Chapter 21: The Onion Knight's Pitch
Three days had passed since Henry had declined whatever Stannis had been building toward in that first conversation. The fleet had rounded Fair Isle on the way south — they'd seen the wreckage of the Iron Fleet still strewn along the coastline, hulls broken on the rocks, burned masts jutting from the shallows like blackened fingers. Stannis's work, done cleanly and completely.
Now they were in the Summer Sea, south of Dorne, and the world had changed.
Henry stood at the forecastle rail of the Fury, his palm resting on sun-warmed oak. The wood was smooth from years of hands and salt air. The sea here was a deep, saturated blue — the kind of blue that made the grey-green water of White Harbor seem like a memory from another world, which it essentially was.
The light that came off the waves was almost painful, the crests catching the sun and throwing it back in bright fragments. The air was warm and carried a warmth in the salt that the Iron Islands had never managed, that the North had never come close to. Even the spray from the oars, when it reached him, was comfortable rather than bracing — a different element entirely from the water he'd grown up near.
He heard boots on the deck behind him.
"A view like this is rare from Dragonstone." Davos Seaworth came to the rail beside him, moving without hurry, his own eyes settling on the water with the look of a man who has spent enough time at sea to be comfortable with silence near it. "You seem to have no shortage of time for it, Ser Henry."
"I suspect you didn't come up here to watch the waves with me." Henry kept his eyes on the sea. He knew enough about Davos Seaworth to know that casual approaches from him were rarely accidental.
Davos had been born in Flea Bottom — the lowest and poorest quarter of King's Landing, the kind of place that gave men either ambition or nothing at all. He'd become a smuggler, running a small boat with black sails into harbors in the dark of night, reading coastlines and tides the way other men read letters. During Robert's Rebellion, when Stannis had been holding Storm's End against a siege that had gone on for nearly a year, Davos had slipped through the Redwyne fleet's blockade with a hold full of onions and salt fish. That food had kept the garrison alive long enough for Lord Eddard's relief force to arrive.
Stannis had knighted him for it. He'd also had the first joint of every finger on Davos's left hand taken off with a cleaver, as payment for the years of smuggling before the war. Davos had accepted both. He wore an onion on his house sigil now, and the fingers he'd lost in a small pouch around his neck, and seemed to have arrived at a settled peace with all of it.
"Ser Henry." Davos's voice remained pleasant and easy. "The Lannisters are embedded in King's Landing like roots in old stone. Your fief — Iron Fist Keep — sits on the south bank of the Blackwater Rush, directly across the river from the capital. You are going to be close to the center of whatever happens next, whether you choose to be or not." He paused. "A man in your position needs allies he can trust. Lord Stannis — Lord of Dragonstone, master of ships — is the most reliable ally available to you."
"What does Lord Stannis want in return?" Henry turned from the rail and looked at Davos directly. "Protection always has a price."
"The loyalty of Iron Fist Keep," Davos said, without evasion. "The swords of the Blackwater River Guard when he has need of them. An alliance — a genuine one, not just words." He met Henry's gaze steadily. "The scales in King's Landing are already moving, Ser Henry. The Lannisters' ambitions aren't hidden to anyone paying attention. Men who don't choose their ground before the storm hits find themselves without any ground to stand on."
Henry's hand moved, without his fully deciding to move it, to rest on the pommel of the sword at his hip. The metal was warm from the sun. "Recruiting men to stand against the throne," he said, his voice dropping slightly. "That's a careful line to walk, Ser Davos. I swore my oath to King Robert. Not to his brother."
Davos took a half-step back — not from fear, Henry thought, but from the habit of a man who recognized a hand on a weapon and had learned not to give it cause. "No one is asking you to stand against the King," he said, his tone careful and genuine at the same time. "Lord Stannis swears by Robert.
That has never been in question." He glanced at the sailors on deck — busy with their own tasks, none in earshot — and lowered his voice. "Jon Arryn is not a young man. His health has been failing. His wife has suffered loss after loss. The Hand cannot continue indefinitely. When that position falls vacant, the Lannisters will move to fill it with one of their own, and any lord who hasn't made his allegiances clear beforehand will find the choice made for him.
" He paused. "We're not asking you to oppose Robert. We're asking you to be in the right place when the time comes."
Jon Arryn. Henry kept his face composed while his mind worked quickly. He knew that name and what it meant — knew it the way you know the first stone falling in an avalanche. The timeline was earlier than he'd have expected. The gears were already turning.
"Lord Stannis doesn't want an ally," Henry said, after a moment. His voice was mild. "He wants a vassal with a different lord's seal on his papers." He let that sit. "My grandfather was a rebel — Lord Stannis told me so himself, in those words. I'm not inclined to bind myself to a man who starts our acquaintance by questioning whether my family deserved to survive."
"Ser Henry—"
"I had a hold full of gold and a Valyrian steel sword before I stepped on this ship," Henry said. "I'm not desperate for protection." He held Davos's gaze. "Here is what I can offer, and it's genuinely meant: if King Robert names Lord Stannis his Hand — formally, officially, through the proper process — I will fulfill every obligation that comes with being a loyal vassal of the Crown. I will answer the Hand's lawful commands. That's not a small thing. That's my oath."
"The Lannisters won't wait for a formal appointment—"
Henry raised his hand. Davos stopped.
"I swear loyalty to Robert Baratheon and the Iron Throne," Henry said. "That's where it begins and ends for me. I won't promise more than that to any man, regardless of how the winds are blowing." He looked at Davos steadily. "Tell Lord Stannis that a man who keeps a clear oath is more useful than one who's made too many promises. He seems like someone who'd understand that."
Davos looked at him for a long moment. His expression was the expression of a man who had hoped to accomplish something and found the door politely but firmly closed, and who was being professional about it.
"I understand, Ser Henry," he said finally. "Lord Stannis will hear what you've said." He turned back to the rail. "For what it's worth — I think you're wrong about the time you have. But I've been wrong before."
He pulled his glove back on over the scarred hand and looked out at the Summer Sea, blue and dazzling and entirely indifferent to the politics of Westeros, the way the sea always was.
Henry looked out with him for a moment. Then he turned and walked back toward the stern, leaving Davos alone at the rail with the warm spray and whatever he was thinking about.
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