George Martin - A Storm of Swords

“You must accept her now, my lord,” said Walder Rivers. “Else my father’s offer is withdrawn.”

Lame Lothar spread his hands. “My brother has a soldier’s bluntness, but what he says is true. It is my lord father’s wish that this marriage take place at once.”

“ At once? ” Edmure sounded so unhappy that Catelyn had the unworthy thought that perhaps he had been entertaining notions of breaking the betrothal after the fighting was done.

“Has Lord Walder forgotten that we are fighting a war?” Brynden Blackfish asked sharply.

“Scarcely,” said Lothar. “That is why he insists that the marriage take place now, ser. Men die in war, even men who are young and strong. What would become of our alliance should Lord Edmure fall before he took Roslin to bride? And there is my father’s age to consider as well. He is past ninety and not like to see the end of this struggle. It would put his noble heart at peace if he could see his dear Roslin safely wed before the gods take him, so he might die with the knowledge that the girl had a strong husband to cherish and protect her.”

We all want Lord Walder to die happy . Catelyn was growing less and less comfortable with this arrangement. “My brother has just lost his own father. He needs time to mourn.”

“Roslin is a cheerful girl,” said Lothar. “She may be the very thing Lord Edmure needs to help him through his grief.”

“And my grandfather has come to mislike lengthy betrothals,” the bastard Walder Rivers added. “I cannot imagine why.”

Robb gave him a chilly look. “I take your meaning, Rivers. Pray excuse us.”

“As Your Grace commands.” Lame Lothar rose, and his bastard brother helped him hobble from the room.

Edmure was seething. “They’re as much as saying that my promise is worthless. Why should I let that old weasel choose my bride? Lord Walder has other daughters besides this Roslin. Granddaughters as well. I should be offered the same choice you were. I’m his liege lord, he should be overjoyed that I’m willing to wed any of them.”

“He is a proud man, and we’ve wounded him,” said Catelyn.

“The Others take his pride! I will not be shamed in my own hall. My answer is no.”

Robb gave him a weary look. “I will not command you. Not in this. But if you refuse, Lord Frey will take it for another slight, and any hope of putting this arights will be gone.”

“You cannot know that,” Edmure insisted. “Frey has wanted me for one of his daughters since the day I was born. He will not let a chance like this slip between those grasping fingers of his. When Lothar brings him our answer, he’ll come wheedling back and accept a betrothal . . . and to a daughter of my choosing.”

“Perhaps, in time,” said Brynden Blackfish. “But can we wait, while Lothar rides back and forth with offers and counters?”

Robb’s hands curled into fists. “I must get back to the north. My brothers dead, Winterfell burned, my smallfolk put to the sword . . . the gods only know what this bastard of Bolton’s is about, or whether Theon is still alive and on the loose. I can’t sit here waiting for a wedding that might or might not happen.”

“It must happen,” said Catelyn, though not gladly. “I have no more wish to suffer Walder Frey’s insults and complaints than you do, Brother, but I see little choice here. Without this wedding, Robb’s cause is lost. Edmure, we must accept.”

“ We must accept?” he echoed peevishly. “I don’t see you offering to become the ninth Lady Frey, Cat.”

“The eighth Lady Frey is still alive and well, so far as I know,” she replied. Thankfully . Otherwise it might well have come to that, knowing Lord Walder.

The Blackfish said, “I am the last man in the Seven Kingdoms to tell anyone who they must wed, Nephew. Nonetheless, you did say something of making amends for your Battle of the Fords.”

“I had in mind a different sort of amends. Single combat with the Kingslayer. Seven years of penace as a begging brother. Swimming the sunset sea with my legs tied.” When he saw that no one was smiling, Edmure threw up his hands. “The Others take you all! Very well, I’ll wed the wench. As amends .”

Lord Alester looked up sharply. “Voices,” he said. “Do you hear, Davos? Someone is coming for us.”

“Lamprey,” said Davos. “It’s time for our supper, or near enough.” Last night Lamprey had brought them half a beef-and-bacon pie, and a flagon of mead as well. Just the thought of it made his belly start to rumble.

“No, there’s more than one.”

He’s right . Davos heard two voices at least, and footsteps, growing louder. He got to his feet and moved to the bars.

Lord Alester brushed the straw from his clothes. “The king has sent for me. Or the queen, yes, Selyse would never let me rot here, her own blood.”

Outside the cell, Lamprey appeared with a ring of keys in hand. Ser Axell Florent and four guardsmen followed close behind him. They waited beneath the torch while Lamprey searched for the correct key.

“Axell,” Lord Alester said. “Gods be good. Is it the king who sends for me, or the queen?”

“No one has sent for you, traitor,” Ser Axell said.

Lord Alester recoiled as if he’d been slapped. “No, I swear to you, I committed no treason. Why won’t you listen? If His Grace would only let me explain—”

Lamprey thrust a great iron key into the lock, turned it, and pulled open the cell. The rusted hinges screamed in protest. “You,” he said to Davos. “Come.”

“Where?” Davos looked to Ser Axell. “Tell me true, ser, do you mean to burn me?”

“You are sent for. Can you walk?”

“I can walk.” Davos stepped from the cell. Lord Alester gave a cry of dismay as Lamprey slammed the door shut once more.

“Take the torch,” Ser Axell commanded the gaoler. “Leave the traitor to the darkness.”

“No,” his brother said. “Axell, please, don’t take the light . . . gods have mercy . . .”

“Gods? There is only R’hllor, and the Other.” Ser Axell gestured sharply, and one of his guardsmen pulled the torch from its sconce and led the way to the stair.

“Are you taking me to Melisandre?” Davos asked.

“She will be there,” Ser Axell said. “She is never far from the king. But it is His Grace himself who asked for you.”

Davos lifted his hand to his chest, where once his luck had hung in a leather bag on a thong. Gone now , he remembered, and the ends of four fingers as well . But his hands were still long enough to wrap about a woman’s throat, he thought, especially a slender throat like hers.

Up they went, climbing the turnpike stair in single file. The walls were rough dark stone, cool to the touch. The light of the torches went before them, and their shadows marched beside them on the walls. At the third turn they passed an iron gate that opened on blackness, and another at the fifth turn. Davos guessed that they were near the surface by then, perhaps even above it. The next door they came to was made of wood, but still they climbed. Now the walls were broken by arrow slits, but no shafts of sunlight pried their way through the thickness of the stone. It was night outside.

His legs were aching by the time Ser Axell thrust open a heavy door and gestured him through. Beyond, a high stone bridge arched over emptiness to the massive central tower called the Stone Drum. A sea wind blew restlessly through the arches that supported the roof, and Davos could smell the salt water as they crossed. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the clean cold air. Wind and water, give me strength , he prayed. A huge nightfire burned in the yard below, to keep the terrors of the dark at bay, and the queen’s men were gathered around it, singing praises to their new red god.

They were in the center of the bridge when Ser Axell stopped suddenly. He made a brusque gesture with his hand, and his men moved out of earshot. “Were it my choice, I would burn you with my brother Alester,” he told Davos. “You are both traitors.”

“Say what you will. I would never betray King Stannis.”

“You would. You will. I see it in your face. And I have seen it in the flames as well. R’hllor has blessed me with that gift. Like Lady Melisandre, he shows me the future in the fire. Stannis Baratheon will sit the Iron Throne. I have seen it. And I know what must be done. His Grace must make me his Hand, in place of my traitor brother. And you will tell him so.”

Will I? Davos said nothing.

“The queen has urged my appointment,” Ser Axell went on. “Even your old friend from Lys, the pirate Saan, he says the same. We have made a plan together, him and me. Yet His Grace does not act. The defeat gnaws inside him, a black worm in his soul. It is up to us who love him to show him what to do. If you are as devoted to his cause as you claim, smuggler, you will join your voice to ours. Tell him that I am the only Hand he needs. Tell him, and when we sail I shall see that you have a new ship.”

A ship . Davos studied the other man’s face. Ser Axell had big Florent ears, much like the queen’s. Coarse hair grew from them, as from his nostrils; more sprouted in tufts and patches beneath his double chin. His nose was broad, his brow beetled, his eyes close-set and hostile. He would sooner give me a pyre than a ship, he said as much, but if I do him this favor . . .

“If you think to betray me,” Ser Axell said, “pray remember that I have been castellan of Dragonstone a good long time. The garrison is mine. Perhaps I cannot burn you without the king’s consent, but who is to say you might not suffer a fall.” He laid a meaty hand on the back of Davos’s neck and shoved him bodily against the waist-high side of the bridge, then shoved a little harder to force his face out over the yard. “Do you hear me?”

“I hear,” said Davos. And you dare name me traitor?

Ser Axell released him. “Good.” He smiled. “His Grace awaits. Best we do not keep him.”

At the very top of Stone Drum, within the great round room called the Chamber of the Painted Table, they found Stannis Baratheon standing behind the artifact that gave the hall its name, a massive slab of wood carved and painted in the shape of Westeros as it had been in the time of Aegon the Conqueror. An iron brazier stood beside the king, its coals glowing a ruddy orange. Four tall pointed windows looked out to north, south, east, and west. Beyond was the night and the starry sky. Davos could hear the wind moving, and fainter, the sounds of the sea.

“Your Grace,” Ser Axell said, “as it please you, I have brought the onion knight.”

“So I see.” Stannis wore a grey wool tunic, a dark red mantle, and a plain black leather belt from which his sword and dagger hung. A red-gold crown with flame-shaped points encircled his brows. The look of him was a shock. He seemed ten years older than the man that Davos had left at Storm’s End when he set sail for the Blackwater and the battle that would be their undoing. The king’s close-cropped beard was spiderwebbed with grey hairs, and he had dropped two stone or more of weight. He had never been a fleshy man, but now the bones moved beneath his skin like spears, fighting to cut free. Even his crown seemed too large for his head. His eyes were blue pits lost in deep hollows, and the shape of a skull could be seen beneath his face.

Yet when he saw Davos, a faint smile brushed his lips. “So the sea has returned me my knight of the fish and onions.”