Alric came down the steps.
One.
Two.
Three.
He stopped far closer than Monford would have preferred.
“Your color has gone, my lord,” Alric observed.
A cold smile touched his lips.
“What happened, Lord Monford?”
“I—” Monford’s mouth had gone to sand.
“My lord, I do not understand—”
“You don’t understand.” Alric scoffed.
“Are you trying to play the fool, or do you take me for one?”
Monford Velaryon said nothing.
There was nothing to say, and both of them knew it.
Whatever shame or guilt moved behind the man’s eyes, Monford kept it to himself, and Alric let the silence sit long enough to be felt by every man in the hall.
Then he turned his head.
“Cressen. It seems Lord Monford does not understand.” The mockery in it was thin and cold.
“Help him understand. Bring out the ledgers.”
Cressen was already moving.
The old man carried the papers to the great trestle table beneath the dais and began laying them out, one beside the next in a neat line.
The doors of the hall opened.
A knight came through them at speed, and Alric’s head snapped around, and the look he turned on the man could have make him faint.
The knight immediately went to one knee before he had finished crossing the threshold.
“My lord. Forgive me.” His voice of a man working very hard to keep it steady.
” But Lord Duran Bar Emmon has arrived with his party.
He seeks audience with you.”
The glare softened, though only slightly.
“Have them wait,” Alric said.
The knight bowed his head and began to rise.
“Wait.”
Alric stood where he was, and He needs to create a distinction between being a Leige Lord and a Friend for Lord Duran and it seems a right moment for that, a tough and hard but a right and fair one.
“Bring them here,” Alric said.
“To the hall. And inform Ser Willem that Lord Monford Velaryon is present.” He said that hoping Sir Willem would take a hint.
The knight paused, then nodded.
He had understood, or would.
“At once, my lord.”
Alric turned back as the doors closed.
“Wait a while longer, my lord,” he said to Monford.
“You and I are not finished. But it seems the matter concerns more than two houses, and I would sooner say it once than twice.”
He looked at Cressen.
“Leave the papers where they are.”
“My lord.”
Alric walked back up the steps and sat, and drew the dragonglass sword across the arms of the seat, and did not say another word.
Monford Velaryon stood in the middle of the hall, and waited.
Knight immediately went to inform Lord Duran and his party about Lord Alric decision.
Ser Willem heard the message out twice before he answered it.
“He said Lord Velaryon is in the hall,” he repeated.
“Aye, ser. Lord Alric bade me tell you that.”
“He did.” Willem let out a slow breath through his teeth.
He had served House Bar Emmon two years, and Alric Baratheon rather longer, and he had learned somewhere in that time that the young lord did not waste words.
If Alric had gone out of his way to name Monford Velaryon, it was not gossip.
It was a warning, that it as a formal meeting than a Friend’s meet , Lord Duran would expect.
“My lord,” he said, turning.
“A word before we go in.”
Duran Bar Emmon looked up from adjusting his cloak.
He had been in high spirits the whole crossing—he had talked of Alric for most of it, in fact.
“What is it?”
“Lord Velaryon is in the hall. Waiting on his lordship’s judgment, if I read it right.”
The boy’s brow furrowed.
“Judgment? Over what?”
“That I cannot say. But Lord Alric made certain we knew it before we walked in.” Willem held his gaze.
“Which means this is court, my lord. Not a visit. You will greet him as your liege lord and nothing else, and you will not speak first, and you will not call him by his name.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
“Ser Willem, I know how to—”
“I know you do.” Willem’s voice gentled slightly.
“I am telling you that today it matters.”
Duran was quiet a moment.
Then he nodded, and squared his shoulders, and something in his face went older by two or three years, the way it did sometimes when he remembered what he was.
“Very well,” he said.
He did not, Willem noted, look particularly worried.
Fourteen was fourteen.
The boy still believed the world would be pleased to see him.
Then the doors opened, and they went in, and Willem watched that belief take its first real blow.
The hall swallowed sound, Papers laid out along the trestle in a line, and the Lord of the Tides standing beside them, grey-faced, alone in the middle of the floor.
And on the seat, in the dragon’s mouth, black and gold and utterly still, a sixteen-year-old boy with an obsidian sword across his knees.
Ser Willem Cobb went to one knee without hesitating.
“My lord.”
Duran had stopped walking.
Willem heard him take a breath.
Then, an instant later, the boy knelt too—properly, both knees, head bowed, and when he spoke his voice had lost every trace of the eagerness it had carried on the ship.
“My lord. House Bar Emmon answers your call.”
“Rise.”
Neither of them missed that it was an order rather than a courtesy.
“Ser Willem.” Alric’s voice came down from the dais, level and unhurried.
“Lord Duran. I trust the crossing was kind.”
“It was, my lord,” Willem said.
Duran nodded.
“Very kind, my lord.”
“Good.” A pause.
“Lord Duran. Has your time as lord been well? Are you keeping your duties, and understanding them?”
“Yes, my lord.” The boy’s chin came up slightly.
“It has been easier than I feared, with Ser Willem to counsel me and Maester Wendell to keep me honest about the figures.”
Alric nodded at that , doing his basic etiquette as a Leige Lord.
And he continued “Ser Willem. I am guessing your posting been good?”
“It has, my lord.” Willem allowed himself the smallest smile.
“It has been a genuine pleasure to teach and consuel Lord Duran. He learns faster than he lets on.”
Alric nodded once and continued for a far serious discussion that the pair hopped for.
“I had hoped we might meet under different circumstances,” he said.
“That is not the day we have. There is a matter here that needs settling, and it will not improve by keeping.” His eyes moved.
“Cressen. Tell him.”
The old maester did.
He told it plainly, without ornament and without mercy—the years of the regency, the authority Guncer Sunglass had held and the use he had made of it, the eight houses that had sat in a room at Sweetport Sound, the ships and gold signed away and the fine names put to the signing.
He named the sums.
He named the houses.
When he reached House Bar Emmon, he did not soften it, and he did not look away from the boy while he said it.
Willem watched Duran’s face go from confusion to comprehension to something considerably worse.
The maester finished.
Silence came down on the hall.
Listening to it Duran Bar Emmon knelt again by himself without any telling him.
He did it before anyone spoke, before Willem could catch his arm, before Alric had asked anything of him at all—down on his knee on the black stone, and when he lifted his head his voice cracked straight down the middle of the first word.
“My lord. I apologize for the wrongdoing my house has done to yours. Though I was not part of it directly.” The boy pushed through it.
“I was a mere child and I truly did not know, and I would not have understood it if I had. But my father was part of it, and he is dead, and I have taken his lands and his name and his title.” He swallowed hard.
“So I have taken his wrongs as well. That is what inheritance means, my lord, or it means nothing at all.”
Nobody in the hall moved.
“House Bar Emmon will return everything it took from Dragonstone. All of it, to the last dragon, and I will send the accounting myself so you need not take my word for the sum.” His hands had closed into fists on his thighs.
“And I will accept whatever punishment you judge fitting. Whatever it is. I will not argue it and I will not ask for less.”
Alric said nothing for a long moment.
Willem, still on one knee, glanced up—and saw it.
Just for a heartbeat: something moving behind Alric cold young face, some crack in it, quickly closed.
“Rise, Lord Duran.”
The boy rose, unsteadily.
“Your apology is accepted,” Alric said.
“In full. I hold you to no part of your father’s account beyond the gold and ships, and I will take on whatever schedule your maester can bear without ruining you. I am not in the business of breaking children for the sins of dead men.”
“But hear the rest of it.” Alric’s voice did not change.
“You are the first man to kneel in this hall today and mean it. You will not be the last man to be asked, but I doubt very much you will be the second to answer. Sunglass will not repent. Celtigar will not repent. Half the bay will write me letters full of law and scripture and hope I am too young to read them properly.”
“So I may have to stand against my own vassals. Openly. With ships and men, if it comes to that and whatever comes after that.” Alric leaned forward slightly.
“So tell me Will House Bar Emmon stand with me when it matters the most?” Alric asked
“Of course, my lord.”
It came out instantly, without a heartbeat’s pause, and Willem closed his eyes briefly because he had known it would.
“Your enemies shall be mine,” Duran said.
“House Bar Emmon will be at the front, and I will command the charge myself. I know what I am, my lord—I am fourteen and I have never been in a battle. But I have been trained well, and I am not a coward, and I would rather ride out beside you than sit safe at Sharp Point and hear about it afterward.”
Something flickered across Alric’s face again.
He did not let it stay.
He needed to maintain his Lord persona no matter what.
“Then hear the last of it,” he said taking the final test, “before you swear to anything.”
Duran waited.
“The Crown has done the same to me. Worse, in truth—Jon Arryn, Hand of the King also took the ships out of that harbor and called it duty, and I have written to the Hand of the King demanding every keel and every man returned.” Alric’s hand rested flat on the black glass.
“That letter is already flying. Which means the fight you have just offered to lead may not be against Sweetport Sound. It may be against the Iron Throne.”
Monford Velaryon, forgotten in the middle of the floor, went very still.
” I know That is not a winnable fight, a crazy and mad thing to do, Lord Duran.
Any man with sense will tell you so, and any man with sense will be right.” Alric did not soften it.
“I am doing it regardless, because if I bend once anyone can come back for more, and I would rather be broken than be a bow down where there is no fault of mine. But that is my choice, made for my own pride, and I will not have another house destroyed for it.”
He looked directly at the boy.
“You are the last of your father’s line. No heir, no brother. If the Crown’s wrath comes to this bay, House Bar Emmon ends—the name, the seat, all of it. So think before you answer, because I will hold no man accountable for refusing me. Not you. Not anyone. I know exactly how mad this sounds.”
The hall waited.
And Duran Bar Emmon smiled.
It was not a brave smile, exactly.
It was too crooked for that, and too young, and there was still salt drying on his face.
“My lord,” he said smiling, “you have misunderstood something.”
“Have I.” Alric asked with amusement
“I am not standing with you just because I swore an oath to Dragonstone.” The boy’s voice steadied as he went.
“My father swore that oath, and look what he did with it. I am standing with you because when I was twelve years old and my father died and every neighbor on this bay was working out what they could take from Sharp Point, you sent me Ser Willem instead of a tax collector.”
Willem’s throat did something complicated.
“You are my friend, my lord. You support me when everyone wanted a piece of me.That is the whole of it. I would give my life for you and I would not hesitate, and it makes no difference to me whether the man on the other side is Vassals of Dragonstone or Crown. I would be with you in every battle to follow till I die ” Lord Duran said with genuine warmth and with every intention to follow through it.
He might be young and stupid but he is honest and loyal man.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then Alric Baratheon stood.
He came down off the throne with the dragonglass sword in his hand, and Monford Velaryon actually took a half-step back—and Alric walked straight past him, past the trestle table with its rows of damning parchment, and stopped in front of Ser Willem Cobb and handed him his sword.
Willem took the sword.
It was lighter than he expected.
And then the Lord of Dragonstone pulled Duran Bar Emmon into an embrace that lifted the boy half off the floor.
The veteran knights along the walls stared straight ahead with tremendous discipline.
“Thank you, my friend,” Alric said, low.
“Thank you for that.”
“It is nothing, my lord.” Duran’s voice was muffled somewhere against his shoulder.
“But my honor to do so.”
Alric released him and stepped back, and he was grinning—actually grinning, in a way that took a good five years off his face.
“My lord?” he said smiling.
“Still? Even now? Are you offended, Duran ?”
Duran laughed.
It cracked halfway through and came out as more of a hiccup.
“Of course not,” he said, wiping his face with the back of his wrist.
“But we are in public, my lord, and it would be unwise. Ser Willem would complain about it the whole way home, and then he would tell Maester Wendell, and I would hear about proper form at every meal for a month.”
“Ah, I understand. Cressen do that too sometimes.” Alric clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder and left it there a moment.
“Then I am content. It seems I have not only gained a good friend in you, but a competent ally besides. I will look forward to your support, my friend. Truly.”
“You will have it.”
Alric took the sword back from Willem with a nod that carried more in it than the gesture, and turned.
The warmth went out of him between one step and the next.
By the time he reached the middle of the floor, it was gone entirely—the grin, the ease, all of it packed away somewhere the eye could not find, and what stood in front of Monford Velaryon was the same young man who had come down those steps a quarter hour earlier and asked why his color had gone.
He did not return to the seat.
He simply stopped, a few feet away, with the dragonglass sword hanging easy at his side and the ledgers spread out on the table between them, and waited.
“So,” Alric said.
“What is your answer, Lord Monford?”
“Uhm,” said Monford Velaryon.