Dareon knew the songs as well. When the bleak grey peaks of Skagos rose up from the sea, he joined Sam at Blackbird’s prow, and said, “If the gods are good, we may catch a glimpse of a unicorn.”
“If the captain is good, we won’t come that close. The currents are treacherous around Skagos, and there are rocks that can crack a ship’s hull like an egg. But don’t you mention that to Gilly. She’s scared enough.”
“Her and that squalling whelp of hers. I don’t know which of them is noisier. The only time he ever stops crying is when she shoves a nipple in his mouth, and then she starts to sob.”
Sam had noticed that as well. “Maybe the babe is hurting her,” he said, feebly. “If his teeth are coming in…”
Dareon plucked at his lute with one finger, sending up a derisive note. “I’d heard that wildlings were braver than that.”
“She is brave,” Sam insisted, though even he had to admit that he had never seen Gilly in such a wretched state. Though she hid her face more oft than not and kept the cabin dark, he could see that her eyes were always red, her cheeks wet with tears. When he asked her what was wrong, though, she only shook her head, leaving him to find answers of his own. “The sea scares her, that’s all,” he told Dareon. “Before she came to the Wall, all she knew was Craster’s Keep and the woods around it. I don’t know that she went more than half a league from the place that she was born. She knows streams and rivers, but she had never seen a lake until we came on one, and the sea… the sea is a scary thing.”
“We’ve never been out of sight of land.”
“We will be.” Sam did not relish that part himself.
“Surely a little water does not frighten the Slayer.”
“No,” Sam lied, “not me. But Gilly… maybe if you played some lullabies for them, it would help the babe to sleep.”
Dareon’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Only if she shoves a plug up his arse. I cannot abide the smell.”
The next day the rains began, and the seas grew rougher. “We had best go below, where it’s dry,” Sam said to Aemon, but the old maester only smiled, and said, “The rain feels good against my face, Sam. It feels like tears. Let me stay awhile longer, I pray you. It has been a long time since last I wept.”
If Maester Aemon meant to stay on deck, old and frail as he was, Sam had no choice but to do the same. He stayed beside the old man for nigh unto an hour, huddled in his cloak as a soft, steady rain soaked him to his skin. Aemon hardly seemed to feel it. He sighed and closed his eyes, and Sam moved closer to him, to shield him from the worst of the wind. He will ask me to help him to the cabin soon, he told himself. He must. But he never did, and finally thunder began to rumble in the distance, off to the east. “We have to get below,” Sam said, shivering. Maester Aemon did not reply. It was only then that Sam realized the old man had gone to sleep. “Maester,” he said, shaking him gently by one shoulder. “Maester Aemon, wake up.”
Aemon’s blind white eyes came open. “Egg?” he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. “Egg, I dreamed that I was old.”
Sam did not know what to do. He knelt and scooped the old man up and carried him below. No one had ever called him strong, and the rain had soaked through Maester Aemon’s blacks and made him twice as heavy, but even so, he weighed no more than a child.
When he shoved into the cabin with Aemon in his arms, he found that Gilly had let all the candles gutter out. The babe was asleep and she was curled up in a corner, sobbing softly in the folds of the big black cloak that Sam had given her. “Help me,” he said urgently. “Help me dry him off and get him warm.”
She rose at once, and together they got the old maester out of his wet clothes and buried him beneath a pile of furs. His skin was damp and cold, though, clammy to the touch. “You get in with him,” Sam told Gilly. “Hold him. Warm him with your body. We have to warm him up.” She did that too, never saying a word, all the while still sniffling. “Where’s Dareon?” asked Sam. “We’d all be warmer if we were together. He needs to be here too.” He was headed back up top to find the singer when the deck rose up beneath him, then fell away beneath his feet. Gilly wailed, Sam slammed down hard and lost his legs, and the babe woke screaming.
The next roll of the ship came as he was struggling back to his feet. It threw Gilly into his arms, and the wildling girl clung to him so fiercely that Sam could hardly breathe. “Don’t you be frightened,” he told her. “This is just an adventure. One day you’ll tell your son this tale.” That only made her dig her nails into his arm. She shuddered, her whole body shaking with the violence of her sobs. Whatever I say just makes her worse. He held her tightly, uncomfortably aware of her breasts pressing up against him. As frightened as he was, somehow that was enough to make him stiff. She’ll feel it, he thought, ashamed, but if she did, she gave no sign, only clung to him the harder.
The days ran together after that. They never saw the sun. The days were grey and the nights black, except when lightning lit the sky above the peaks of Skagos. All of them were starved yet none could eat. The captain broached a cask of firewine to fortify the oarsmen. Sam tried a cup and sighed as hot snakes wriggled down his throat and through his chest. Dareon took a liking to the drink as well, and was seldom sober thereafter.
The sails went up, the sails came down, and one ripped free of the mast and flew away like a great grey bird. As Blackbird rounded the south coast of Skagos, they spotted the wreckage of a galley on the rocks. Some of her crew had washed up on the shore, and the rooks and crabs had gathered to pay them homage. “Too bloody close,” grumbled Old Tattersalt when he saw. “One good blow, and we’ll be breaking up aside them.” Exhausted as they were, his rowers bent to their oars again, and the ship clawed south toward the narrow sea, till Skagos dwindled to no more than a few dark shapes in the sky that might have been thunderheads, or the tops of tall black mountains, or both. After that, they had eight days and seven nights of clear, smooth sailing.
Then came more storms, worse than before.
Was it three storms, or only one, broken up by lulls? Sam never knew, though he tried desperately to care. “What does it matter?” Dareon screamed at him once, when all of them were huddled in the cabin. It doesn’t, Sam wanted to tell him, but so long as I’m thinking about that I’m not thinking about drowning or being sick or Maester Aemon’s shivering. “It doesn’t,” he managed to squeak, but the thunder drowned out all the rest of it, and the deck lurched and knocked him sideways. Gilly was sobbing. The babe was shrieking. And up top he could hear Old Tattersalt bellowing at his crew, the ragged captain who never spoke at all.
I hate the sea, Sam thought, I hate the sea, I hate the sea, I hate the sea. The next lightning flash was so bright it lit the cabin through the seams in the planking overhead. This is a good sound ship, a good sound ship, a good ship, he told himself. It will not sink. I am not afraid.
During one of the lulls between the gales, as Sam clung white-knuckled to the rail wanting desperately to retch, he heard some of the crew muttering that this was what came of bringing a woman aboard ship, and a wildling woman at that. “Fucked her own father,” Sam heard one man say, as the wind was rising once again. “Worse than whoring, that. Worse than anything. We’ll all drown unless we get rid of her, and that abomination that she whelped.”
Sam dared not confront them. They were older men, hard and sinewy, their arms and shoulders thickened by years at the oars. But he made certain that his knife was sharp, and whenever Gilly left the cabin to make water, he went with her.
Even Dareon had no good to say about the wildling girl. Once, at Sam’s urging, the singer played a lullaby to soothe the babe, but partway through the first verse Gilly began to sob inconsolably. “Seven bloody hells,” Dareon snapped, “can’t you even stop weeping long enough to hear a song?”
“Just play,” Sam pleaded, “just sing the song for her.”
“She doesn’t need a song,” said Dareon. “She needs a good spanking, or maybe a hard fuck. Get out
of my way, Slayer.” He shoved Sam aside and went from the cabin to find some solace in a cup of firewine and the rough brotherhood of the oars.
Sam was at his wit’s end by then. He had almost gotten used to the smells, but between the storms and Gilly’s sobbing he had not slept for days. “Isn’t there something you can give her?” he asked Maester Aemon very softly, when he saw that the old man was awake. “Some herb or potion, so she won’t be so afraid?”
“It is not fear you hear,” the old man told him. “That is the sound of grief, and there is no potion for that. Let her tears run their course, Sam. You cannot stem the flow.”
Sam had not understood. “She’s going to a safe place. A warm place. Why should she be grieving?”
“Sam,” the old man whispered, “you have two good eyes, and yet you do not see. She is a mother grieving for her child.”
“He’s greensick, that’s all. We’re all greensick. Once we make port in Braavos…”
“… the babe will still be Dalla’s son, and not the child of her body.”
It took Sam a moment to grasp what Aemon was suggesting. “That couldn’t… she wouldn’t… of course he’s hers. Gilly would never have left the Wall without her son. She loves him.”
“She nursed them both and loved them both,” said Aemon, “but not alike. No mother loves all her children the same, not even the Mother Above. Gilly did not leave the child willingly, I am certain. What threats the Lord Commander made, what promises, I can only guess… but threats and promises there surely were.”
“No. No, that’s wrong. Jon would never…”
“Jon would never. Lord Snow did. Sometimes there is no happy choice, Sam, only one less grievous than the others.”
No happy choice. Sam thought of all the trials that he and Gilly suffered, Craster’s Keep and the death of the Old Bear, snow and ice and freezing winds, days and days and days of walking, the wights at Whitetree, Coldhands and the tree of ravens, the Wall, the Wall, the Wall, the Black Gate beneath the earth. What had it all been for? No happy choices and no happy endings.
He wanted to scream. He wanted to howl and sob and shake and curl up in a little ball and whimper. He switched the babes, he told himself. He switched the babes to protect the little prince, to keep him away from Lady Melisandre’s fires, away from her red god. If she burns Gilly’s boy, who will care? No one but Gilly. He was only Craster’s whelp, an abomination born of incest, not the son of the King-beyond-the-Wall. He’s no good for a hostage, no good for a sacrifice, no good for anything, he doesn’t even have a name.
Wordless, Sam staggered up onto the deck to retch, but there was nothing in his belly to bring up. Night had come upon them, a strange still night such as they had not seen for many days. The sea was black as glass. At the oars, the rowers rested. One or two were sleeping where they sat. The wind was in the sails, and to the north Sam could even see a scattering of stars, and the red wanderer the free folk called the Thief. That ought to be my star, Sam thought miserably. I helped to make Jon Lord Commander, and I brought him Gilly and the babe. There are no happy endings.
“Slayer.” Dareon appeared beside him, oblivious to Sam’s pain. “A sweet night, for once. Look, the stars are coming out. We might even get a bit of moon. Might be the worst is done.”
“No.” Sam wiped his nose, and pointed south with a fat finger, toward the gathering darkness. “There,” he said. No sooner had he spoken than lightning flashed, sudden and silent and blinding bright. The distant clouds glowed for half a heartbeat, mountains heaped on mountains, purple and red and yellow, taller than the world. “The worst isn’t done. The worst is just beginning, and there are no happy endings.”
“Gods be good,” said Dareon, laughing. “Slayer, you are such a craven.”
JAIME
Lord Tywin Lannister had entered the city on a stallion, his enameled crimson armor polished and gleaming, bright with gems and goldwork. He left it in a tall wagon draped with crimson banners, with six silent sisters riding attendance on his bones.
The funeral procession departed King’s Landing through the Gate of the Gods, wider and more splendid than the Lion Gate. The choice felt wrong to Jaime. His father had been a lion, that no one could deny, but even Lord Tywin never claimed to be a god.
An honor guard of fifty knights surrounded Lord Tywin’s wagon, crimson pennons fluttering from their lances. The lords of the west followed close behind them. The winds snapped at their banners, making their charges dance and flutter. As he trotted up the column, Jaime passed boars, badgers, and beetles, a green arrow and a red ox, crossed halberds, crossed spears, a treecat, a strawberry, a maunch, four sunbursts counterchanged.
Lord Brax was wearing a pale grey doublet slashed with cloth-of-silver, an amethyst unicorn pinned above his heart. Lord Jast was armored in black steel, three gold lion’s heads inlaid on his breastplate. The rumors of his death had not been far wrong, to look at him; wounds and imprisonment had left him a shadow of the man he’d been. Lord Banefort had weathered battle better, and looked ready to return to war at once. Plumm wore purple, Prester ermine, Moreland russet and green, but each had donned a cloak of crimson silk, in honor of the man they were escorting home.
Behind the lords came a hundred crossbowmen and three hundred men-at-arms, and crimson flowed from their shoulders as well. In his white cloak and white scale armor, Jaime felt out of place amongst that river of red.
Nor did his uncle make him more at ease. “Lord Commander,” Ser Kevan said, when Jaime trotted up beside him at the head of the column. “Does Her Grace have some last command for me?”
“I am not here for Cersei.” A drum began to beat behind them, slow, measured, funereal. Dead, it seemed to say, dead, dead. “I came to make my farewells. He was my father.”
“And hers.”
“I am not Cersei. I have a beard, and she has breasts. If you are still confused, nuncle, count our hands. Cersei has two.”
“Both of you have a taste for mockery,” his uncle said. “Spare me your japes, ser, I have no taste for them.”
“As you will.” This is not going as well as I might have hoped. “Cersei would have wanted to see you off, but she has many pressing duties.”
Ser Kevan snorted. “So do we all. How fares your king?” His tone made the question a reproach.
“Well enough,” Jaime said defensively. “Balon Swann is with him during the mornings. A good and valiant knight.”
“Once that went without saying when men spoke of those who wore the white cloak.”
No man can choose his brothers, Jaime thought. Give me leave to pick my own men, and the Kingsguard will be great again. Put that baldly, though, it sounded feeble; an empty boast from a man the realm called Kingslayer. A man with shit for honor. Jaime let it go. He had not come to argue with his uncle. “Ser,” he said, “you need to make your peace with Cersei.”
“Are we at war? No one told me.”
Jaime ignored that. “Strife between Lannister and Lannister can only help the enemies of our House.”
“If there is strife, it will not be my doing. Cersei wants to rule. Well and good. The realm is hers. All I ask is to be left in peace. My place is at Darry with my son. The castle must needs be restored, the lands planted and protected.” He gave a bark of bitter laughter. “And your sister has left me little else to occupy my time. I had as well see Lancel wed. His bride has grown impatient waiting for us to make our way to Darry.”
His widow from the Twins. His cousin Lancel was riding ten yards behind them. With his hollow eyes and dry white hair, he looked older than Lord Jast. Jaime could feel his phantom fingers itching at the sight of him… fucking Lancel and Osmund Kettleblack and Moon Boy for all I know… He had tried to speak with Lancel more times than he could count, but never found him alone. If his father was not with him, some septon was. He may be Kevan’s son, but he has milk in his veins. Tyrion was lying to me. His words were meant to wound.
Jaime put his cousin from hi
s thoughts and turned back to his uncle. “Will you remain at Darry after the wedding?”
“For a while, mayhaps. Sandor Clegane is raiding along the Trident, it would seem. Your sister wants his head. It may be that he has joined Dondarrion.”
Jaime had heard about Saltpans. By now half the realm had heard. The raid had been exceptionally savage. Women raped and mutilated, children butchered in their mothers’ arms, half the town put to the torch. “Randyll Tarly is at Maidenpool. Let him deal with the outlaws. I would sooner have you go to Riverrun.”
“Ser Daven has command there. The Warden of the West. He has no need of me. Lancel does.”
“As you say, uncle.” Jaime’s head was pounding to the same beat as the drum. Dead, dead, dead. “You would do well to keep your knights around you.”
His uncle gave him a cool stare. “Is that a threat, ser?”
A threat? The suggestion took him aback. “A caution. I only meant… Sandor is dangerous.”
“I was hanging outlaws and robber knights when you were still shitting in your swaddling clothes. I am not like to go off and face Clegane and Dondarrion by myself, if that is what you fear, ser. Not every Lannister is a fool for glory.”
Why, nuncle, I believe you are talking about me. “Addam Marbrand could deal with these outlaws just as well as you. So could Brax, Banefort, Plumm, any of these others. But none would make a good King’s Hand.”
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