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Dragonstone had been dead and dying for years now yet Stannis had never truly felt the immensity of ghost-breath silence in the fortress until returning from his defeat at Blackwater Bay. Until the dead he had not seen before the ill-fated battle seemed to have emerged from the sea with him, the dead and gone taking the place of his army. He felt them then, in the deserted room of the Painted Table when only days before was near full with bickering, querulous lords he'd wanted to be rid of.
More than ten years past, he himself had led the attack that thickened the shadows. As if each one thickened the very walls of the keep until it became as impenetrable, barren and unyielding as the rock it sat upon and the lands it held; a monstrous shard that pierced the sky.
Back then, his men—Baratheon men—fought for him in the name of his brother. When Robert called upon his banners and they answered with ready steel. When Stannis didn't need to besiege his own home and defeat his own brother.
His closed his eyes at the memory—this ghost haunted him most of all. Stannis was not deaf to the whispers of Renly's ghost at the Blackwater. Perhaps it--Renly--truly was there, came the rumor-mongering of his own sleep-starved mind. If he was, then Stannis was sure he brought the shade along with him as he fled.
Fled. His teeth grit.
After the Rebellion, as he'd steeled himself to send a raven to Robert about the escape of the Targaryen children, he poured over a hastily drawn list of those that had fallen at the shoals of Dragonstone. Targaryen bannermen, Targaryen knights, that wouldve just as quickly killed him and his own men if their fortunes had been reverse. When the septon—Rhaegar's—asked a night of prayer for the dead, he allowed it. He'd forbidden the celebration of his soldiers, stationing guards at the wine cellars, until the last candle was lit and Baratheon and Targaryen men alike stood before the Seven to honor those they had killed and those they had lost.
Stannis had stood with them, even though he kept silent as the septon said his prayers. He saw then that even shackled, injured, and maimed, soldiers would bend the knee to their gods. They could refuse their king and betray their lords, but not their gods. Even as they stood next to the enemy they'd faced that day, they knelt and they prayed.
When he returned from Blackwater Bay, that brief moment when his feet touched solid ground despite the lingering sway of a battle-ravaged seam underneath his skin, he'd swayed and looked up at Dragonstone as he had that first time twenty years ago. He'd half-expected an approaching septon to once again ask for prayer, only to be struck by the realization that there would be no septon—and there would be no gods. Just a raging fire where the saltspray dashed upon the rocks. Fire and the Red Woman. He didn't stand with his men as he had done when they first left. From inside the keep, he listened to their voices along the fires at the beach.
He had no prayers to say, for the gods—the God—had no answers to give.
The days that followed were a haze of fire and darkness and a warmth that hovered just out of his reach even when Melisandre kept hearths ablaze in every chamber.
The darkness has its demons, my king, she said. He didn't need to be told. He saw these demons with his own eyes, dark, unnameable things mounted on the walls like trophies of his conquest. The Light of R'hllor will comfort you now most of all.
But there was no comfort to be had. Even as R'hllor blazed on, playing fickle shadows upon the Painted Table, dancing across the Seven Kingdoms—his Seven Kingdoms—they had no power now. Only mimicry, a trick of the light on shadowy fingers; only promise, and Stannis once disillusioned—once betrayed—refused to play the part again.
Then the Wildlings came with their foolish quest for the Wall. With the news came purpose, said Davos, but even then, Stannis had his doubts.
To what end shall I fight? With what shall I fight? I have little more than a thousand swords at my command, he thought bitterly. A mere garrison. In service of the king of the Seven Kingdoms.
He had the blessing of a god that watched as his fleet burned, as the Seven had watched when his parents were dashed upon the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay. If he'd hated the Seven for what they failed to do, then so must he hate R'hllor for what he failed to give.
Yet he had no strength to hate anew. Much of it was already within, a fire that he himself fed. I failed, and that, he felt, he knew, was the truth. Unlike Melisandre, he didn't need incantations to hasten the burn. Just the darkness of his own thoughts, the demons of his own failure, that played upon him as if he himself were the shadow and gone was the man that cast it.
Halting, tentative footsteps echoed in the chamber, disturbing his thoughts.
He was sat at the head of the Painted Table, head bowed, eyes fixed blankly upon the fine ridges that marked the Wall engraved on ancient wood.
He barely stirred at the sound. He was tired. Thirty-and-five years old, at the prime of his life, outlived his brothers and the parents that raised them, with a kingdom that needed him, and a throne that refused him, Stannis Baratheon was spent.
His knuckles were sharp, angry under his skin as his hands gripped the edge of the table. His cheeks had hollowed. His head was bare; his crown lay discarded over the fine markings of Winterfell. Just as his kingdom lay asunder, so did he.
“Your Grace,” said a young voice. His squire Devan stopped at a respectable distance away. Stannis could see his feet shuffle uneasily from the edge of his sight.
“Stop fidgeting,” Stannis said, stern but for the hoarseness that roughened his throat. He looked up and leaned back in his chair, heaving a sigh through his nose as if that simple act had sapped his strength.
Devan immediately straightened, folding his hands behind him.
Not rarely was Stannis struck by the boy's resemblance to his father that Stannis wondered if this was how Davos had carried himself as a young man. Then he would remember that Davos had been raised in Flea Bottom, where Stannis had often wandered in the years he'd sat in the Small Council. He could hardly imagine Devan, stood before him now in his neat doublet, the sigil of House Seaworth on his breast, littering those narrow alleys, shrinking back from him like the many starving children of Flea Bottom as he, Master of Ships and brother of the king, did the king's duty of surveying the city.
Yet Davos had been that boy that shrunk in hunger, became the man that braved the Tyrell fleet, and the man that withstood the justice that Stannis exacted from him, with eyes so hardened by acceptance and faith that the vivid memory of them couldn't be reconciled with the wide-eyed reverence of the boy now staring back at him. Devan twitched, fighting the urge to fidget under the weight of his gaze.
No, Devan was raised a bannerman's son and would someday be a bannerman himself. He was not his father.
The light sluiced across the boy's face. If Stannis saw fear there, then he did not see all of it.
“What is it?” Stannis prompted him.
“Maester Pylos says to tell His Grace that the smithy has finished repairs on all swords that needed tending. The reserve armory--” the boy swallowed, his voice gaining strength as he spoke. He learns quickly, Stannis thought. “--has been checked twice. Ser Rolland Storm says that it will be adequate for the garrison that His Grace will be leaving here.”
Stannis nodded. His men were preparing for the Wall. Stannis had never gone so far north and he echoed the fears of his young maester. They were hardly armed for war in such foreign climate.
He'd commanded Pylos to send for Velaryon pelt. The Lords of the Driftmark commanded over scant fertile land yet they had significantly more game for skinning than any of Stannis' bannermen. Another jab that was not intended by anyone other than sheer circumstance yet he felt it all the same. The Stormlands were teeming with game—they were more than capable of supplying pelt for thick cloaks. But not all of the Stormlands were his; even though he'd gained them after Renly's death, very few survived after Blackwater Bay.
However, Selyse provided ample compromise. The Florents of the Reach further thinned their coffers to buy meager supplies from White Harbor. The cloaks were hardly adequate. They were dregs of White Harbor's provisions, having already supplied Manderly's men.Robb Stark's men. But they were better than leaving southron skins unprepared for nothern warfare.
Of the Estermonts—his grandfather and his uncles—he received no word, and that was word enough. In spite of his cousin Lomas' reassurances, Stannis knew not to rely on his mother's family anymore.
“And the food supply?”
“Maester Pylos is expecting a raven from Storm's End tomorrow, Your Grace, but--” Devan's mouth clicked closed. Apprehension knit his brow.
“Speak,” Stanns commanded gruffly.
Devan didn't so much as bristle Stannis' impatience, and if he did then he hid it well. He had gotten to know the lord that he served and while Stannis didn't expect a young boy to keep better rein over his fears, Devan never failed to try.
“Bryen--” Devan began, swallowing, “Bryen says that his father was afraid that Storm's End would be unable to meet Your Grace's demands.”
Bryen Farring, Stannis' other squire, was the son of Ser Gilbert, the castellan that Stannis had left at Storm's End before his fleet sailed south. The father proved to be as steadfast as the son. Ser Gilbert, despite growing fears of an attack on the meager garrison and even after news of Stannis' defeat, kept true to his oath and held Stannis' burning stag high over the keep alongside the crowned stag of his youth.
The Stormlands were rich, but Stannis also knew that Renly's sizable host had depleted the stores. The next harvest was still several months away and of all the resources that Stannis lacked, it was time that he had least of all.
Stannis' mood darkened further. “Did Bryen say this to anyone else?”
Devan shook his head.
Stannis studied at him a moment longer. Devan and Bryen had become close friends and likeness was not the only thing that Devan inherited from his father but loyalty as well. But he saw that Devan spoke the truth. Loyalty to his liege came before loyalty to others—perhaps he learned that from Davos as well.
“He shouldn't be sharing unfounded fears when it serves no purpose other than rousing panic. This campaign is already ambitious,” Stannis told Devan. The boy nodded, meeting his heavy gaze with a firm resoluteness in his eyes that held with better strength than the hollow grief he saw in some of his men. “I would not have them disheartened further.”
Devan nodded again.
“And you will not be telling Shireen,” Stannis hastened to add. He knew that Devan and Shireen shared a companionship beyond their lessons with Pylos. Somehow, the boy had gained her confidence, and while Selyse was quick to show her disapproval, Stannis argued that Devan was a much more preferable companion for Shireen than Patchface. Eventually, Selyse had relented.
“Even when she asks, Your Grace?”
Stannis frowned. “I see no reason why she would.”
Devan, suitably chastised, bowed his head. “Of course, Your Grace.”
“Tell Pylos all the same, and send for the Lord Hand. We must needs prepare for the shortage if it does happen.” And it will, he thought to himself with no little foreboding.
Dismissed, Devan bowed a final time and walked quickly out of the room. Stannis heard him break into a run once he was out the door. His squires knew that he didn't like to be kept waiting, something they learned on their own that Stannis sometimes marvelled at their partnership.
Soon, Devan would pass on Stannis' reprimand to Bryen; he wouldn't be surprised if the boy would ask his forgiveness in the morning. Bryen had always been the straggler of the two. Stannis often overheard Devan imparting stern yet tender guidance to his fellow squire when they thought he was out of earshot.
He imagined Robert and Eddard Stark sharing the same camaraderie as boys. If serving the same master had made them better brothers than Robert and Stannis, who grew up answering only to themselves after their parents died.
It was little wonder then that Robert had sooner cast his gaze far afield when he was in need of guidance after Lord Arryn's death. Farther than the one that Stannis had been prepared to offer.
After Robert's eleventh nameday, he'd left for the Eyrie. A cause for much pride for Robert as a boy—as if he needed more to boast about, Stannis thought bitterly.
And me, father? Stannis remembered asking Lord Steffon. Will I learn to be a lord as well?
You won't be a lord, Stannis, Robert had scoffed.
Lord Steffon had silenced Robert with a patient click of his tongue. You'll be the younger brother of a lord yes, and you'll help him run Storm's End when the time comes.
He'd asked, then: Whom shall I squire for to learn this?
Then Lord Steffon was silent. It wasn't until Stannis was much older, recalling that exchange rather vividly, that he realized his father truly had no answer to give him. Steffon was the only child of an only child. He'd had no cause to think of younger brothers. But at the time, with all the earnestness of a boy of ten, Stannis thought that surely, surely, they had much to learn to serve as the younger in the same way that elders learned to be the elder.
You don't have to learn to be a younger brother, his father finally answered, uncharacteristically cautious as he spoke. You... You simply are.
Confused, he'd asked more questions. He could see that his father was starting to get impatient with the conversation. Still, he'd soldiered on. He must know. Then what will I learn? I'll must needs learn something as well. His young face had been set in grave seriousness. Don't I, father?
Then Steffon had smiled in answer. You could be a knight, of course. They're never short of a need for squires, you know.
Yes, a knight! Robert had exclaimed from their father's knee, bouncing on his heels in excitement. Then when I call my banners--
If, Steffon had interjected. If you call your banners. A lord must not wish for war, Robert.
Robert huffed. If I call my banners—you'll answer.
Steffon turned to Stannis, then, and the weight Stannis had seen in his father's gaze held him still. More than twenty years later and it was still vivid in Stannis' mind. He will be the first to answer.
Davos arrived soon after Devan left. He appeared wearier—older--than Stannis remembered. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the fickle light that deepened the lines on his face, darkened the shadows underneath his eyes. The Lord Hand—the new Lord Hand—look to be as worn as his king felt.
“You summoned me, Your Grace?”
Stannis nodded brisquely, gesturing for Davos to take the chair nearest him.
The wariness with which Davos glanced around the room did not escape him. Neither did the slow, reluctant way he'd lowered himself on the chair with all the caution of a guilty man.
Stannis studied him closely. Davos had spent several days in the dungeons—with very little relief from Stannis himself. He'd proven his loyalty when many highborns had failed and burned for their treason.
What was there for his Hand to be guilty of?
“The Red Woman is not present,” Davos said eventually, barely hiding his surprise.
Of course. “The Lady Melisandre,” Stannis stressed her name, “is praying, no doubt, for the safety of our journey north.”
Davos shifted uneasly. The antagonism between the two was palpable even from the start. Stannis loathed it. It was as if both trusted him too little to be assured of their place in Stannis' court, like children vying for favor.
“Why do you distrust her so, my Lord Hand? She has served me loyally, as have you. Surely that would suffice to reassure you of her place by my side.”
Davos cleared his throat. He met Stannis' gaze, undaunted. There were very few times when Davos looked at him so. Even though he made his disagreements plain enough, Davos had always said them with reverence and respect. But there were times, such as now, when he met him with defiance as unbending as the king he served.
What a pair me make, Stannis thought snidely.
“She's a foreigner, Your Grace. She'd burned the Seven in the same of some god.” Derision was uncharacteristic of Davos Seaworth. A common man—less so of birth but of standing--Stannis would lose him in the middle of festivities. He was silent in most meetings, drifting towards the back as the highborns spoke. Yet here was Stannis' plainest bannerman, speaking so vehemently.
Surprised as he was, Stannis had heard all of this reasons before. “As you were foreign to courtly life before I'd given you a knight and a name? As heretic--” he near spat the word, recalling the many lectures from bygone septons, “--as I for denouncing the Seven whom you hold so dearly?”
He didn't expect an answer; Davos had none to give. Instead, Davos ducked his head, contrite. But contrite for what? Stannis knew it wasn't for thinking so little of Melisandre. Davos did not apologize for speaking his mind.
“She led you astray,” he said softly.
Alarmed, Stannis eyes widened in unfurling outrage. “Do you think me weak to be bent to anyone's will?” A straight-forward question as any, and perhaps unfairly demanded. He'd known Davos for a long time, after all, and Davos had never wavered.
Davos shook his head, his demeanor calm as if he'd expected such an outburst. As if he'd asked the same question himself—and had answered it. “No, Your Grace,” he said. He didn't meet Stannis' eyes. “I am still your man. Now more than ever.”
Stannis wasn't so easily reassured. He realized with a pang that it had been foolish to think that Davos would remain at his side—staunch even in doubt, loyal even in loss. Had Blackwater Bay taken his Onion Knight from him after all?
Better he'd died than for me to see his faith so diminished. The thought came unbidden, yet it came all the same and did so bitterly in scorn. Stannis wanted to recoil from having wished it, only to discover that it was the truth. Davos was his, and he felt like a child for staking his claim but Davos was, out of anyone else, truly his. His name, his knighthood, his lands. Stannis had been the one to touch sword on the man's shoulders, the one who'd rewarded him for his deeds and punished him for his crimes. Davos swore loyalty to him, not to Robert, even when the banner of House Baratheon had unfurled behind Stannis on the day Davos bent the knee and rose a knight. Even as Stannis became lord of Dragonstone and Davos remained in his service.
Davos was his in the way that Robert never truly was, in the way that Renly never ended up becoming.
Stannis knew no other loyalty as that which Davos had pledged him. Neither Robert and Renly had been so generous. His wife was his wife—to betray him was to betray herself, joined as they were in name and wealth.
Davos, however—I made him, Stannis reasoned with himself. I madehim.
“I had led myself astray,” Stannis said, so plainly that it was less an admission of guilt than a blatant statement of fact. “Blackwater Bay was my failure.”
Davos looked up, confusion writ clearly on his face.
But Stannis was undeterred. “You asked for truth, did you not?” He grit his teeth. “I failed because I failed, Davos. It was through no fault of Melisandre. It was my ill judgment that ought to bear the blame for the death of your sons.” The death of a thousand others. “Blame the wildfire, the Imp's cunning, Tywin Lannister, and the Tyrells' treason.”
Davos swallowed, silent. Stannis saw the pain in his eyes. Did Davos ache for the sons that he lost or the king that betrayed his faith?
“Robert's decline will also be blamed on no one else but Robert—his excesses and his obsession with the past. He brought about his own death and perhaps if I had not left King's Landing when I did, I would have met the same end.”
The fire seemed to be the only one breathing in the silence that thickened between them. Despair leadened Stannis' heart as barely healed wounds opened anew, raw as if he hadn't already spent the last few months mired in the fog. He was wrong; he had yet to escape the it, and perhaps it was unjust that he wanted to. Cowardly.
After all, this was his burden to bear. Renly wasn't the only ghost branded into the back of his eyes.
“Would you just as readily murder me, Lord Davos? To exact justice?”
Davos flinched violently. As Stannis spoke, Davos' shoulders had hunched gradually. He withered, it seemed, at the face of truth he may have already known yet refused to see.
Stannis continued, yet his words had lost their heat. His eyes turned to the Painted Table. “She says that I am Azor Ahai reborn. Do you believe this?”
Davos was silent for a moment. “I believe only in the Seven, Your Grace,” he answered, not without great caution. But Stannis felt that Davos' heart was not in it. His heart was not with him. It was burning in wildfire where Stannis had left him at the mention of his sons. “And in you.”
Stannis snorted. “You waste so much breath for one word. 'No' would have sufficed.”
Teeth grit, clearly at the last stretch of his thin threshold, Davos looked at him. “Then no, Your Grace.”
“You believe in me but what am I?” Stannis turned away from the Painted Table to held his gaze. “She says I'm a god yet I do not feel it. Why me? Why not Robert, or Rhaegar, or Eddard Stark? Or you, Davos, why not you? Am I a god because I am king? Or am I king because I am a god?”
Again, Davos paused.
Have I bled you dry of your truths, Davos?
“I only know that I pledged my service to you before you became either one,” Davos answered, with the resolute certainty of a man that clung to the mast in the heart of a storm. “To the half-starved boy of nine-and-ten that held Storm's End.”
“The very same that chopped off your fingers.”
With his maimed hand, Davos reached up to grasp the pouch of fingerbones that were no longer there. He clutched only air. Too aggrieved, Davos didn't bother to mask his error. “The very same.”
“The very same that cost you four sons and may very well cost you another.”
Their eyes locked, both gazes hard and unyielding.
Davos did not look away, the grief raw on his face. Thick in his throat. His voice trembled even as his lips steadily moved. “The boy that gave me land and life, Your Grace.” Before Stannis could open his mouth, Davos continued. “My wife often despaired of my absence, yet she never uttered a word and I had never given it much thought.” Until now, hung heavily over Stannis' heart. “She understood better than I did. 'Seaworth' will not be the only legacy I pass on to my sons, but also loyalty.”
“Indebtedness,” Stannis corrected, the word grit through the back of his teeth.
Davos roughly shook his head, as if batting away dust and smoke from his eyes so that he may soldier on. “Loyalty, Your Grace. It is what I promised at the start.”
“And what is the reward you expect for this loyalty, Davos? My knights will be in want of land and wealth should we win the battle at the Wall, the same reward I had given you those many years ago. Your onions would have cost you your life, now this war has cost you more than that.”
Davos remained at Stannis' side out of loyalty but Stannis believed that that wasn't the only reason. King and Hand alike honored duty. As Stannis had been dutiful to Robert, even he had been embittered by the loss of Storm's End. Even he sought justice for his sacrifice.
“I'm a simple man. I don't crave power, and I don't need more land than you have already given me.”
Stannis smiled hollowly. “Then what would a simple man want?”
Davos was reluctant with his answer. Emotions warred on his face. “It is a luxury--”
“Everything is a luxury now,” Stannis interrupted, dismissing Davos' concern.
Davos swallowed.“I want to see my family,” he said in earnest.
Stannis nodded. “You shall, when we return from the Wall. When we have done our duty. You may even stay in Cape Wrath till the end of your days once this war is finished, if you so choose. But that is victory, not reward.”
“I want to see them before we leave, Your Grace.”
Stannis frowned in disbelief. What Davos asked was not only impossible but irresponsible. They were in the middle of a war. They had but a handful of days left till they sail from Dragonstone and preparations were already underway.
“You are my Hand. You cannot leave now.”
Davos drew in a breath, steeling himself. “I have lost much and if it is as the Night's Watch says—if the wildlings truly outnumber us—then I may no longer have the chance to see them again.” He didn't ask; he pleaded.
Stannis' frown deepened as he realized this. His staunch Onion Knight, who had done little more than nod in acceptance when Stannis had passed the sentence to chop off his fingers for his crimes, was at the point of begging.
Taking advantage of Stannis' silence, Davos continued, speaking in a cascade of near desperation such that Stannis had never seen from him. “I have been a better knight than a husband. I cannot hope to undo the past,” he said, his voice thickening with grief. “But perhaps I can mourn with my wife, even only for a short time. It's my duty as well.”
Stannis grimaced. Grief was for peace-time, and part of him wanted to tell Davos this. A soldier did not bind his wounds in the middle of battle.
Even as he looked into Davos' eyes with the intention to demand for his resolve and his strength, he found that he could not. Stannis was gripped in fear. Davos begged for relief, for a small mercy while they could still afford some of it. If Stannis were to deprive him this as well, then he feared that Davos would truly be lost to him.
That Stannis wished that he had instead of watching Davos' loyalty weaken and flag altogether was not lost on him. Here was his chance to break the man completely, if he chose to. All of him, or nothing of him.
Now that the choice was his to make, he refused to. He had released Davos from the dungeons, after all. Even as Melisandre recounted her vision in the fire, of Davos' intent to betray him by murdering her, Stannis still looked to him for counsel when everyone else had failed.
I will not lose him.
The truth of this knocked certainty from its feet, headlong into doubt.
He looked away for a moment. His eyes hardened, betraying nothing, when he turned back to Davos as he spoke. “Do you regret it? Serving me better than you have served your wife?”
The question took Davos by surprise. He wavered. “Yes,” he said eventually, and it was only later that Stannis realized the weight that seized his chest was not confusion, or anger, or outrage, but pain of loss he didn't know he'd already suffered.
Davos, in all his plain honesty, dealt him treason in the guise of truth, and it was not a betrayal that Stannis could punish.
“I do not regret serving you,” Davos said. “But my wife deserves a better husband, and my sons deserve—deserved--a better father.”
“Were you not good to them? You'd clothed them and fed them. You've provided them land and home so that they may never starve again.” You have earned much from me—for them. Is that not enough? “You raised your sons to be better men than you.” His voice remained even, but for the strain underneath.
Davos shook his head. “My loyalty has always been to you first, Your Grace. Always,” he stressed, adamant, laden with frustration. “I realized that when I'd been hopeless on the rock that saved me. When I'd prayed to the Seven that I may survive, I realized that--”
“--that you've been living for the wrong reason.” Stannis interrupted, suddenly awash with exhaustion that he did nothing to restrain the anger in his voice or the helplessness that hollowed him. “That you were living for me.”
“I mean no disrespect,” Davos argued, sounding as helpless as Stannis felt. He meant to say more than that yet no other words were forthcoming. Stannis was caught in the tide, drifting far away from Davos.
The room felt smaller than Stannis remembered it. The Table too big as he laid out his hands on the edge. His fingers dug into the grooves that marked the Land of Always Winter, into the edges of snowstorms immortal on wood.
“I know you did not. You never do,” Stannis said, his voice soft yet brittle. “Who owns your mind, after all, certainly not I. If I did then I would have no use for your counsel. I value you as you give me truth unlike any other.”
Davos had edged forward in his seat, almost leaning over the Table. Stannis did not want to see his face or what he may find there. His hands were fists over the grooves of Eastwatch.
“Not the same truth I would give myself. I know that.” He looked up, then, only to see regret reflected in Davos' eyes. But for what? Regrets for regrets? Stannis' lips curled slightly. “You know your duty as much as I do mine. But we have many duties, my lord Hand. And not all of them agree with one another.”
“I have a duty to you, Your Grace,” Davos hurried to reassure, earnest. “I never lost sight of it.”
“But will you still honor it when it goes against your duty to your family?”
Stannis let out a long, drawn-out breath that rattled the lump in his throat. He leaned back in his chair, his shoulders tight, his grit teeth tighter.
The virtue he valued in Davos more than anything—the virtue that gave him plain and simple honesty amidst the sycophant platitudes of the bickering lords around him—was the same thread that threatened to unravel them.
In bitter resignation, Stannis found that he couldn't ask more from Davos. “Go to Cape Wrath. I give you three days, no more than that.”
Davos' shoulders sagged in relief. Looking at him, however, Stannis saw that it had not eased his worry. “Devan will stay here,” Davos told him. “Where he’s needed.”
“I hardly need a hostage to assure your return,” Stannis said flatly. “Or do you put so little faith in your own promises?”
Davos mustered a smile, though it faltered as soon as it touched his lips. “Words are wind, your grace. As you know. I will return for Devan, yes,” then he sat up and fixed Stannis with a look of such confidence that Stannis was loathe to admit that the last hour had ever happened. “But I will also return to you. If you will have me.”
“The Hand of the King serves until his death,” Stannis replied.
“Or until he is proven unworthy,” Davos pointed out.
And did Davos remain worthy of the title? His pride till smarting, Stannis was eager to refute it, yet reason said that Davos was still, at the heart of him, Stannis' man. Perhaps the only man worthy of the position to be his Hand. Why? Stannis asked himself, almost desperate for an answer. Why do I depend on such a man, who does not follow me blindly?
Because Davos saw him a man rather than a god, for all of his virtues and his flaws, and followed him. Even as he prayed to the gods that Stannis had betrayed, cost him his sons, and perhaps might someday cost him his life, Davos still followed him.
Even as Davos drifted, dying on that rock, he had returned. From death, he returned. To serve him.
Stannis gave an answering nod, his lips thinned as he, too, saw Davos in the way that Davos saw him. Flawed men, they were, yet still they endured.
“I fear the day that happens, Davos,” he admitted, all derision gone from his voice. “That even you become unworthy. I'm afraid of what that might mean for me.”
“It will never happen,” Davos promised him.
“You don't know that.” You still have three sons that I might someday take from you. Where will you be then? Stannis grew graver at the thought.
Davos was silent. His resolve, however, was immovable. Stannis saw that he disagreed, that Davos was eager to reassure him of his loyalty. But Davos didn't speak. He knew most of all that some things were better earned than promised.
Stannis held his gaze. “Return to me,” he said. “And I'll know that you mean what you say.”
Davos left immediately after. The sun set over Dragonstone, casting the lone ship on the horizon into shadow. Stannis watched from the Room of the Painted Table. Fear still gripped his heart. He knew it would not give him peace until Davos was by his side again.
“Your Grace.” Bryen Farring's voice carried over his shoulder.
“What is it?” Stannis' eyes never left the ship.
“My fathe—Ser Gilbert Farring has sent a raven from Storm's End.”
Stannis turned towards his squire. “And?”
Bryen held out the parchment in his hands.
“Read it.”
Bryen nervously unfolded the missive. “Your Grace,” he read, “We can provide pelt enough for three hundred winter cloaks, as Maester Pylos had requested in his raven.” The boy's voice grew steadily stronger as he continued. “Our stores are not enough to send provision for food, but Houses Wylde, Morrigen, and Grandison have pledged what remains of their harvest.”
Stannis felt grim satisfaction at the news. “That ought to rest your worries, Bryen.”
Bryen bristled, ducking his head. “I apologize, Your Grace, for having doubted you.”
“It is unbecoming of a squire to question his king,” Stannis said in stern reprimand. Then he turned away when Bryen appeared to have understood the weight of his error.
The ship was barely a speck on the deceptively calm sea.
“But it is never wrong to fear,” he said. “The more you're afraid, the harder you fight."