Alric crushed the bottle in his bare hand.
The glass broke between his palms.Glass stabbing and Shards piercing his skin and puncturing his palm.
Red liquid dripped from his hands into a spreading pool on the floor.
Nobody in the room could tell what it is .
Maybe it’s is wine.
Maybe it is blood.
And Most likely, it is both mixed and Cursed by the Fury.
“My lord, your hand is bleeding.”
Cressen was on his feet, staring at the red running down Alric’s wrist and dripping steadily onto the black stone.
“Sit down, Cressen. It is just a cut.” Alric did not look at it.
“I have taken worse and survive it like nothing happened.”
The old man’s mouth worked.
Then he sighed and lowered himself back into his chair.
Nobody else moved.
The chamber had gone grim and heavy, the kind of silence where every man is aware of his own breathing.
Duran sat with both hands flat on the table.
Davos had not touched his wine since it was poured.
Ser Willem stood at the wall with his eyes fixed on nothing at all.
Monford Velaryon looked at the pool spreading slowly across the floor, and decided that if nobody else would say it, he would.
“Then what is it you want, my lord?”
Alric’s head turned.
“Do we simply go and attack them? Is battle what you seek?” Monford kept his voice level.
“I would not advise or recommend it.”
Silence again.
“But It would set an example for others to not try this,” Monford went on.
“That much I grant you. Brutal, but effective, and it would achieve one of your aims.”
Alric said nothing.
He only looked at them, one by one, and the glare moved around the table like something dragging.
Duran broke first.
“If that is your wish, my lord.” The boy stood.
“House Bar Emmon will be at the forefront. As I promised you in the hall. We will prove our loyalty with the blood of your enemies.”
Monterys could not sit quiet after that.
“Then we should begin at once, my lord. Ships, supply, provisioning.” He spoke fast, the way a man does when he has already worked the problem.
“Driftmark’s granaries and Driftmark’s hulls are at your command. If battle is what you want, you will have it before the moon turns.”
“Battle.”
Alric said the word as though testing something rotten.
“A battle.” He shook his head slowly.
“What would a battle alone would achieve? They lose a few hundred men, they sue for terms, and in twenty years some other lord decides Dragonstone can be robbed if the timing is right.” He leaned back.
“That is not where I am going. Not at all.”
He was not joking.
Every man there could hear it.
“Then what are you getting at, my lord?” Cressen asked.
Alric smiled.
It was not an easy smile.
It was not the one he had worn when he laughed at Monterys ten minutes ago.
It was thin and dark, and grim, something behind it did not belong to a sixteen-year-old boy.
“When I lived in King’s Landing,” he said, “I often quarrelled with the Queen. She could not stand the sight of me and I could not stand hers.” He turned his cut hand over, watching the blood collect in the palm.
“She was the most arrogant creature I have ever met. Pompous. Insufferable. And I kept asking myself why. What made a woman behave like that in a room full of men who could have her killed for it.”
The turn of subject left the table stranded.
Monford glanced at his son and saw the same confusion.
“Ah, yes One of the most obvious answer.That is what I thought at first. It is not the real answer, I am also the King’s Nephew you see.” Alric’s voice stayed cold.
“The answer is Tywin Lannister.”
Nobody spoke.
“She grew up on it. Fed by Arrogance , Reputation and Fear since she could walk. The knowledge that her name frightened people, and that nothing she did would ever be answered for, because of the man who held that name before her.” He looked up.
“Tywin Lannister made Lannister mean something in this realm. Uncle Robert sat on a throne he had just won by force of arms and still had to marry that man’s daughter to keep his crown steady. Think on what it takes to make a king do that.”
“My lord—” Cressen began, and something in his face had already started to change.
“I was curious how a man earns a reputation like that,” Alric said.
“So I read about it. I found nothing in Tywin Lannister worth respecting to be honest, He is just a old man who is too narcissistic for his own sake.But…” He set his bleeding hand flat on the table.
” I will say this for his methods.
The message was heard.
It is still being heard, thirty years on.”
The horror arrived on Monford Velaryon’s face before he had words for it.
He knew.
Of course he knew — every lord in the realm knew,
“The Rains of Castamere,” he said in horror , a fear that he knew what he is suggesting and he just fears what would happen.
Alric nodded.
Then he stood, and whatever had been sitting behind that smile came all the way forward.
“YES, MY LORD. YOU HAVE IT.” His voice filled the chamber.
“BUT IT WILL NOT BE A RAIN. ” He said shaking his head
“IT WILL BE FIRE. IT WILL BE THE BURNING OF MY FURY.”
The knights at the door had gone stiff as posts.
“I, ALRIC BARATHEON, WILL BRING SUNSET OVER HOUSE SUNGLASS FOR WHAT THEY HAVE DONE TO DRAGONSTONE. I WILL HAVE MY JUSTICE FROM THE TRAITOR AND HIS BLOOD BOTH.” He was breathing hard.
“HOUSE SUNGLASS WILL BE ERADICATED FROM THIS REALM. ROOT, BRANCH, NAME AND SEAT. THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT OF THEM BUT THE STORY.”
The silence that followed was total.
“The story that will carry the message to the generations on how to be a loyal Lord. ” He said in his coldest voice possible but unlike the before which was loud.
This was deliberately more cold and silent only to be heard by men in the room and just feel the impact of it all.
To wipe out a house.
Not defeat it, not humble it, not take its lands and marry its daughters off to loyal men — to end it.
Every man at that table understood exactly how mad it was.
But Not every man cared.
Duran Bar Emmon went down on his knees before anyone else had drawn breath.
Defying the common sense over few men could understand.
“Then House Bar Emmon stands with you,” he said.
“If that is your command, my lord, we will give you glory and the heads of your enemies with it.”
“Rains of Castamere.” Monford said it to himself, loud enough to carry.
“Or rather… sunset over House Sunglass.”
He rose from his chair.
“It is madness, my lord. I will say that once and I will not soften it. I would never counsel this, not for gold, not for vengeance, not for anything you could name.” He came around the table and knelt, an old man’s knees cracking audibly on the stone.
“But I did gave you my word in your hall, and Now I gave you my son. House Velaryon is yours to command.”
Monterys knelt beside his father.
He thought it was excessive.
He thought it was worse than excessive.
But the ship had sailed the day his father put his name to that settlement, and there was nothing left to do but see where the voyage went.
“Rise. All of you.” Alric’s voice had dropped back to something almost normal but the madness is still there”Sit down.”
They did.
His hands were shaking, and he did not seem to notice.
“I have served this house long. Please Let me speak once.”
“Speak.”
“This will not be remembered as justice. It will be remembered as slaughter.” The old man’s voice cracked.
“Every lord in the Seven Kingdoms will hear that Dragonstone put a house to the sword over gold and ships. They will remember what you did about it. The Faith will preach against you. Sunglass is a pious house, my lord and a big supporter of Faith.”
“I know what I am doing and Realm should remember that is the whole point.”
“Then know this also.” Cressen leaned forward.
“Your uncle can forgive you a battle. He can forgive you a siege, and a sacking, and a hundred dead men. Kings forgive those things every year. He cannot forgive extinction, because the moment you do it, every man in the realm will start wondering which house is next and whether the Iron Throne has any say in it at all.” A breath.
“You will not be a lord who was wronged. You will be a lord who cannot be trusted with vassals.”
Alric listened to all of it without interrupting.
“Are you finished?”
“No, my lord. But I see that I am.”
“Then sit down, Cressen, and drink your wine.”
Monterys had been turning something over since the shouting stopped, and he did not much want to ask it.
But it would eat at him the whole voyage if he did not.
“My lord.” He hesitated.
“And Claw Isle?”
Alric looked at him.
“Lord Ardrian refused you outright. He insulted you in writing, under his own seal.” Monterys chose the words carefully.
“By any reckoning his offense is worse than Sunglass’s. If sunset falls on Sweetport Sound, does it fall on Claw Isle as well?”
He kept his face still while he asked it.
He had met the Celtigar heir twice — once at a wedding in Duskendale and once over three days of very bad weather in a Gulltown inn, where they had drunk together and complained about their fathers and discovered they liked each other rather more than either expected.
The man was nothing like Ardrian.
He knew ships, he laughed easily, he had said one night that his father’s mouth would cost their house dearly one day and he was not looking forward to inheriting the bill.
Do not say yes, Monterys thought.
Whatever else, do not say yes.
Alric shook his head.
“No.”
Monterys let out a breath he had not known he was holding.
“I have another plans for House Celtigar entirely,” Alric said.
“Ardrian Celtigar insulted me, and he will answer for it. But luckily for his House, it will survive.” Something moved at the corner of his mouth.
“My lord?” Cressen said.
“What plan?”
“Ser Willem.”
The knight came off the wall.
“My lord.”
“Bring him in.”
Willem crossed the chamber without a word and pulled the door open.
Monford Velaryon watched him go with the distinct sensation of a man who has just realized he has been sitting in a room for an hour without knowing what was in it.
He arranged something.
Before this council.
Before the letters even came back.
Gods.
He was three moves ahead of the whole table.
Boots on the stone outside.
Two men.
Willem returned with someone behind him — a man of perhaps twenty, seasalt-stained cloak, tired around the eyes, standing in the doorway of the council chamber of Dragonstone with the wary look of a man who has already gambled everything he has.
Monterys Velaryon’s cup stopped halfway to his mouth.
“My lords,” Alric said.
“Please Meet your new ally Arthor Celtigar.”