cloth-of-gold kerchief. A stag dances in one corner, picked out in beads of polished jet. A fine thing, besmirched with a curl of common greyish herring.
The young lord stares at it for a long moment, his countenance as strange and slack as a man half in dreams, but it resolves into a thunderous scowl. He all but crumples the fish in his fist. “Come,” Lord Stannis barks.
Like a dog, Davos follows.
The youth leads him up a long, twisting stair, past a black iron portcullis, and into a sprawling courtyard. The night air is cool and crisp, the moon’s white eye shut, but already the sky is softening with the promise of dawn. As the hour of the nightingale spreads her wings, a lone washerwoman emerges to draw water from the well. She scurries away at sight of her lord, and the bucket is left perched on the well’s stone lip. Lord Stannis drinks from it, swallowing deep from his cupped hands.
Davos remembers that trick from when he was small: water on an empty stomach is wretched at first, but it soothes the pangs, at least for a time. The youth does not ask Davos if he should like a drink, and they march on.
It is up another narrow stair, then across a covered bridge, spanning the inner bailey to the great drum tower. With its jagged battlements, it seems like some god’s gauntleted fist, thrust up into the heavens. Davos looks down, to the earthly things he knows, and sees that there are no horses in the stables. Nor does he hear any hounds barking in the kennels. “Have you any mutinies?” he asks unwisely.
For all his vices, Roro Uhoris had never been cruel enough, nor Cobblecat’s straits dire enough, to give men such notions. As a captain in his own right, Davos has never tasted that bitter dish and prays that he never shall.
“The master-at-arms,” Lord Stannis answers shortly. His eyes are fixed straight ahead, as if he were looking down some long tunnel. “And three knights. They thought to sneak out a postern gate to surrender. I would’ve had them loaded into a catapult and hurled at the Tyrell host, but my maester convinced me otherwise.”
“Oh,” Davos says. They walk the circumference of the drum tower and back across another spider’s web of bridges. The seaward side of the castle is slick with spray, and Davos can taste the salt thick in the air. Shrouded in mist, Lord Stannis seems a shade from a story of old, ancient and melancholy.
Before them, the sun is rising. It dapples the waves in autumn hues of gold and amber, though spring has hardly begun. Stannis does not seem a man to linger, but Davos would not stir him from his vigil. There is a soft, distant look on his face, his dark eyes aglow with sunlight. A new day is always a pretty sight, dancing sweetly up the Narrow Sea.
Below, the waves thunder against the high stone walls, steady as a beating heart. The sound is deep and resonant, raising all the hair on the back of Davos’ neck, but there is no malice in it. Shipbreaker Bay had sundered lords and ladies, kings and princes, but it had seen Davos the smuggler safely to her bosom. It is not oft he feels beloved by the gods, but just then, he feels cradled in their tender hands.
At last, Lord Stannis seems to wake. He gives Davos a sharp glare, as if he were the one to tarry, and marches swiftly away.
As Davos follows, the smell of salt lessens, and the catwalk grows dull and dry. The sun soaks through the back of his brown woolen cloak to warm him. His stomach rumbles for a morning meal, but it seems an embarrassing, petty thing in face of the castle’s famine.
As if in reply, when at last Lord Stannis stops again, it is at the lip of the leeward curtain wall. At its foot, the fields are green and a breakfast bounty is being laid. The smells are too far to reach them, but Davos can see long trestles heaped high. There are colorful blots of fruits and trenchers of stew lining the tables like brown ants, garlanded in greenery. The blurry golden shapes of great roasts and basted birds sit at the center, all framed by radiant banners: Rowan, Redwyne, Tyrell himself.
Looking down at them, Stannis at last unwraps his salt fish. The taste can only be horrid, but he digs into it at once with soldierly determination.
“It is best soaked overnight and stewed, m’lord,” Davos offers, but the youth isn’t listening: he’s pecking off strained bites like a gull at a carcass. When it is done, Lord Stannis sucks the salt from his fingers, smiling faintly. It is not like the smile he gave Davos; it is small and mean and satisfied.
With that, the youth balls up the fish’s wrapping and drops it from between the crenels. The golden silk unravels as it falls, opening like a bird’s wings to catch the wind. Davos watches its flight, down and down, until it lands softly in the dew-bright grass. Somewhere amongst the Reach’s host, musicians are blaring horns, loud and gay.
By the time they return to the yard, word of his cargo has spread. Men scurry about like mice, squeaking over a wheel of fresh cheese. Lord Stannis does not seem to hear them. He is floating somewhere north of the castle, his spit-damp fingers twitching restlessly.
“Are you still hungry, m’lord?” Davos asks, though it is a foolish question. Of course he is. Even in the pits of Flea Bottom, Davos has seldom seen such hunger.
“No,” the youth declares. It can only be a lie, but his voice rings with certainty. It is a truth of his own making, Davos suspects, as if the world were something he could bend to his will. Lord Stannis’ black velvet cloak speaks for him, swirling behind him and grasping at Davos’ legs like a desperate starveling.
Though the day is blazing and blustery, inside the castle is dim and dreary. Davos can still hear the distant, angry ocean battering at the walls, tolling at the castle’s door like some tireless giant. Safe from its fury are halls of hunting tapestries, shuttered rooms full of covered furniture, dazzling mosaics of seabattles and storms, gleaming gold and centuries-old silvered treasures beyond count.
Storm’s End is a castle of kings, Davos remembers suddenly. It twists and twines around them like a living thing—a sea snake of grim grey stone. He feels small and unworthy in its coil, as much a mouse as the men in the yard.
In one hall, Elenei, wife of Durran Godsgrief, looms before him in a profusion of seed pearls and silk, her abalone eyes winking in the torchlight. The drapery stretches so high that the froth of her hair is lost in gloom. She is what Davos had imagined of Queen Rhaella Targaryen: as lovely and lofty as the clouds in the sky, far beyond his reach.
Below Elenei’s outstretched hands, a door flings itself open. It slams against the wall, startling Lord Stannis so badly his teeth clack together. In runs a child in a great green cloak, trailing a handful of colorful ribbons.
Davos blinks at him. Unlike everyone else in the castle, from the lowliest scullion to the lord himself, the child is apple-cheeked and smiling. This is how the sons of lords ought to look, Davos thinks. Like they’ve never known hunger.
“Look!” the child demands, shoving his fistful of ribbon in Lord Stannis’ frowning face. “The maester says we can make a maypole.”
Stannis bats them away. “Go then, to Cressen.”
“I don’t want to go!” The boy whines and kicks. “You can’t make me! You’re not my mother! Lorna says I don’t have a mother, but everyone has a mother.” The boy suddenly looks uncertain, almost afraid. “Don’t I have a mother?”
Stannis’ face does not soften. “You had one, but she died.” It is said so plainly that Davos winces. The boy is younger than Dale or Allard, but he does not cry.
Instead, he turns to Davos. The boy’s eyes are a peculiar shade of blue, almost green, and full of childish curiosity. “Do you have a mother?”
“I did, once, m’lord,” Davos answers honestly. “But she died, too.” He does not remember her, the smell of her hair or the shape of her smile, but all boys have a mother. Even orphan boys from Flea Bottom. Even little lords.
“Out, Renly,” Lord Stannis commands, with something that must be, for him, gentleness.
Rather than obeying, the boy draws his cloak up around himself stubbornly. There’s an Estermont turtle stitched on the seafoam satin in beads of dark jade, and it’s so long that even doubled over, it drags on the ground. “I won’t.”
Stannis’ teeth grind together. “I am your lord. You must do what I tell you.”
“You’re not the lord,” Renly asserts. “Robert is.”
“I’m your brother,” Stannis grits out. “So you still must listen to me.”
“I don’t have a brother!” the boy declares shrilly, running from the room. The ribbons fly behind him in a fluttering rainbow.
In his wake, Stannis looks impossibly weary, as old as the Crone. Were he not a lord, only a ship’s lad, Davos would’ve put a hand on the sharp jut of his shoulder. He wonders if there is anyone in the castle who could presume to do so.
“Come,” Lord Stannis demands, rubbing a knuckle between his eyes. “I would eat.”
The room the youth leads him to is not the grand feasting hall Davos had imagined, with a hundred torches burning and a soaring dais on which to sit. It is a small, servant’s kitchen, the walls arrayed with knives and skillets. Already, barrels of salt fish and onions are being wheeled in, though their bearers flee from Lord Stannis.
He and Davos sit together at a rickety table, the top scored and pockmarked. Small windows are set in the immense walls above them, though the glass is thick and cloudy to withstand sea and storm. The morning sun fills them with a golden glow, spilling out to gild smuggler and lord alike.
Stannis digs into another fish like it is some dire indulgence, though the cook had at least the kindness to wash off the crust of salt. He eats methodically, pulling the needle-thin bones from his lip and lining them up in a neat row. Even after it is done, he straights them mindlessly, seeming lost in a trance.
“How old are you, m’lord?” Davos asks.
Stannis blinks at him slowly. Some of his lordly repose has slipped in his stupor, but Davos can see him snatch it back, straightening proudly. “That is not for you to ask.”
He’s swaying, just a little. Davos feels a pang for him. The bones of Stannis’ face press through his thin, sallow skin, and the set of his jaw is hard and unyielding. Twenty, Davos judges, likely less.
His lordship dislikes being observed and rises at once. Davos suspects that even fed, Lord Stannis would be gawky and gangling, in the way of striplings. Davos has always been small and slight, and he despaired of it as a child. It made him quick and mean and worse. He would be half a monster now, he fears, were it not for Marya.
Lord Stannis is no monster, but nor is he a man for much ceremony. “For your service, I would knight you,” he declares, gesturing flippantly at the window. Shipbreaker Bay is a dark blur beyond; the storm is coming. “There will be no shortage of forfeit after the war is done, so pick what land you would from Cape Wrath. Within reason.”
Davos can only stare at him. What is reasonable, to a lord? Ten acres? A hundred? A keep? He had imagined some huge chest of gold, something he could snatch up and soar away with it. Davos thinks of some stately keep, of Marya warm in a fine woolen gown, of Dale and Allard and Matthos with a name to carry, and finds that he cannot speak.
“There must be punishment as well,” the youth adds, almost as an afterthought.
Davos nods. It is a relief. Nothing is given; all must be paid. Otherwise, he should have gone in fear forever, waiting for the gods to balance the scales.
“King Jaehaerys I decreed that smugglers ought to be fined ten dragons for every one that was ill-gotten. King Aerys would have smugglers hanged from the royal docks, as a warning to all who would flaunt the crown’s laws. Those kings between them ordered a hand, two, a tongue, a cropped ear.” None of it seems to suit Lord Stannis. “I would have the tip of each finger on your left, smuggler. Save for the thumb. I would judge that fair, for your crimes.”
“That is fair,” Davos agrees.
A flash of relief slips out from behind Stannis’ lordly mask, but he turns away and fetches down a butcher’s cleaver. The handle is plain wood, the blade freshly sharpened. “It will be cleaner this way.”
Davos knows it for a kindness and spreads his hand obligingly on the table top. A prize so rich can only demand a lord’s ransom; a few fingertips feels near beggarly.
Stannis stands before him. There is a furrow between his brows and a faint tremor in his arm. Davos wonders if he has ever dispensed such justice before. His own heart is thundering against his ribs, but he feels strangely fearless. Not courageous, in that ringing, resolved way, but languid and lulled. It is well-deserved, well-earned, and he knows the young lord will not take more than his due.
“You might sit, if it is easier,” Davos offers when he hesitates.
Stannis’ jaw clenches. “I will do this in the proper way.” And then the knife is there, biting deep.
It hurts, as Davos knew it would, a red roar that deafens him to the world and all good sense. Agony crashes into him in towering waves, as if he held the center of the sea in his palm. It drags him down to some low place, drowning him again and again. At length, when his wits gather themselves, he is staring up at the maester, the man Cressen.
“I have given you milk of the poppy, for the pain,” the maester explains slowly, like soothing a child. Davos feels like one, born new and innocent with the caul still clinging to his hair. Or mayhaps he is the mother, bleeding and aching and heedless with triumph.
The young lord watches the maester’s needle with an intent, unreadable expression. He fiddles with Davos’ severed fingertips as he had the fishbones, fashioning them in an orderly line. The sight makes Davos laugh. Lord Stannis flushes and snatches his hands away.
For once, he looks like the boy he is. Even his ears are red, Davos thinks, drunk with it. “It was well-done, m’lord,” he tells him. “I am grateful.”
“I am not ungenerous,” Stannis replies stiffly. Plainly, the praise makes him uncomfortable.
Even after the maester leaves, the butcher’s cleaver remains. Wiped clean of blood, it is cozied up beside a small pile of onions. They are hard, ugly, half-rotten things, but Davos fumbles for one. The sky rumbles outside, as hungry as he is.
Davos holds the onion still with the palm of his maimed hand, whilst the other takes up the knife. He can feel the giddy smile on his lips, even as his missing fingers pulse with pain. The onion splits evenly, the inside pearlescent and gleaming like a cracked oyster.
He takes one half. Without a word, Stannis takes the other. There is some faint flicker in his eyes, something young and soft in his old, stern face. Hope, Davos thinks, taking a great bite.
The onion crunches between his teeth, at once sour and the sweetest thing in all the world.