Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

All of this for a punch and a kick.

Prince Baelor might have promised him that he would keep his head, and indeed his teeth, but a hand and a foot- It would mean nothing but a longer, slower, crueller death, he knew. Without one or the other, he might still be able to scratch out some kind of a living, even if it meant the end of his knighthood. To lose both- It would reduce him to beggary, he knew. If it came to that- if it came to that, he would rather lose his head, and end it quickly.

Trial by combat might amount to the same thing. Dunk had size and strength on his side, but- little else to recommend him, and Prince Aerion must have trained with the best masters in the Seven Kingdoms-

It did not seem to have availed his royal cousin much, a treacherous thought whispered in the back of his mind. And surely Prince Valarr would have had Baelor Breakspear himself for a teacher, as well as all the great knights and masters-at-arms the Red Keep could boast.

How good a knight are you, truly?

No knight at all, was the answer. But his knighthood was all that would save him now, and- shamefully, Dunk didn’t want to see the look in Prince Baelor’s eyes when he admitted that he had lied, had somehow convinced the prince to vouch for a lie, to put his own word and his own honour at hazard to prop up Dunk’s desperate grasping at the one thing he had ever really wanted.

“There is one final alternative,” Prince Baelor said, his voice low and measured, his mismatched eyes never leaving Dunk’s face. There was something to those eyes, something that caught and held, and would not let a man go, one brown and one an eerie near-violet, lighter than Egg’s. “When I spoke with the steward to learn your name, after our first meeting-”

That was right, Dunk thought, he’d never- the Prince had vouched for him, even not knowing his name. Gratitude and shame boiled up both at once, thick enough to choke him, and an odd sort of desperate tenderness at the thought of it, that Baelor- that the Prince had taken such a chance on him, even knowing so little.

“-he told me that you introduced yourself to him as ‘Ser Dunk’, before you gave him the name of ‘Ser Duncan the Tall’. Is that your true name?”

Dunk swallowed, hard. He hadn’t meant- He hadn’t thought it mattered, really. Plummer the steward had been right, ‘Ser Dunk’ wasn't a name anyone would take seriously, nor a knight any lord would want serving them. He hadn’t done anyone harm by it, but the prince looked so intent, as if the fate of the whole realm might turn on his answer.

“‘Tis,” he said thickly. It wasn’t as though he’d have very many more bits for them to cut off him, either way, once Aerion had taken his hand and foot. If lying about his name to sound knightlier were as serious an offence as that, they would be hard pressed to find any worse ways to punish him.

“Your only name?” the prince pressed. “You remember no other, even from earliest childhood?”

“No.” Dunk stared down at his hands. “I was born in Flea Bottom, your grace. My mother left when I was small, and I never knew my father. Might’ve been she wasn’t even my mother, I was never- I was that young when she left. If ‘Dunk’ were ever meant to be short for anything, she never called me by it. It was more of a name than many others had. If Ser Arlan had taken Ferret or Pudding instead, they’d have had a harder time of it-”

“No doubt,” the prince said, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards like he was trying to control a smile. “Be at ease, ser. You have done no wrong.” The hint of a smile faded from his face. “...I am afraid I must ask one thing more of you. You need not answer against your wishes, but if this last alternative is to be considered, I must needs have an answer.”

“Your grace?”

“Do you know what name is written on your arm?”

For a moment, Dunk did not know what the prince meant, and then- His hand went, involuntarily, to his sleeve, the place where the mark lay hidden beneath clothes and wrappings, unseen by anyone since he had shown it to one of the septons back in Flea Bottom, all those years ago.

“‘Baelor’,” he said. “I- the name is- it’s ‘Baelor’, your grace, but that doesn’t mean- there are- there must be a dozen-”

“I have met at least six, and been asked leave for the naming of seven more,” Prince Baelor said, sounding almost amused now. “I could hardly expect to be my cousin’s only namesake, and it has ever been a popular way of currying favour at court.”

My cousin, Dunk thought, wondering. He must mean Baelor the Blessed, or at least, Dunk had heard of no other royal Baelor. All the same, it was strange to hear the dead king spoken of so casually. 

“So- you know, then, that it can’t mean-” He stopped. “I mean- I’m not-”

“On its own, it might mean nothing,” Prince Baelor agreed. “Except that the name on my arm-” He was already rolling back the ornate patterned sleeve of his doublet, revealing the fine lawn shirt beneath. That was black too, Dunk noticed distantly, and found himself wondering whether the Prince ever wore any other colour. “-is ‘Dunk’.”

The prince’s forearm was paler than the rest of him, from where it had been hidden away under all those layers of heavy blacks, but the mark on it was a fresh, bright green, the colour of elm leaves. It wasn’t a long word, by the look of it, so he supposed it could well say ‘Dunk’, and he could think of no other reason why the prince would say it was. Except that that was- it was all wrong, he couldn’t- Dunk couldn’t be-

The prince was watching him now, a little furrow between his brows, as if he were waiting for something, and if the thought hadn’t been so completely absurd, Dunk would have said he looked almost anxious.

Dunk cleared his throat. “I- I can’t read, your grace,” he admitted. “Ser Arlan- could only manage a few words, and he never- there was never any reason for him to try and teach me.”

Heraldry had taken priority over letters, and Ser Arlan had drilled him relentlessly on that. Dunk nearly had by heart the names and arms of half the Riverlands, Westerlands, and Reach, and every lord of the Crownlands besides, as well as a scattering of Dornish titles picked up on campaign against the Vulture King. The  old man had kept the details in Dunk’s head with stories, and his well of those had been almost as endless as his supply of songs. There had never been any need to write any of it down - in fact, the old man had always said, it was better if Dunk couldn’t, so he could learn the skill of keeping that knowledge all in his head for when he needed it.

He might have wanted to learn, given the chance, if only to read the word that blazed across the length of his arm in ornate scrolling loops, so fanciful that it had taken the septon a moment to be able to decipher it. It certainly looked grand enough to belong to a prince- save that it was on Dunk’s arm, marking him out for his mate, and the thought of that was-

“Do you have any particular friend in the camp?” Prince Baelor asked, so gently it was almost cruel. “Anyone you would trust to tell you true, even if I ordered them otherwise? And not to speak of it, after, unless you gave them leave?”

Raymun, was Dunk’s first thought. Raymun, who held the Targaryens in nearly open contempt, who had been nothing but a friend to Dunk all this time- but then the second thoughts stole in. Could he ask that of Raymun? It was one thing for a man to talk slightingly of incestuous aliens, blood magic and tyranny in his cups in the privacy of his own tent. It was quite another to stand under the eye of a prince and perhaps have to call him a liar.

Lyonel, was his third thought. He had thought the other man liked him above half, enough maybe to witness this, and- and unlike Raymun, lesser cousin of a knightly house, Lyonel was a great lord’s son, the heir to Storm’s End, and could not be easily brushed aside.

Except.

“Why…why not speak of it?” he demanded, hating the way his voice trembled, just a little, over the words. He had heard-

You heard terrible stories, sometimes, about what nobles did if one of their sons or daughters turned up with a common-born soulmate. There was a grisly story they told around Castamere of a long-ago Lord Reyne who had hanged every lad named ‘Wat’ on his lands, lest one turn out to be the ‘Wat’ whose name was written across his daughter’s wrist. You didn’t even need to be a soulmate to be in danger, not really. Everyone knew the story of Merry Meg, how King Viserys had shipped her back to her husband as soon as he learnt of her, and how that husband had beaten her to death within the year. ‘Megette Was A Merry Maid’ was a lively, bawdy song, but Dunk had never been able to hear that awful final verse without shuddering, even before he had realised that his own soulmate was probably noble-born.

The prince would not meet his eyes.

“That- is the final option I spoke of,” he said simply. “If I announce that I have found my soulmate, and present you as such to the realm, we will have no choice by law, faith or custom but to marry. As my soulmate, and a member of House Targaryen, your decision to publicly chastise our errant nephew would be entirely permissible under the law…although not, perhaps, in his father’s eyes.”

Our errant nephew- that was strange to hear, and stranger when Dunk realised it wasn’t one of those flourishes nobles liked adding to their speech but rather that the prince meant for Aerion to become their nephew, jointly, his and Dunk’s, which was more responsibility for Aerion Brightflame than Dunk had ever wanted to bear. But- but-

“You mean to marry me?”

“If you are willing, yes.”

“But-” 

There were too many objections for Dunk to think of which he meant to get out first. But you are a prince, and I am a hedge knight. But I haven’t made my name yet, I wanted- when I found my Baelor, I wanted more to offer him than this, I wanted to be worthy of him. But you are Baelor Breakspear, and I am Dunk of Flea Bottom.

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again, struck dumb. 

“Say yes or no without fear,” the prince said sharply. “If you truly do not desire it, I-” he broke off. “I will urge my fellow judges to show mercy. I am the King’s Hand, and heir to the throne, my word carries some weight.” He grimaced. “But so does my brother’s. The risk is there. And Lord Tyrell is-” he paused, as if weighing his words carefully, even here, with no-one but Dunk to hear him. “...perhaps too eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the Iron Throne. And he is a Reacherman, with a Reacherman’s prejudices. The right of trial by combat also remains to you. Neither is as certain a path, but- should you succeed, you would be free to return to your hedges, or to take service with some other lord, if you so chose.”

It did not feel quite real. Dunk- 

Dunk had spent half his life thinking about it. Not- always, not even every day, but- every now and again, in snatched moments. He’d be tending to the horses or mending clothes or polishing armour or on a long, hot, dusty march, and the thought would just- slip into his head, of what sort of a man his Baelor might be, how they might meet.

He’d imagined it a hundred different ways. As a boy, fresh from King’s Landing and following Ser Arlan, he had watched the older squires, the young knights at every tourney, had listened as each name was announced with a sort of fizzing exhilarated anticipation bubbling up inside his chest. In the sweltering heat of the Red Mountains as they chased the Vulture King, Dunk had imagined putting his body between the formless image of Baelor, his Baelor, and one of the poison-tipped arrows the Vulture King’s followers had used against them. He would wake after days of fever and ravings, the poison coursing in him, to find a stranger by his side, and learn that he had found his soulmate all unknowing, and proven his devotion with his blood. On the way to Lannisport last year, they’d passed through Deep Den, and Dunk had hoped against hope that they might enter service there from the moment that he heard that the heir had been named ‘Baelor’, in honour of the Prince of Dragonstone. They’d only stayed in Deep Den a day and a night, in the end, and the name had turned out to be ‘Balon’, but that thought, of swearing himself to his soulmate’s service, had lingered with him through a few nights’ sweet imagining, and not a few dreams that had left him embarrassed come morning.

In none of those dreams had Baelor been- Baelor. Breakspear, Hammer, Prince, Hand.

Not even at Storm’s End, when Dunk had been sixteen and so eager to see his Ser ride against the prince. He’d missed it, in the end, for Summer, who had been Ser Arlan’s riding horse before Sweetfoot, had come down with colic and Dunk had spent three days walking her up and down in slow circles, whispering comforts to her as he went. Ser Arlan had let him do it. He’d done without a squire before, he’d do it again, and Summer had carried Ser Arlan the length and breadth of Westeros without ever once complaining. Summer had died before the tourney ended, but the money Ser Arlan had already won, and Prince Baelor’s refusal to take ransom for the old man’s arms and armour, had bought them Sweetfoot. And not once, through that entire tourney, or after, when Ser Arlan had told the story of the prince’s chivalry, had this possibility even occurred to him.

“...what happens, if I say yes?” he said slowly.

The prince seemed to consider the idea, with an odd little birdlike tilt of the head that cast new shadows across his face in the firelight. He looked- like something out of a dream, or a tale, too fine a thing for the likes of Dunk to even look at, 

“We would announce the bond, first to your other judges, and then to the rest of the tourney. I imagine gossip and rumour will do the rest. The story will likely arrive in King’s Landing before us. I- will deal with my brother, as best I can.” That little twitch of the mouth again, but- rueful, this time, and then: “I will need to present you to my father, before the preparations begin.”

“The- the King?” Dunk blurted out, wide-eyed, and immediately cursed himself. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall…

“I have no other father, ser,” the prince said, with a faint smile. His front teeth were crooked, Dunk noticed all at once. It felt- absurd, that that should make him feel better, but it did. That and the prince’s twice-broken nose, the way he was fidgeting, now, with the heavy Targaryen signet ring he wore on his left hand. It made him feel- more like just another man, though of course he could never be that, more like someone Dunk might reach out and touch, if he wanted to. No sooner had he had the thought than the image flashed through his mind: Dunk putting one of his own great clumsy paws over the prince’s hand, stilling its fidgets if only for a few moments, before it was inevitably snatched away.

“And then we-” Dunk couldn’t make himself finish the sentence. The thought was too absurd.

“And then we marry.” The prince had gone still again, except for the way he toyed with his ring, turning it around and around on his finger, spinning it so fast it was almost a blur. “The High Septon will demand it, as soon as the bond has been confirmed.” He paused again, then went on, cautious as a cat picking its way through mud. “I would not force you to my bed, nor restrict your movements, nor demand that you remain at court against your wishes. But you would not be able to return to your hedges either, or live as you have been accustomed.”

Dunk almost laughed. To live as he had been accustomed- that was gone whatever came. Gone with Ser Arlan, wherever he was now. He had come to Ashford hoping for- gods, for a place above the salt. Except that now somehow he had stumbled onto the dais, and had been offered a seat beside- beside the prince. Beside Baelor, because surely- surely he could use the name, if the prince was- if they were to- if they were going to be wed-

“This is no light matter, ser,” the prince added, not reprovingly. He sounded almost pained. “House Targaryen has many enemies - more, now, than we have had in many years. The days when the House of the Dragon needed fear only itself are long past, as little as my brother or my nephew might care to acknowledge it. By marrying me, those enemies would become yours. And there would be- other dangers.”

“I’ve heard the stories,” Dunk said grimly. “What happens to- to people like me, if our names show up on the wrong wrists.”

The prince nodded once, gravely.

“My father would not,” he said, with such assurance it was almost blinding. “But there are those at court- It is hardly a secret that, since my wife found her soulmate and our marriage was dissolved, the great houses of the Realm have been jockeying to put forward some child of theirs to replace her.”

And Dunk was only a hedge knight, with no family, no name- a piece of detritus to be swept aside. 

“Your wife’s mate,” he asked, grabbing onto the least alarming part of all that. “Are they-”

“A Manderley of White Harbour, Myriame. The wife of Lord Rodwell Stark, when they met.” 

The prince’s mouth twisted ruefully, and Dunk- caught himself grimacing sympathetically in return, because he knew little enough of highborn ways, but he’d served in enough castle garrisons with the old man to know how little the high lords liked it when their careful alliances were broken by the random chance of a bond. Men plan, and the gods laugh, the septon at Brightwater had said, when the betrothal Lord Florent had worked at for years had fallen through because Lord Tyrell’s daughter had found her soulmate in a Mallister boy met by chance at court. He’d had to be careful to say it well out of his lord’s hearing, too, because Lord Florent had been fit for boiling. He couldn’t imagine Lord Stark had been much happier to lose his wife to a royal visit, and the Dondarrion men they’d fought with in the Red Mountains had still been sour that they’d lost their chance at a future Queen, but you couldn’t argue with the will of the gods. At least, not when doing so meant offending some other highborn family who’d take it amiss if a lord had one of their children killed to keep them from being a disruption to anyone’s marriage arrangements. 

“So my choice is to die now or later.”

“You would not be without protection,” the prince said, and for a moment, his voice seemed just a touch less measured. “As one of the royal house, the Kingsguard would be sworn to defend you. As would I,” he added, with another of those rueful, oddly disarming little smiles. “That is one of the promises attendant upon marriage. And, whatever impression my nephews may have given of you of my house’s honour aside, I do keep my oaths. Or try to.”

Dunk had been to a few weddings in his time. Weddings were common occasions to be marked by tourneys, and Dunk had been sixteen before Ser Arlan had finally renounced the lists for good. He hadn’t paid much attention to the vows, but he knew the gist of them. He knew what got promised there. Protection was part of it, that was what the cloaks were for, though either he’d have to kneel down or the prince would need a stepstool to put a cloak around Dunk’s shoulders. But what was said- they always spoke of love, even at highborn weddings where everyone there knew that weren’t why any of it was happening. The first highborn wedding Dunk had ever seen, as a ragged boy of thirteen fresh from the streets of Flea Bottom, the bride had wept all through the ceremony, and still her father had said it for her, that with this kiss she pledged her love-

Baelor would say that to him, when they married, and he to Baelor. And both of them kept to their oaths, even when- even the ones they hadn’t really properly sworn.

Or- they tried, anyway. The prince had said he’d try. And Dunk- it still felt like someone had handed him a Valyrian steel sword for the first time as a squire, as the raw untrained boy he’d been when Ser Arlan took him on. Like someone had laid something priceless in his hands, more beautiful than anything Dunk had ever seen, but something that he was as like as not to end up chopping his own hands off with if he wasn’t careful with it.

That steady, unflinching gaze was still on him, the violet eye and the brown as unalike as could possibly be, and both- both beautiful, all the same. He’d never been able to decide, he remembered in a sudden rush, whether he liked light eyes or dark eyes more. Of course, he’d always told himself, he’d love his Baelor whichever sort he had- but it seemed he ought not have fretted. There had never been any need to choose.

Those eyes, and those twisted little close-mouthed smiles, the crooked dragon’s teeth, the man who had remembered Ser Arlan when no-one else had and had given Dunk a chance at his only dream without a moment’s pause when all the realm knew who the Grey Lion was, that didn’t prove anything really, and had had to swallow a smile at the thought of Dunk kicking his awful nephew in the teeth. Dunk could grow to love a man such as that, if he gave himself the chance.

“Your grace,” he said, faltering, and the prince- Baelor, his Baelor, surely Dunk had the right to call him that now, even just inside his own head. “I am your man. I- if you’ll have me.”

And then, because they could not cut it off twice, he reached out his hand, the same big, clumsy hand that had struck Aerion Brightflame, and caught the prince’s many-ringed hand in his. For a moment, Baelor stiffened, and Dunk thought that he had gone too far- and then the prince’s hand turned in his, and squeezed back. It was rougher than Dunk had expected, with the same sword-calluses as his own, and more besides, and as strong as he might have expected of the hero of the Redgrass Field. Hands that could hold a whole realm, he thought, without ever once faltering, and yet somehow small in Dunk’s own. Perhaps that was what their bond had been meant for. Baelor would protect the Seven Kingdoms, and Dunk would protect Baelor.

“If you will have me, I will be yours,” Baelor answered him, with a smile like the first pale sunlight of a winter’s morning, and though it was nothing at all like any of those hundred daydreams of finding his soulmate Dunk had entertained over the years, it was somehow better than all of them for being Baelor, and for being real.

When Baelor was a child, he had dreamed and dreamed of finding his soulmate.

Perhaps it was natural. His parents’ bond had been more than just a fortunate chance, it had been the gods’ own declaration of intent, that they wished for the endless feuding between Dorne and the Iron Throne to come to an end. So his namesake had believed, at least, and from that belief had come the foundations of an alliance, a path by which their peoples might learn to live together in peace.

He had known the story by heart before he had learnt to read enough to decipher the mark on his own arm: how the-King-his-cousin had walked barefoot and alone from King’s Landing to Sunspear, in penance for all those who had died in the first Daeron’s conquests, and there learned the name of Prince Manfrey’s daughter and heir. The betrothal had been arranged on that same extended visit, and (though Baelor’s grandfather had certainly given her many reasons to) his mother swore that she had never regretted giving up her crown and her place as her father’s heir for the sake of the other half of her soul.

Baelor had been romantic, as a child, with a head full of knights and heroes. He had followed his great-uncle the Dragonknight around like a puppy, had begged for the chance to squire for him. And so, of course, that was what he had imagined, when he had tried to picture who ‘Dunk’ might be.

As a child on Dragonstone, before Maekar had grown old enough to join him (neither Aerys nor Rhaegel having been inclined towards the sorts of games Baelor liked to play), Baelor and his soulmate had fought monsters, outlaws (both gallant and otherwise), traitors and rebels of every kind. Up and down the dimly-lit corridors, in the castle yard, between the wild roses of Aegon’s Garden (he had only fallen in the cranberry bog once)- In those childhood imaginings, Dunk had been a knight out of the songs, brave and kind and true, the soul of honour and of chivalry. Real honour, real chivalry, the sort that came of real risk, not the petty pageantry of refusing to take ransoms he had no need of anyway that would eventually make Baelor’s own reputation in the lists.

It had taken his grandfather’s court to teach him the truth of what it meant to have ‘Dunk’ written on his skin, other than Aerys laughing at it and Baelor having to knock him down and sit on him until he begged pardon for insulting the other half of Baelor’s soul. Even from his earliest childhood, Baelor remembered hating the time they spent at court. His father had not wanted to bring them there, when they were very young, though he himself spent months at a time there, arguing with his own father, doing what he could to mitigate the worst of Baelor’s grandsire’s misrule, but he could not hide them from the realm entirely, and Baelor least of all.

In those early days, the thought of Dunk had been a comfort. To Dunk, Baelor would not be a too-Dornish oddity, quite possibly a bastard (everyone at court knew, or thought they knew, what Dornish women were like, and shared that opinion loudly whenever they could plausibly claim to believe Mother could not hear them), Fireball’s favourite whipping boy and not half the squire his cousin Daemon (still Baelor’s cousin, then, still his friend, in the days before his grandfather had recognised him) was showing himself to be. Dunk was his soulmate, the gods had designed them for one another, which meant that, somehow, Baelor would be everything Dunk had ever wanted, just as Dunk would be everything Baelor longed for, just as his parents had always described.

To Dunk, Baelor would be- 

A prince. The heir to the Iron Throne, too powerful to ever be refused.

He had learnt that lesson the first night he had caught the Goldcloaks dragging a dozen smallfolk women through the lower bailey. One was still struggling in their grip, a few had bruises, some just walked numbly, staring at nothing, prodded along by hard-faced men in soiled armour. Baelor had been no older than Egg, still young enough to think being his father’s heir meant anything to the men of his grandfather’s court. He’d called out to demand what they were doing, meaning to stop them. And the Goldcloaks had told him.

By the time he was fourteen, and his grandfather was dead, Baelor had known the impossibility of those childhood daydreams. If he were to go looking for Dunk, all it would be was another iteration of what his grandfather had done to the women of King’s Landing, the King taking what he wanted from his people. Dunk would be no more able to say no than any of those women had been, and that Baelor would victimise only one person instead of dozens made it no less a horror. He had resolved to find other ways to serve his common-born soulmate, even if they could never meet. He devoted himself to learning the duties of a crown prince with such zeal it frankly alarmed his parents, pestered the Masters of the Small Council about conditions in the lower city and grew increasingly frustrated at the lack of answers they had to offer, tried to look at every petition from the commons as if Dunk were on either side of it, tried to be- worthy. The gods had surely intended something, to match him so, with someone he could never touch, never hold, never lead to the Great Sept of his namesake and put a Targaryen cloak around their shoulders.

What it seemed, now, that the gods had intended was surely their idea of a jape, but Baelor could not laugh at it.

Ser Duncan was- everything that dreaming child had imagined and more. A true knight, the sort of knight Baelor had never thought to encounter outside the confines of a song or a story. Brave enough to challenge a prince, kind enough to speak in Egg’s defence even after all the trouble the boy had caused him, true enough to his oaths to go to the defence of the puppeteer woman (no-one, as yet, had been willing or able to tell Baelor the woman’s name) without a thought to his own safety. All of this, and beautiful as well, and something in Baelor’s chest had ached when he’d learnt the knight’s true name, even before he had known how good a man the gods had made him for, at the thought that he would never be Baelor’s.

Still, he had remained certain of his course. To cloak him was to kill him, and that earnest young knight would wither and be wasted behind the walls of the Red Keep. And then had come this latest, terrible folly of Aerion’s, worse than any that had come before, and all of those good intentions had gone up in smoke.

The only protection Baelor could offer now was that of his name. Dunk - Ser Duncan - would be safe, then, from every dragon but one.

He watched the movement of Ser Duncan’s throat as he swallowed, and tried not to think of tasting the sweet thick line of it, tracing the cords of muscle there with his tongue.

“...what happens now?” Ser Duncan asked, as awkwardly as when he had gone the wrong way to leave Lord Ashford’s audience chamber, and even then, Baelor had had to bite back his smile.

Baelor met his eyes squarely, and tried to breathe through the regret.

“Now, I summon these friends of yours, to testify to our bond,” he said, trying to keep his voice even, its cadence steady. “Unless you would prefer to reveal the marks directly to Lord Ashford, Lord Tyrell, and my brother.”

And likely Aerion as well - as Duncan’s accuser he must needs be present for the trial. Possibly Daeron on the same grounds, although only if Baelor’s eldest nephew was sober enough to attend to the proceedings.

Duncan blanched.

“No- I mean. No, your-” A hard swallow. “Baelor.”

“You needn’t force yourself to anything that causes you discomfort in this,” Baelor said, trying not to think that this was the first time he had heard his own name, unadorned, from his soulmate’s lips. How much he wanted to hear it again.

Ser Duncan laughed. “I- uh- that’ll make for a change, then, but-” he visibly steeled himself. “Raymun Fossoway,” he said after a moment. “And- Ser Lyonel Baratheon. We met on the first day of the tourney, he- gave me some good advice then. I don’t think he’d steer me wrong in this. Not that- I don’t think you-”

Baelor’s hand moved to rest on Duncan’s shoulder without his conscious direction. He drew it back, and tucked his hands behind his back, the better to avoid any further temptation. 

“I know what you mean, ser,” he said. He wanted to take Duncan’s hand, run his own up the line of Duncan’s forearm, roll back the sleeve, see the mark there instead of just hearing about it. He could not, but he wanted it, so fiercely it almost hurt. The way he had wanted the victory that had won him the name of ‘Breakspear’, the way he had wanted that first breath of clean air after Redgrass, when he’d finally pulled off his helm. He could not have it, he reminded himself. Take a lesson from your namesake, Breakspear, and learn to fast. It will not kill you to go without. “I will summon them,” he said. “This is not something to be witnessed by strangers.”

“How-” Duncan cut off. “I mean- will you- Raymun, he-” he broke off again, apparently not sure how much he dared say. It was almost a relief to know he possessed even that much guile. The court would eat him alive, Baelor thought despairingly. Perhaps Ser Duncan had been right that the choice Baelor offered him was only between death now and death later, or- 

Aerion had always preferred to target the worst of his malice at those who could not fight back. There had been a string of ‘training accidents’ during his visits to the Red Keep, but- always amongst outriders, squires, those without the strength or the standing to risk a prince’s displeasure. Faced with an equal contest with a man of Ser Duncan’s evident size and strength, Aerion might yet withdraw his accusations.

He opened his mouth to say as much, but Ser Duncan got there first.

“...when you say summon them,” he asked, “What- what would that- Can I go myself, or-”

“Before the trial, that would be quite unwise,” Baelor said grimly. “We will reveal the truth of it there.” 

Before witnesses, after which Ser Duncan would be guarded as Baelor himself. If they announced it privately - and Baelor would have to give some explanation for turning Ser Duncan loose, if only to Maekar, who would then convey it to his sons, and once the secret was out it would not stop there - there was too great a risk of further attack. Aerion was a sight too convinced that the Targaryens were, as they had once styled themselves, nearer gods than men, and they were in the Reach still, the heartland of Daemon Blackfyre’s support. How many of the lords here at Ashford had a son or a cousin or a brother or a daughter hostage at the Red Keep, and how many of those would baulk at striking at Baelor’s common-born soulmate while they still could?

He had only ever sought to protect his Dunk, and yet at every turn, it seemed, Baelor only threw new dangers in his path.

“At the trial,” Ser Duncan repeated. “That- that’s to be-”

“A matter of hours away,” Baelor said. “I suggested delaying it until after the close of the jousting, that we might speak privately first.”

“Because you- you knew-”

“I suspected.” Baelor paused. “...I- cannot know, but I hope I would have done this regardless. And assisted you at trial, regardless of whether my suspicion turned out correct.”

Ser Duncan lifted his head, and his gaze met Baelor’s.

“Yes,” he said, “I mean- I think you would.”

The words scoured Baelor down to the bone. Ser Duncan- did not know him, really. His master had told him that Baelor was the soul of chivalry, all for four lances and not asking for a ransom he had neither needed nor wanted, whose value would not have amounted to a drop in the bucket of Baelor’s yearly incomes. Dunk’s own good opinion had been bought just as cheaply, just a few words and the memory of an old competitor, remembered less for his own sake than because of Baelor’s own particular mania for tourneys. Would he have intervened against Aerion, had Aegon come to him? He hoped so. But even then, it would have cost him nothing.

It would cost Ser Duncan everything. Baelor could lavish royal favour upon him, shower him with gifts and honours, wrap him in a cloak of Targaryen sable and make him a prince- but he could not set him free. How much younger than his grandfather had Bethany Bracken been? Had Lady Melissa been (only his grandfather had ever called her ‘Missy’), his parents’ friend, under whose eyes Baelor had played at knights and maidens with Gwenys and Mya? How much younger was Ser Duncan? Baelor almost didn’t dare to ask. Not less than twenty, he thought, but- Twenty was bad enough.

“I must summon the Kingsguard,” he said hoarsely, turning away. “You- may remain here. I will send Egg to you, if you are agreeable. And speak to his father, after our announcement, about arranging for him to squire for you more permanently.”

Removing Aegon from Aerion’s orbit, too, would not be a bad idea. Whatever bad blood there was between them was- worse than Baelor had realised, and he had not the least idea how to mend it, or even if it could be mended. And Aerion- he had let the problem of Aerion go too long unchecked. If Baelor had insisted on curbing the boy while his malice had been restricted to ‘accidents’ in the training yard, perhaps things would never have reached this pass. 

“I’d be glad of that.” Duncan coughed. “I- I won’t keep this from him. He’ll want to know what’s to come, with the trial-”

Baelor smiled. “I hardly think that Egg will betray us. You may tell him all you believe he should know. I would only ask that you keep him here with you, until the trial begins.”

“I can do that,” Ser Duncan said quickly. “It’ll be good to- have someone near. Has-” he cleared his throat. “...my horses, they should still be at my camp-”

“I will send someone for them.”

“Can you- ask whoever you send to tell them- tell them I’m all right,” Ser Duncan asked, his voice halting. “The horses, I mean. I know it’s- Ser Arlan used to say it was mad, but- just so they know.”

Baelor closed his eyes, overcome with an absurd rush of fondness. It was- it was ridiculous, horses- perhaps responded to a tone of voice or a learned command, but Baelor was quite sure they understood even less than dogs did, but- all the same, it was desperately sweet. And- young, gods help him, Ser Duncan was so young, in a way Baelor didn’t think he’d ever been. 

“I will tell them,” he promised, and left the room before he could say or do anything even more ill-advised. Aegon was quickly found - he had, of course, been trying to listen at the door, for all that it was solid oak and not easily listened through - and seemed relieved to be sent in to join Ser Duncan in the safety of the solar. Baelor- had no real answer for him, when he asked if Ser Duncan was going to be all right, and Egg stared at him narrowly for a long moment before slipping in to join his knight-master. Dunk’s strongest champion, Baelor thought, with a little pang, and composed himself, and went to find the Kingsguard.

It was Ser Donnel he found first, and dispatched him to find and bring to Baelor Raymun Fossoway, whoever that was (Baelor’s knowledge of the houses of the Reach was thorough, but had mostly covered the principal members of each house, which were related to which noble hostages at court, and any notable relations they might expect him to remember), and Lyonel Baratheon, who needed no clarification.

And then, he went to Maekar.

Maekar had retreated to the rooms set aside for him. They were not quite as fine as the lord’s chambers, which had been given over to Baelor for the duration of this visit in a frankly extravagant show of hospitality, but everywhere Baelor could see the signs of exhaustive preparation for the castle to host a royal prince. He wondered how Lord Ashford was paying for all of this. Hosting a tourney at all was expensive, and they had been hosted so lavishly that Baelor found himself wondering if their hosts meant to beggar themselves just to boast that they had once hosted six Targaryen princes beneath their roof. Aunt Elaena, no doubt, would have had some explanation, but she was in King’s Landing, and by the time he saw her again, doubtless they would all have other things to concern them.

Maekar did not seem to notice any of their hosts’ efforts, however, and Baelor added thanking them for their consideration to the list of tasks that would need attending to before they left Ashford. His brother was pacing the outer chamber like a caged beast, clearly in a boiling temper, and he rounded on Baelor as he came in.
“Well?” he demanded. “Did you get what you wanted from the hedge knight who kidnapped my son?”

It took a moment for Baelor to collect himself.

“...I am not yet convinced that he has.”

Maekar made an outraged noise. “I am well-aware of Daeron’s failings, but he wouldn’t lie about that. I don’t doubt that he buried himself in drink rather than pursuing the man. I can’t even fucking blame him, the fucker’s about three times your size-”

Baelor truly wished his brother hadn’t said that, because the image that had flashed through Baelor’s head at the words was- Neither appropriate, nor helpful, under the circumstances, and made Baelor very glad of his long houpelande and the concealment it offered. 

“-but Aegon was found with the man, wasn’t he? So we know that he took Aegon-”

“Aegon says otherwise.”
“Aegon is fucking nine!” his brother snarled. “Maybe the brute cozened him away instead of carrying him off, although how is fucking beyond me-”

Baelor once again spared a moment to regret having taught Maekar the word ‘fuck’ in the first place. It was a perfectly good word, as words went, but there were other obscenities, Maekar hardly needed to repeat just that one.

“-but it’s still a fucking kidnapping!”

“According to Aegon, he followed Ser Duncan to the trial on a lamb cart after Ser Duncan refused to take him from the inn.”

Maekar snorted. “‘Ser Duncan’,” he repeated sourly. “You still claim to believe his story about Ser Aeron of-”

“Arlan. Ser Arlan of Pennytree.” 

“Some random fucking hedge knight who happened to break lances with you once gods only know how many years ago at some benighted-”

“Storm’s End,” Baelor corrected, “And it was only nine years ago. Ser Duncan must have been a squire himself at the time.”

He caught himself wondering how, then, Ser Duncan had chanced to mistake the number of lances, but- tales grew in the telling, as much for observers as participants. And the story had plainly been a cherished one. Baelor had not known Ser Arlan of Pennytree, they had spoken only once, when the hedge knight had come to ask about the ransom of his horse and armour, but it spoke well of him, that his squire was so protective of his memory.

“Assuming he was ever a squire,” Maekar muttered darkly. “He has a rope for a belt!”

That would need to be remedied. Baelor caught himself wondering which colours Ser Duncan would favour, given the choice. He had watched the jousting, but Ser Duncan had not yet entered the lists for Baelor to see what new device he had chosen for himself- and it did not matter, because if this succeeded, he would likely never see Ser Duncan again, and if it failed- then a new swordbelt would be the least of Ser Duncan’s concerns.

“I am quite convinced of the truthfulness of his account,” Baelor said instead. He had been certain of that since Ser Duncan had corrected him, however wrongly, about the lances at Storm’s End.

Maekar snorted. “Of course you are,” he said scathingly. “Gods forbid you should ever make a mistake, even just about vouching for some no-name fucking hedge knight at this miserable little circus in the very back of beyond. He assaulted one of my sons - maybe two, if Daeron’s story can be relied upon-”

“He seems remarkably uninjured, for having been assailed by a man twice my size, brother.”

“-and still you fucking vouch for him! Nobody will even remember that you vouched for him after, so I don’t know why you’re being so fucking precious about it-”

“What Aerion was doing-”

Maekar made a dismissive gesture. “He rebuked some fucking Blackfyre-”

“He publicly assaulted the woman before a crowd. We came here to try and mend relations with the Reach after the rebellion, and this latest folly of Aerion’s has destroyed all hope of restoring our reputation. Far too many in the Reach think of House Targaryen as actively hostile to their interests - our failure to arrange even one Reacher marriage-”

“You’re not looking for your soulmate, you’ve said so a hundred fucking times, why don’t you marry one, then?”

The words ought not have had the force of a slap, but Baelor reeled from them, all the same.

“That is not what I-”

“If you or Father try and shove some fucking Reacher whore into my bed before Dyanna is even cold-”

“No-one is suggesting any such thing!” Baelor snapped. “For either one of us. And if we had any hope of one for Aerion, this display-”

“The woman was spreading treason-”

“Aegon says otherwise.”

“Aegon is still fucking nine!” Maekar retorted, his voice rising to a yell. “He saw a pretty story about a knight slaying a fucking dragon, you know how he is about knights, and he didn’t see anything else!”

That- could actually be true, Baelor reflected. Except that without having seen the puppet show himself, he had no way of confirming it, and- even if that were so, assaulting the puppeteer would only have confirmed the opinion such a performance would seek to elicit from its audience. But a troupe of Dornish puppeteers seemed an odd vehicle, if this were a Blackfyre plot, or even just the long-entrenched distaste for Targaryen power that had long prevailed in the Reach. Small wonder Daemon had found such support here - the region seemed quite overburdened with overmighty vassals, each of whom felt quite convinced that their own ties back to the Gardener kings entitled them to rule from Highgarden. Baelor had his doubts of the Tyrells as well. Leo Longthorn had not been able to muster in time to join them at the Redgrass, when he of all lords ought to have been forewarned of Daemon’s intentions, given how overwhelmingly his vassals had taken the Black Dragon’s side. The forces of the Vale had reached them in good time, but not the Lord of Highgarden. But Baelor had no proof, just suspicion, and once the battle was won- then the Tyrells had become the staunchest allies of House Targaryen, striking down their own bannermen in service to the crown.

“If we are to name the telling of Serwyn of the Mirror Shield as treasonous, then I fear we must behead half the realm. Starting with myself and Matarys. You know it was always his favourite story.”

He had hoped the reminiscence would soften Maekar, a little, the way speaking of the days when all their children had been small often did, but his brother only scoffed, and hunched deeper into himself, crossing over to lean against the mantelpiece and glower into the fire.

“Aerion wouldn’t have hurt her if he didnt have good reason,” he said at last.

Baelor stared at his brother’s back, and only wished that he had the luxury of incredulity.

“Would he not? He has done it before.”
“Don’t fucking-” Maekar waved a hand, as if trying to waft away the stench of his son’s misdeeds. “A few accidents in the yard-”

“One accident may be seen as a misfortune,” Baelor agreed levelly. “Two might be simple carelessness. The third, fourth and fifth-”

“Like you didn’t have ‘accidents’ in the yard when we were boys!”

“Those are not the kind of accidents I was speaking of.”

He could hear the edge coming into his own voice now. Yes, there had been ‘accidents’. Baelor had suffered more of them than most. His grandfather had always delighted in seeing Baelor sprawled in the dirt at some other squire’s feet, and Quentyn Ball had known what he wanted well enough to know that his best route to it was to please the King.

Maekar growled.

“You sound like Aegon,” he accused. “Like that business with the fucking cat all over again. All of you, just looking for excuses - it’s not my son’s fucking fault that yours can’t fucking joust!”

Baelor blinked. “Cat-?”

“Some childish quarrel,” Maekar said dully. “I don’t- it was after Dyanna.”

Baelor’s gaze flicked away, remembering, or trying not to remember. Losing Dyanna had- broken something in Maekar that Baelor hadn’t known could break until she was gone. Afterwards, Maekar had been- it still chilled Baelor, remembering how hollowed-out his brother had been in the aftermath. Some of the fire had rekindled itself in Maekar, in the year and a half since his wife’s death, but not enough. Baelor had hoped the tourney would afford them some time to spend together, to see for himself how his brother was faring, but between Daeron and Aegon’s disappearance, and now this business with Aerion, it seemed to have been a fool’s hope.

He tried to gather his own arguments.

“This isn’t about Valarr. We were speaking of Aerion, and his actions.”

“I thought we were talking about your pet hedge knight!”

“That is not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” Maekar snorted. “Vouching for him, letting him get away with-”

“A little harmless discourtesy. The man was hardly trained to treat with princes. And his wish for your sons was…kindly meant, I think, if impolitic.” Baelor had not known Ser Duncan long and, gods willing, would not grow to know him better, but that the man was kind, he knew quite well. 

“Kindly meant, really? Is my son’s word not enough for you-”

“Aegon is your son also, is he not?” Baelor retorted, more sharply than he had meant. “Did you not trust him to act as Daeron’s squire-”

“Clearly I fucking shouldn’t have, if he was so easily lured away,” Maekar grumbled. “Who knows what the hedge knight meant to do with him. Ransom, if we were lucky. If we weren’t-”

“We have no proof of that.”

“Why do you care so much about this fucking hedge knight?” Maekar demanded. “Even if you’ve taken Aerion in dislike for some reason, he’s still your own fucking blood! What is this Ser- whatever the fuck his name was to you?”

Half myself. The words were heavy on Baelor’s tongue, but he could not force them out. If he said them, that would be an end to this. Maekar- Maekar would understand. He had been so devoted to Dyanna that, even now, even after so many too-convenient ‘accidents’ and kitchen cats going missing and dogs ‘killed on the hunt’, he would not see the child of his that most resembled her for the monster Baelor feared he had become. He would sooner believe that Baelor harboured some deep dark dislike of the little boy who had dragged him on fishing excursions on the shores of Dragonstone and asked for scary stories of Maegor the Cruel and his Black Brides than that Aerion had done anything to warrant concern. If Baelor told him Ser Duncan the Tall was Dunk, his Dunk…he might be angry, but he would accept it. And Ser Duncan would have no further hope of escape. 

Until the word was out, there was still a chance that Ser Duncan might return to his hedges or- enter some other service, or- that he would not be shackled to a man nearly twice his age, greying and war-weary and part of a family that had already wronged Ser Duncan twice. Even if Baelor himself were acceptable to Duncan, because of his master’s unearned praise or the legend that had grown up around him since the Redgrass (and that thrice-damned song that had turned ‘host of Dornish spearmen’ into a euphemism for half the court), he had seen the look on Ser Duncan’s face at the thought of having any familial connection to Aerion. Nor could Baelor blame him for that. And that without knowing, because how could he, how unforgiving a place the court could be. Better now than in his grandfather’s day, because it could scarcely be worse, but still a nest of adders. 

“Even if the puppet show were treasonous, Ser Duncan did not know of it,” he said, rather than answer his brother’s question. “Aegon went to him, and told him that his brother was assaulting this woman. Ser Duncan merely acted on the information Aegon gave him.”

Maekar gave him a scornful look. “Did the hedge knight fucking tell you that?”

“Actually, I had it from Aegon. As I have had most of this story. We are inexpressibly fortunate that Ser Duncan was the knight he chose to follow, and not some less honourable man-”

“I’m sure the fucking hedge knight would love for you to believe that!” Maekar snapped, straightening up to glare at him. “Aegon is nine. I don’t doubt he went with the man willingly enough, for whatever purpose the hedge knight had for him. It wouldn’t have taken much, Aegon has been- you know how Aegon has been, since Dyanna. I don’t- know where I’ve gone wrong with him. And once the knight had him away from Ashford, we might never have found him again until Bittersteel turned up at our gates with an army and my son as hostage! Are you that incapable of admitting that you made a fucking mistake?”

“I can admit my faults,” Baelor said steadily, trying to remember the last time he had done so. “But I do not believe I am mistaken now.”

“Of course you don’t.” Maekar made a revolted noise. “You know nothing about this man! You met him two days ago, and what you saw in him then I don’t know, asked him a question any beggar off the street could answer before granting him your patronage, put up with more fucking insolence than even Father would have tolerated, and now take his side over your own nephew! He nearly knocked half of Aerion’s teeth out, Daeron swears on whatever it is he has that passes for his honour that the man abducted Aegon, and I know what he is, but Daeron loves his brother! He wouldn’t lie if Aegon were in trouble! And you stand there and tell me that I am lucky that it was this fucking hedge knight who abducted and brutalised my sons?”

Baelor grimaced. His brother’s voice had risen nearly to a shout, he was breathing heavily, and his eyes were wild. There would be no more reasoning with Maekar in this state, and likely it would only waste his breath to try.

 “I take that to mean you will not speak with Aerion about withdrawing his accusations.”

“Of course I fucking won’t-!”

“Then I had better leave you for the evening. There are- witnesses that I will need to speak with, before the trial.”

It was the truth, if you looked at it from the right angle and squinted, but Baelor didn’t know how to wrap his words around the whole of it. What it had been to hear Dunk’s name from the steward, his agonies over it, the news of Aerion’s latest grotesque, evil folly…and who had stepped in to stop him. The awful thing he had done to save Ser Duncan’s life, that he could not even truly regret, not if it saved Dunk, even knowing that he should-

Maekar- Maekar would not understand it. His brother was no fool, but he was- straightforward. Whereas Baelor, as Rhaegel had been known to complain, seemed to think in corkscrews. To Maekar, the answer would be obvious: the gods, whether that was the Seven, the Fourteen, the Old Gods of the North or some stranger, foreign power, had designed Baelor and Ser Duncan for one another, and so they must honour that. It was what Maekar and Dyanna had done, quite throwing out all their fathers’ planned marriage arrangements in the process. Baelor ought not have spoken about the potential of a Reacher marriage, that reminder had always galled his brother, and all the moreso, since Dyanna’s death had briefly reopened the question.

Maekar snorted. “Some fucking rabble there to gawk at my son being thrown in the dirt?” he muttered sourly.

Baelor considered what he knew of Lyonel Baratheon.

“...something like that. Please, give my apologies to Lord Ashford. I shall not delay him much longer.”

“I don’t know why you’re delaying at all,” Maekar grumbled. “Probably the man’s not even a proper knight, even if he did know your Ser Alyn.”

“Ser Arlan,” Baelor corrected, more purposely this time. “I suppose, then, I will see you at the trial. And hope that one of your elder sons shows as much integrity as their younger brother.”

He left before Maekar could reply, closing the door behind him with- perhaps a little more force than was truly warranted. He stopped in the corridor, breathing in deeply, and closed his eyes to consider his options.

It was possible, still, that Aerion would back down when confronted with the prospect of fighting Ser Duncan. Indeed, Baelor judged it entirely probable. Neither kitchen cats, hunting hounds nor knights of lesser birth sparring with a prince had ever posed any kind of real danger to Aerion, after all. Alternatively, if Baelor went to speak with Lord Tyrell and Lord Ashford before the trial, made it clear the side he would take- it would be a perversion of the rule of law he had worked so hard to uphold during his Handship, and might well backfire anyway. Ashford - was a minor lord with social ambitions likely beyond his purse, and might well consider Maekar, with his brood of eligible sons, the surer prospect there, although why anyone would want to marry their daughter into a family that included Aerion, Baelor could not comprehend. And Lord Tyrell- Baelor had never trusted Leo Longthorn, and would not begin now.

He could see no better alternatives now than those he had seen when he had summoned Ser Duncan to Lord Ashford’s borrowed solar. Of those, Ser Duncan had chosen to reveal the bond. Baelor supposed he ought to be grateful that his hand in marriage was not yet considered a fate worse than death, but it was hardly a flattering alternative. Baelor wanted to drop his head against the cool stone and stay there until he had found some neat solution- but they had not the time, and this corridor was too exposed, and he would have to present the messy best-guess solution he had, and hope that it would be enough. 

He heard footsteps, and turned.

“Your grace!” Ser Donnel called, rounding the corner, with a glowering Lyonel Baratheon and a scruffy young man in a red tunic whom Baelor did not recognise at his heels. “The men you requested.”

“Thank you, Ser Donnel. Sers.” Baelor nodded politely, and gestured to them to follow.

“Where’s Dun- Ser Duncan?” the youth he presumed to be the Fossoway boy asked, with a fair attempt at belligerence. “What’s to happen to him?”

“I will take you to him.” Baelor cast them both a censorious look. “And must ask of you both to reveal nothing you see or hear once we reach Lord Ashford’s solar without Ser Duncan’s leave.”
“That sounds…important,” Lyonel Baratheon said insouciantly, a reckless glitter in his hard blue eyes that reminded Baelor of the look he got in the lists, all terrible intent and thundering force. “Dunk’s come up in the world, if he can deputise a crown prince for his errand boy now.”

Baelor- did not have time or inclination to bandy words with the insufferable man. They had met a handful of times before, and Baelor always found himself trying not to obviously grit his teeth whenever the prospect of conversation with the Laughing Storm presented itself. The one great consolation was that, when they had met, it had usually been for tourneys, and those involved very little conversation, and hopefully the prospect of knocking Ser Lyonel off his horse at some point in the proceedings, if the lots favoured Baelor. Ser Lyonel was a good jouster, but- reckless, with a tendency to over-commit, and it made him easy to bait into taking risks he would have done better to avoid.

“There is- a service, for which Ser Duncan requires a trustworthy friend,” he said carefully. “He named the two of you. I trust that you are sensible of the responsibility.”

“I’m never sensible about anything,” Baratheon said, with a flash of smile that showed all his teeth. “But Ser Duncan can rely on me. And you, apparently. Odd, for one of the House of the Dragon to take so much interest in a hedge knight. Ser Donnel was telling us you’ve had him confined to the solar. And yet here you are. Should we expect a confession before morning? I wonder if you’ve managed to rustle up a Night’s Watch recruiter, conveniently here for the occasion.”

Baratheon’s tone was light, almost friendly, but Baelor could hear the iron in it. Good. Ser Duncan would need that strength in an ally, if this were to work as intended.

“Not if you can perform this service for him,” he replied, as neutrally as he could manage. “I will explain further once we reach the solar. We should hurry,” he added, “This- would be better done quickly.”

Baratheon’s eyebrows lifted. “...suspicious. Even clandestine. I hope our Ser Duncan hasn’t got in over his head. As difficult as that might be, given…” he made a broad gesture, presumably meant to encompass Ser Duncan’s considerable height.

Baelor shook his head. “That remains to be seen. Ser Donnel, you may leave us.”

The fewer witnesses there would be to what came next, the better.

No sooner had the prince- had Baelor gone out, than Egg came in.

“Ser!” All his attempts at dignity forgotten, he nearly threw himself across the room at Dunk, barrelling squarely into him and wrapping his skinny arms as high as he could reach. “I tried to listen, but the door was too heavy.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dunk said roughly, hugging the boy back. “I- Did Prince Baelor tell you what’s to happen now?”

“He wouldn’t tell me anything!” Egg complained. “Are- is it true there’s going to be a trial by combat?”

“No, it’s not true,” Dunk said quickly. “Listen, I-” he tried to find the words, and failed. It still didn’t feel quite real. Egg was still in his fine black velvets, every inch the prince, not Dunk’s scruffy little squire. How was Dunk supposed to tell him that Dunk was to be his uncle? That he was- that he would marry Prince Baelor. Even inside his own head, it sounded like- like a joke. And not the sort it was safe to tell anywhere any lord might hear it, either. 

Egg’s face was falling, though, the boy looked terrified, and Dunk- had to find something to say.

“How- how much has anyone told you about…about soulmates,” he asked.

Egg squinted at him. “...some,” he said. “Mother and Father were soulmates. So are Grandmother and Grandfather. Nobody else in the family has one, though. Daeron has a mark, but it’s not in a language anyone recognises. Aerion burned his off,” he added, “He said it was dirty.”

Dunk’s stomach churned. You heard stories, sometimes, about people burning off marks. Horrible stories, the kind of thing you shuddered just remembering. He’d never heard of anyone mad enough to do it to themselves. 

He swallowed, tasting bile, and made himself ask.

“Dirty?”

Egg nodded. “Father doesn’t know,” he added. “He’d be furious if he did. I told him, but Aerion said I lied, and Father didn’t even check his wrist-!”

“Wrists are- personal,” Dunk said thickly. He ought- he hadn’t known what to do when the prince had started rolling his sleeve up, he ought- he really ought to have looked away, but he hadn’t known- he still couldn’t stop thinking of how it had looked, strong and leanly-muscled with that little green scrawl in the middle of it. Seeing the prince stripped to his smallclothes would’ve been less intimate-

Dunk really oughtn’t have thought of Baelor in his smallclothes. Or out of his smallclothes, gods be good.

Egg sniffed. “I don’t see why,” he said, like the child that he was. “Mine isn’t special. It just says ‘Betha’. It could be anybody. Loads of girls are called Betha.”

“You shouldn’t be telling just anybody that,” Dunk said, not sure what to do with that. Betha. Egg was right, it was a common enough name. Dunk had met a hundred Bethas in his life.

Egg gave him a look that said he thought Dunk was being very stupid. “I’m not telling anybody, I’m telling you. Why are you talking about soulmates, anyway? They’re not that interesting.”

“Because,” Dunk said, trying to keep the rising hysteria out of his voice. “I- uh- that is, your uncle- I mean, your uncle and I-”

Egg’s eyes went wide.

“...but you’re my knight-master,” he said, in a small voice.

“Think your father might have something to say about that,” Dunk replied, swallowing hard around the lump in his throat. You want a family, go out and get a family. Dunk couldn’t say he was eager to have the rest of them, but a nephew like Egg was- something Dunk could at least imagine wanting, if not getting. Except that that would mean that Egg was going to be his nephew, which meant he was going to marry Prince Baelor, because they were soulmates, and that was the part where his thoughts gave up and ran away screaming every single time.

Egg huffed. “It’s not fair!” he burst out. “We were supposed to go on the road and have adventures and eat hard salt beef and-”

“It’s better than losing a hand and a foot,” Dunk said, more sharply. “Did they tell you, that that’s what they’d do if they found me guilty?”

Egg looked stricken, and Dunk gentled his tone. It wasn’t the boy’s fault, not really. Dunk would’ve blundered in just the same if he’d happened upon Aerion and Tanselle just by chance, and it wasn’t as though Egg could’ve stopped it.

“Your uncle’s offered me a way out of that.” 

As impossible as it was to believe. Dunk still couldn’t quite convince himself that this was actually going to happen. Was it ‘Baelor’, the name on his wrist? It could be some other name. It had sounded like ‘Baelor’, when the septon read it to him, but- it had been so many years ago. Could’ve been ‘Balon’. Or- nobles had- Dunk didn’t exactly understand it, but there was some way that a name could be not the same name as another name even though they sounded exactly alike, some sort of strange magic in the letters that was far above Dunk’s understanding. More likely, Dunk had one of those. Or- there were plenty of Baelors in the world, at least half of ‘em named for Prince Baelor. Most of those were noblemen, of course. You couldn’t name a Flea Bottom rat like Dunk ‘Baelor’, it just- it just wouldn’t fit.

“Because you’re his soulmate.” There was still a sullen edge to Egg’s voice, but less so than there had been. “And you’re going to go back to King’s Landing with him, and probably never get to leave the Red Keep again-”

“He said he wouldn’t stop me travelling,” Dunk said, though even in that, the doubts whispered. I would not force you to my bed, nor restrict your movements, nor demand that you remain at court against your wishes. But you would not be able to return to your hedges either. Dunk didn’t know what that would mean. The life of a hedge knight was- all he knew, really, and even if he’d once had another one, that- that was no life anyone’d choose to go back to. He didn’t know how to be- whatever he’d be after he’d married Prince Baelor-

The old man would’ve laughed himself sick, if he could hear this, he thought. Before he cuffed Dunk about the head for lying and making up stories, anyway. Like that one time at Maidenpool all over again, and this time Dunk couldn’t even say he’d be wrong to do it. Even entertaining the idea felt like he was setting himself up to be mocked for believing it. He didn’t think Baelor would do that to him, though. A prince might mock a hedge knight, but Baelor- he’d been so careful with Dunk. Say yes or no without fear, as if Dunk would’ve said ‘no’ to- to something out of the songs. His soulmate, and his freedom, and- the prince thing was still more than he could get his arms all the way around, even with how long they were. He didn’t know what would come next, but that wasn’t really much different than things had been before Ashford. He hadn’t had much of an idea of what he’d do after the old man died. It had been- a sudden strange fancy, that he could wear the armour, carry the sword that fit Dunk’s hand just as well as it had ever fit Ser Arlan’s, the sword which didn’t seem to care that-

He swallowed, hard. He’d lied to the prince. To his soulmate, and that was- lying to princes was bad, but what did you call it, when you lied to your own soul? He found himself picturing those mismatched eyes hardening against him, as he stumbled out a confession of just how badly-matched they truly were, Ser Arlan’s soul of chivalry and- Dunk the lunk, not even a real knight, who’d lied to gain a chance he could never have hoped to reach for any other way. It wasn’t the sword or arms that made a knight, Ser Arlan had told him once. It was some other knight thinking you were up to it. Any knight could make a knight, but only a knight could, and Ser Arlan- hadn’t. Dunk was years older than most squires, he knew already. Some men stayed squires all their lives. Had Ser Arlan meant that for him?

Egg, meanwhile, seemed to be thinking something over.

“I thought we’d go on adventures,” he said, sounding downcast. “But- the Red Keep isn’t terrible. Grandfather’s there, and Grandmother. And Father can’t stop me being your squire now. Not if you’re going to be my uncle.”

Dunk- didn’t know if that was right, but he didn’t know how these things worked with princes. He didn’t know how anything worked with princes, and- and Egg had said the Red Keep, and Dunk- he’d watched Ferret climb the wall of it once, to steal a severed head off its spike. He’d never known whose head that had been. Some rebel or other, he guessed. Whoever it was, it’d ended in a pot shop in Flea Bottom, when enough of the flesh had sloughed off that their games with it hadn’t been any fun anymore. Little monsters, they’d been, and Dunk the worst of all of them. It felt like betrayal to admit it, and no matter what they’d done, Rafe hadn’t deserved what happened to her, but looking back, Dunk couldn’t think of that ‘game’ without wincing.

The thought of going back to that keep as- as whatever he was going to be now- Dunk couldn’t imagine it. He didn’t know what he was even supposed to do. 

“Be happy to have you,” he said, smiling at Egg, because none of his troubles were worth bothering the boy over. “You’ll know better than me how things go there.”
Egg brightened.

“I found a secret passageway once! Father said Maegor the Cruel had them built so he could escape if the people turned against him! It didn’t help,” he added, with the ghoulish enjoyment of childhood. “He was murdered on the Iron Throne.”

“By the Iron Throne, as I heard it,” Dunk protested. 

He didn’t know much history, but there were a thousand songs about the way Maegor the Cruel had met his end, and Ser Arlan had known them all. He hadn’t sung them often, preferring cheerful songs, full of love and fair maidens and gallant knights defending a righteous cause, but Dunk had travelled twelve years with the old man, up and down from the Neck to the red mountains of Dorne, and Ser Arlan had always loved to sing. He’d sung as they rode just a few days before he died, the old song about going to Gulltown to see the fair maid, except he’d sung ‘Ashford’ instead. Dunk had heard the song in his head, the whole time he’d been digging the grave. Off to Ashford to see the fair maid, heigh-ho, heigh-ho…

Egg screwed up his face, and Dunk was jolted abruptly back to the moment.

“Father says that story is ‘fucking nonsense’,” Egg said, dropping his voice to a low, growly register that sounded almost entirely unlike his father.  “He says an assassin probably got in through the tunnels, because ‘Maegor never had a good idea that he didn’t manage to fuck up somehow’.”

“Language,” Dunk said, because he had a vague sense that was something the boy’s uncle was supposed to do, and- that was what he was going to be, apparently. He still couldn’t make it feel real. And anyway, if Prince Maekar was any indication, it seemed like Dunk was wasting his efforts. 

“Aerion didn’t like that,” Egg added, with some relish. “He likes Maegor the Cruel.”

From what Dunk had seen of Aerion, that wasn’t even a little surprising.

“He said he was going to make me into one of his own Black Brides,” Egg added, eerily flat. “When I was little, he used to come into my bedchamber at night, put his knife in between my legs. He had too many brothers, he’d say. Maybe one night he’d make me a sister, and then he could marry me, and me and Daella and Rhae would all be his Black Brides.”

Dunk’s stomach turned over with horror. You heard- Incestuous aliens, Raymun’s voice whispered in the back of his mind. Dunk- didn’t know what he thought of that, but royalty were different, everyone knew that. But this was- this wasn’t-

“You’ll come to King’s Landing with us.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. “I’ll talk to your uncle. And if your brother tries anything again, I want you to come find me right away.”

Would Baelor believe him, after Dunk had told him the truth of himself? He hoped so, but- The septons say that we must love our brothers. And Dunk had lied once already. If the prince turned him away, and wouldn’t believe Egg- then Dunk would take his chances with a trial by combat, because he couldn’t be bound to such a man as that. 

“Will you hit him again?” Egg said, straightening up, abruptly bright again. “I’d like to see that, ser! And you could do it, now you’re one of the family. Nobody could stop you.”

“He tries anything like that with you again, I might.” Dunk swallowed, hard. “Have you- does your father know?”

Egg’s eyes dropped.

“...he’d just say I was lying,” he said, so bitterly that you could almost forget, for a moment, that he was only nine. 

“And your uncle?”

“He won’t help.” Egg hunched into himself. “I asked him to take me with him to the Red Keep once, after he came for a visit. He just said he’d ask my father, and when Father said no he just sent me back when I tried to stow away with them.”

“But-” Dunk almost couldn’t make himself shape the words. “But did you tell him…?”

Sullenly, Egg shook his head.

“We’ll tell him now, then,” Dunk said, trying to sound like he knew what he was doing better than he did. “You and me, together. If he’s the man I think he is, he’ll listen.”

And if not- then Dunk supposed both he and Baelor would have their answer to his hope that he would’ve stepped in, had he been the one that Egg had run for. It felt treacherous even to think it, but- The septons say that we must love our brothers. Clearly none of the septons Baelor had been talking to had had any brothers anything like Aerion.

Egg gave him a long look, just as he had when Dunk had said- all that nonsense about Aerion not going for the horse on purpose, back during the jousting. He knew better than that now. He found himself wondering what the horse’s name had been, if she had a name. She must’ve done. A lot of knights didn’t name their horses, but Dunk had been friendly with enough stableboys to know they’d do the job where their masters wouldn’t. Lord Tyrell had never known his prize jousting steed was ‘Daisy’ to the lad who had the keeping of her, when Dunk and Ser Arlan had been down at Highgarden…gods, it must be eleven years ago now. She’d been a sweet horse too, Dunk thought. Long dead now, probably, in some tourney or other, or just plain old age.

Dunk cleared his throat a little.

“D’you know what he’ll want me to do?” he asked. “In King’s Landing?”

Egg screwed up his face, thinking.

“...you’d be in charge of all the feasts!” he said after a moment.

Dunk could count on one hand the number of feasts he’d even been to, and as for organising one- 

He’d got to sit below the salt with Ser Arlan once, at a grand feast held at Nightsong, at the close of the campaign against the Vulture King. He’d been so big they’d taken him for another knight, not just Ser Arlan’s squire, and he’d been too tongue-tied to correct anyone, so they’d let him into the Great Hall, not just to sit on trestles outside with the other squires. He still remembered how grand it had all seemed. The Lord of the Marches had got up and made a grand speech he’d only heard about half of, they’d cheered whenever he’d left a pause, and the food- 

They’d had suckling pig and swan in its feathers and a great marchpane castle made to look just like Nightsong up at the high table, but down below the salt there’d been salt pork soaked in milk to soften it, stuffed capons and buttered neeps and some sort of sweetmeat made with pine nuts that Dunk had never tasted before nor since. Dunk had been half-dizzy with it, how grand it all was, almost more than the wine. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten well and truly drunk, but it was the drunkest he’d ever felt, even though he could’ve sworn he’d barely tasted the wine.

And that was only for a lesser lord - the Lord of the Marches, a greater lord than Lord Ashford, but a lesser lord all the same. Hedge knights hadn’t even been allowed into the hall, when they’d served at Highgarden. Even if they had, Ser Arlan’s scruffy squire, constantly outgrowing his clothes, shooting up like a weed, still with the edge of Flea Bottom in his voice that he’d never quite lost, certainly wouldn’t have been. And now he sat in a fine solar, listening to the-prince-his-squire telling him what the-prince-his-husband would expect of him, and felt like he’d been caught up in one of those Shipbreaker Bay riptides the Stormlands lads on that campaign had talked about, and dashed up a hundred miles from where he ought to be.

“Grandmother attends the Small Council with Grandfather most of the time,” Egg added a little dubiously. “But I never heard of Lady Jena doing anything like that. You should ask her, when we get there.”
“Ask-” Dunk swallowed hard. “She’s still-”

“She and Lady Myriame have apartments at court,” Egg said, a little dismissively.

Apartments at court. Prince Baelor’s former wife had apartments at court. Dunk was- would he be expected to speak to her? What- what was he supposed to say? She hadn’t been married to him in- not since- Dunk had been only about a year or two a squire when he’d had that news, they’d been at Highgarden. The whole place had been afire with gossip, Lord Tyrell had readied himself to bring every eligible lady even slightly related to him to court to see which might catch the prince’s eye. Apparently none of them had, because even hedge knights got to hear about a royal wedding, and anyway, Baelor hadn’t said anything about it. Which left only the Lady Jena to be aggrieved at Dunk’s blundering into her place.

“You’ll be in the Tower of the Hand, though, with Uncle Baelor,” Egg said. “And I’ll stay there with you, because I’m your squire,” he added virtuously. 

Dunk opened his mouth to tease the boy- and then shut it again. Yes, Egg would be staying with them. He didn’t want the lad sleeping anywhere near Aerion again, if he could help it.

“Rys will be there too,” Egg added, “But he’s squiring for Ser Gwayne Corbray of the Kingsguard, so I’ll still be your only squire.”

The Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, Dunk thought. The man who’d duelled Daemon Blackfyre to a standstill to buy time for Prince Baelor’s spearmen, when it had looked like the Arryn line was on the verge of breaking. Ser Arlan had told him that story a thousand times. Ser Gwayne had been blinded in the battle, the old man had said, but the Kingsguard swore for life. 

“Rys,” he repeated. “That’s- that’s Prince Matarys.”

Prince Matarys, who was to be his stepson. Just as Prince Valarr was, but that was- that was ridiculous, Prince Valarr was- he couldn’t be much younger than Dunk. Seven help them all, was he older? Dunk didn’t know, but he was a man grown and knighted regardless, and- lords married people young enough to be their children all the time, but no-one had ever explained to Dunk how that was supposed to go. It had never been information anyone had thought he’d need.

Egg wrinkled his nose. “Yes,” he said, a little sullenly, giving Dunk a look that said very plain that he didn’t see why this was anything they needed to talk about. “He’s not very interesting. He’s a squire, but not a real squire. Ser Gwayne hasn’t served outside the Red Keep in years. Matarys just writes things down for him. He showed me the White Book once,” he added, brightening up. “He gets to write in it, because Ser Gwayne can’t anymore.”

“The-”

Egg bounced a little in his seat. “The White Book! The one that they keep all the records of the heroic deeds of the Kingsguard in! He showed me the page for my Great-Uncle Aemon. He had three whole pages all for himself! Most knights only get one!”

Aemon the Dragonknight, that was, Dunk thought, and shivered a little, though he couldn’t quite say why.

“What’d it say?” he asked, because that was easier, and listened with only half an ear to Egg excitedly telling him the old tale of the Dragonknight carrying the first Baelor across half of Dorne on his back after Baelor had freed him from the crow cage he’d been trapped in. His head was still spinning. You will know great success and be richer than a Lannister, the fortune-teller had told him. He’d thought nothing of it, at the time, it was the sort of fortune that went down well and might earn the witch a copper. Now, though- He looked at Egg, midway through a gleeful description of how his Dayne relatives all swore that the Blessed had been bitten half a hundred times before he reached the cage, and his stomach turned over at the memory of the other half of that particular prophecy. It couldn’t happen, he told himself. Egg was the fourth son of a fourth son, nearly the whole royal family would have to die for him to get anywhere near the throne. And why would anyone who loved Egg rejoice to see him die? The woman made it up, he told himself. A few tales of horrible death might well enliven a fortune-teller’s reputation, except- except why say he would be king, then? That was obviously false- ought to have been obviously false. Except that Egg was a king’s grandson, and how could any fortune-teller have known that, just to look at him?

Egg had moved on to the Dragonknight’s defeat of Ser Morgil Hastwyck by the time the door opened again, all bright animation as he explained that he’d had the story from his grandfather, and Dunk remembered all again that that was the King and had been very grateful indeed that he was already sitting down, especially when Egg had said that Dunk would meet him soon.

The door swung open with a clatter, Lyonel preceding Baelor into the room like the storm he named himself. That odd trick he had of seeming to fill up a whole room, so that for an instant before you got your bearings he could seem as big as Dunk, was even more overwhelming in Lord Ashford’s solar than it had been in his own tent, and Dunk found himself shrinking a little before he remembered himself. Be tall. Right. Baelor came after him, though, grave and carefully composed but still with a strained smile for Dunk as he came in, and Dunk felt the thrill and the wonder of it all over again - his soulmate! He almost missed Raymun, who came in last of all, looking anxiously from Baelor to Lyonel to Dunk and back again. 

“You’ve still got both hands, then,” he said, sounding relieved.

“Both feet, too,” Dunk agreed, and caught Baelor’s wince out of the corner of his eye. He twisted around to look at the prince. “Did you tell them-?”

“I thought it best not to let the story spread before you have had sufficient time to decide your course,” Baelor said simply. Dunk frowned. He’d said he was willing. Had Baelor hoped he’d change his mind? If that were so, Dunk wished he’d say so. He didn’t relish the thought of a trial by combat against a man better-armed, better-armoured, and better-trained than himself, but it was more of a chance than he’d expected to have, when Prince Maekar’s men-at-arms had dragged him off Aerion.

“Well, don’t leave us all in suspense,” Lyonel said, some of that edge coming into his voice that there had been the first time they had spoken, when he’d said that all men either wanted his help or his head. It still seemed a lonely way to live, for Dunk, but what did he know? “What is this great secret that we’re to be let in on?”

Baelor met Dunk’s eyes squarely, and raised his eyebrows, as if to ask permission. Dunk felt himself flush.

“You’d- know better how to say it than I would,” he said awkwardly, dropping his gaze.

Baelor nodded, once. “Very well. Ser Duncan cannot read, Sers, and needs a guarantor. He tells me that you are his closest friends in the camp, and so the task falls to you.”

“A guarantor?” Raymun repeated, wide-eyed. “But that- that’s for- You mean- you can’t mean-”

“Soulmates.” Lyonel looked like he had bitten into something rancid. He was staring at Dunk now like- like- like he was suddenly afraid that something would snatch his supper away. Dunk looked around for Egg, only to see the boy standing in the men’s shadows, watching them all with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

“I just found out,” Dunk said thickly. “Or- I knew my part. There was a septon, when I was a boy, who read the mark for me. I never dreamed it was-” His eyes found Baelor again, and he lost the rest of the words.

“No reason you should,” Lyonel said, in a voice that was clearly trying for that sort of- almost lazy shadowcat’s sharpness from that first night in his tent, and not quite reaching it. “There must be a hundred Baelors across the Seven Kingdoms. Fewer, maybe, in the Reach, but still far too many for anyone to be certain. About as many Duncans, too. These marks could be anyone’s, if those are even the names written there at all. I saw a septon hanged, once, for pretending he could read and misleading his flock that way.”

Dunk hadn’t thought of that. He nearly shuddered just at the thought, and now that Lyonel had raised it- did he know that, really? People who could read could lie, but- but not a septon, surely, and- and what would the septon get from it?

“Well, let’s see it then,” Lyonel said, putting out a hand. “If this mark is all that’s keeping you from being less a hand and foot…”

Dunk saw Baelor’s lips press into a hard line.

“There is still trial by combat,” he said hoarsely. “I- every knight has that right.”

Lyonel nodded. “A wise choice. Better a quick death than a slow one, and better die a knight than a beggar. Better die a prince than either, of course, so let’s see this mark of yours.”

Dunk swallowed, hard, his hand going to his sleeve. He didn’t- He’d never shown it to anyone, not even Ser Arlan. Just the septon, when he’d been a boy. It felt like he’d been asked to strip for examination, except that then they’d at least have left his wrist-wrappings on, but-

He closed his eyes, and pushed the sleeve up to his elbow. He couldn’t unwind the wrappings without seeing them, poor ragged things that they were, cobbled together from old bandages and knotted several times over, filthy from the road. There was a sharp line there, the back of his hand a few shades darker than the wrist and forearm, where the wrappings had kept his skin from the sun. And there, marked plain on the skin of his inner forearm, was the mark.

Dunk had always thought it was beautiful, even before he had quite known what it was. Sunset-coloured, it was, all fanciful swooping lines and spiky edges like a dragon in flight, the one beautiful thing Dunk had ever owned. It had almost seemed a shame to cover it, but to expose this to any other eyes felt- wrong, somehow, worse than nakedness.

He heard a soft, sharp exhale of breath from somewhere nearby, and when he looked up, Baelor had drifted closer, his eyes locked on Dunk’s wrist, his mismatched eyes wide with something like wonder. He reached out a hand, and Dunk wondered for one wild moment if he meant to touch the mark, to stroke it, and caught himself shivering a little with anticipation at the thought, but the prince drew back, and reached for his own sleeve.

He had no wrappings at all, Dunk realised, even though everyone wore them. Had he put them aside just for this meeting, or did he go without them as a matter of course, the mark hidden beneath layers of sleeves that went all the way to the wrist? He caught himself craning his neck to see Baelor’s mark again, just a flash of bright spring green against soft brown skin, a few shades darker than Dunk’s even here, where the sun never touched him.

“...seven hells,” Raymun muttered, and then blushed apple-red. “I mean- uh- your grace-”

“Tell Ser Duncan what it says, Ser,” Baelor said, implacably. 

Raymun swallowed, but looked to Dunk anyway. “It’s- ‘Dunk’. It says ‘Dunk’. And yours is ‘Baelor’, but I guess you knew that already.”

“Just ‘Dunk’, though,” Lyonel added, rather sourly. “The apple boy speaks true about the other, but-”

“It’s my name,” Dunk said helplessly. “It’s- That’s what I was called, near every day of my life. Was Egg’s idea, to make it ‘Duncan’. It sounded…knightlier, he said.”

Raymun winced. “It does, at that.” His eyes found Dunk’s, and Dunk was surprised to see fear there. What reason did Raymun have to be afraid of the likes of Dunk? And then, all at once, he remembered. Even half of what Raymun had said in that tent was worth a man’s life. He forced a smile, trying to look reassuring, but it didn’t quite seem to be working. Raymun was slowly going from red to green right before Dunk’s eyes.

“There a lot of Dunks…wherever it was you came from?” Lyonel asked, catching Dunk’s forearm so he could examine the mark more closely, his mouth twisting. “Common name, is it?”

“I-” Dunk fumbled. “I suppose? I haven’t met many others, but…”

Lyonel was nodding now. “And Baelors are nine a penny. No offence,” he added, in a tone that practically invited offence. Such were the privileges of being a high lord’s son, Dunk supposed.

Baelor gave Lyonel a disapproving look. “It is not any other Baelor,” he said, very deliberately. “The hand is mine own. I suppose,” he added, drawing the sleeve back over his own wrist. “That this is the reverse.”

“I-” Dunk swallowed. “I hardly see how that can be. I- I cannot write, either. I can make my mark, when I need to, but- no more’n that.”

Baelor managed another small, strained smile, “A situation we shall have to remedy,” he said, with that edge of warmth still in his voice. Like he didn’t doubt that Dunk could do it, if given the chance, even though everyone had always said Dunk was too stupid to even bother trying.

“Fuck this.” Lyonel sounded furious, for no reason Dunk could see. “That’s your plan! Is this your vaunted strategic brilliance? I suppose it spares his fucking foot at least!”

“It is the surest way.” Baelor’s voice was iron now. “If Ser Duncan chooses to take it.”

Lyonel snorted. “A fine choice you dragons offer him! Your hand or his hand and foot, is that it? Or, I suppose, you will graciously offer him the chance at a trial by combat, against a man who’s actually been trained in arms, and let him see how little size and strength are worth put up against real training?”

“I’ve fought before!” Dunk protested. “Ser Arlan- we rode against the Vulture King beneath Lord Dondarrion’s banner!”

He hadn’t done badly in it, either. True, he hadn’t used a sword, then, only a levyman’s long pike and the hammer Ser Arlan had let him use in practice, but he thought he’d acquitted himself well. And maybe size and strength weren’t worth much, but if there was one thing Dunk knew how to do, it was how to take a beating and stay on his feet. He didn’t know how far that would take him in a trial by combat, didn’t know if there were some rules he didn’t know- but he wasn’t helpless either.

“You’re entitled to a champion, too,” Lyonel said fiercely. “Did he tell you that?”

“I-” Dunk frowned a little. “...it’s a poor kind of knight that asks another man to die for him. And I’ve no-one to ask, even if I could.”

“You’ve got us,” Raymun spoke up. “Or-” he flushed. “I don’t know if I’d be allowed. I’m still only a squire. And-” his eyes flickered to Baelor, and then away again. “...guess it doesn’t matter now.”

“That remains to be seen,” Baelor said. “The trial is an hour hence, in Lord Ashford’s audience chamber. I trust we may rely on you both to be present, and to speak the truth of what you have witnessed here?”

“If he wants it,” Lyonel said, the anger still there in his voice, over Raymun’s muttered agreement.

“I do.” Dunk swallowed, hard. “I know it’s out of your way to vouch for me.”

He hadn’t even dared ask for Lyonel to speak for his knighthood. Ser Arlan had never served under him, never tilted against him, though they’d competed at a few of the same tourneys, in the days when Ser Arlan still competed. Lyonel had been frank enough about Dunk’s chances, after all. He’d meant it kindly, though. And he wasn’t wrong, either. Jousting- Dunk had never excelled at it, even on those rare occasions where they’d taken service somewhere with rings and quintains for him to tilt at. Size and strength might count for little enough against skill when it came to swords, but they were worth even less, where jousting was concerned. 

“To the Seven Hells with that," Lyonel said roughly. “I’ll speak for you, if you want it. I’d have done it even if-” he broke off. “...it would’ve worked as well with any high lord,” he said at last. “Bribed or loyal witnesses, and no-one would’ve asked to see the proof in court…”

“But we don’t have to- it’s not a lie-” Dunk said, his eyes automatically seeking out Baelor, looking for- some kind of reassurance, he knew not what. Baelor wasn’t looking at him, though. He was looking at Lyonel, and Dunk could not read the look on his face at all. 

“It says ‘Baelor’, Ser,” Egg said, making Dunk nearly jump at how quickly the boy had appeared at his side. He was peering at Dunk’s arm now, reading it, and Dunk- he wanted to go for his wrappings again, wanted- Lyonel still had a grip of his arm, though, and Dunk didn’t know if they were finished yet enough to pull away. “And it does look like Uncle’s handwriting. That’s why it’s so messy.”

It didn’t look messy to Dunk, but maybe there was something to this business of reading and writing that he still didn’t quite understand. But- Egg had said it, and the boy had lied to him, but only- only ever about himself. Dunk didn’t think he’d lie about this, nor Prince Baelor neither, and Lyonel seemed unhappy enough about it that if he was going to lie, which Dunk didn’t think he would, it’d be the other way.

“You said-” he managed, “That- that they could- that it’d be- that I should choose men I knew wouldn’t speak of it, ‘less I said they should.”

Baelor had gone very still now. 

“I did,” he said, fixing Raymun and Lyonel both with a look that had Raymun gulping and trying as best he could to fade into the background - a thing easily done, with Lyonel there, quite unaffected by Baelor’s glare and looking suddenly almost cheerful. “And will hold to that.”

Forcing the next words out was the hardest thing Dunk had ever done, now he knew, now he was certain, now it was- real, that he’d seen it, that the mark on his wrist meant, had always meant, Baelor, Baelor Breakspear, Ser Arlan’s soul of chivalry, the greatest knight of their age, the man whose eyes had gone wide at the sight of- of his name, writ on Dunk’s massive forearm.

“Then- I- Raymun, Lyonel, this-” he couldn’t make the words make sense. “Can you give us the room?”

Lyonel clapped a hand to Dunk’s shoulder.

“I’ll go and talk to your prince’s pet Kingsguard for a while,” he said, with a smile that showed all his teeth. “Always liked a Kingsguard, all prim and proper in their pretty white gowns. Like septas, you just sort of want to muddy them up a bit. Shout if the dragons decide to devour you after all. Unless you like that sort of thing, of course, but don’t forget my house has a drop or two of dragon’s blood of its own.”

“I won’t,” Dunk said, because it seemed like the thing to say. He couldn’t make sense of half of this, if he was honest. Except that none of it sounded like a thing it was at all advisable to say with two Targaryens right there in the room. Raymun looked like he was trying very hard not to look terrified, but he gave Dunk a little nod and a shaky sort of smile, and Dunk smiled just as shakily back. He wanted to pull Raymun aside, promise him he’d never say a word about anything he might’ve said that a zealous lord could call treason, but he couldn’t, not- not with this still between them. After- after the trial, after- once they knew what was going to come of this, then they’d talk. If there was an ‘after’.

Lyonel left the room as loudly as he had entered it, because of course he did. The Laughing Storm never did anything by halves, Dunk thought, with an odd sort of fondness that he didn’t know if he quite had the right to feel. Raymun followed after, slow and reluctant, as though he didn’t quite dare let Dunk out of his sight. In the end, though, the door swung shut behind him.

And then they were alone.

If Baelor were a better man, he would be only relieved in this moment. Ser Lyonel, however irritating Baelor might find him, had presented Dunk with- what might be his best chance. Size and strength and- whatever training Dunk might have received from Ser Arlan might be enough alone, but Ser Lyonel Baratheon was a force to be reckoned with, a proven champion. Ser Lyonel would, he thought, be glad to do it, if he had not misread in what quarter things stood. He had no right to jealousy, he told himself, doing his best to smother down the greedy, dragonish part of him that wanted to hiss and snarl and furl wings he didn’t have around Dunk, shielding him from view. (Or attempting to, at least. Given the difference in size between them, even if Baelor had had wings to furl, he doubted they would be sufficient to the task.) Just as he had no right to the shameful rush of disappointment in his chest, that his Dunk would go from him, and be free of him, and likely Baelor would never set eyes on him again. Ser Duncan was not his, not really. That was the price one paid for the crown. Baelor could not be Ser Duncan’s, would always belong first to the realm he was to rule, and so Ser Duncan could not be his.

The door thudded shut, and the room was silent. Rooms always seemed quieter after Lyonel Baratheon had left them, even in a crowded hall. Daemon had once had a similar quality, so that when he left a room, half the light and life in it seemed to go out with him. Baelor had loved him for that, when they were children. He had cursed it, once they were grown.

“If feeling it un-knightly is your only objection to Ser Lyonel’s offer, I must ask you to put that aside,” he said. “The Laughing Storm is a fine warrior, and if you mean to be his man, no-one would think anything of your liege stepping in to defend you.”

“What?” Ser Duncan gaped at him, then shook his head. “No- No, it’s- that isn’t- I don’t-” he broke off. “I’ll fight my own corner, if I must,” he said, all grim determination, jaw set, those blue, blue eyes alight with purpose. A knight out of the songs. “No, it’s- it’s Egg. Aerion-” he broke off, and screwed his eyes shut. “She wasn’t the first. Tanselle.”

Baelor grimaced. “No,” he said grimly, “I fear not. Merely the first that could not be plausibly denied. There has been a string of ‘training accidents’ around my nephew these last years. Nothing any of us could ever prove were deliberate, but too many to believe were entirely innocent. Either Aerion is culpably careless or deliberately cruel- you, I think, know which, but Maekar will not hear of it. My father, in the end, was forced to forbid him from training in the Red Keep’s yard until he learned better control. Since then, he has remained at Summerhall.”

Ser Duncan looked grim, Egg fit for boiling.

“I- it is- worse than that, your- Baelor. Aerion-” he paused, took a breath, and then went on. “Did you ever- think he might be a danger to his brothers?”

Baelor recoiled. Aerion was- He knew what Aerion was. A vicious, proud, ungovernable boy, whose understandable pride in their heritage and the honour of their house had curdled into something that might yet be the undoing of all of them. And yet that pride had been almost a reassurance, in its own terrible way, because to Aerion, an insult to one was, always, an insult to all, even if the insult was unmeant or- sometimes even only imagined. Aerion had argued fiercely with his grandfather, Maekar had said, when the King had first suggested that Aemon - gentle, bookish Aemon, slow with a sword but quick with his wits, the most like Daeron II of all Baelor’s brothers’ children - be sent to the Citadel. It was unbefitting, he had said, for a dragon to wear chains.

“If I had believed that, we would have found a way to confine Aerion at court, not at Summerhall,” he said, more sharply than he had meant, but the thought was- gods be good, their family could not survive another war between kin. Aerion knew that, he must know that, even if he had been a child younger than Egg when Daemon’s ill-starred rebellion had ended in the mud of the Redgrass Field. “Aerion is- I do not know where we have gone wrong with him.”

He remembered, all at once, with a sudden sharp pang, a silver-haired boy scrambling up the rocks at Dragonstone, many years before, eager to see the cave where the Cannibal had once laired. Aerion might yet mend, he told himself, although without much hope. Maekar- could be brought to see reason. He did not know, though, what could be done, or- who it was should be the one to do it. In all the histories, the Targaryens who went down in infamy were simply mad, or cruel from the cradle. No maester ever wrote of Aemond One-Eye or Maegor the Cruel as having been children like any other. In all the tales, they were monsters from the first. But Aerion had not been so. 

Ser Duncan closed his eyes, and visibly steeled himself. “Egg. Can you tell your uncle what you told me just now? All of it.”

Egg gave Baelor a faintly dubious look, before glancing back at his knight-master.

“Go on,” Ser Duncan added, more softly, “He’ll listen.” 

His gaze met Baelor’s, and held it, almost a challenge.

Egg breathed in sharply.

“Aerion- used to come into my chambers at night,” he said, the words nearly falling over each other with how fast he was trying to get them out. “When I was small. He-” Another imploring look at Ser Duncan, who reached out to put a gentle hand on the boy’s shoulder. “He used to- sometimes, he’d have a knife-”

“No!” The word felt- as though it had been punched out of him, almost a snarl. He couldn’t- Aerion was vain and cruel, he knew, but this was a horror he had not considered.

Egg had frozen now, but the look on his face was worse. There was disgust there, and resignation. Not surprise, nor shock, that- that was all for Ser Duncan, whose blue eyes were wide and betrayed and sickened, and Baelor realised, all at once, what his nephew had thought that his reaction would be.

“What did he do to you?” he asked, fighting at every word not to make it an outright demand, to keep his voice gentle even as he wanted nothing more than to scream, to shout, to put his hands over his ears, to not have to know what manner of monster his brother’s favourite son had made of himself, or they had made of him. “Egg-”

“He never cut me.” Egg’s voice was sharp, each word bitten off sharply, like he was trying to chew his way through saddle leather. “He never does anything that will leave a mark. I wished he would. I could’ve taken a mark to Father. He’d just- put his knife between my legs and say- things.”

It was a sickening sort of relief, and yet-

And yet Egg’s terror of his brother was plain in every line of him. Terror and hatred, the miserable beaten-down hatred of a hostage, with no means of striking back at their tormentor, so plain now that Baelor wondered how he had ever mistaken it.

“Does your father know?” he asked, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears. He couldn’t. Maekar couldn’t know. Not Maekar, always so fierce in their family’s defence-

Egg scowled.

“I told him what Aerion said, but he- he just started talking about when you were children and Uncle Aerys threatened to shut him up in one of the secret passages and leave him there forever-”

“Aerys didn’t have a knife in his hand when he said it,” Baelor said, too sharply, again, he- he was supposed to be better than this. He forced himself to breathe steadily, to not reach out and catch his nephew by the shoulders, hold him in place. “What did Aerion say to you?”

Egg had gone still. He was sickly-pale now, almost grey against Ser Duncan’s steadying hand. Of course Dunk was gentle with children, Baelor thought, despairingly, as Egg stole a look up at his knight-master, who nodded, once, and said:

“He threatened to geld the boy, your grace. He- said he wanted to make a sister of him, to marry, like King Maegor of old.”

“Aerion has sisters,” Baelor said blankly, and then- Aerion had sisters. Gods be good, had the girls been subject to this too? Had Aemon? How much horror had he failed to see? And the reference to Maegor-

Maegor, who had had no sister-wives, but-

It was the story Aerion had asked for most often, he remembered, with an odd thrill of horror. Back when he had been small, before the rebellion, in the days when Baelor was not so chained to the court as he had been since the Hand’s pin had come to him. Maegor the Cruel and his Black Brides. Baelor- had thought nothing of it, then. Children liked, sometimes, to be frightened, to hear terrifying stories of days long past, while they sat safe and snug and warm at home. Maekar, at the same age, had always pestered for tales of the Dance of Dragons, and had found a particularly ghoulish thrill in hearing about how their great-grandmother had been devoured whole by her brother’s dragon, before he was murdered himself by his treacherous advisor the Clubfoot.

“He visits them, too,” Egg’s voice was bleak. “Or he used to. He hasn’t done it since I got big enough to have my own dagger. Rhae and Daella have them too now. Rhae tried to give me a love potion so she could marry me instead of him, and Rhae doesn’t even like me-”

It felt- like being struck in the head with a lance. That same dizzy, sickening feeling, the world around him spinning too fast to make sense of, the same lurch in the pit of his stomach.

“None of you children are going to be betrothed to one another, if your grandfather has anything to say of it,” he said firmly, because that much, at least, he knew for a certainty. His father was a pious man - too pious, some said - and even had he been otherwise, he had reasons of his own to detest the ancient custom of their house. “I will speak to your father. If Aerion cannot be trusted around even his own siblings, a solution will need to be found.”

Egg and Ser Duncan shared another speaking glance, and Ser Duncan cleared his throat.

“...what- what were you thinking of?” he asked, a little nervously, as if unsure, still, that he had the right to ask.

Baelor- reached for an answer, and found he did not have one.

The Wall, was one solution, but- even knowing this, Baelor couldn’t- It was as good as a death sentence, and- and even if Aerion likely deserved it, even if men committed lesser offences and were sent to the Wall every year, some of them by Baelor himself- his brother’s son, the little boy who had loved fishing and scary stories and trailed after Valarr and Daeron like a puppy- He could not bring himself to it. Even if he could, Aerion would never go willingly, and- his offences would not, in the eyes of the realm, be sufficient to justify bringing the power of Baelor’s office to bear to banish him. But he could not be allowed to continue as he had, certainly could not be allowed- had it stopped at knives and threats? He doubted Egg would answer if he asked.

Confinement, then. On Dragonstone, would perhaps be easiest, though Valarr would not thank him for it. House Targaryen did not have so many holdings as all that. He could reach out to the family in Dorne, perhaps. House Martell had towerhouses enough to confine a single man, with an armed guard and servants to see to his needs. Or there was Aerion’s mother’s family, if they could be persuaded of the need. But for that, too, Baelor would need Maekar to consent to the plan, and his brother-

All Maekar’s hopes were laid on Aerion now. Daeron- was what he was, the clever, charming boy who had been the delight of all his tutors grown into a shambling drunkard somehow while Baelor’s eye had been elsewhere, Aemon had been sent to the Citadel (Aerys had not spoken to their father for a week after that declaration, since he had coveted the Grand Maester’s chain very nearly since his infancy…admittedly, then mostly because it seemed to present such a fascinating assortment of things on which to chew), and Egg was still so young. If Dyanna were here, perhaps, Baelor could have drawn on her for support, for her girls’ sake if nothing else. With her dead- there stood another barrier. Aerion had inherited his father’s colouring, but his face was all Dyanna, and that was no small part in Maekar’s partiality.

“Either Aerion cannot return to Summerhall, or Aegon and the girls cannot remain there,” he said at last. “For Aegon, at least, that much is simple. I mean to ask Maekar to allow him to remain as your squire, regardless of whether you return to King’s Landing as my acknowledged soulmate, or to your hedges and the service of-” He did not want to say Lyonel Baratheon’s name, did not want to speak what he suspected into being. “-of some other lord, after a trial by combat.” 

If the trial happened, and Aerion killed Dunk-

Egg would likely never forgive them. And he would be right to. Baelor did not know that he could forgive it himself. If it came to that- Baelor would find a politically advantageous fostering somewhere very far from Summerhall, present it to his father, and keep Egg with him until the day came for him to be sent off. The North, perhaps. Lord Stark’s Mormont wife had given him a son, since Myriame and Jena’s marriage had dissolved his alliance with White Harbour, who must be about Aegon’s age now, and it would at least be a step towards mending their relations with the Starks. 

The girls, though-

They were in still more danger, though Aegon perhaps was still too young to realise it. And it was harder to find a pretext to remove them. Harder, but not impossible. Daella was ten years old, little Rhae only eight. Young, to be sent as handmaids, but if Kiera was willing, it was at least an honourable pretext.

Maekar would hate it, he knew already, hated any suggestion of his children being sent from him. He had refused good fosterings for Daeron and Aerion both, and by the time Aegon had grown old enough for it, the lords had learnt better than to ask. 

Egg had brightened.

“You really mean that?” he asked, and at Baelor’s distracted nod he let out a noise almost like a whoop and dove to hug Ser Duncan around the waist, knocking all the breath out of him as the big knight moved to steady him. “Ser!”

“D’you want a-” Ser Duncan broke off, casting a wary look at Baelor that- oughtn’t have caught and twisted in Baelor’s chest like a knife. Ser Duncan had no reason to trust him, after all. That they were soulmates made no matter, or made things still more precarious - those stories he had spoken of were not only stories, after all, illegal and blasphemous though the practice might be. “You mean, it, then?” he asked, not quite meeting Baelor’s eyes. “Even- even if-”

“It hardly seems possible to part Aegon from you,” Baelor answered, unable and disinclined to control his smile. “I suspect even if I were to send him back to Summerhall, with Aerion confined elsewhere, it would not be long before we found that he had stolen a horse and gone after you.”

“Or hitched a ride on another lamb cart,” Ser Duncan said, with a rueful sort of smile for Aegon, which the boy returned slyly.

“Are you going to have Aerion confined?” Egg asked, sobering a little as he turned to Baelor.

“Yes.” 

The only question that remained was whether Maekar would permit for that confinement to be to some distant towerhouse, or if he would insist on its being at Summerhall. If the choice were put to him, one child against three- He would rage and storm and dig up old grudges, but- but Maekar loved his children. He would want to see Egg and Daella and Rhae safe, and Aerion safe too, if he could only be brought to understand that the gravest threat to Aerion’s safety was Aerion himself. Baelor would put the whole weight of his office behind it if he must - if this business of the puppeteer had proven anything, it was that Aerion’s peccadilloes were no longer just a private family matter that could be dealt with within Maekar’s own household. The hatred of the commons had been plain enough, and worrying enough, after Ser Humfrey Hardyng’s injury. Baelor had taken a half-measure then, and both Dunk and this Tanselle had paid dearly for it. He would not make that mistake again.

“You swear it?”

“I swear I will do all that is in my power to see Aerion confined where he may do no more harm,” Baelor said steadily, forcing himself to meet Aegon’s eyes, so like his father’s, and to hold them, until at last Egg nodded, and looked away, giving Baelor the space to close his eyes for a moment to collect himself.

“That’s all right, then,” Egg said, casting a look up at his knight-master, who managed a weak sort of smile for him, before he looked back at Baelor.

“‘s good to know you’d take him seriously,” he said, “I’d sooner have a husband who listens, if I’m going to have one at all. I won’t shame you,” Ser Duncan added, the words nearly falling over each other. “Or- I’ll try not to.”

Baelor’s heart turned over. He wished he could put his first, absurd thought to words - that his Dunk could never shame him, that if anything any shame would go the other way- but that wasn’t the sort of shame Ser Duncan meant.

“Nor I you,” he said, and smiled, small and cautious, “Or- I shall try not to, as well.”

Perhaps they could build something on this. It might never be what Baelor had dreamed of, as a boy, because Baelor was not the sort of man that long-ago boy had dreamed of being. But they could try not to shame each other, at least, and that- that would have to be enough.