Davos I

“What about this one here, Princess?” Davos pointed to the last word at the bottom of the book’s first page. It seemed more like a jumbled clump of letters than any real word he’d ever seen. “Re—” he tried “Rejrat—” but the sounds of each letter twisted his tongue worse than a bowline knot.

Shireen shuffled around the table in her nightwear and stopped beside him. Her sharp hazel eyes followed his finger to the last word. “Regretful,” she read easily. “Regretful. It means feeling sorry for something you did; something wrong that eats at your heart.”

He flipped the book over and looked at the depiction set in relief on the leather cover. It had a man slumped over on his knees as if the weight of the world had settled on his back. The small lines that made up his face showed him bone-weary and sad. “I thought this was a book on knights and kings and princes,” he said.

“Well it is,” she said. “It’s about a prince who fought his family for power, and then goes on a journey to find forgiveness and peace of heart.”

“That seems like a heavy subject for a little Princess like you,” Davos said, smiling.

Shireen’s scarred face pinched into frown. “I’m hardly little,” she said. “I was old enough to know what the word meant when you didn’t, wasn't I?”

Davos chuckled. “You shouldn’t compare yourself to me. I'm just a smuggler, Princess.”

“Well you’re one of my father’s knights. And the Hand of the King again now.” She opened her arms wide as if to show how important he was, before bringing them both over the book and flipping it back open. “That’s why we are teaching you how to read, no?”

“I suppose so,” he said. “Your father and I have you to thank for the letter to the Iron Bank, after all. Mayhap he should make you his Mistress of Coin?”

Shireen folded her arms together. “But I thought I was just a silly little Prince, Ser Davos Seaworth. Now back to reading.” She rapped a finger on the book. “I’ll let you go when you can read a full page uninterrupted.”

Davos grumbled under his breath, but followed her order anyway.

Heavy footsteps outside in the tower’s hall put an end to their silent reading. Before long there was a sharp knock and the door opened. The candles danced eerily as the incoming wind blew on the flames.

“Onion Knight.” It was one of the Queen’s men. He could tell because of the sneer on his face and the flaming heart sewn over his breast. They all called him the Onion Knight as if to shame him, as if to point out his lowborn origins. Davos hovered a hand over the pouch of finger bones he carried about his neck. They didn’t know it was his greatest honor. “King Stannis awaits you at the table room.”

Davos nodded and shot Shireen a victorious look. “Well, you heard the man. Duty calls. I will just have to finish this later.” He put the book down at the short table and rose.

“You’re just using this as an excuse,” she said, pouting. He laughed and kissed her on the forehead, just where the crackled gray skin afflicted by greyscale met healthy pale white.

Before he left, Davos stopped by the door and looked back at Shireen, sitting alone with her letters and books as her only friends. Sweet and bright as she was, her place should be beneath the open sky and the clouds with the wind on her hair; somewhere the smell of flowers and wet earth clung in the air. Not in this dready tower her mother confined her like a prisoner.

Davos forced the sad smile off his face and said, “I’ll come back soon, Princess. Then we can finish the whole book, okay?”

Her smile was the sun itself.

xxxx

The red woman was already at the king’s side when Davos arrived at the chamber of the painted table. The moonless night sky provided little light from the half of the chamber that was opened to the cliff face, and torches had been set all around the room. While Stannis Baratheon looked pale and haggard, with dark circles under his eyes, Melisandre seemed to glow with life, and the torches behind her threw her shadow all the way across the room.

He bowed. “Your Grace.”

“This came for me today,” Stannis Baratheon said. He held a scroll between two fingers. “From one of the last remaining loyal houses in the Stormlands. It seems the little king is hosting a tourney for the year’s passing.”

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Davos tried for humor. “I’m afraid I’m a poor hand at jousting, Your Grace.” Stannis remained impassive, so he cleared his throat. “What does that do for you cause, my liege?”

“A better question,” the king said. “And what it is, is an opportunity.”

“Opportunity?”

Melisandre of Asshai stepped forward. “To topple another king,” she said. She let a hand wander over a torch as she walked past a sconce, and the flames seemed to kiss her like an old lover. “Just as Storm’s End has old magic from the Age of Heroes ingrained into its every stone, the Red Keep also carries whatever Valyrian sorcery the early Targaryen’s manage to conjure. My shadows would only work were I already inside the castle.”

Davos felt something crawl up his spine as he looked into her flaming red eyes. “Is that the reason I took you to that other cave? The one after Renly?”

Melisandre smiled. “Yes, Ser Davos. Ser Cortnay Penrose was behind Storm’s End’s walls, and the cave happened to be inside the bowels of the castle.”

Davos shivered. He’d taken her to a passage on the rockface deep beneath the castle where the sea met the white cliffs of Durran’s Point. They’d crossed an old forgotten postern gate to a gully that might have once served as anchorage, and there she birthed another demon, like the one she’d used to kill Renly Baratheon. Was he as guilty as her? Had he murdered Storm’s End’s Castellan by taking the witch there?

The king must have seen his plight. “Ser Cortnay was a traitor,” he said, as if there was no other truth in the world. Davos wondered if Stannis was trying to convince himself more than anything. “He refused to yield the castle to my cause; the rightful cause.”

“Of course, Your Grace.” Davos swallowed down his doubts and tried to focus on the matter at hand. “I take it she wishes to use the tourney to... assassinate the boy?”

“I’ve seen him in the flames,” Melisandre said. “Twisted and wrong, a stain in the Lord’s great tapestry. He spends almost all his time inside the Red Keep, and with the Spider making use of the secret tunnels it would be too risky to sneak in. The tourney is the perfect time. We will know for certain he’s outside the walls of the castle.”

Davos got a twisted feeling deep in his gut. He turned to the king. “He’s just a child, Your Grace, no older than Devan. Surely—”

“He’s a false king,” Stannis cut in sharply. “Does your son—my own squire—proclaim himself King of the Seven Kingdoms? No?” He slapped both hands down on the painted table. “There can only be one king in this country, Ser Davos. One king. All the others are fakes, and they shall be destroyed.”

Reluctantly, Davos nodded. He had already been arrested once, for freeing Gendry when it became clear Melisandre would sacrifice the lad to her cruel God. He didn’t think Stannis Baratheon had it in his soul to forgive him twice. He was not that kind of man. He was a stickler for fairness and justice above everything else.

He was, wasn’t he? Yes, Stannis was still the same man who’d taken Davos’ fingers for a life of smuggling, while also raising him up higher than a simple lad from Flea Bottom had ever thought possible. He’d given him a castle and called him a lord, had pinned the symbol of the highest office in the land on his chest despite the grumblings of lords of older, far more respectable families. Only he’d been poisoned by the soft whispers of this red woman, a red woman with a black heart.

“What will you have of me, Your Grace?” Davos finally said.

“You will sail down the Blackwater with Melisandre and take her where she needs to go.”

No, he thought wearily. Not again. He fumbled for a reason. “But… but we’re set to leave for the North in just a few days. The red woman said it herself, death marches on the wall—great victories await you in the snows. She saw it.”

“That will still come to pass, as the Lord of Light showed me. I simply need not be there for that to happen, the witch said.

“Please, Your Grace…” He looked straight at Stannis, eyes begging. “Any other service, my liege. Any but that.”

In a moment, Melisandre was standing in front of him. The smell of ash and sex clung to her porcelain skin. “You’d disobey the Lord’s chosen again, Ser Davos?”

“Leave us,” Stannis suddenly told her.

Melisandre turned to Stannis, surprised. “My king…”

“I said leave us, woman.” Davos thought he could hear the grinding of the king’s teeth.

The red woman stood silent for a second until she nodded. “As you will, my king.” Before she left, she stopped beside Davos, her breath tickling in his ear. “Look to your sins, Ser Davos. For the night is dark and full of terrors.”

Despite the torches in the room, Davos felt a wave of cold wash over his bones. King and Hand stood silent for a long moment, listening to seawind blowing against the stones.

“You’ll come north with me,” Stannis finally said. “Some other poor soul will take Melisandre.”

Davos sighed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”

“But don’t ever disobey me again, ser. Heed my words here.”

Davos' only answer was to bow. He had already turned to leave when the king spoke again.

“I’ve dreamt of it, Ser Davos. The night of Renly’s death.” When Davos looked back, Stannis was slumped against the table, both hands barely able to support him as if a great weight had settled over his shoulders.

“Your Grace?

“I dreamt of flying through the night; the wind billowing the tent’s flaps; a woman’s scream.” The king shook his head, as if by doing so he would be rid of whatever afflicted him. For the first time in the near twenty years Davos had known him, Stannis Baratheon looked… regretful. “He was a traitor, aye. But he was my brother. My little brother.”