AN: ToT today, BIW tomorrow. This one is long and took me a while to finish. Next chapter we'll be at the Tourney of Storm's End. And also, I fucking love Pate!

Chapter 71 - Interlude - The Adventures of Pate the Great, the Almost Knight

Pate had never liked ships. The water slapped against the hull loud enough to keep a man awake all night. Everything creaked, from the deck beneath his boots to the beams above his head, as though the whole vessel might crack in half like an egg at any moment. 

And the floor rocked. It rocked all the time, tilting one way and then the other, never still, never solid. Floors are not supposed to rock. Pate did not know much, but he knew that.

They left Tyrosh that morning on a ship Ser Galladon and Prince Oberyn had picked out, the Orange Sun, a dornish carrack heading to Sunspear with a captain who would not dare deny one of his princes such a simple favor.

Rona lay curled on the cot in their small cabin, facing the bulkhead, exactly where she had settled herself when they first came aboard. She had not moved from that spot since. She had not eaten. She had not touched the water Pate left near her, or the bread, or the dried figs the ship's cook had given him in exchange for some copper. She was not asleep either. Every so often he heard her sniffle, a small wet sound in the dark, and then the aggressive scrub of her hand across her eyes, as though she were angry at herself for the tears.

He figured she missed her mother. He would miss his mother too, he supposed, if he could remember her. 

Or his father, or any one of the family he must have had once, before he ended up an orphan in the streets and stables of Lannisport with no name but Pate and no memory of anyone who might have loved him. So he did not blame Rona for her crying.

Watching over her from his chair was dull work compared to the grand adventure Ser Galladon and Codin and the others were sailing off toward. Lys and Volantis and all the wonders of the east. That’d at least make up for having to be on a ship.

But here Pate sat, hunched over a tiny chair in a cramped cabin, guarding a little girl who had not spoken a word since they left and would not eat.

He let out a sigh. Despite the boredom, he was determined to see it through.

There was nothing in the world Pate wanted more than to become a proper squire for Ser Galladon, and one day, gods willing, a knight. This was his first true charge. The first duty Ser Galladon had trusted him with, alone, without Codin or Grey or anyone else to lean on. A knightly duty, Ser Galladon had called it. The most knightly of all.

He would not disappoint him. He would sooner die. 

xxx

It was deep in the night when he woke up with a groan, eyes bleary and mouth dry as a donkey’s hoof. Blinking, Pate had a confused moment of dumbly looking around until he realized where he was. He groaned again. 

The cabin, right. The candle in the wall bracket had burned down low, now its flame guttering, throwing long shadows that swayed with the roll of the ship.

Looking down, he saw a pool of drool right where he’d fallen asleep on the small, bolted-on desk against the bulkhead. It wasn’t the most knightly of sights. He stood then, hoping to stretch out the kinks on his back from the awkward position he’d slept, only to feel an urgent pressing in his belly.

Pate winced. Gods, but he needed to relieve himself, badly, and had for some time judging by how it ached. There was no chamber pot in the cabin. And even if there had been, he would sooner have burst than use it in front of a lady, little girl or not. A future knight might drool in his slepp, but he did not do such things.

Rising quiet, he crossed to the cot and shook Rona's shoulder as gently as he knew how.

She came awake with a thin gasp, jerking away from his hand as though he had struck her. For a heartbeat she stared at him wild-eyed, her whole body coiled to flee, before recognition came into her face and she understood who was leaning over her.

Pate raised both hands, palms out, the way you might to a spooked horse. "It's all right," he said. "It's just me. I have to go outside for a moment. Just outside."

She did not understand. Her face scrunched up in confusion. She did not speak the Common Tongue, and he did not speak Valyrian, and the two of them were left to stare at each other across a wall of silence.

He thought about using his hands to show her. Then he thought about what, exactly, he would be miming, and his whole face went hot. He certainly could not do that. 

So instead he simply pointed at the cabin door.

She seemed to get that quickly enough, but it only made her shake her head, clutching at the blanket, her eyes darting toward the door and back to him. She was frightened, he realized.

"I have to go," he told her, helpless. "I know you can't understand me. I'm sorry. I'll be right back. I promise."

He showed her how the latch worked instead, so she could bar the door behind him. Then he slipped out into the dark.

The deck at night was a different world than the deck by day. Gone was the shouting and the bustle and the endless work of a ship under sail. The sea was calm, the wind gentle, and only a handful of men were above deck at this hour. 

A few shapes clustered near the forecastle. A helmsman stood at the wheel, a dark outline against the darker sky. They were like shadows, all of them, and none of them paid Pate any mind as he found a spot at the rail and did what he had come to do.

When he was finished, he lingered a moment, staring out at the ocean. The water was black and endless, frothing white where it broke against the hull, stretching away into a darkness with no edge to it. 

A chill ran down his spine. Growing up in Lannisport, Pate had learned to swim as a boy, splashing in the shallows outside the busy port with the other stray children of the docks. But that had been harbor water, warm and shallow and safe. This was something else. This was deep enough to swallow a man and never give him back.

He wondered, for a moment, what had become of those other children. The ones he'd swum with. He didn't think any of them had been so lucky as to meet a Ser Galladon in their lives, a lord's son who would look at a filthy stableboy and see something worth lifting up.

Though maybe they would have, if they'd been born on Tarth instead of in Lannisport. Nearly all the Companions had started as orphans out of Dawnrest, or the fourth and fifth sons of poor farmers and shepherds who could not feed them. Ser Galladon took in the ones no one else wanted. Pate had simply been fortunate enough to be found first.

Turning from the rail, he made his way back down to the cabin, only to find there was someone at the door. A dark shape crouched before it, pushing at the wood, rattling the latch, testing to see if it would give.

"Hey!" Pate shouted.

He broke into a run. The figure bolted at once, scrambling away down the long shadowy corridor and further into the ship, and by the time Pate reached the cabin door there was nothing to see. In the dim light he had not gotten so much as a glimpse of the man's face. Only that it had been a man, and that he had been trying to get into the room where Rona was.

Pate's heart hammered against his ribs. "Rona," he called through the door. "It's Pate. It's me. Open the door. It's me."

Nothing.

"Rona. It's Pate."

He heard her on the other side, breathing fast, but she did not open the latch. She was too scared, and she could not understand his words, and for all she knew the voice through the door belonged to whoever had just been rattling the lock.

Pate sighed and leaned his forehead against the wood.

He thought about going to wake the captain, or the first mate. But that would mean leaving the door unguarded, and he did not know who to accuse. He had not seen the man's face. Would they even believe him—a smallfolk boy, a foreigner, accusing one of their own crew on no evidence at all? Not likely.

So in the end he sat down on the deck with his back against the cabin door, drew his knees up, laid his sword across his lap, and stayed there.

He did not sleep. Every creak of the ship, every footstep somewhere in the dark, brought his hand to his hilt. But no one came. The man, whoever he was, did not return.

Dawn came grey and slow over the water. 

When the latch clicked and the door finally opened behind him, Pate scrambled up, and Rona stood in the doorway, looking out at him with surprise plain on her tired face. She had not expected him to still be there, he saw. She had thought, perhaps, that he had gone and left her.

Pate said the only phrase he had learned from Ser Galladon before they parted in Tyrosh. He had made the knight teach it to him three times over, until he had the shape of the strange words right.

"Nyke vāedemūn sīrī," he said clumsily. But he did mean it.

I protect you.

The girl’s eyes grew watery. She looked at him for a long moment, then she nodded and stood aside to let him back into the room.

He was so tired that he was asleep almost the moment he sat back down in the chair.

xxx

He woke to Rona shaking him hard, yelling something in Valyrian.

Pate came up out of the chair with a jerk, expecting someone to be rattling the latch again. That wasn’t it 

Frantic shouting came from beyond the cabin door. Boots stamping across the deck as men ran about, calling loudly to one another in a way they hadn't done the day before. And one word, repeated, that cut through all the rest and turned his blood to ice.

Pirates.

Without thinking, he grabbed his sword and started for the door.

Rona seized his arm. She hadn’t spoken a word to him before, but now she was speaking fast, pleading, her small hands locked around his wrist. And though he could have broken her grip as easily as drawing breath, he was afraid he might hurt her in doing so. So he stopped. Turned back. Knelt down so he was level with her frightened eyes.

"I have to go," he said, as gently as he could. "It's my duty. As a squire, as a knight one day—it's my duty to fight. Same as it's my duty to protect you. Do you understand? I have to help them, or none of us are safe."

She did not understand. She shook her head, over and over, and the only words she managed in the Common Tongue came out broken and desperate.

"Pate stay," she said. "Pate stay."

Pate's heart twisted.

He was afraid to leave her. Afraid the man from last night might use the chaos to try the door again while Pate was gone. But he also knew, from everything Ser Galladon had drilled into them, that there was no point in guarding one cabin door if the whole ship was overrun. The best hope any vessel had against boarders, when it could not outrun them, was to break the first assault and throw them back into the sea. They had even gone through mock fights aboard Ser Galladons’ own ships back at Tarth, the Companions divided in half to either swarm the deck or protect it while their lord shouted corrections.

If the pirates took the ship, no locked door would save Rona.

But she could not understand any of that. So Pate only said it again, the one thing he could make her understand.

"Nyke vāedemūn sīrī,. I protect you."

At last she nodded, tears standing in her eyes.

Before he left, he showed her how to prop the room's single chair beneath the latch, wedging it against the door to hold it fast, and made her understand through gestures that she was to open for no one unless it was Pate himself who called through the wood. She seemed to grasp it, nodding again as he pressed the chair into her hands and made himself leave.

xxx

Out on the deck, the ship bubbled with activity. The Dornish sailors were gathering weapons and shields from the arms lockers, buckling on what armor they had and were brave enough to wear, stowing anything loose that wasn't needed. The first mate stalked the deck barking orders, and up on the aftcastle the captain stood watching the sea and the coming ship with a spyglass, calm as a lord surveying his lands.

The first mate's eye fell on Pate.

"I can help," Pate said quickly, before the man could dismiss him. "I can fight. I've trained for it."

The first mate looked him up and down, at his height and at the cut of his shoulders and at the sword held with a grip that at least looked like it knew what it was for. He grunted.

"So be it," he said. "Stay near the mainmast and out of the men’s way, you hear?"

The waiting was the worst part. The pirate ship was smaller than their merchant carrack but faster and likely with double the men, a lean predatory thing that came on with all its oars working, and it took the better part of a half hour to close the gap. Half an hour in which Pate stood at his post trembling, his breath coming quick and shallow, his hands damp on the grip of his sword. Twice he slipped below to check on the cabin door, to make sure no one lurked near it, and twice he found it barred and quiet and hurried back up before the fighting could start without him.

This would be his first real battle. His first time facing men who meant to kill him. The first time he would have to kill a man himself.

He shook his head hard, driving the thought out. Don't think of it. Don't think of it.

He was doing a duty for Ser Galladon. A knightly duty, he had called it. The first true one Pate had ever been given. He would see it through even if he had to gut every last pirate on that ship.

The vessel drew alongside in a rush of shouting and churning oars. Grappling hooks arced across the gap and bit into the rail. Ropes went taut. Planks fell across the railing. And with a great howling roar, the pirates began to board.

The first man to reach him came scrambling over the rail and past the sailors already engaging with other pirates, a shabby, wind-burned man in salt-stained rags, howling like a mad dog, swinging a crude notched iron sword at Pate's flank. Pate batted the blow aside almost without thinking. 

Every hour Ser Goodwin had spent drilling him in the yard, every bruise the Companions had given him in practice, every correction Ser Galladon had barked across the training ground—all of it was there in his hands now, and the pirate's wild swing had nothing behind it but fury. Pate turned it away, deflected the sword a second time, then struck out on a counter at the man's exposed neck.

For a second he almost felt like he was back in Tarth and Ser Goodwin would call out his point in the spar against another squire. Until the blood sprayed bright and red under the morning sun and the pirate dropped with a wet gurgle.

Pate’s eyes widened, but he did not have time to dwell on it further.

A second man was already coming over the rail nearby, and a third behind him, and then the whole boarding surged up and across the deck all at once, and there was no more time for thought at all. There was only the fight.

He blocked and parried and ducked and struck. His sword flashed faster than it ever had on the training yard, faster than he had known he could move. He used his size the way Ser Goodwin had taught him, letting his reach keep the smaller men at bay, driving them back with the sheer weight behind his swings. A pirate lunged at his belly and Pate turned the point aside and opened the man's arm to the bone. Another swung a boarding axe at his head and Pate ducked under it and hammered his pommel into the man's teeth, then ran him through as he staggered. 

He felt strangely alive. Focused. The fear that had made him tremble through the long half hour of waiting had burned away entirely the moment steel first met steel, and what was left was clear and sharp and terribly awake.

More pirates came, climbing the railings like spiders, but the Dornishmen around Pate held their ground. The Orange Sun’s captain held the higher deck of the forecastle almost entirely on his own, wielding a slim slashing sword with an elegance that seemed almost incompatible to the chaotic melee around him.

The first mate had waded into the fight too, leading the men at the main deck where Pate was. He acquitted himself well, laying about the pirates with a long-hafted hammer, until a big man, half a head taller than Pate and twice as broad, caught him across the leg with a heavy slash, and the mate crumpled to the deck with a cry. 

Kicking away the pirate pressing him, Pate dashed across the deck, reaching the big man just as the killing blow began to fall. Their swords met with a crash that ran all the way up Pate's arm. He grit his teeth at the impact, but his strength held. This was nothing, he thought. Ser Galladon hit twice as hard! 

The big man rounded on him then, snarling, but though he matched him in size, he didn’t in skill. He swung his crude sword about like a woodsman hacking at a stubborn stump, all while Pate weaved deftly around the strikes, parrying and deflecting and slowly giving ground against the furious onslaught as he looked for an opening.

He could almost hear his knight’s voice cautioning him never to fight angrily. Clearly, the pirate had not taken that lesson to heart.

They came in close then, blades locked hilt to hilt, faces a hand apart, and Pate knew what to do. He could almost picture the move in his mind’s eye. Step back as if retreating. Soften the hold on the locked blades so the opponent thought he had the upper hand. Then a quick, sudden strike, arm snapping up like a bow spring.

Before he could take the first step back, the pirate spat in his eyes.

The world went white and stinging. Pate reeled back, clawing at his face with his free hand, half-blind—and through the blur he saw the shadow of a swing coming down at him. He got his sword up to block it, but the angle was all wrong, awkward and rushed, and the force of the blow tore the hilt clean out of his grip. His sword went spinning away across the deck.

Pate threw himself left. His boots slipped on blood or seawater and he nearly went down. His hand scrabbled across the planks for anything, any weapon at all, until they closed on the long-hafted war hammer the first mate had dropped.

He came up with it and got it into the path of the next swing just in time. Steel rang off the hammer's head. He shoved back, hard, and forced himself upright while the big pirate rained blows down on him, one after another, driving him back toward the rail.

He fought clumsily at first. The hammer was heavy and strange in his hands, its balance nothing like a sword's. Ser Goodwin had made him practice with every weapon in the armory back at Evenfall Hall, with mace and axe and spear and hammer, the old knight insisting a fighting man should never be helpless no matter what fell into his grip. But Pate had always favored the sword. It was the weapon Ser Galladon carried, and Pate wanted nothing in the world so much as to be a knight like Ser Galladon, and so it was the sword he had loved and the sword he had practiced most.

Now, though, the sword was gone, and the hammer was what he had.

The big pirate swung again, overhand, meaning to split Pate's skull. Pate caught the blow on the thick haft of the hammer and turned it—and this time, with the turn, he let the weight of the weapon carry him around, and he brought the head of the hammer whistling across the pirate's face.

It struck with a crack he felt in his teeth. The big man's head snapped sideways and he crumpled to the deck never to move again.

After taking a second to let out a heaving breath, Pate did not bother going back for his sword. With the hammer in both hands, he waded into the rest of them. He learned its weight now, learned to love the brutal simplicity of it. He cracked knees and shattered elbows and stove in ribs. When one ratty pirate tried to parry a blow with his thin blade, Pate simply smashed through the attempt, the hammer's head crushing the man's shoulder and driving him to the planks. There was no finesse to it, no elegance like the Dornish captain's slashing sword. There was only weight and force and certainty behind every strike.

And slowly, then all at once, the tide turned.

The pirates began to break. One of their number shouted something, and the boarders started falling back toward the rail, scrambling for the hooks and planks that had brought them, abandoning their dead and their wounded. Pate thought for a moment that the Dornish captain might order a counter-boarding, but when he looked around at the deck, he saw why the order never came. 

Fewer of their own sailors lay down as pirates did, but not by much. It had been a bloody thing, close-fought, and the crew had no strength left to chase. The pirates cut their lines and rowed clear, leaving some two dozen of their own dead scattered across the deck. 

The Dornish sailors roared in triumph as the enemy ship pulled away. Soon enough, along with the shouts and the roars, there were men coming up to him and to slap him on the back. Laughing. Clasping his shoulder. He found he had not moved from where he stood, his heart still rattling inside his chest, the hammer still grasped tight in his hand.

Until the first mate, propped against the mast with a rag bound tight around his bleeding leg, caught Pate's arm. “Trying to keep me hammer for yerself, are ye?” he asked, dark eyes gleaming.

That snapped him out of it. His eyes widened. “No, I—I didn’t—”

“Keep it, boy,” he grunted, waving a hand. “You’re better at it than I am.”

Pate felt his whole chest swell as the first mate hobbled away. His body tingled from crown to heel, his breath still coming in great heaving pulls. But he had never in his life felt so alive.

The captain came down from the forecastle and gave a short speech about how these had been the dregs of the Stepstones, cowards and scavengers who would never have dared try their luck had they known it was Dornishmen they'd be crossing swords with. 

The men loved that. They cheered loudly, and the captain called for a pair of wine barrels to be broached and divided among the crew. The mood aboard turned in a heartbeat from battle to celebration.

Pate stood among them, flushed and grinning, and though Ser Galladon never allowed him to indulge much in drinking, he allowed himself a gulp of the wineskin that came to his hand.

Then one of the sailors, already red-faced from the carnage and the wine, came up to him and slung an arm around him. "What say we bring that little girl of yer’s up, eh?” He spoke loudly and carelessly and with a rotten grin stretching his mouth. “We can have ourselves a proper party and pass her round to every man that fought!"

Pate went very still. "What did you say?"

The sailor sneered, then shoved him off. "You heard me, ginger cunt. I should've fucked her bloody last night."

Last night. Something went white and roaring behind Pate's eyes. 

A raw, animal sound came out of him then. He did not think. Before he knew, he was charging, bringing the hammer down with every ounce of strength in his body.

Eyes nearly popping out of his skull, the sailor tried to throw himself aside. He was too slow.

The hammer missed his skull but crashed into his shoulder. The man went down with a shriek, and then Pate was on him, and the long-hafted hammer rose and fell in the same angry, careless hacking he’d disapproved of in the big pirate. Once. Twice. A third time. Until the man's head split like a dropped melon across the deck planks and stopped being a head at all.

Hands seized Pate and hauled him back and threw him down. He hit the deck hard. When he looked up, half a dozen swords were leveled at his throat, the sailors' celebration curdled into fury.

"Hold!"

The captain's voice cracked across the deck like a whip.

The men stopped. The captain shouldered through them to stand over Pate, before he turned to look at his crew. His voice when he spoke was cold and flat.

"That girl," he said, "is under the protection of the Sapphire Knight of Tarth, who is a personal friend of our prince." He pointed at the ruined thing that had been the sailor. "Try what he tried, and that is your fate. Now throw this filth overboard along with the rest and get back to the wine, before I change my mind about the lot of you, you pack of whoresons."

The crowd broke apart, muttering. Two men dragged the dead sailor to the rail and heaved him into the sea without ceremony. The swords went back into their sheaths. And the crew, after a sullen moment, drifted back toward the wine, because sailors were sailors and there was wine to be had.

The captain crouched down beside Pate.

"You should have done that sooner, boy," he said.

Pate stared at him, still shaking, the fury draining out of him and leaving something cold and sick behind. "You knew?"

The captain shrugged. "That one liked to brag. Told half the deck what he'd tried in the night."

"Then why didn't you stop him?" Pate's voice cracked. "Why didn't you say anything?"

The captain looked at him the way a man looks at a fool who does not yet understand the world.

"This is the sea, boy," he said. "And I'm not your knight. Out here, you fight your own battles."

He rose and walked away, leaving Pate sitting alone on the bloody deck.

xxx

After a time, Pate got to his feet. He was suddenly bone-deep tired, tired in a way that had nothing to do with his body. He made his way below to the cabin door, knocking and calling softly through the wood.

"Rona. It's Pate. It's me."

The chair scraped. The latch lifted. The door opened. She threw her arms around him the moment she saw him.

"I'm dirty," he said, trying to push her gently back—there was blood on him, other men's blood, and he did not want it on her. "Rona, I'm dirty, don't—"

But she held on, and then she pulled back just far enough to look up at him, her eyes streaming, and she said, in careful, broken Common that she must have been practicing in the dark all that long morning:

"Thank you. Thank you, Pate."

And Pate, filthy and exhausted and still only a boy of fifteen years, felt as though he could have fought another hundred battles—a thousand—if each one meant doing his duty, and keeping one small girl safe.

xxx

It took them another two days to reach Dorne. The rest of the journey there was quiet, especially as the crew kept a respectful distance from Pate after that bloody morning. 

When he left the cabin to fetch food for himself and Rona, the sailors gave him space, their eyes sliding away, and none of them so much as spoke to him beyond what was needed. Pate did not mind. He had learned what their friendliness was worth. The cook still filled his bowls without complaint, and that was enough.

They came into Sunspear on a bright, hot afternoon, the sun blazing off the water and the pale towers of the Old Palace shimmering in the heat. Pate had never seen anything like it. Lannisport had been the biggest place he'd known before Tarth, and Tarth had seemed grand to him in its own way with its endless valleys and forests, but Sunspear was something older and stranger, all sunbaked stone and narrow shaded streets and the smell of spice thick in the air.

He took Rona by the hand and went up to the castle to call at its gates, the letter from Ser Galladon tucked safe inside his jerkin.

He was nervous saying his piece to the guards, stumbling over the words. But the moment he spoke Ser Galladon's name—Ser Galladon Tarth, the Sapphire Knight—the manner of the men at the gate changed at once. It did not take long after that. They were escorted inside, through courtyards and cool shaded corridors, to a waiting room with cushioned seats and a fountain trickling in the corner, and told to wait.

After some minutes spent in nervous silence, Princess Elia Martell came to meet them herself, and with her the Lady Ashara Dayne.

Pate scrambled to his feet and nearly knocked over a small table doing it. He remembered both women from their time on Tarth when they had visited the island, and they remembered him too, which somehow made it worse. They were beautiful in the way that highborn ladies were always beautiful in the songs, and being in a room with two of them at once made Pate's tongue turn to lead in his mouth. He went red. He knew he went red, which made him redder.

But he got through it. Somehow. Flushed and stammering and staring mostly at the floor, he told them the whole story of why he was there and who Rona was and how they had ended up in Dorne. He handed over the letter Ser Galladon had written too, and the two of them read it quickly with softening eyes.

"You have done well, Pate," Princess Elia said. "Ser Galladon chose his man wisely. You'll both stay here with us, to rest and recover. When you're ready, we'll find you a good ship and a proper escort to see you safely home to Tarth."

Pate could have wept with relief.

Knightly duties, it turned out, were not so easy as he had once imagined. He had thought protecting one small girl on a short voyage would be a simple thing. Instead it had nearly gotten him killed, and had shown him things about men he would rather not have learned. He was glad, more glad than he could say, for a reprieve.

The princess told them they'd be given rooms, hot baths, and fresh clothes. But when it came time for each of them to go their separate ways, Rona shrank back against Pate's side and clutched at his sleeve, her eyes going wide and frightened at the thought of being taken somewhere apart from him. 

He felt his own chest grow warm at it. And had Ser Galladon himself not told him to trust the princess and her lady-in-waiting, Pate might’ve gone against the idea as well. 

Rona was still hesitant until Lady Ashara crouched down and spoke to her softly in Valyrian. Then the girl's face change. She still looked up at the two grand ladies with awe bordering on fear, but there was relief in her too, at hearing her own tongue spoken kindly, at finding someone in this strange sun-baked place who she could actually understand. After a moment, Rona nodded, letting go of Pate's sleeve and following the ladies out with a shy wave back at him.

xxx

The bath was the finest thing Pate had ever felt in his life.

He soaked in the hot, scented water until his fingers wrinkled and the grime and salt and dried blood of the voyage sloughed away, and he thought that if this was how highborn folk lived, it was no wonder they never wanted to give it up. 

But when he climbed out and saw the clothes they'd laid out for him, fine Dornish silks and soft leathers, in colors too rich for the likes of him, he balked. It was too much. Clothes like that belonged on a lord's son, not on him. He left them folded on the bed and put on his own things he'd brought from the ship while old clothes, now clean, were left to dry.

A guard came to his door not long after and summoned him to follow.

He was led to a room larger than his own, with a proper sitting chamber before it, and Lady Ashara and Princess Elia were both waiting inside. For a moment Pate's heart lurched when he didn't see Rona anywhere. But one of the ladies opened a side door, and there was Rona, curled small in the middle of a bed big enough for four grown men, fast asleep, her dark hair fanned across a pillow finer than anything she'd ever known.

"She's exhausted, poor thing," Princess Elia murmured. "Let her sleep. Come. We need you now."

And then, before Pate quite understood what was happening, he was being guided to a chair and sat down in it, and Princess Elia had moved to stand behind him with her hands resting light on his shoulders, and Lady Ashara had settled herself into the seat directly across from him with a sweet, warm smile on her lovely face.

Pate went red to the tips of his ears. Redder than his own hair, he was sure of it. He had never in his life been this close to a princess. She smelled of some flower he didn't know. Her hands on his shoulders were the gentlest weight, and he sat rigid as a fence post, afraid to move, afraid to breathe wrong.

"We need to talk, Pate," Lady Ashara said.

"What—" His voice cracked. He swallowed. "What about, my lady?"

Her smile turned sharp, then. As sharp as it was beautiful.

"Everything, dear," she said. "Everything."

xxx

It was more than two hours later when Pate finally staggered out of that room, feeling more thoroughly wrung out than he had after the whole battle with the pirates.

His head was spinning.

Like all the Companions, Pate had been taught what to do if he were ever taken by enemies. What questions they might ask, and what answers he ought to give, and what he must never reveal no matter what. How many men Ser Galladon commanded. Where his ships sailed and what they carried. The state of Tarth’s gold, stores, defenses. Anything that might be useful to an attacking force.

Lady Ashara had asked him none of it.

Not one question about Ser Galladon's men, or his ships, or his coin, or his lands. Instead she had wanted to know about his life. What Ser Galladon ate for breakfast, and whether he preferred wine or ale. What made him laugh. What color he favored. Whether he woke early or late, and whether he was pleasant in the morning or foul-tempered. Whether he ever spoke of women, and what sort of women—did he seem to favor fair hair or dark, tall or small, and had Pate ever heard him name a lady he admired, and did he seem to think often of anyone in particular, and had he ever mentioned Starfall, or Dorne, or—

So many questions. On and on, one after another, gentle and sweet and relentless, until Pate's head swam with them. Princess Elia's hands had stayed light on his shoulders the whole while, and every so often she'd added a question of her own, voice sweet as honey in his ear, and between the two of them Pate had felt utterly surrounded.

Ser Galladon, Pate thought as he walked away on unsteady legs, had most certainly not prepared him for that kind of battlefield.

As it was still early in the day, Pate decided the best cure for a spinning head was an aching body, so he asked the princess's leave to use the training yard before he changed back into the clothes he wore at the ship and went outside.

At the weapons rack, his hand went to a war hammer instead of a sword.

It felt right. It felt better than right. The weight of it settled into his palms like it belonged there, and he took it out to a clear corner of the yard and began to work through the swings and forms he half-remembered, over and over, correcting himself as he went. Overhead. Across. Turn and recover. Again. 

He drove himself hard, until the sweat ran down his back and soaked through his shirt and his arms burned pleasantly with the effort, and the memory of Lady Ashara's endless questions finally began to fade.

The yard filled slowly as the day wore on. Men-at-arms came to drill. Knights came to spar. Squires came in twos and threes to work through their forms. Pate kept to his corner and kept to his hammer and tried to draw no notice.

It was not enough.

A knot of squires broke away from the others and came swaggering over. Four of them, all older than Pate or of an age with him, all wearing the good clothes and easy confidence of highborn boys. The lead one, a slim dark-haired youth with a Dornish sneer already well-practiced, looked Pate up and down.

"You," he said. "Don't know your face. Who are you, then?"

"Pate." He straightened. "Squire to Ser Galladon Tarth."

That gave them a moment's pause. Ser Galladon's carried some weight here in Sunspear. He was the knight who'd unhorsed Arthur Dayne, the Dornishman's own famous son, and was even now travelling with Lord Baratheon and Prince Oberyn on the king’s word. The squires exchanged looks.

Then the lead one recovered his sneer. "Squire, are you. And what house do you hail from, squire?"

Pate's face went hot. "None," he said, throat bobbing.

The squires laughed. His ears burned.

"No house," the leader repeated, delighted. "A hedge squire. A guttersnipe playing at knighthood." He waved a hand dismissively. "Off with you, then. Go practice in the hedges where you belong. This yard's for proper men, not for stableboys waving around hammers."

Pate's grip tightened on the haft until his knuckles went white. He was bigger than any of them. Broader. And he'd fought pirates on a heaving deck and lived. He doubted a single one of these preening boys had ever crossed steel with a man who truly meant to kill him. He could have laid the whole lot of them out across the yard and not broken a sweat doing it.

But they were right.

That was the thing. They were right. They were the sons of lords and knights, and he was a stableboy from Lannisport with no name and no blood, and if he raised his hammer against highborn boys in a Dornish castle yard, it was Pate who would be flogged for it, or worse. There was no version of that fight he could win.

So he swallowed it. He swallowed all of it—the anger, the shame, the sting of it—and he set his hammer back on the rack and he walked out of the training yard while the squires jeered at his back and called him hedge-boy and guttersnipe until he was through the gate.

He could not wait to leave Dorne.

xxx

Two days later, they did.

Princess Elia was as good as her word. She found them passage on a good ship and sent four of her own Martell men-at-arms along as escort, hard-eyed men who took their charge seriously and made the crew keep their distance. 

Unlike the squires, the princess and the Lady Ashara had been nothing but kind to Pate, for all that he'd barely managed to string two words together in their presence. He was grateful to them. He only wished the rest of Dorne had been more like its ladies and less like its yard.

The crossing of the Narrow Sea passed without trouble, if you didn’t count being stuck on a ship once again. The one bright thing about it was Rona. Her time in Sunspear seemed to have breathed new life into the girl. She was not the silent, curled-up creature who had faced the bulkhead all the way from Tyrosh. 

Now she followed Pate about the deck and tugged at his sleeve and pointed at things—a rope, a barrel, a gull, the sail—and made him say their names in the Common Tongue, then repeated them back to him with her thick accent, over and over, until she had them right. Rope. Barrel. Bird. Sky. She was quick. Quicker than Pate, he thought ruefully, if he ever tried to speak her own language. She soaked up the words faster than he'd have believed possible.

When Tarth finally came into view some five days after leaving Sunspear, Pate finally used the word he’d been meaning to teach Rona.

“Home,” he said, pointing at the island. The girl looked out toward the horizon with wide, curious eyes.

Their arrival should’ve been quiet, but with the Martell men insisted on their orders to deliver the two of them safely to Evenfall Hall itself, it was anything but. Four armed Dornishmen wearing the spear and sun of House Martell escorting a Ser Galladon’s squire and a small girl up the coast road to the seat of House Tarth drew every eye they passed. 

Pate walked with his shoulders hunched under all the staring. But he walked, and he delivered the letter to Lord Selwyn and he Rona to Lady Addison as he'd promised, and there his charge was finally, truly done.

Lady Addison almost wept when she heard the tale. She gathered Rona to her at once, this stranger's child, this freed slave from across the sea, and held her like one of her own. 

And when Pate finished telling the whole of it, including the voyage on the Golden Sun with the man in the night and the pirates, Lord Selwyn looked at him with a steady, measuring gaze and said, simply, that he had done well. That he had brought the girl through great danger and kept her safe, and that he’d done House Tarth proud.

Pate walked away from Evenfall Hall that day with his head held higher than it had ever been. His first proper duty for Ser Galladon, and he'd seen it through.

xxx

Time moved quickly on Tarth after that. 

Pate fell back into his routine as though he'd never left it. Mornings in the yard under Ser Goodwin, the old master-at-arms working him through the sword and the shield and, now, at Pate's asking, the war hammer too. 

Afternoons were with the Companions under Jack, running and sparring and drilling in the hills above Dawnrest. It was hard work and Pate loved it, loved the ache of it, loved the way his body was growing stronger and surer with every passing week.

But the best part of his days came in between, when he took his meals with Rona in the gardens of Evenfall Hall.

She was thriving. Lady Addison and Ser Galladon's sisters had taken her in fully, and it showed. She was learning her letters and her Common both, proving cleverer than Pate at each. She told him, in her thick and improving accent, that she was happy here. That she was being cared for. That everyone was kind to her.

But she still missed her mother. She said it often still, though she cried less than she had at first. Pate would watch her talk about the woman she'd been torn from, and he'd wonder if one day Rona would end up like him—if the memories would fade and blur and finally slip away entirely, until she couldn't remember her mother's face at all.

He hoped not. He hoped she'd hold on to them. He wished, more than he could say, that he'd been able to hold on to his own.

The weeks passed. The only truly exciting thing Pate did in all that time was ride out with Jace one afternoon to visit Ser Galladon's strange distillery in the outskirts of Dawnrest, where the coppersmith Borric and the boy Lenny toiled over their gleaming contraption. Jace let him try the newest batch of the clear burning drink, and Pate had coughed and choked and nearly brought it back up, though Lenny had insisted, indignant, that it was getting much better than it used to be. Pate could not imagine what it must have tasted like before.

It was another fortnight after that when Ser Galladon finally came home.

xxx

He came with good news. The voyage had been a success. The Crown Prince's bride had been found, and even now sailed toward King's Landing in Lord Baratheon's fleet.

Lord Selwyn threw a great feast that night to welcome his son home. The great hall of Evenfall Hall blazed with light and rang with music and laughter, and Ser Galladon sat at the heart of it, besieged on all sides—by his father's knights wanting tales of the Free Cities, by the many ladies of the island who seemed to have found a dozen reasons each to drift near him.

But he made time, in the middle of all of it, to come and find Pate.

"There he is," Ser Galladon said, clapping a hand on Pate's shoulder. "My father told me what happened with the pirates. Seven hells, Pate, but that must’ve been scary. I wish I was there for your first real fight, but from what I heard, you acquitted yourself tremendously."

"Yes, ser." Pate flushed and looked at his boots. "Thank you, ser."

Ser Galladon opened his mouth to say something more—but just then Lady Addison called out to him from the high table, where she sat surrounded by a knot of ladies, beckoning him over.

"Later," Ser Galladon said, giving Pate's shoulder a squeeze. "We'll speak properly tomorrow. Meet me at the yard in the morning."

And then he was gone, swept back into the feast.

Pate barely slept that night.

We'll speak properly tomorrow. He turned the words over and over in the dark. Could it be? Could Ser Galladon mean to knight him, for what he'd done on the ship? Pate had never dared to even think it. He was too young still—not yet six-and-ten. And he had so much left to learn, so much more Ser Galladon could teach him. But the pirates. Protecting Rona. Perhaps that had been enough. Perhaps—

He dreamed, when he finally slept, of riding beneath the sun-and-moon banner of Tarth with spurs on his heels and a knight's sword at his hip.

xxx

The next morning, Pate waited for Ser Galladon in the yard.

He couldn't keep still. His hands wouldn't stop fidgeting, twisting together, tugging at his belt. To give them something to do he went to the rack and took down a war hammer and started working through his forms, the familiar swings settling his nerves a little.

He'd been at it a few minutes when a slow clap sounded behind him.

He turned. Ser Galladon was crossing the yard toward him, a grin on his face.

"When did you take up the war hammer?" the knight asked.

Pate reddened. "At the ship, ser. Lost my grip on my sword and had to grab the first thing I could find. It never felt good in practice with Ser Goodwin, but back there, with the pirates…" He shrugged, searching for the words. "I dunno. It just feels right, now."

Ser Galladon's smile widened, and a gleam came into his blue eyes.

"It fits you, Pate," he said. "You've the size for it, and you still have some years to grow. Keep at it. A hammer in hands like yours will make you twice as deadly." He nodded at the weapon. "Ser Goodwin can teach you the fundamentals, but I can show you a few tricks too. And I know someone who’ll make a great sparring partner for you."

Pate glowed at that. But he could not wait any longer.

"What did you wish to speak about, ser?"

"Ah. Right." Ser Galladon's manner shifted, became a touch more serious. "Well. It's this. Soon, we’ll  be gaining some company. Two new squires will be joining my household. Both younger than you."

Pate's mind leapt at once to the Companions. Someone from among the boys, then—maybe even a boy he knew. Some clever orphan from Dawnrest who'd caught Ser Galladon's eye.

"Who, ser?"

"Lord Tywin's heir," Ser Galladon said. "Jaime Lannister. And Lord Steffon's second son. Stannis Baratheon."

Pate's stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Lannister. Baratheon.

"There'll be a tourney at Storm's End in a few moons," Ser Galladon went on. "They'll join me there, and then come back with us to Tarth."

"Oh," Pate said. His mouth had gone dry. "Oh."

He'd thought he was to be knighted. Instead—

Instead Ser Galladon had come to tell him he could no longer be his squire.

The understanding settled over Pate like cold water, and his chest went tight around it. He couldn't even blame Ser Galladon. Not really. Those two were the sons of Lords Paramount. Jaime Lannister was the heir to Casterly Rock itself! It was an enormous honor to have them squire under you, the kind of honor a rising house like Tarth could hardly refuse. And Pate…

Pate was just a stableboy. In the end, that was all he'd ever been. A stableboy from Lannisport, better fit to swing his practice hammer in the hay and the hedges than to stand in a proper castle yard among the sons of knights and lords.

Go practice in the hedges where you belong.

He should have known.

"I understand, ser," Pate said. His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "But… would it be possible to find another knight? Anyone at all who'd take me. I'd serve them just as well, ser, I swear it. I'd give it everything I have."

He didn't want to serve any other knight. He wanted to serve Ser Galladon. But what else could he do? Squiring was his only road to earning his spurs, and if that road no longer ran through Ser Galladon, then he'd have to find another, or give up his dream entirely.

Ser Galladon made a strange face. "What are you talking about? What other knight?"

Oh no.

No, no, no. Was that it? Was Ser Galladon telling him there were no other knights? That no one at all wanted a stableboy for a squire, that his time was simply done?

Pate's shoulders dropped. He felt like he'd been punched in the gut, all the air gone out of him. He should have known. He'd always known, hadn't he, somewhere deep down. He was never meant to be a knight. Boys like him didn't become knights. He didn't belong here, had never belonged here, had only been fooling himself all along—

He shook himself. Stopped the thought before it could finish.

No. He couldn't give up. Not now. He had to try. He had to.

He looked down at the dirt, biting hard at the inside of his cheek to stop his upper lip from trembling.

"Well, ser," he managed, "I only thought that perhaps I could find another knight to serve under until I earn my spurs. Seeing as I won't be able to serve under you anymore."

"What are you saying?" Ser Galladon said. Then he stopped. He tilted his head, and something shifted in his face. "Do you… do you think I came here to drop you as my squire? Because Jaime and Stannis are joining us?"

"I understand, ser," Pate said. His throat throbbed. He forced the words out anyway. "They're highborn an' all. Wouldn't want to be seen squiring alongside the likes of me. But maybe some other knight could—"

"No."

Ser Galladon's voice came out harsh, and Pate flinched as though he'd been slapped.

"Look at me, Pate. Look at me."

Two hands landed firm on his shoulders and Pate looked up. Ser Galladon and Lord Selwyn were the only two people left in the whole castle that Pate still had to tilt his head up to meet, tall as he was growing. Ser Galladon's blue eyes held his, and there was no anger in them, only something fierce and steady.

"You are my squire, Pate," Ser Galladon said. "That will not change. Not if I gather a hundred highborn squires. Not if the king himself decides to earn his spurs a second time under my banner. Do you hear me? I came to tell you there'll be a squires' tourney at Storm's End, and that you'll be coming with me for it. And that you'll be meeting your new brothers, who will look to you as the senior squire, and learn from you as much as they learn from me. Do you understand?"

Pate could only nod, dumbly. His knees nearly buckled with the force of the relief that swept through him. His eyes stung. He blinked hard against it.

"Oh, Pate," Ser Galladon said, softer now.

And then he pulled Pate into a hug.

He froze.

"I also came to tell you how proud I was," Ser Galladon said, one hand coming up to the back of Pate's head. "When my father told me what happened at sea. And there was a letter, too. From Princess Elia. The captain of the ship told her everything—how you fought, and what that man tried, and what you did to protect Rona. You did so well, Pate. You did so, so well, buddy."

Pate nodded against Ser Galladon's shoulder. The tears came now, and he couldn't stop them. They spilled down his face and soaked into the knight's shirt, and he thought dimly of how pathetic that was, weeping like a child into his lord's clothes.

"The only reason I'll not knight you yet," Ser Galladon went on, unbothered by the wet on his shoulder, "is that you've only been training a few years, and there's more to being a knight than knowing how to swing a sword. But the most important thing, Pate, the thing that matters more than all the rest, is the heart. And that you have. A big one, at that. You understand me?"

Again, Pate could only nod.

And then Ser Galladon brought both arms fully around him and pulled him in tighter, and Pate could not hold it back anymore. He grabbed at his knight with both arms and held on, and the sobs came loud and wet and shaking, and Ser Galladon just held him through all of it, one hand patting slow and steady against his back.

In that moment, Pate understood, finally, truly understood, why Rona still missed her mother so much. Why she cried for her in the night. Because this, this feeling, this arm around your shoulders and this voice saying you did well, buddy, this was what it was to have someone who was yours. A parent. Someone who held you up when your legs gave way.

Pate had never had that. Not that he could remember.

And if this was how it felt, this warm, aching, overflowing thing in his chest, then it was the greatest feeling in all the world.