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“Because in my own uncle’s private residence,” Aven said, pressing down hard on the word, “I had a siege crossbow prepared.”
Joffrey’s eyes lit up to a degree Aven had never seen before.
“A siege crossbow, Your Grace.
Do you know what a siege crossbow is?”
“Of course I know.” A flicker of irritation at being questioned, then interest swamped it entirely.
“The kind used for storming cities.”
“Exactly.” Aven nodded.
“When my soldiers found that siege crossbow in my uncle’s residence—”
He spread his hands wide.
The gesture said: you see how simple it was.
“Everyone shut their mouths.
I sentenced my uncle to take the black, and when he was on his way to the Wall, I had someone deal with him.
The men who attacked him, I silenced afterward.
Everyone thought it was an accident.
Who would ever know it was me?”
Joffrey began to applaud.
His face wore the expression of a child tearing open the gift he wanted most, satisfaction, excitement, and a small gleam of I knew you’d surprise me.
“Good.
Good.
Good.” Three times, each one harder than the last.
“Clever Aven.
I have yet to kill anyone.
You’ve given me a great deal of inspiration.”
He paused.
The smile on his face faded a little, replaced by something darker.
“That mad dog Sandor Clegane is always stopping me.
He says — ‘Your Grace, not this.’ ‘Your Grace, not that.'”
When he mimicked Sandor, his voice dropped low, rough and thick, exaggerated, mocking.
But underneath the mockery there was no mockery at all.
There was hatred.
The pent-up, stifled kind, from being held on a leash too long, from wanting to break free and not yet being able to.
“One day I will kill him.”
He said it the way someone states the weather.
That calm was enough to send a chill straight down your spine.
Aven’s face showed nothing.
He gave a small nod, the way you nod when a friend is telling you about a problem that genuinely troubles them.
“Old fellows are like that.” Just the right shade of understanding in his voice.
“He’s nearly thirty, isn’t he?
Poor old Hound.
His thinking has gone stale.”
The darkness on his face flipped back to excitement.
Not gradually, instantly.
Excited, dark, excited, and no space between any of them, like a man with no emotional gears, only switches.
“I like you so much, Aven.” Something almost childlike in his voice.
“You are quite simply the cleverest person I have ever met.”
The most sincere thing he had said all day.
Not because Aven was truly clever, but because Aven had said what he wanted to hear, said it the right way, and had let him, in a place full of people he considered country dirt, find someone he felt was worth his time.
Aven dipped his head slightly, his eyes meeting Joffrey’s with every appearance of honesty.
“Are we friends, Your Grace?”
Soft.
The way you ask a question you’re not sure you’re allowed to ask yet.
Joffrey barely hesitated.
“Of course!” His voice rang out through the corridor.
“Aven, come back to King’s Landing with me.
I’ll have my father give you a position.
You’ll stay by my side.”
A small expression crossed Aven’s face, reluctance.
Just a slight crease of the brow, a slight shift at the corner of his mouth.
Small enough that most people would have missed it.
Joffrey didn’t.
Joffrey had a predator’s instinct for reading people, not because he cared about them, but because he always needed to know one thing: is this person refusing me?
“Your Grace,” Aven said, a trace of regret in his voice, “you may not know.
Lord Eddard wants me to remain at Winterfell.
He doesn’t even want me to return to Karhold.”
Joffrey’s expression changed.
No preamble.
No warning.
The anger went from nothing to everything.
“Damn the Starks!”
His voice cracked through the corridor, sharp and high, the sound a cat makes when you step on its tail.
He stamped his foot, boot leather slamming into stone with a dull, heavy crack.
Then he stamped again.
Then he raised his hand and slapped it hard against the stone wall, palm scraping across the rough surface, leaving a thin red mark across his skin.
Jon flinched.
He couldn’t understand how one person’s emotions could move like that.
He understood it even less when he remembered this person was first in line for the Iron Throne.
Aven didn’t move.
He watched Joffrey rage, and his face showed nothing at all.
Stepping in right now was the stupidest move possible.
Let him vent.
“When I ascend the throne,” Joffrey ground out through clenched teeth, each word loaded with something ugly, “I will kill Eddard Stark.”
Aven looked at that twisted face and felt nothing in particular.
He had seen everything that face would do.
If you looked at Joffrey as a mentally broken fool, things became very simple.
He waited a beat.
Then he said something else, almost to himself.
“King Robert came to Winterfell because—”
Joffrey went quiet.
The quiet hit like a slap after the screaming.
One second he was stamping his feet and hitting walls.
The next he was standing perfectly still, as if someone had reached over and pressed pause.
His lips parted slightly.
His eyes fixed on some point that wasn’t anywhere in this corridor.
His pupils went soft and distant, and behind them something was turning over fast.
“Right…” He was barely whispering, like he was afraid to be overheard.
“That old man is going to follow us back to King’s Landing.”
He turned and looked at Aven.
The excitement was back on his face, more than before, even, because he had just convinced himself he’d thought of something brilliant.
“I have a plan.” Fast, like he was afraid the thought might slip away.
“I’ll have my father order you to come to King’s Landing with us.
That solves it, doesn’t it?”
He tilted his head.
The corner of his mouth pulled up.
“Would he dare refuse a king’s command?”
He didn’t wait for an answer.
He turned and walked back the way he had come, boots striking stone in the same crisp, even rhythm as before.
At the corner of the corridor his steps paused, just for a moment, as if something had just occurred to him.
He looked back.
“Aven.”
“Your Grace.”
“I’ll arrange it.
Wait for me.”
Aven looked at him and dipped his head.
“I’ll wait for you, Your Grace.”
Joffrey held his gaze for one last second, maybe checking whether Aven meant it, maybe just enjoying the feeling of being waited for, then turned and walked into the shadows at the corridor’s bend.
His footsteps grew fainter, and fainter, and fainter, until the wind took them entirely and left nothing behind.
The corridor settled back into quiet.
The torches swayed, flames bending sideways once, then straightening.
Outside, the snow was still falling, a soft steady hiss against the stone, like someone turning pages in a book very far away.
Aven stood there and thought about King’s Landing.
If Joffrey could be tamed, really tamed, that city was going to be very interesting.
➤ Next: The Imp — The Conversation
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