Chapter 77

She stood there between the two knights at my door, purple eyes gone dark and narrowed, clad in pale blue silk that clung to her waist sheer as veil of water. A slit ran down the length of the dress, baring one tanned leg to the thigh, and it distracted me badly enough that it took me a moment to make my mouth work at all.

"Ashara?"

"Galladon Tarth." She spoke my name like a curse. "Tell your brutes to unhand me."

Blinking, I raised an eyebrow at the two men. They stood a clean foot to either side of her, hands entirely to themselves, having clearly laid not a finger on her. They looked at one another, then at her, then at me, and their eyes glinted with a knowing I did not much care for. Both of them were my father's men, members of our household since before I was born. Whatever this turned out to be, I would not hear the end of it once we were back on Tarth.

"What are you doing here, my lady?"

She crossed her arms and ignored the question entirely. "Am I so detestable to you, ser, that you'll not even invite me inside?"

There was something strange in her voice. Something I couldn't quite put my finger on.

Letting out a sigh, I dug a finger into the temple that had been throbbing since Malora left me at the great hall. I was in no mood whatsoever for whatever conversation Ashara had come to have. But it would do me no good to leave her making a scene outside my door for any length of time. Rumors caught fire from far less than a Dornish beauty in blue silk arguing with the Sapphire Knight at his own threshold in the small hours.

I stepped aside.

She didn't hesitate for so much as a heartbeat. She strode past me and into my rooms, leaving me standing there in the doorway wondering what precisely I'd just let into my chambers. I glanced back at my men, hoping for some flicker of commiseration.

The elder of the two, Ser Nyle, only gave me a proud, fatherly sort of nod. And Ser Patrek, younger and bold enough by half, shot me a straight-up thumbs-up.

Shaking my head at the pair of them, I shut the door and followed her inside.

Ashara had crossed to the window. I watched her for a moment in silence. It was not a bad view, some traitorous corner of my mind observed.

She reached up to open the shutters and a cool breeze rolled in off the sea, stirring her dark hair loose about her shoulders. Moonlight poured through the open window, and when she turned back to face me, she was bathed in it, the silver light catching the pale blue of her dress and rendering its edges very nearly translucent.

When she started walking toward me, I couldn't stop staring at her lips. Red as ripe cherries in the moonlight.

As if possessed, she reached up, caught me by the collar, pulled me down toward her, and kissed me. Soft. Plump. And not right at all.

I pushed her back, gently, by the shoulders. "You taste of wine, Ashara.” And it was as if my own words made the pieces fall into place, and I let out a sigh. “You're drunk."

"And?" She swayed a little where she stood. "This is what you want, is it not?"

Gods. I heard it now, plain as day. She was slurring her words. Badly so.

Wrapping her arms around my neck, she leaned up to kiss me again. This time I held her off at arm's length, both hands firm on her shoulders. And this close, with the moonlight full on her face, I could see it all clearly. The high flush in her cheeks. The unfocused drift of her eyes, struggling to fix on mine. How much had she had to drink to come to me like this?

"You were trying to make me jealous, were you not, ser?" she whispered, her voice low and throaty and very unlike the Ashara I knew. "With her. With your ribbon and your dances. Well." Her mouth twisted. "You have done it. Another victory for the great Sapphire Knight. So take your spoils, Galladon Tarth. Come and take them."

She pulled at me, trying again to close the distance. When that failed against my grip, she shoved away from me instead, and began clumsily pulling at her own dress, dragging it down to bare her shoulders.

Closing the distance, I caught her hands in mine, stilling them before she could go further. “What are you doing?"

She looked up at me. Her voice cracked. "Take me." But now her eyes were brimming with tears. "Or is she already warming your bed? Is she? Is that it?" Her voice rose into something almost a growl. "You lying ass!"

I shook my head slowly. "You are drunk, Ashara. And I have not lied to you. Not once."

She let out a wet, broken chuckle. "No? When you told me, back in Tarth, that there was nothing between the two of you, were you not lying then?"

"When you asked me," I said quietly, "there wasn't."

"Liar!" She yanked away frome me and started pawing at her dress. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”  

Cursing, my hands moved before I could think and I grabbed her by the arms, trying to keep her from tearing her own clothes again, only for her to gasp at the sudden force of it.

I let go at once, my stomach dropping, afraid I'd hurt her.

But she didn't pull away. She launched herself back at me instead, and this time she did not go for a kiss. This time she simply wrapped her arms around me and buried her face against my chest. She let out a single ragged sob.

"Please," she said, her voice hardly a whisper against my shirt. "Just for tonight, then. Just this once."

She tilted her face up to look at me again, and I had to look down at the same violet eyes that had captivated me all the way back in Sunspear, near four years gone now. 

"Even if we never see each other again after this," she said. "My first… I want it to be special. I want it to be you."

Her words were like knives sliding into my stomach.

Had she said the very same thing to me back when we'd been together on Tarth, in the crystal cavern beneath Evenfall Hall or in the gardens under the moon, it would have made me the happiest man alive. I'd have carried her to the bed and counted myself blessed by every god there was in this world.

But now?

Now all I could think of was another Ashara Dayne. An Ashara who had done something so very much like this in the tourney at Harrenhal. And whether it had been with Brandon Stark, or a young Eddard, or some other man entirely, it had eventually broken her. It had set her feet upon the path that would one day lead her to the highest tower of Starfall, and over its edge, down onto the rocks and the sea below.

No temptation in all the world was worth the risk of causing her even a fraction of that hurt.

I raised both my hands and cupped her lovely face between them. I opened my mouth to speak, to tell her a thousand different things, promises and pleas and plans for a future I had already given up on having, but no sound came out, and for a long, drawn out moment, I just stared at her. 

In the end, I said the only thing that came to my mind.

"Don't go to King's Landing." 

She shook her head against my palms. Tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks. "I must."

Something in my throat made it hard to swallow. Something in my chest ached.

Leaning down, I kissed her, once, softly, on the forehead. And then I pulled her close against me once more, and this time she came without resistance, her arms tightening around my back, her face pressed into my chest.

I don't know how long we stood there. Seconds. Minutes. The same eternity as when we held each other in that cave. Only it was long enough that at some point her ragged breathing slowly evened out, the tension going out of her by degrees as the wine and the weeping finally caught up with her.

When I was sure she'd gone quiet, I led her carefully to the bed, laid her down atop the covers, and drew a blanket over her.

Then I stepped outside and had a quiet word with my guards.

It was some twenty minutes before Oberyn Martell came to my rooms.

Walking in without saying a word, he stopped before me where I sat on the edge of the bed. And in a single sweeping look, from Ashara's sleeping form, to my face, to the untouched state of the room, Oberyn seemed to understand the whole of the situation entirely.

He put a hand on my shoulder.

"I am sorry, my friend," he said quietly.

I could only nod, feeling numb.

Oberyn drew a shawl up over Ashara's head and settled a veil across her face, so that when he gathered her up into his arms and carried her out, she looked for all the world like another of the Red Viper's many conquests, being spirited discreetly back to her own chambers. It was a small mercy, and a clever one. This way, at least, her honor would be protected. No rumors. No scandal. Only Prince Oberyn doing what Prince Oberyn was famous for.

I did not get much sleep that night.

xxx

Smoker snorted and dragged a hoof across the churned sand, restless and ill-tempered, as though my foul mood had bled straight through the saddle and into him.

I didn't much care. I let him be foul. It suited the day.

When the trumpet sounded, I gritted my teeth and rode hard.

The Lord of Griffin's Roost came thundering down the lane toward me, black armor and the griffins of his house bright on his shield. For all his prickly manner, for all the mutual disdain that ran between us, Jon Connington bore no fault for the way I was feeling. He had simply the poor luck to be the man standing in front of me when I needed something to break.

I let out a roar as I drove my lance into him.

The shaft burst in a spray of splinters as it smashed against his well-placed shield. But a good shield placement did nothing to save him from the sheer force of it. I didn’t remember ever hitting something so hard. 

Connington flew clean out of his saddle and crashed down onto the sand.

I did not stop to check on him. I did not stop to celebrate or to raise a hand to the roaring crowd yelling out for the Sapphire Knight. Riding back down the length of the lane, I collected a fresh lance from a nervous, wide-eyed Pate, and bellowed toward the master of the games.

"Next!"

xxx

Like before, I needed three victories today to advance to the final day. Only this time there was no margin for error left. Three separate opponents, and a single loss to any of them would see me out of the tourney entirely.

I let my eyes sweep the stands between bouts.

No sign of Ashara. No sign of Malora, either. Though I still wore her green ribbon knotted around my arm, bright against the blue and silver of my plate. I'd promised her I would wear it in the tourney and I meant to keep that promise, unless and until she herself asked me to take it off. My word was my word, whatever had passed between us on the dance floor.

Lord Jason Mallister was next.

The whole bout passed as though through a fog. I felt as though I were not myself, as though some other man had climbed into my armor and taken hold of the reins, roaring down the lane, shattering lance after lance against the Mallister lord and taking his blows in turn, absorbing the battering without ever quite feeling it. Mallister was a strong rider, and he held his seat through four hard passes. But on the fifth, my lance found him true, and he went down.

My whole body was bruised and battered by the end of it. I barely felt any of that either. I simply wanted to keep hurling myself against men and knocking them into the dirt. I found myself wishing the melee were today rather than just after the jousting finals tomorrow. I could have lost myself gladly in that chaos, in the pure uncomplicated business of putting men on the ground. But there was no such luck to be had. I would have to make do with the lists.

My third and final opponent of the day was a mystery knight.

The arena seemed to thrum with excitement when the pairing was announced, and I understood well enough why. I had been a mystery knight myself at Lannisport, had ridden in unknown and gone on to win the whole thing. The commons loved that story, and now they hoped for another like it.

Too bad for this fellow. I was not in a merciful mood.

The mystery knight proved genuinely competent on the first pass, keeping his seat cleanly against a hard strike. And crafty on the second, when he feinted his lance low as though to drive it at Smoker rather than at me. I nearly veered aside on instinct, which would have opened me up entirely. His lance still came up fast as lightning at the last second, scraping across my breastplate and very nearly throwing me from the saddle. 

It was a dishonorable move, aiming for a man's horse, and the crowd let him hear their displeasure for it, a chorus of boos rolling down from the stands.

Smoker took it even more personally than I did. He rode like a demon out of the seventh hell on the next pass, all his earlier ill temper focused now into pure fury.

And I decided I could play the dishonorable game just as well as any masked coward.

So when the time came, I drove my lance not at the man's shield, nor at his chest, but straight at his throat. He didn't get his shield up fast enough, and had he not thrown himself aside, my point would’ve caught him square on the gorget. Instead, I had to settle for a glancing blow which still did enough to make him tumble down, hit the ground hard, and be dragged across half the lane by his foot caught in the stirrup before his horse finally came to a stop. 

And even as he picked himself up and limped from the field, he did not remove his helm to reveal his face, as an unhorsed mystery knight was expected to do. I could still feel the glare boring into me from behind that closed visor as he went, hot enough to leave a mark.

It seemed this one meant to ride in the melee as a mystery knight too. And that, when he did, he meant to come for me.

So be it.

He could get in line behind that dornish prick and whoever else wanted a piece of the Sapphire Knight.

I welcomed every last one of them.

xxx

That same day, all three of my squires won their fights and advanced to their own finals.

I attended, as was my duty as their knight. But I found no joy in it even as Pate battered his opponents into the dirt with that warhammer of his, even as Jaime followed my instructions to the letter and kept the showing-off to a bare minimum, even as Stannis ground his opponents down with all the methodical, joyless efficiency of an accountant reconciling a ledger. Three clean showings. Three boys through to the final eight. On any other day I'd have been bursting with pride.

Today I just watched, nodded along, and felt nothing.

Later, Gerion called on me to join the Lannisters for a private dinner.

I wanted nothing in the world so much as to be left alone with my own black mood. But I went. It was the smart thing to do for a man in my position when a Lord Paramounted called, and being smart did not stop for a broken heart or a sleepless night. So I put on a fresh doublet and I went even if just to move through the motions of it.

They were all there. Gerion, of course. Lord Tywin at the head of the table, cold and watchful as ever. Jaime seating stiffly among his kin now that his knight was here, like a kid faced with both his teacher and his parents. Then there was Cersei, of course, as well as Genna and Kevan and Tygett besides.

When Tygett and Kevan asked me about the jousting, neither of them having made it through to the final round, I answered them with all the right words and asked my own questions in turn about their tilts, who'd unhorsed them and how, what they'd have done differently. 

When Genna asked after my family, I spoke fondly of my mother and my sisters, of little Brienne, growing so fast, and of Arianne and Alysanne. And knowing that Genna had been married off to a Frey, I did not make the mistake of asking the same of her in return. Instead I asked about her youth, about her girlhood at Casterly Rock before all of that, and she recounted it gladly, smiling at me the whole while.

When Cersei spent the entire dinner glaring at me from across the table, I ignored her as though her chair were simply empty. It only made her scowl the harder, which suited me fine. I didn’t know why the sudden animosity, and I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care. 

And finally, near the end of it, Lord Tywin Lannister set down his cup and fixed me with those hard green eyes.

"Tell me, Ser Galladon," he said. "Should I expect my son to win this squires' tourney?"

I told him the truth. “No.”

The table went silent. Tense. Every head turned toward me at once.

"No?" Tywin repeated, one pale eyebrow rising a precise fraction.

Across the table, Jaime seemed to physically shrink in his seat, as though he wished the floor would open and swallow him rather than leave him caught here between his lord father and his knight.

"And who will win instead of Jaime?" Tywin asked. 

"My other squire," I said. "Pate."

Gerion snapped his fingers helpfully. "Ah, yes, the stable boy."

Which did not help in the slightest.

"You believe," Lord Tywin said slowly, "that a stable boy will best my son." His voice had gone deathly quiet, as if affirming my previous answer would be the gravest of sins now that Pate’s origins had been revealed.

"He is older and better prepared, for now. But that is not the point, and it is not the thing you should be taking from this." I gazed straight back into those cold green eyes without flinching. "What you should be thinking, Lord Tywin, is this: if I can take a stable boy off the streets of Lannisport and forge him into the finest squire in all the Seven Kingdoms, then what, do you imagine, can I make of a lion of Lannister?"

The silence held for a long moment.

Then Lord Tywin gave me a slow nod, and the very slimmest of smiles pulled at the corner of his hard mouth.

I excused myself before the dessert was served.

xxx

My back slammed into the ground. My head rattled inside my helm. My lungs simply stopped working.

A cloud of dust and churned sand billowed up around me. I tried to roll over and failed. Coughed. Tried again, and managed it the second time, dragging myself half onto my side, but I still couldn't pull enough air down into my chest. I squeezed out a thin wheeze, and then, at last, forced a proper gasping breath into my body.

My armor felt twice its usual weight as I struggled up onto one knee.

A high thin whine still rang at my ears, drowning out the roar of the crowd. But through it, I could still hear hoofbeats coming toward me across the sand.

Dazed, I looked up, only to see two white horses approaching.

Was I seeing double? Had I hit my head that hard?

Then I kept looking up and my vision cleared enough to understand. Both Ser Barristan and Smoker had come to check on me at the same moment from opposite ends of the lane. Two white courses that gleamed near-silver in the afternoon light, converging on the man they'd both just watched hit the dirt.

Pulling off his helm, Ser Barristan revealed his shock of white hair. He looked down at me with genuine concern.

"Are you well, Ser Galladon?"

Smoker, unlike the Bold, simply snorted at me. Derisively. 

Did he just call me a loser? So much for a man's best friend. Maybe I should do as the Starks did and get myself some puppies instead. Loyal, uncomplicated puppies who wouldn't mock a man when he was down.

As if he'd read the thought straight out of my rattled skull, Smoker stepped closer and bonked me firmly in the side of the head with his great snout.

I pushed the muzzle away, muttering, "I was only joking. Gods."

Then I glanced back up at Ser Barristan.

"I am fine, ser.” I hauled myself the rest of the way to my feet. "Well ridden, too. That was a fine pass."

Ser Barristan watched me for a moment. There was something in his weathered face as though he had wanted to say a thing but thought better of it. 

I knew exactly what that thing was.

Falling on the eighth lance to the greatest living knight in all the realm was no shame. No one in that whole arena would think the less of me for it. But any knight worth his spurs, watching closely, could see that it had not been my best showing. Not remotely. My head had not been in it. And a man like Barristan Selmy did not miss such things.

"I hope to one day face you at your best, ser," the Bold said at last. Then he inclined his head and rode away.

He was right, and he meant it kindly, but somehow, that only made me angrier. Right and kind and true, and it landed like a rebuke all the same, because I knew I'd wasted the chance to test myself against the best in the realm by riding half a man, hollowed out by a night I didn't want to think about.

My three squires were waiting for me at the end of the lane.

All three of them had wanted the honor of squiring for me against Ser Barristan Selmy, as it was not every day a squire got to serve his knight in a tilt against a living legend, so they'd worked out some arrangement between themselves to share the duty. They came forward now to help me from the field, hands reaching for my straps and buckles, questions already rising in their eyes.

Waving every one of their questions away as they set to work on my battered armor, I gave them a single word instead.

"Yard."

They had their own finals tomorrow before the melee. Besides giving them some last minute pointers, I needed—desperately needed—to get my head straight before I set foot on that field, and I knew nowhere else better than to let out some steam. 

A man who fought in a rage died in a rage, Lord Selwyn had always said, and I did not want to give Anders Yronwood the satisfaction.