Aemon watched the boy Edric Dayne.
Ten years old already the Lord of Starfall, whether the world thought him ready or not. He held the parchment the same way he held everything, with both hands, and a stillness that most men did not find until their half a decade of ruling, if they found it at all. He read it twice. Aemon knew, because he counted. He had not shifted his weight, had not fidgeted, had not whispered to the man beside him. Most boys his age could not have managed it for ten minutes.
The solar was bright with the thin light bright and clean, scrubbed of shadow by the time it passed through the pale stone. Palestone Tower rose from the rock hill of Starfall. Far below, the Torentine ran copper-green between its clay banks, and out across that water, slow and low, Meleys turned in a long arc and vanished behind the far ridge. A wing-beat later she was visible again. She was restless, she was always restless when Aemon was not with her.
The parchment crinkled as she unrolled it.
"Five thousand." Lady Larra Blackmont stood at the head of the table, both hands braced on the wood, and did not look at any one man for long. She moved her eyes across the room from left to right, her jaw tightened. "Gerold marches with five thousand men of the Golden Company. That is the number my scouts have confirmed, and I trust their eyes." She paused and let it settle. "He will gain five hundred more once he crosses High Hermitage. Men who have been waiting there, sworn to his house, not to our cause or Martell's and not to this kingdom. Bought swords who have spent the better part of a generation bleeding for the Free Cities and have come here for profits." Her jaw tightened. "We should march before he reaches them. End this before those five hundred join the count. A smaller enemy is always the wiser enemy to fight."
"Your Grace." Ser Manfrey stepped forward from the cluster of men near the wall hearing Aemon's word. He was broad across the shoulders, with grey hair at the temples, and had the look of a man who chose his words the same way he chose his ground in a fight, carefully, and only after studying the terrain. "House Dayne can raise fifteen hundred men. Perhaps more, if the smaller holders in the hinterlands heed the call. But if I must speak plainly, forty-five hundred of our own against fifty-five hundred is a fight we can have. Any worse—"
"I fear your worse has turned reality, Ser Manfrey." Aemon said. "You were correct in your initial count of the men you know about, Lady Larra."
She looked at him and her chin came up slightly, not in challenge but in attention.
He reached into his tunic and drew out a rolled parchment. "There is more."
He unrolled it slowly and passed it to her and continued. "Three thousand Ironborn march with them," Aemon said "Which brings their number close to eight thousand," Aemon said. "Possibly nine."
Silence landed over the room like a stone into still water.
"My Master of Whispers is not given to excess," Aemon continued. He moved to the long table at the room's centre and drew his gaze at the rough-drawn map with its passes and ridges marked in charcoal and old ink. "They sail from the Iron islands now under Euron Greyjoy's reign," he said. "Not his whole fleet arrived here, he's committed those elsewhere. These are the men he's has been asked part of his bargain probably from Daenerys or the pretender Aegon across the Narrow Sea to bring Dorne to its heel for supporting me. Three thousand Ironborn rowing up the Torentine they will come all for the sake of raiding and reaving." He let that sit for a moment. "They do it because they can, because they have always done it, and no one has ever made them regret it sufficiently."
Lord Dayne's steward made a sound at the back of his throat and he was not alone.
"First time in living memory," said Lady Jynessa Blackmont, from the far side of the table. She was the oldest daughter of Lady Larra, and wore clothes the way some Dornish women did. "First time in the longest history that reavers have set foot south of the Red Mountains."
"And the last," Aemon said.
The room stilled. He had not raised his voice, he never needed to, not when there was weight behind the words.
Lady Larra had gone to the window. She was watching Meleys cross the valley. Her profile was carved and still, like something painted on an old wall.
"Of the three thousand men we have marched with," she said. "We have archers, light horse, and the hillmen who know that ground better than any invader will. They cannot be taken head on." She held his gaze. "And Gerold knows it. He will not try."
"He will not try," Aemon agreed. "Which is exactly the problem."
He moved his finger along the map, tracing the lower road, the one that curved west before climbing into the heights.
"Euron will try to send the Ironborn up the river to Starfall or fishing villages by the banks on river side opposite our own, to let them burn and draw us out. Meanwhile the Golden Company will make for this notch." He tapped the charcoal mark. "Morne's Gap. It has not in any grand campaign history, no great battle was ever won or lost there. It is a shepherd's path." He looked at Lady Larra. "But five thousand men can squeeze through it, if they move in column and don't mind losing a few to the cliffs."
Larra's eyes came back from the window, sharp and dark and working quickly.
"He means to take us in the blindside," she said.
"He means to take your people in their beds. He wants Starfall for what's inside it." Aemon glanced up, briefly, at the painting hanging on the wall. "And he wants to plant his own banner on what remains."
"We will march before he clears the pass," Aemon said. He had made the decision the second he had ever walked through the door, had made it two days ago, when he had heard of it at Dragonstone. "We will move through Morne's valley, and we cut the Golden Company at their lowest vigilance, Hour of the wolf." He looked around the room and then outside the window. "Meleys will make sure none of the Ironborn gets to the shore."
Ser Manfrey said, "And if the timing fails, your grace? If Gerold moves faster than we expect, or the Ironborn reach the shore should the dragon miss them—"
"Then we will fight hard." Aemon met his eyes. "I have not promised you a easy win, Ser Manfrey but we will have our victory."
The knight nodded slowly. He was a practical man. He did not ask for promises none could hold. That was a quality Aemon had always valued more than men generally understood.
There was a long moment, filled only by the wind off the desert and the distant deep rhythm of Meleys' wings.
Lady Larra was the first to move. She turned from the window and picked up the map, folding it with the swift efficiency of a woman who had spent years managing logistics of her territory. "I will ready the cavalry to march with you, your grace," she said. "The archers may be slower to reposition. If the Golden Company is riding with wide flanking riders—"
"They are," Aemon said. "The Golden Company always does."
"Then I want them met dead, before they loose themselves on smallfolk."
"Agreed."
They talked for another hour. It was good talk, the kind Aemon preferred specific and blunt, with room for objection but none for sentiment. By the end of it there were lists of provisions, marching orders sketched in charcoal, a rough count of the minimal supply wagons that could follow the army without slowing it. Lady Larra would remain at Starfall as was his command, with half her personal guard and whatever militia the village could muster. She received this without complaint. She was too sharp to take offense at the obvious need of capable hands needed to hold defense against Ironborn.
The room emptied slowly. Men and women gathered their things, exchanged low words, moved toward the door in ones and twos. Aemon stayed at the table until only Brienne remained, and Edric Dayne, who had not moved from his spot since the meeting began.
He had not asked any questions, that is the thing about this one, Aemon thought. He already understands that his knowledge on matters are still lacking so he had listened and not bragged his own ideas.
The boy was still holding the parchment that he had given to Larra, which contained information regarding Ironborns.
Aemon waited and Edric's purple eyes came up slowly, as though he had spent the last hour deciding whether to speak.
"My Aunt spoke of him," Edric said. "Gerold." He paused. "Not often, but when she does, she says he is closest to Ser Arthur strength in whole of Dayne and though he is the closest he may never become like him." His voice was careful, the boy didn't want to curse his kin even now. "He is said to be the best swordsman in the family since Ser Arthur."
Arthur Dayne. Aemon looked up at the painting. The Sword of the Morning, rendered in old pigment, a younger face than the stories made him, open and serious and wearing the white cloak of the Kingsguard like a second skin. He had dreamt of it, dreamt of everything when he was at ruins of Summerhall. He had seen his father death at Trident, his mother, brother and sister in Red Keep during the sack, their screams ringing in his head even now. And he had seen Tower of Joy and death's that had occurred there.
"Your Aunt may be right," Aemon said.
Edric nodded once, very small.
"You will kill him," the boy said and it was not a question.
"Yes."
A breath. "He is my kin, who plans to overthrow me." Edric's hands were very still around the parchment. "I never wanted this to happen."
"Many things happen which we never wish for."
"Justice will be delivered, for his actions" Aemon continued quietly. He looked at Edric the way he had looked at Jojen Reed once, in another room, with the recognition that the quiet purpose in a young face is not less real despite the lack of experience. "Not as your king, Lord Dayne. As a debt, your House has suffered for being loyal to my own. Do you understand the difference?"
Edric thought about it. "It was the right thing to, what Ser Arthur did, saving the King." he said at last.
Aemon almost smiled. "Go see your Aunt and men. However you will remain here with Lady Larra holding defense of your home."
The boy went. He moved without scurrying, without looking back, and when he was gone the room held his absence the way rooms hold the absence of particular people.
Aemon turned to the painting.
Ser Arthur Dayne had been rendered life-size, or near enough, a young man in white, one hand at his belt, the other holding Dawn by its hilt, the pale blade catching a painted light that no real room had ever produced so cleanly. He had the family look, those eyes, that dark blue, almost purple colored eyes. He had died outside the Tower of Joy with two other Kingsguard by his side and had taken down five of Ned Stark's men with them. He could not decide whether it was a tragedy and some crime for him to die by Howland's hand, by an attack from behind. Aemon would not be able to decide that his entire life.
He kept his oath, he thought. Whatever else the reason of his death, I concur.
He was still looking at the painting when Lady Larra returned.
She came in alone. The door closed behind her. She stood for a moment in the middle of the room, her dark eyes reading him the same way she had read the map efficiently, and without expression.
She looked at him squarely. Lady Larra Blackmont was not a woman who looked at things sideways. "I will not tell you I am not afraid. My people will make way through those passes. My cousins, a nephew, two of them." She paused. "But I want you to know that I am not afraid of the dragon, most of my men are. They have heard stories, and stories do what they do. But I am not."
Aemon said, "I see."
"Then I will tell you something that might matter." She came closer, lowered her voice, not from fear of being overheard, but from the habit of women who had spent their lives speaking truth in rooms where truth was not always welcome. "Gerold Dayne was not always this. He was angry, as of late, but proud, always. But there was a time when he cared about this house, this family." She glanced at the painting. "He worshipped Ser Arthur. Most of the young men in this family did, even the ones who never knew him. He was that kind of man."
"What changed him?" Aemon asked.
"Starfall didn't come to him and neither did the sword. He was passed over by Edric Dayne, a boy almost ten years younger his own age." She was quiet for a moment. "Then it was Dawn who didn't chose him. Resentment is a long thing, and it broke him when he felt Lady Arianne is using him for her own gain."
Aemon looked at her. "You are telling me not to underestimate what he will do."
"I am telling you not to expect him to flinch," she said. "He has nothing left to protect. Men without anything left to protect are the most dangerous kind." She picked up the map then, tucked it under her arm. "My men will be ready at dawn, Your Grace. My riders know the valley. I will send two scouts ahead tonight to watch the lower mouth of Morne's Gap."
"Good."
She was halfway to the door when she stopped. Didn't turn.
"He was a fool to sell his family for whatever he was offered by the woman across the narrow sea," she said. "Whatever he was promised, it wasn't worth it. It never is." She left and the door swung shut behind her. The room was quiet again, and the painting stared down from the wall with its blue eyes, and Meleys called once from across the valley, a sound that carried through stone as easily as through air.
Brienne had not moved from her place behind him.
She was watching Meleys again over his shoulders, and Aemon came to stand beside the window. The dragon had drifted lower over the Torentine, her belly close enough to the water that her shadow passed over the surface, as if bringing night. Red she was that looked more like blood than any red he has ever seen and those scales shined in the Dornish sun that reminded him of rubies.
"I have never seen anything move like that," Brienne said. "Not the way she turns with that speed, even falcons they commit to their direction once decided."
"She calls for me with her actions," Aemon said. "She feels my trouble and asks me to ride on her and burn everything that defies us."
"Everything?"
He considered. "All of it."
Brienne was quiet. The wind pressed at the window's edge. She was a large woman and she stood with her size, a head taller than her own. She had found her way into his company the way certain people found their way into certain wars: not by planning, but by being present exactly where the thing matters.
"I never thought I would fly," she said, and there was something in her voice that was quite wonder.
Aemon said, "I was as shocked as you when I first met her."
The first time he had met her was in Riverland when he was riding to Reach to ask of leal men of their fealty and oath.
"Will you use her against them?" Brienne asked. Her eyes were still on the dragon. "Against men of golden company and Ironborn."
"I would burn every last one of them a thousand times over," Aemon said. "Every invader, every reaver who has sailed up from the sea thinking another man's home is his right to take." He paused. "But the passes are narrow and the canyon walls are close, a dragon in a narrow place kills everyone. Friend and enemy cannot be told apart from above." He watched Meleys climb, a slow circular spiral that took her up until her shadow vanished from the water. "I would rather lose no leal men at all. Which is why I march with only men and not her, Meleys will hold Starfall on her own."
Brienne was quiet for a long moment. "I would ride with you," she said. "March, whatever word you prefer."
His lips moved, just slightly. "A knight of your ability is an asset to any lord or king, Lady Brienne."
The silence that followed had a particular sad tilt to it. He heard her breath, and looked at her, and saw the way her face had settled. "I am not a knight," she said.
"No," Aemon said. He looked back out the window, where Meleys had dwindled to a red speck against the pale sky. "Not yet."
He left the word there. Let it mean what it meant.
The fire was too large for the room. Whoever had built it up had done so in the Ironborn way, not for warmth, but for light. The Ten Towers had many hearths and most of them drew badly, and the great hall smelled of salt and peat and the particular damp that lived inside stone fortresses on islands where the rain came sideways six months of the year. The logs hissed and cracked. The men around the long table were talking too loudly, the way men talked when they wanted to be certain that it will be their ideas that will turn into final decisions.
Alannys Greyjoy born Harlow, had stopped listening, after a while.
She was watching the fire.
Her husband was dead for a moon now. Her sons she had mourned in different ways, at different times, until she had run out of ways to mourn and was left only with the knowledge of their absence and memories. Balon gone, and Rodrik and Maron before him in the war, and Maron her favourite child, sweet foolish Maron who had never wanted anything except his books, dead because his father wanted more. Wanted to be a King.
And now Asha and Theon had been taken.
My last ones, she thought. The ones who lived long enough to become people I knew.
"—say it plain," Jon Myre was saying, his voice carrying over the fire, over the low murmurs and the clinking of cups. He was a lean man with clever eyes and the sort of confidence that came from never having been wrong in front of anyone who could call him on it. "Seagard is empty, the Mallister lords have ridden south with the Stark war and not returned. Even three men could take the harbor gate. I say we sail, we land, we move up the kingsroad, and we take them back."
Herrock Kenning leaned back in his chair, broad and deliberate, the way all Kennings sat, arrogant, as if chairs had been designed specifically to accommodate them. "The plan is sound," he said. "Lord Euron has knelt to the Dragon Queen, Daenerys. He's brought her our support, and in return she'll move against the dragon pretender on the mainland. The king is occupied in the Vale, we have time."
"The king," said a voice at the end of the table, flat as an anvil, "is not in the Vale anymore."
Alannys looked toward Drennan Stonetree.
He was old, not the kind of old that became frail, but the kind that became stone compressed by years into something that would not easily crack. He had fought since the war of Ninepenny Kings. His face was seamed and grey and he wore no adornment except an old pin at his collar, the kind of pin that families gave their sons when they came of age, before they could afford anything better. He had kept it.
He had not spoken until now. He looked at no one in particular and cup was in front of him, untouched.
"His dragon burned Greyjoy men from Barrowton to Deepwood Motte," Drennan said. "His dragon ate Victarion in half. I thought you would have heard of it, Jon." He looked at Myre, who shifted almost imperceptibly. "You were not at the front of it, I grant you. But you heard the screaming well enough, I believe."
Jon Myre said nothing.
"You want to march on a castle three days' sailing away," Drennan continued, "to rescue two prisoners being taken south on the kingsroad, based on a letter from Euron Greyjoy telling you to do exactly that." He paused and the fire hissed in the hearth. "When has Euron Greyjoy ever written a letter that served anyone's interest but his own?"
The room stirred. Not agreement, not quite that, it was never possible to have agreement against One-eyed Greyjoy. But the stirring that happens when a true thing is said in a room full of men who would prefer it had not been said.
"Lord Drennan." Herrock Kenning set down his cup. "The Dragon Queen has resources we have not-"
"She has resources she has not yet used," Drennan countered, "and a fleet that is not here, and an army that is across the Narrow Sea, and a dragon that burned through a Slavers before breakfast, if the stories can be believed at all." He clenched his cup, but did not lift it. "I am not made of fear, I lost my eldest at the Pyke, same as many at this table. I know what it costs." He looked around the room not theatrically, not in challenge. Just looking, that made everyone remember their losses. "But a man who charges into a burning house because someone outside told him his family is in, they ought to look through the window first."
Alannys watched him.
She had known Drennan Stonetree for thirty years. He had been at her wedding, he had then stood at her father's side and at Balon's side at the Pyke, and she had seen his face when the walls came down. He had buried a son. She had buried two. She knew, in the way that mothers knew such things, that his caution was not born from nothing.
It was still wrong.
He is afraid of the dragon, she thought. And a man afraid of the dragon will spend the rest of his life finding reasons not to act.
Lord Maron Volmark laughed. He was young, young enough that his beard still grew in patches, young enough that the gaps between laughter and thought were very short, young enough that he had not yet been made to pay in full for any decision he had made. He laughed the way young men laughed at old ones, not with cruelty exactly, but with the easy contempt of someone who cannot yet imagine what it costs to have been wrong.
"I did not take you for a craven, Lord Drennan," Maron said.
Drennan looked at him for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not to engage.
"A boy who counts women as conquests and calls it war," he said, "and thinks he knows what a sword sounds like when it isn't singing." His voice had no heat in it. That was worse, somehow, than if it had. "You'll hear the horns, Lord Maron. You will hear them and you will shit and piss yourself in that moment. Even your sword will feel ten time heavy its weight and I will be glad to be wrong about you." He paused. "Though I have not been wrong about anyone like you yet."
Maron's chair scraped back. He was on his feet before anyone else had moved.
It was then that Alannys spoke.
"Sit down," she said, not to Maron but to all of them.
The room went quiet and she rose from her chair, slowly. She had sat through this meeting like a stone in a riverbed, letting the current go around her, and the men at this table had begun to forget she was there, which was something she had counted on.
"Asha is on the kingsroad," she said. "Theon is with her." She looked around the table, at each of them in turn. She did not let the eye contact drop. "They are being taken south in chains, past Seagard, past the Neck, to be handed over to pay for their crime. And this room has been arguing for the better part of an hour about whether Euron's letter is trustworthy."
"My lady—" Drennan began.
"I am speaking, Lord Drennan."
He closed his mouth. She had thirty years of practice at keeping her voice even. She did not use them now, she let it carry and she let it be what it was.
"I have buried a husband," she said. "I have buried sons. I have watched my house feed itself to ambition, piece by piece, and told myself it was the way of the Iron Islands, and the Drowned God's will, and what men did. I told myself many things. I believed some of them." She looked at Rodrik, her brother. The last of her blood who sat at this table and held anything. "I will not bury my daughter."
Rodrik met her eyes and he did not look away.
"Euron's letter is a convenience," she said. "I am not a fool, I know what he is, and I know that he sent us those because they cost him something and a dead Greyjoy is worth less than a traded one. But the information in this letter is true. I have had received word on my own. Asha and Theon was seen at Moat Cailin three days past, alive, moving south under guard." She reached into the fold of her sleeve and set a small, folded piece of parchment on the table. "Not Euron's letter, mine."
Nobody spoke after that
"Seagard is empty," she said. "Lord Mallister rode south with Robb Stark and has not come back. The harbour sits unguarded. We can take it, hold it, and move riders up the kingsroad before they cross the Trident."
Drennan said, "And the dragon."
"Is far away." She turned to face him fully. "The dragon fight other wars, Lord Drennan. I do not say we go to war with the King. I say we go to Seagard, take the harbour, and bring our kin back to the Islands while his eyes are pointed sideways." She paused. "We already have Queen Daenery's and King Aegon's protection and they have three dragons with them. A swift blade, a swift sail, and we are home before the realm remembers we were ever there."
"You speak of raiding a Westerosi harbour in a time of contested kingship," Drennan said. His voice was flat and patient, the voice of a man who had been flat and patient for so long it had become his only register. "The Targaryen boy is not stupid. He will—"
"He is a boy," Alannys said. "One who is learning to hold a kingdom while four armies pull at it from different directions. He will have to deal with Dorne first for Euron sail there, then the Golden Company, then Stannis and even Robb Stark. Then the Dragon Queen across the water. Then, perhaps, Seagard." She looked around the table. "We will be in strong position by then."
Drennan's jaw worked. He looked at her the way men looked at things they found uncomfortable, with the controlled expression of someone refusing to let the discomfort show, and failing at it.
"You are not afraid," he said. It came out almost like an accusation.
"I am terrified," Alannys said. "My children are in chains on a road that moves further south every hour we sit in this room. I am afraid of the dragon. I am afraid of what happens if we arrive too late, or too slow, or find that the letter lied and Seagard is not what we expect." She set her palms flat on the table. "I am afraid of all of it but I ask you to sail anyway."
Drennan looked at her for a long moment. Something moved behind his eyes neither surrender nor agreement. He looked at Rodrik. "Your sister has made up her mind, my lord," he said, heavily.
Rodrik said, "She usually does."
"And you?"
Rodrik was quiet for a moment. He turned the letter over in his hands, not Euron's, her own, the one she had placed on the table. He read it, though she suspected he had already read it the moment she set it down.
"The harbour," he said at last. "Not the kingsroad, not the Neck. We take Seagard, hold the harbour, and send riders to attack, riders, not an army to find where they are and bring them to the water." He looked at Jon Myre. "You will lead the men to take the harbor. Kenning takes the vanguard riders." He looked at Maron Volmark. "You are not to raid anything, not a village, not a holdfast, not a barn just hold the Seagard together with Lord Myre. We are not at war with the riverlands. We take the harbour, we find the prisoners, and we leave." He held the young lord's eye. "Is that understood?"
Maron nodded, quickly, before enthusiasm could betray him.
Drennan rose, he was slow about it, the way old men were slow about rising as if the body required persuasion. "I will not go," he said. "I am too old for this foolishness, and I have said my piece." He looked at Alannys. "I hope to be wrong."
"So do I," she said.
He left, the door did not slam. He was not a man who slammed doors, even in disagreement. That was the thing about him. He was wrong, and he was honourable, and those two facts would have to live alongside each other.
The room began to move. Men talked over maps, called for quills, sent runners to the docks. The fire burned without anyone attending it, hot and purposeless in the too-large grate. Alannys remained standing at the table. She did not join any of the conversations. She had said what she had come to say and now it was other people's work.
She picked up her own raven's note and folded it and put it back in her sleeve. Hold on, she thought, as if thinking it hard enough might carry it across the water and the leagues and the cold kingsroad dust. Just a little longer.
She was her father's daughter, in the end. Old Lord Harlow, who had built the library at Ten Towers and stocked it with books from two continents, who had believed that Ironborn could be something more than what the Drowned God said they were. She had spent a long time deciding whether he had been right or simply foolish, and she had never quite made up her mind.
What she knew was this: Asha had her father's ambition and her grandmother's eyes and had been sailing since she was five years old. Theon had survived things that should have broken him, and they had broken him, and he had mended in the crooked way broken things mended, and he was still alive.
She had buried too much already, she would not bury this.
The fire had burned low by the time the room emptied. She stood alone in it for a moment, in the orange light, the smell of old peat and damp and the sea that was always there, always underneath everything on these islands.
She had been born to it. She supposed she would die to it but not today and not before she sees her children one last time.