[Kill The Boy] Chapter 72: A Fool’s Hunger (Patreon)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and all rights for character, plots and settings belong to GRRM. I have no ownership.

A/N: LTTS Chapter is coming out Saturday. Hope you enjoy the chapter!

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Year 300 AC

Pyke, The Iron Islands

Pyke came out of the morning mist piece by piece. First the sea stacks showed themselves, black teeth with gulls turning over them. Then the rope bridges took shape, swaying between towers above the white crash of surf. Last came the towers themselves, wet stone and hard edges, rising from the rock as the ship rounded the headland toward Lordsport.

Asha counted sails in the harbor. Fewer than she had told herself to expect.

So this is what's left of us. You truly were our downfall, Uncle.

Below the rail, lashed to the deck with iron bands, the crate sat where it had sat since Winterfell. Two of Dagmer's men had refused to sleep near it on the crossing from Harlaw, and Rodrik's captains had given it six feet of clear deck on every side.

Dagmer stood beside her at the rail, chewing dried fish. "At least this will be easy."

"Getting them to submit, yes. Getting them to change their ways? Not even close," Asha said.

She had come this way once before with a plan in her head and good men at her back, and lost the day to a madman and a horn. The same mist, the same towers, the same wet stone under gull dung. She had been another woman then. A lie, but a useful one.

Below, more hulls emerged as the harbor opened: a scarred longship riding lower on one side than she liked, a heavier galley with one oar bank repaired in fresher timber, a squat cog that looked wrong among longships and somehow more honest for it. She knew the houses before she reached the pier. The Drumm had taken hurt at the Shields and brought it home with him. Goodbrother still had ships afloat. Stonehouse had come to hedge, which was what Stonehouse always did when the wind shifted.

Asha went down the gangplank first with Dagmer at her shoulder. Behind them walked Rodrik Harlaw with his captains, then the men Dagmer had brought back from Winterfell who had chosen ship planks and salt air over sitting idle on Harlaw's shore. Spears and axes showed all through the column. Good, let the pier see steel and count it. Let them count wrong if they liked, so long as they counted enough.

The crate came last, carried on poles by four men who walked too fast and held the poles too tight.

No one cheered but surprisingly, no one spat either.

One minor captain near the net sheds touched two fingers to his brow as she passed. Another took one look at the landing party and turned toward the way up to the Great Hall, walking fast without quite running.

They climbed from Lordsport through wet wind and old stone and came into the Great Hall with salt still on them.

Torches smoked in their brackets and damp had crept into the walls. At the far end the Seastone Chair sat on its dais beneath shadow and an empty space where a banner should have hung somewhere outside above it all. Captains filled the benches in knots rather than ranks, thirty men at most, with a few captain women among them, each with their own crew at the back or waiting outside.

The Drumm sat centered left, scar down one cheek, thick through the chest, the old way in every breath of him. Further back sat the Goodbrother, hands on his knees, head bowed, staring at the stone between his boots. Near the doors the Stonehouse leaned on one boot heel and watched the room watch itself. At the rear stood a priest in wet robes, seaweed snarled in his hair, barefoot, a pool of seawater spreading around him on the stone. Men nearest him had given him room without seeming to notice they had done it.

Asha marked him and put him aside for now.

She crossed the hall and stopped at the steps below the dais. She did not sit. A person who sat too early in Pyke invited arguments about who had given leave.

"I, Asha Greyjoy," she announced. "Am now Lady Asha Greyjoy, by authority of King Aemon Targaryen. I have come to take the Seastone Chair and put the fleet under one command for the great war that is coming."

"A greenlander king." The Drumm leaned forward on the bench. "An ironborn bends the knee to a greenlander and calls herself Lady for the privilege."

"This greenlander burned the Boltons out of Winterfell and broke every lord between the Wall and the Neck in a fortnight. I watched him do it. Then I watched him walk into the yard and turn into a dragon. He is not sitting in a castle enjoying a mug of ale."

"…turn into a…?" The Drumm set both hands on his knees. "He can burn all the castles he likes. He is still not ironborn."

From the middle benches a voice came low enough to be denied. "Should have called a kingsmoot!"

A second voice, louder. "Aye. The Chair was won at kingsmoot. It was not Euron's to give and it is not hers to take on a mainlander's word!"

Asha turned to face the benches. "Euron won the Chair at kingsmoot. Where is Euron?"

No one answered.

"Euron sailed south with the Iron Fleet. He reached Oldtown, then Dorne, and after that nothing. No ravens. No ships. No word. The Iron Fleet has not come home."

"Dead, then," the Stonehouse offered from the doors.

"Dead or gone, and either way the Chair sits empty." She looked across the benches. "And Victarion? Where is your other champion? He sailed east to find a dragon queen and has not sent word since. Both of them sailed away and left you here to rot. There is no kingsmoot to void. There is a chair with no one in it and a fleet with no purpose."

"There could be a kingsmoot still," the Drumm said.

"And who stands for it? You, Lord Drumm? With how many ships? Three?" She counted for him. "The Stonehouse with his one cog? We could hold a kingsmoot this afternoon and the only man who would stand would be a priest with wet robes and no hull to his name."

The Drumm's jaw clenched. "Even if the Chair is empty, it falls to the ironborn to fill it. We do not take our orders from greenlander kings."

"No. You take them from the sea, and the sea has been killing you." Asha looked across the hall. "The Drumm lost half his fleet at the Shields. Goodbrother lost a son. Stonehouse lost two longships to storms he would not have sailed into if Euron had not driven them out. And what came back? What did the Old Way buy you? More widows, fewer ships, and a chair that nobody wants badly enough to sit in."

"And if Euron returns?" The Drumm again. "He has come back before."

"Then he comes back to find a king who will burn him alive and a fleet that answers to me. There is nowhere Euron can run that he won't be found." She held his gaze. "And if Victarion sails home with whatever he found in the east, he finds the same. Tell me which of your missing champions you would wager against that."

The Drumm sat back on the bench and reached for his cup. "What war does your greenlander master speak of."

Asha ignored the jibe and turned to the doors. "Dagmer."

Dagmer nodded. The crate came through the doors on its poles, carried by four men who set it down in the center of the hall and stepped back faster than pride should have allowed. Every man on the benches heard what was inside before the lid came off. Something scraped against the wood as the crate rattled.

Dagmer drew his axe and knocked the bolt free.

The lid fell.

The thing came out in a rush of dead limbs and rot-smell that hit the first row of benches before the captains could stand. It got four steps toward the Drumm's bench before the chain caught it short and it went down on its face and scrambled up again, clawing at the stone. Men lurched backward. One captain's woman drew a knife. The Goodbrother was on his feet. The Drumm's hand went to his sword before his head had caught up with his hand.

The wight strained at the chain. Its fingers had worn to bone in the crate and they scraped against the floor with a sound that would not leave Asha's ears for days. The eyes in its ruined face burned blue.

Asha had watched Rodrik see it for the first time at Ten Towers. The Reader had gone grey and put one hand on the table and kept it there until the shaking stopped.

"That is what is coming through the Wall," she said. "Thousands of them. Every man who dies on the wrong side of it stands back up and fights for the thing that killed him."

The wight lunged at the chain again. A captain in the second row flinched and covered it with a cough that fooled no one.

Asha turned to Dagmer.

Dagmer spoke up now. "You have your proof. This is real, the Long Night is real. And more so, the king who can turn into a dragon for I have witnessed it with my own eyes."

The Drumm leaned back, slow, his eyes moving from the crate to Dagmer to the wight. Rodrik had not moved from his bench. His eyes were on the Drumm.

Only the priest remained still.

Water dripped from the drowned one's hem to the stone, and then the questions started.

"What does the dragon king want expect of us?" That one came from the middle benches.

"Ships, eyes, and men who can move fast."

"And after Harrenhal?"

"Whoever still breathes will need grain moved, ore moved, men moved, and coasts held. You can sell those things or steal them. Selling leaves more men alive."

The Drumm leaned forward again. "And when the mainland lords close the water behind us, what keeps them from closing it for good?"

"The dragon keeps it open," Asha said. "Same thing that keeps all of us honest now. We are all in this together now."

That won her one short, joyless bark from the right bench.

A voice from the back benches, older, rougher. "And what of us, after? When this war is done and the greenlanders have their castles back. What do the ironborn do then? Go back to farming rocks and starving?"

"You trade."

The Drumm said the word back to her. "Trade." His mouth twisted on it.

"Hulls for hire," Asha said. "Coasts that need holding, harbors that need running, ore and timber and grain that need to go from one end of the realm to the other. The mainland will be half in ruins when this war is done. Every lord between here and the Wall will need ships, and we charge every one of them."

"And the Iron Price?" A captain's woman on the right bench. "We just put it down and pick up a merchant's ledger?"

"There is no Iron Price anymore. If you want to keep paying it, find someone who will take your coin, because the Drowned God has been pocketing it and giving nothing back."

The questions stayed practical after that. Asha answered as she had ordered them in her own head on the crossing from Harlaw. Dragonglass would come from Dragonstone. The green lands had stores enough if their lords meant to move them. The wight kept scraping at the stone, and every man in the hall heard it under every answer she gave.

Within the hour the argument had spent itself. The Drumm still sat set against the tide, though he had ceased objecting. The Stonehouse had gone from leaning away to leaning in. Even the benches in the middle had stopped testing her with snipes about crowns and claims.

Through all of it the priest had stood in his own puddle and waited.

When at last he lifted his head, half the hall looked to him before he had spoken a word.

"The Drowned God has not spoken on this claim."

The priest said it from the back of the hall, feet in his own puddle, and men nearest him gave him more space.

He spoke to the hall, not to her. "What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger."

"Harder and stronger," the Drumm gave back, low.

A few voices on the middle benches mouthed the words after him.

She let the beat run a moment longer. Let them count how few voices had answered the priest.

The scrape of her boot leather on stone drew a few heads. She crossed the floor at an even pace, one hand resting on the axe at her hip because that was where it went when she meant to hold herself steady, and stopped three feet from the priest. Close enough to catch the brine on him, and the rank pond-stink that clung to robes never fully dried.

"How many ships did the Drowned God send to the Shields?"

Nothing.

He looked at her, then past her, at the hall behind.

"How many ships did the Drowned God send to find Euron?"

Asha held her ground.

"How many men has the Drowned God raised, harder and stronger, from the ships that did not come home?"

"The god's ways are not for —"

She cut through him before he could finish. "The dead are rising." She pointed at the wight who was still thrashing around. "Dead men who cannot be drowned, who serve a cold god that has never heard of the Drowned One. Your god says what is dead may never die but that's not true anymore now, it it."

Someone on the right said "aye" under his breath and was elbowed quiet. Men who would laugh at dragon tales if they came from green boys had already heard too much from too many mouths. You could ignore one mad story, but a pack of them started to smell like truth. And the wight was right there, chained to the floor, pulling itself toward the nearest living man with fingers worn down to the bone.

The priest stuck with his god. "The Drowned God is older than dragons and older than the dead. He will endure."

He had yielded nothing. He came to stand in the way and bless delay.

"Will your children endure? The truth of the matter is that the dead aren't the only threat we have to traverse. The dragon king already despises us, and if we do not bend the knee, he promised me he will turn the Iron Islands into a charred rock. Can you stop a dragon? Can your Drowned God?"

The priest did not answer.

Asha could have pressed, but that would have been the wrong blow.

The Goodbrother rose. "My son drowned at the Shields. The Drowned God gave him nothing back."

The priest answered at once, still in that same measured cadence. "Your son feasts in the Drowned God's halls."

The Goodbrother's mouth twisted in anger. When he spoke again his voice was flatter than the priest's and more weary, which made it cut deeper.

"My son is rotting in the Mander."

The priest remained where he was, seawater spreading from his feet, face set like wet driftwood, yet the calm had changed shape. A moment ago it had ruled the room. Now it stood apart from it, still there, still certain, far less useful.

The Goodbrother had broken more with one plain sentence than she could have broken with twenty clever ones. The Old Way would die by fathers who had done all the drowning asked of them and found the sea gave back nothing but corpses.

The priest said nothing more.

And the hall waited.

The priest gathered his robes and turned for the doors.

Salt air streamed through the open doors awhile longer, then the wind eased. The hall remained full, the captains on their benches, the Drumm where he had sat. The Goodbrother still stood where he had risen. At the back of the hall, where the priest had been, the floor shone dark with seawater.

Asha turned from the doors and crossed to the dais.

No man spoke an objection as she mounted the steps.

As she sat down, the black stone bit cold through wool and leather. When she set her hands on the carved arms, her sleeves drew back enough for the scars at her wrists to meet the stone. A tremor went through her fingers and was gone. Her grip steadied. Her thumb found one raised ridge in the carving and rested there.

A voice in the back of her head told her that she wanted a crown, but reality told her it was a fool's hunger. Lady was better than dead.

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Bitterbridge, The Reach

The great hall at Bitterbridge had been built for feasts and weddings, and in its better years had seen both. Today it held seven Reach lords, three Tyrells, and the cold that came through the high shutters when the wind turned off the river. Cold fowl, a terrine, warm bread, a pale wine from the last good year before the war. The servants set it down, bowed, and withdrew to the screens passage.

Olenna took her seat at the head and the others took theirs. Margaery at her right and Loras at her left, where his good hand could reach his cup without crossing his body. Across from the Tyrells sat their host, Lord Lorent Caswell of Bitterbridge, in a doublet that had been brushed twice since dawn and still betrayed the brushing. To his right, Lord Mathis Rowan of Goldengrove was silent, watching the bread with a focused intensity as if his thoughts were elsewhere. Beyond Rowan sat Lord Ashford and Lord Mullendore.

She did not wait for any ceremony of grace.

"We have orders," she said. "From both Queen Daenerys and… King Aemon and I am passing them down as I received them. We are to expedite grain harvesting. Any miners we have need to head to Dragonstone to mine dragonglass. Every Lord of the Reach is to muster all the soldiers they can and are to appear at Harrenhal in person or by proxy within a fortnight. We answer the dragon queen's call, and through her the king's."

Caswell shifted his weight and the chair complained. "They want us to raise more levies? Lord Tarly's vanguard already rode out with a large force—"

"Yes, we are ordered to levy more. There is talk of a greater war at play, one that I don't see yet. But we have little choice in the matter when dragons are involved."

Dead men rising. A war for the dawn. Did the coin flip on madness again?

"The amounts are steep," Ashford offered. "This will be a massive cost to bear."

"They are. They will be paid."

"Red Lake has —"

"— winter mouths. Yes. So does every keep between here and the Wall. We will feed them or they will feed the dead. But fear not, we are not the only kingdom being asked to empty our coffers. Again, a dragon makes an enticing argument."

Nobody answered. Drogon had crossed the sky above this camp yesterday, low enough that Caswell's horses had bolted and two pavilions lost their stakes. Rowan sent a courier to Goldengrove within the hour after Queen Daenerys' landing. Ashford had his granary tallies drawn up before supper.

It would have taken Olenna six ravens and a month to managed the same results but a dragon had done it in one pass.

She went down the list. Caswell's granaries first, a host's privilege, if a man wanted to call it that. He took it without flinching; he had been ready since the shadow crossed his yard. Mullendore's wagons from the eastern road. Ashford's miners. Rowan's reserve, a march from Harrenhal and already provisioned. Aye, my lady. It can be done, though the roads. We will see to it. Each lord gave his answer and went back to his food, and none of them argued the amounts.

"Good, now we can dis—"

The doors at the far end of the hall opened.

The steward's boy came through first and stopped four paces in, one hand still on the door. Behind him, two figures crossed into the hall in road-dust, neither looking at the other.

"Lord and Lady Merryweather," the steward managed.

Olenna kept her seat but she gave them the turn of her head that courtesy required, and not a degree more. "Lord Merryweather. Lady Merryweather. How kind of you to ride out. I had begun to wonder whether the Mander still ran between Longtable and Bitterbridge, or whether some new kingdom had cut you off."

Orton Merryweather had the good sense to bow. Taena curtsied a finger's breadth too shallow and held it for a Westerosi matriarch she did not love. Lady Taena turned to Margaery first.

"Your Grace."

"My lady. I am not a Queen anymore." Margaery cut her off, her eyes narrowing at Lady Taena.

"My lady." Orton tried again. "We came as soon as the ravens reached us. The roads were treacherous."

"Yes, the road from Kings Landing is quite treacherous. Now, sit. The bread is good, the wine is aged, and the conversation has only just begun. I would hate for you to miss the part where it concerns you."

Two servants brought places and chairs. Caswell half-rose. "My lady, shall I have them seated beside Lord Rowan, or —"

"Anywhere will do, Lord Caswell. They will not be here long."

Olenna let them settle. Orton drank his own at a speed unbefitting a lord who had ridden all morning and had not yet eaten. Then, mild as she could manage, "I am glad you found the roads passable, Lady Merryweather. We were worried, of course. The air in King's Landing turned so foul this past month that I lost my son to it and my granddaughter nearly choked on it." She reached for the wine and poured herself half a cup. "She is recovering. You will be glad to hear it, I am sure."

Taena's opened her mouth. And immediately closed it. Her eyes turned to Loras, who kept his eyes on his own plate. Olenna watched her gaze and answered the question running through Lady Taena's head. "My grandson has survived a harrowing experience under that madman Euron Greyjoy and it is only the grace of Queen Daenerys and King Aemon that he has returned to us alive at all."

Taena’s smile was a shade too bright. “I am glad to hear it, my lady. Truly. It is a blessing they are both returned to us safe.”

Olenna snorted. She buttered a slice of bread, the knife scraping loud in the sudden quiet. "Of course you are." She took a bite, chewed, and swallowed before adding, "Now. The grain tallies and the miners."

Caswell's granaries first, a host's privilege, if a man wanted to call it that. He had his tallies ready. "The stores along the Mander are counted, my lady. First barges can load before the week is out."

"Sooner than that, Lord Caswell."

"Yes, my Lady."

Rowan set his bread down. "What numbers does the king expect from the Reach?"

"Every man who is not already a solider and can hold a pickaxe."

"Then, two hundred for now if I strip the harvest guard. More to follow once I call in the men at the fords."

"Call them in. Mullendore?"

"A hundred and sixty. I can double it once the wagons come back for a second levy."

Olenna looked down the table to each of them. "Then we have near a thousand to start and more behind them. The queen does not expect the full strength at once. She expects it to keep arriving."

Ashford nodded, and only when the list was spent did he set down his cup. "And the king, my lady."

There it is. Wonder what took so long.

Olenna did miss a beat and continued to eat. "What of him."

"We have seen the queen." He chose his words. "We have seen her dragon. No man in this hall will argue that the dragons have returned to the realm after over a century. But this king is another matter."

His glance went to Loras and away.

"The first the Reach heard the name was a raven from the Blackfish. Then the rumors flowing from the river roads about a dragon. Smallfolk at every inn swearing to have seen a great black dragon hunting over the water. Now Her Grace comes down out of the sky at Bitterbridge and tells us the shadow has a name, and the name in the Blackfish's letter and the dragon are one and the same?"

He set the cup down carefully.

"And more to that, this Aemon Targaryen is actually Jon Snow, the bastard son of Lord Eddard Stark who is also the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. A man takes the black for life, my lady. That is one of the oldest law of our realm. The Reach is asked to muster for a man who walked off that post, put a crown on his head, and now can shapeshift into a dragon."

His glance went to Loras and away. "I do not call the queen a liar, and I do not call Ser Loras one either. But, that is a great deal to swallow in one sitting, and a man may be forgiven for asking once."

"And a Lord Commander is not nothing." Mullendore spoke to his cup. "My grandfather took the black after the Ninepenny Kings. He died on the Wall and I have a cousin there still. The Reach cannot muster eighty thousand spears to unmake a vow men of my blood have kept with their lives."

"Fever-born." Olenna let the word sit on the table like something tracked in on a boot. "That is what you would tell Her Grace when she asks why the Reach sat on its hands. Loras, Ser Barristan, the Dornish nobility and you imagined it in a feverish dream, Your Grace. Beg your pardon, Your Grace, but you are all liars."

Mullendore turned his eyes downward.

"And the oath, Lord Ashford." She turned the cup a quarter. "What would you have of us do? Send a raven to Castle Black asking the First Ranger if he minds that their Lord Commander has taken the crown and has set himself as the king?"

"I would have the Reach know whose rope it is hanging from our necks."

"The rope is Targaryen. It has always been Targaryen, since the Conquest. A Watch vow does not outweigh a throne, and never has."

"With respect." Ashford's color had come up. "A Targaryen did not take the black himself and then break it."

“The only Targaryen who ever took the black,” Olenna said, “was Maester Aemon. And he did not have these… abilities to speak of. There is no precedence for this matter.”

She watched Lord Ashford’s mouth open and close like a landed fish. She noticed Rowan did not speak. He was the senior man in the room, and he had the sense to let the younger lords carry the objection for him.

She opened her mouth to handle it as she had handled such things for fifty years but the sound of Loras slamming his cup down gave her pause. Then he stood.

Margaery's hand went to his elbow but Loras waved her off.

"Fools." He was looking at the lords across the table. "All of you."

This was the first time Loras has raised his voice since his return.

"None of you have been paying attention." His good hand found the back of Margaery's chair. "I watched a raven open its beak and all of Sunspear was witness to a boy's voice coming out of it. Brandon Stark, wherever the boy is, speaking through a bird. It knew things it should not have known. We are not mad, we were not hallucinating. A bird talked, my lords, and it was not a trick." He was breathing harder now. "Ser Barristan Selmy stood three feet from that bird. If any man at this table wants to question Ser Barristan whether he has taken to telling tales, I will lend him my horse."

Ashford's fork had stopped halfway to his mouth. Mullendore opened his mouth. Loras turned to him, and Mullendore closed it.

"Euron Greyjoy chained me to his ship." The name came out bitten short. "He wore a crown that turned the air dead around him and he called things out of the water, living things, my lords, with arms thicker than your masts, and they obeyed him. I will not say what else he did in front of my sister. But he was more than a madman. Whatever lived in that crown answered when he called, and men drowned for it."

He ran out of words for a moment, but every eye in the hall was on him. Loras pressed one hand flat on the table until the tremor in it steadied.

"I do not remember all of it." His fingers moved toward the linen at his wrists and stopped. "Drogon landing on the deck and the wood buckling under him. Her Grace's hands on the chains. The water was at my chest. When I came back to myself she had me off the mast and the harbor was in ruins.

"Across the water, on the sandbar below the walls, a second dragon stood on the Elder Kraken's chest. Black as a the night, and larger than any living thing has a right to be. He had the beast pinned under his talons and burning it alive. The kraken screamed through a mouth the size of a ship's keel, and then it was just a forgotten memory. That was Aemon Targaryen. Not a man riding a dragon. The dragon is the man."

He looked around the table. "You want to know whether I have lost my wits on a ship. I am telling you what I saw. I am telling you what I lived. If that is not enough for any man here, all you have to do go to Harrenhal to face him yourselves."

The last word left him and nothing came after it. He loosened his grip on the chair and lowered himself back to the bench like a man sitting down after a wound, careful and slow, as though something might come apart if he moved too fast.

Nobody moved.

Olenna cataloged the shocked expressions of the Lords and Lady Taena and crossed their objection off her ledger.

Margaery kept her hand on her brother's shoulder. Her thumb moved once against the cloth, then stopped.

"There you have it my lords, if you have—"

The door banged open without a courtesy knock. Maester Rhodry stumbled in, his chain clattering a frantic rhythm against his chest.

Olenna didn’t wait for him to catch his breath. “Well?” she cracked, her voice slicing through the stunned silence of the room. “Has the world ended twice today, or are you just interrupting for the sport of it?”

He flapped a hand, wheezing. A raven-message, sealed with wax gone the color of dried blood.

“Give it here, you gaping fool,” Olenna commanded. “Before you faint and we have to step over you.”

He set it beside Margaery's plate and left without a sound.

Margaery took it up. She cracked the seal and read it once to herself. Then she read it aloud.

"From my brother at King's Landing." She paused, then went on. "King's Landing is taken. Aemon Targaryen flew to the city and brought the lords of the Crownlands and the Golden Company to heel. Cersei is dead, at last. The manner of her death is disputed, though the common telling names either Jaime or Ser Robert Strong to have done the deed. The wildfire beneath the city has been located and removed under the king's hand. The pretender who called himself Aegon Targaryen surrendered Blackfyre to the king out of sight of the court. The king has not claimed him as a brother and nor a Targaryen. That is answer enough for any man with eyes. Even more, Jaime Lannister was present at the parley and is left alive."

She took a breath and continued.

"One further matter. Arya Stark of Winterfell appeared at the parley and now she stands at her cousin's side. The King has already departed from Kings Landing after setting the city to order."

She folded the letter once and set it on the table.

Rowan spoke first. "The pretender surrendered Blackfyre? The sword of the Conqueror, handed over without a fight."

"Without a public fight," Ashford corrected. He had lifted his head at last. "Out of sight of the court, the letter says. That is not surrender. That is negotiation." He looked at Loras, and he had the grace to look ashamed of what he had nearly said an hour ago. "What did the king offer him, I wonder."

"His life, most likely," Olenna said. "The boy took it. Sensible."

Rowan leaned back from the table. "Five kings tore this realm apart for three years and none of them could hold that retched throne. This man has the North, the Riverlands, Dorne, the Stormlands, the Vale, and now King's Landing, all without a siege." He looked down at the letter on the table as if seeing it fresh. "When was the last time a Targaryen moved that fast?"

"Aegon the Conqueror," Olenna said. "And he needed two sisters to do it."

Caswell cleared his throat. "And the wildfire. The letter says removed. Does that mean —"

"It means the city is not going to burn, Lord Caswell. Be grateful and move on."

Mullendore stared at the grain of the wood. "I spoke poorly earlier," he said. "About fever."

"Yes," Olenna said. "You did."

Taena's face gave nothing away. She had been at Cersei's elbow when the city began to rot. Olenna will always remember that as Taena smoothed her skirt beneath the table.

"Eat your food, Lord Mullendor." Olenna reached for the wine. "You will need it on the road."

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The meal ended without ending. Rowan rose first to leave. Caswell stood next, in his own hall, and looked grateful for the excuse. Ashford and Mullendore followed. Rowan paused at the door and half-turned toward Loras, but whatever he meant to say found no purchase and he left without it.

Orton half-rose with the others.

"Sit down, Lord Merryweather. We will speak of Longtable's contribution before you ride. Lady Merryweather will join us. I am sure she has thoughts."

Orton lowered himself back into his chair with the careful obedience of a man who understood he was no longer being asked.

Olenna had a servant show them to the smaller chamber beyond the screens. She followed at her own pace, because haste was a concession she had never given anyone and she was not about to start with the Merryweathers.

Olenna took the only cushioned chair and let them stand until she gestured at the bench.

"Longtable's granaries," she said. "How full are they?"

Orton cleared his throat. "My lady, the harvest was —"

"How. Full. I want a number."

"Three quarters. Closer to two thirds, after the crown's levies."

"The crown's levies went to Cersei. Cersei is dead. The grain stays where it is until I tell you otherwise." She turned to Taena. "You have been quiet, my lady. That is unlike you."

Taena folded her hands. "I have nothing to add to my husband's accounts, my lady."

"No? You had a great deal to add to Cersei's accounts, as I recall. Whispers, mostly. The useful kind." Olenna let that land. "Tis a shame she cannot hear them now."

Orton opened his mouth. Taena put her hand on his arm and he closed it.

"You will provide all your men," Olenna said. "Armed and provisioned. Wagons for the grain. And a written tally of every bushel in your stores, witnessed by your maester, and a report sent Highgarden."

"All of my men is —" Orton began.

"That is what the King requires, Lord Merryweather. I could ask for more, I could ask for all the gold you have hidden away. I could also ask why you were in King's Landing at Cersei's side while the rest of the Reach was burying its dead from the Sept, but I have decided to ask for your men instead. You may thank me for my restraint."

Taena's hand tightened on Orton's arm.

"The tally will be ready," Taena said.

"Good." Olenna planted her cane and rose. "Send out the ravens to your steward. You will ride with the column to Harrenhal. I want you where I can see you."

She left them in the cold chamber and closed the door behind her. Orton's voice started up before she had taken three steps but Taena's cut across it. Olenna kept walking, but a slow smile appeared on her face.

-----------------------------------------------------

Loras had made it as far as the courtyard before Olenna put her cane across his path.

"Get in the wheelhouse."

"I can ride, grandmother."

"You can also bleed, fall, and crack your skull on the king's road, and I have buried one family member this year. I won't bury another. Get in."

Loras looked to Margaery. Margaery ignored him and looked at the wheelhouse. No help came from that quarter.

He climbed in with a frustrated sigh. The column lurched forward and the wheelhouse began its familiar rattling complaint over rutted ground.

For a while they rode in the sound of axles and hooves and the escort's low talk through the canvas. Loras had Garlan's letter in his lap. He was reading it again. Third time, or fourth. His finger kept finding the same line.

"What interests you about the Stark girl?" Olenna asked.

Loras looked up. "She stood beside him at the parley. A girl, what, three-and-two in a court full of grown men with swords. How did she get there? The realm believed her to be dead."

"It seems the Starks are far more robust than many of us would have thought," Margaery said. "Brandon Stark and Rickon Stark were said to have perished as well. And Sansa…"

"Sansa is under her cousin's protection now," Olenna said. "And we will be gracious with her as we have been."

"Is that what we have been," Loras said. "Gracious?"

Olenna considered that. "She is still a girl and we have been far kinder to her than the vipers in that nest. That is all that matters right now."

The wheelhouse jolted over a stone and Loras braced against the wall. His wrists turned the wrong way and the breath went out of him for a moment. Margaery reached across. He waved her off, recovered, and pressed his shoulders back against the wood.

"You don't have to act infallible with us," Margaery said.

"Someone had to."

Olenna tapped the cane against the floor of the wheelhouse. "He is right, Margaery. Leave it."

Margaery's mouth thinned but she let it go. Outside, the escort had settled into its rhythm. Wheels on packed earth. Somewhere ahead an outrider called back that the road was clear to the next ford.

"Now," Olenna said. "The matter I have been chewing on since Queen Daenerys landed in my camp."

"Grandmother."

"Hush. You knew this was coming." Olenna leaned forward on the cane. "Aemon Targaryen is unmarried. Daenerys Targaryen is unmarried. Between them they hold half the world and two dragons. Three, if you count the one that used to be a man. The Reach holds the largest army and the most productive farmland south of the Neck. Someone is going to marry into that, and I would rather it be us than the Martells."

Margaery closed her eyes.

"Stop that. You are twenty-two, not a septa."

"I am scarred, grandmother."

"You are alive and fertile and the granddaughter of the current richest house in the realm. Scars are a currency this year. Ask your brother."

Loras's mouth twitched at one corner.

"The King himself sports quite the dashing scar."

“Dashing,” Olenna repeated, flat. “Is that the word you would use for a man who fought a kraken?”

“It is the word I would use for the scar it left him,” Loras said. “It cuts from here to here.” He drew a line with his thumb from the corner of his own left eye down to his jaw. “It doesn’t spoil the face.”

“Men and their scars,” Margaery murmured. “Collecting them like coins.”

Margaery opened her eyes. "And which one of them would you have me marry, grandmother? The king who turns into a dragon or the queen who rides one?"

"The king of course," Olenna said. "I would like to meet him properly first. Without Daenerys performing queenship and me performing compliance."

"And if the king is already spoken for?"

"Then I will find out what he is spoken for, and by whom, and how firm the arrangement sits. No contract is final until a septon says the words, and even then I have seen contracts come apart."

The wheelhouse swayed through a turn in the road. Light came through the canvas in long bars and moved across Loras's face. He folded the letter and set it on the bench beside him.

"You will like him," Loras said.

Olenna raised both eyebrows. "You presume to tell me what I will like?"

"I am telling you what I saw. He speaks his mind. At the feast in Sunspear, every lord in the hall gave me room. They looked at the burns and they sat somewhere else. He walked across the hall and sat beside me. Asked after my wounds before he asked about Highgarden or the Reach or any of it." Loras turned his wrists over in his lap and looked at the linen. "He is not Renly. He is not Robert. He is something I have not seen before."

"Something new is what concerns me," Olenna said. "Something new is also what excites me. I have spent sixty years managing men I could read. Mace, may the gods keep him, was a man I could read. Robert was a man I could read. Even Cersei was predictable, in her fashion. This one is not."

She settled against the cushion and let the road do its work on her bones.

"I want to see it," she said.

Margaery looked at her. "See what?"

"The transformation. I want to watch a man turn into a dragon and turn back again." She tapped the cane once. "I am ninety years old. I have seen every wonder the Seven Kingdoms has to offer and most of them were disappointing. If this one is real, I would like to know before I die."

Loras looked at his grandmother for a long moment. "It is real."

"Then I will see it at Harrenhal." The cane settled across her knees. "And then we will talk about weddings."

-----------------------------------------------------

Extra:
Dagmer drew his axe and knocked the bolt free.

The lid fell.

The thing came out faster than anything dead had a right to move. It cleared the crate in one lunge, hit the stone floor running, and Asha had half a breath to think where is the chain before the answer arrived: there was no chain.

"Dagmer!"

"I see it!"

Captains scrambled off benches. The Drumm drew his weapon and The Stonehouse threw himself sideways through the doors.

It ran straight down the center of the hall, past thirty armed ironborn, past the Drumm with his blade drawn, past two captain's women with knives out, past every threat in the room, and threw itself at the priest.

The priest had time to say "What is dead may never —"

The wight hit him chest-first and bore him to the ground. The pool of seawater splashed across three feet of stone. The priest screamed once, high and sharp and nothing like a holy man. Then the teeth found his throat, and that was that.

Asha was already moving. Dagmer was a step ahead. Two of his men came from the flanks with spears. The Drumm, to his credit, crossed the hall with his weapon up.

They hit the wight from four sides at once. Dagmer's axe took the right arm off at the shoulder. A spear pinned it through the back. Asha buried her axe in its spine and the legs stopped working. The Drumm hacked the head free with two swings and kicked it toward the wall, where it rolled to a stop against the base of the dais, jaw still working, blue eyes still burning.

The body kept twitching under the spear.

The priest lay on his back in his own puddle. The seawater had gone pink with his blood. His eyes were open and his mouth was frozen in a shape his god would not have recognized.

Asha stood over the mess, breathing hard, her axe dripping something black and older than blood.

"Who," Asha said, very carefully, "was supposed to chain it."

Dagmer turned to his men. His men turned to each other. One of them said "Wex," and the rest nodded very fast. Wex was still on the ship.

"Right."

The hall was quiet. Thirty ironborn captains stood among overturned benches, drawn weapons, a dismembered corpse that was still moving, and a dead priest in a puddle of holy water and blood. The head by the dais had stopped biting but the eyes still tracked the nearest living man.

Asha planted her axe on the stone and looked at the captains.

"So...ummm..." she said. "...there is a war."

Nobody dared to argue that and she won the Seastone Chair in record time.

Dagmer leaned close as she sat. "Could have planned that."

"Could not have," Asha said. "The timing was too good."

"Shall I fetch the head? It is still watching Stonehouse."

"Leave it. It is doing more for discipline than I ever could."