The King’s Gate loomed as we closed in on the city. Ramshackle houses dotted the outside of King’s Landing’s walls, along with shops and merchant stalls and seedy taverns. Our column passed through the shanty town in a storm of horses and dust, and as I slowed my horse until it's galloping turned into a trot, I caught the eyes peeking out of shuttered windows and half-opened doors.
The great iron-strapped gate stood open on one side, and only a trickle of people were leaving with whatever they could carry. Given the view I had from the hill, I had expected it to be much worse.
A small clump of gold-cloaks came to the gates as we approached—no more than four of them—looking at us warily.
I glanced back at the file of knights behind me. They looked haggard and bone-weary, with blood staining their black and yellow tabards. It was no surprise the watchmen didn’t recognize us. After I took off from the hill at a gallop, I hadn’t once bothered to check over my shoulders to see if my knights were chasing me. At this point, I knew these men would follow me into hell itself without batting an eye.
“Raise my banner, Ser Godric,” I ordered.
He snapped a salute, then unfurled the crowned stag into the air. Ser Godric had the cloth tied to a make-shift wooden pole, as he’d broken his lance in the throat of one of the bandits.
As soon as the guards caught sight of the king’s banner, they waved us through the gates.
I looked around the fleeing citizens and gold-cloaks until I caught who I was looking for. It was one of my household men I’d ordered to help with patrolling the city. He was not one of my knights, just a man-at-arms in service of House Baratheon, but I’d rather get answers to my questions from him than from the regular watchmen.
I jumped out of my horse in a single move, trusting that Jaime or Lyle would see to it, and approach him. “You there!” At first, he didn’t seem to hear me. So I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around.
His hand was already flying to the pommel of his sword before he realized who I was. “Your Grace,” he choked out.
“What is going on, ser?” I asked before he could start apologizing. “Where is the fire?” I couldn’t see a single burning building this side of the city.
It took a second for him to center himself. “It’s Flea Bottom, Your Grace,” he said. “Folk who come from there say it started on the street of silk, then ran up the packed hovels in the warrens.”
The brothels? Why there? Pushing that thought aside, I asked, “What’s being done to contain the flames?”
“I don’t know, Your Grace. We’re short on man here. The commander sent us all to the Old, Iron, and Dragon gate, near the fire. But I’ve heard there’s crews already out to block it off by tearing down the houses around.”
I noticed my teeth were suddenly grinding against each other. Half my city was afire, and if I didn’t do something, the rest might be lost as well. Truth was, I didn’t even know if there was still wildfire in caches under the streets. One barrel of the green substance in the wrong place and there would be no way to stop it.
“I see. Keep up the good work, ser.”
The man turned to leave just as Jaime rode up to me, bringing my charger with him. He did have good timing. “We should ride to the Keep, Your Grace,” he said. “They will know the situation better than a guardsman.”
“No. We ride to the fire.” Jaime looked taken aback, but my voice brooked no arguments. “And forgive me if you can, ser, but I won’t be needing you for the rest of the night. Rouse the fire priestess, if you will. It’s time she makes herself useful to her promised prince again.”
I looked away before his grimace turned into a scowl and hefted myself up my mount. The horse was clearly tired beneath me, but it would make do. When I looked back at Jaime, his eyes already shone red, so I signaled the men and we took off at once.
“My prince,” the red woman said over the hooves clip-clopping on the cobbled streets. “How can I help you?”
“You said the ruby has power,” I started, “power beyond your own. How can I use it?”
“Prayer,” she said, her tone carrying more conviction than I’d ever heard. “Only the lord can grant this power.”
I frowned. I would pray if I had to but… “Does it matter if I mean the words?” I asked.
Jaime’s brow pinched in confusion, and I waved her away before she could open her mouth. It made sense that she wouldn’t know; she was probably already a fanatic when she got the ruby from the red priests. She meant every prayer she’d ever prayed to her lord.
“Never you mind it,” I told her. “I’ll try something.”
We rode deeper into the city, skirting the foot of Viseny’s hill where the Sept of Baelor resided atop. The air became fouler with the smell of burnt wood and black smoke the closer we got Flea Bottom, and I had to let Ser Godric ride ahead of me with my banner to open a path through the thickening throngs of people that fled the otheway with whatever they could carry in their hands.
Turning the final shop-lined corner, we came upon the fires. The blaze was devouring whole blocks worth of buildings, seeming alive and menacing and reaching as high as towers. The flames shone against the plume of black smoke that hung over the city, casting the whole night in shades of red and yellow, bright enough that it looked as if dawn had already broken.
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Soot-stained men worked on a ring around it with hammers and shovels, tearing down wooden houses and pot stalls. Screams and pounding hammers rang loud in the air.
Hot air and smoke blew on my eyes, and I blinked the acrid moisture away.
“My powers are not as great without the ruby, but I will work to contain the flames,” Melisandre said from the side, and I noticed Jaime’s voice didn’t even crack with the smoke coming his way. It paid to have a fire priestess’ soul in you, apparently.
Jaime’s eyes glinted red with Melisandre on the driving wheel, but this close to the fire, it seemed no more than a trick of light. Turning away, I focused on the ruby on Lightbringer’s handle, one hand going over it. It was supposed to be tens of times more powerful than any fire priest, so I had to believe I could scrounge up something out of it.
The hilt started to steam under the leather wrapping. The crackling fires sang in my ear, calling to the ruby as if it was an old friend. Sweat was pooling on the small of my back, running down the sides of my face; salt and soot dripped on my lips. Come one! Feeling a well of power surging in the ruby, rising with the temperature, I reached for it, a finger testing the waters of a pool, only to be denied with a harsh pull.
The whiplash of the mental touch had me reeling, and even the horse beneath me shuffled on its hooves.
Something blocked me like towering walls on the path of an army, and I couldn’t see a single way around it.
On the back of my mind, I knew that no tricks I could contrive would be of use here.
I grimaced, face pinching. Had the Lord of Light himself denied me? Did he expect me to bow down and pray for him as a supplicant? If it’s devotion he wants, he’ll be sorely disappointed.
Some men had stopped their work, gaping at the king seeming to have become paralyzed atop his horse. Even my knights stood around awkwardly. Putting on a brave face, I turned to the gathering. “Take off your plates lest you want to broil inside,” I ordered, dismounting. “Then let’s get to work.”
Grabbing a two-handed hammer from a passing worker, I squared my shoulders and approached the next building of many that was meant to be put down. I might as well make a show of it.
xxxxx
My shoulders were screaming when someone finally stopped me. I felt like a plough ox after a day on the fields, my whole back screaming at me with the effort of pounding down walls and carrying out the debris. We’d taken occasional breaks, myself and the knights, taking turns with a crew of dockworkers that picked our hammers and shovels up while we sat out.
After what must have been like hours working together, a few of them had yet to realize I was the king. It meant four less guys to spread a good word on me, but it made for good banter.
I must’ve looked as terrible as I felt, since the Lannister soldier who’d just called me ‘Your Grace’ almost fell on his ass when I turned to him. “I already said I’d pass on the water, ser,” I said, tapping the wineskin hanging at my waist. It tasted like hot piss at this point, but I’d rather taxe an axe through the belly than drink water from whatever shithole they were getting it from.
“Apologies, Your Grace,” the man said, dusting himself off. “I came with word from the Red Keep. Your grandfather sent for you as soon as he learned you were in the city. There was an attack in the Tyrell apartments—on Lady Margaery.”
I was stunned into silence for a moment. “Is she safe?” I found myself asking, though I barely heard his positive answer through my own swirling thoughts. My mind kept trying to process how everything could turn into chaos all at once. First the bandits and the fire, and now an attack inside Maegor’s Holdfast on my bride?
Chaos, I thought again. And just like that, all the little pieces fell effortlessly into place like a puzzle. A man named Brune should’ve clued me in on Baelish’s game, but an ambush didn’t exactly promote deep, rational thought. And the fires starting in the brothels seemed almost poetic, coming from him.
Kevan must have failed at the inn, I realized, and I was paying the price for his incompetence. Shoving the blame on someone else was deeply satisfying, even if untrue. His incompetence didn’t erase my negligence, but it sure made me feel better about myself.
And that’s what counted, in my book.
Letting the hammer fall from my hands, I addressed the Lannister soldier, “Take me to her.”
xxxxx
When I arrived at my rooms after cleaning the soot and grime off with a wet towel, it was Loras who greeted me at the door. He stood unarmored despite being at his post, with a bandage around an arm and a somber cast to his usually bright eyes. “She won’t let anyone one inside, Your Grace,” he told me, voice cracking. “And she refuses to leave, too.” He sounded as young as he looked right then. Just a boy wanting to help his sister.
I nodded. “I will speak with her, Loras,” I said, giving him a sympathetic smile. I was never the best at it, but people tended to buy it. “My condolences on your cousin.”
Loras bowed. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
Brushing past him, I entered my apartments to darkness and silence. I expected to hear shouts and condemnations, maybe have something thrown at me. It was what Cersei would’ve done; but the truth was, I didn’t really know what an upset, grief-stricken Margaery sounded like.
From what I heard of the attack on my way here, the experience itself would take a toll on anyone, even more so on someone as privileged and sheltered as a noble lady of the Reach.
And what I found was a young girl curled up in my bed, sobbing and whimpering.
I almost didn’t make it through the threshold of the parlor into the bedroom. Anger would’ve been a hundred times better.
My past life had its fair share of loss and pain, but I’d never had that caring shoulder people love to wax about; or perhaps it was that I never allowed myself to lean on someone for support. It always smelled of weakness to me, that sort of vulnerability. I simply hefted the grief atop the growing pile mounting up in my mind and kept on moving forward. Always forward.
What good was crying for someone if the dead would never hear it?
But aside from the night of Melisandre’s shadow attack, which was a literal demon coming in the night, I had always seen Margaery as someone beyond that weakness, with a tight leash on her emotions and hard as bones despite her soft demeanor; and I found myself wondering if there wasn’t some strange form of strength in that vulnerability—a courage of heart and trust in the choice of coming to my room instead of slinking to her own bed to cry by herself.
It was an alien idea to me, and I didn’t find the answer for it before I walked inside the room. In the end, I settled for going to sleep with my arms around her that night, her weeping turning to soft snores in my embrace.