Ser Barristan Selmy had been waiting a week to hit him, and he was making up for lost time.
"Again," said the Lord Commander.
Alyn picked himself up off the flagstones. It was the ninth time that morning. The sun had not yet cleared the eastern towers of the Red Keep, and the yard was still grey and cold with dawn, and every part of him that was not already bruised was on its way to becoming so. His shoulder throbbed where the old knight's blade had caught it. His ribs ached. There was grit in his teeth.
"You're slow," Barristan observed, as Alyn found his feet. "Slower than a fortnight ago. Slower than before you sailed."
"I know, ser."
"Your guard drops on the left when you're tired. It didn't used to."
"I know, ser."
"You're breathing through your mouth."
"I'm tired, ser."
"Yes," said Barristan Selmy, with the faint, grave satisfaction of a man watching a lesson sink in. "That's what a week of pillows does. Again."
Alyn came at him. The old knight stepped aside—not quickly, not even very far, just enough—and Alyn's blade went past him into empty air, and something cracked across the back of his thigh, and he was on one knee on the flagstones for the tenth time.
He knelt there a moment, breathing hard, and looked up at the old man standing over him. Ser Barristan was sixty-odd years old, grey to the roots, half a head shorter than his squire and two stone lighter, and he had not so much as broken a sweat.
"Ser," said Alyn. "Are you enjoying this?"
Barristan considered the question with the gravity he brought to everything.
"A little," he admitted. "Again."
It went on like that every day for a week. Before dawn, after dawn, and again in the late afternoon when the heat had gone out of the sun. Barristan worked him as though he were trying to wring every soft hour out of his body one bruise at a time. Footwork. Guards. Cuts and counters, over and over until his arms went numb. Bouts against squires, and then against knights, and then against Barristan himself, who beat him so thoroughly and so patiently and with such quiet, unhurried precision that by the fourth day Alyn had begun to dream about it.
But by the fifth day, he was faster. By the sixth, his left guard had stopped dropping. And on the seventh, at the very end of a long, grinding afternoon bout, he got inside the old knight's reach for the first time since he'd come home, and turned his blade, and felt the flat of his own sword ring off Barristan's pauldron.
The Lord Commander stepped back. He looked down at his shoulder. Then he looked up at his squire.
"Better," he said.
From Ser Barristan Selmy, it was practically a feast in Alyn's honour.
His grandfather had come and gone while Alyn was still lying in his bed.
Tywin Lannister had stayed after the fleets return to discuss the matter of the Iron Islands with the small council. He had sat through two long sessions with Jon Arryn and Stannis and Kevan, and listened to the whole of it, and pronounced the settlement adequate, which from Tywin Lannister was something unheard of.
But that was not what Alyn remembered about the visit.
What he remembered was Lyonel.
His grandfather had stayed four days. And on three of those four days, he had found some reason to spend time with Alyn's little brother. He had taken him riding in the kingswood on a fat brown pony, with half a dozen Lannister guardsmen trailing behind. He had sat with him in the gardens while Lyonel showed him how high he could climb in the old oak, and how far he could throw a stone, and how loud he could shout. He had let the boy hold his sword—his own sword, a great longsword with a golden lion's head for a pommel, which had not been drawn in anger in twenty years—and watched with an expressionless face while Lyonel swung it about the solar, laughing, nearly taking off a candelabrum.
And he had asked questions. Quiet, careful questions, in that cold, level voice. What did Lyonel like best? What did he want to be when he was grown? Did he like the sea? Did he like the west? Had he ever seen a lion?
Lyonel, who liked everyone and everything and had never once in his life been afraid of anybody, had answered all of them at the top of his lungs. He liked swords best, and horses, and his brother. He wanted to be a knight, the best knight in the whole world, better than Ser Barristan, better than Alyn. He did not know if he liked the sea; Alyn said it was horrible. He did not know if he liked the west; he had never been. And no, he had never seen a lion. Was it big? Did it bite?
It's very big, his grandfather had said. And yes. It bites.
And Lyonel had laughed with delight, and Tywin Lannister had looked down at him, and Alyn—watching from the window of his bedchamber, where he had been ostensibly reading and actually spying—had seen something in his grandfather's face he had never seen there before.
Calculation. Of course calculation. With Tywin, there was always calculation.
But under it, something else. Something that, in another man, might almost have been hope.
Alyn had thought about it a great deal since.
He knew what his grandfather wanted. It was not difficult to see. Tywin Lannister had three children, and he had spent twenty years watching the future of his house rot in their hands. His heir had taken a white cloak and given up all claim to his inheritance. His daughter was a queen, and could never hold the Rock. And his youngest—
Alyn's thoughts always slowed, a little, when they came to his uncle Tyrion.
He had met the dwarf only a handful of times—at his name day feasts, mostly, and once at the triplets' birth, when Tyrion had come up from Casterly Rock and spent the whole of the feast drinking and making the lords around him laugh until they wept. He had been kind to Alyn. Kind in a sharp, wry, sideways sort of way, as though kindness were a joke he was making at his own expense. He had asked Alyn what he was reading, and when Alyn told him, he had laughed and said that's a terrible book, read this instead, and the next morning a crate had arrived at Alyn's chambers with forty books in it and a note that said only better.
In the stranger's story, Tyrion Lannister had been the cleverest of them all. The best of them, perhaps. The one who saw most clearly and was listened to least. And his father had hated him from the hour he was born, and blamed him for his mother's death, and never once let him forget it.
Alyn did not think that had changed in this world. He did not think anything could change it.
And so Tywin had looked at his three children, and seen no heir worth the name. And then he had looked at his four grandchildren, and seen four.
The eldest was the heir to the Iron Throne. The girls would marry. That left one.
A second son. A second son who would inherit nothing from his father but a name and a sword and a little holdfast somewhere, if he was lucky. A loud, laughing, fearless boy, big for his age, with Robert's strength and Robert's courage, and Lannister blood in his veins from his mother's side. A boy who could be raised at Casterly Rock, under his grandfather's eye, and taught everything Tywin knew—and given, at the end of it, the lion instead of the stag.
Lyonel Lannister, Alyn thought. Lord of Casterly Rock. Warden of the West.
It was not a bad thought. That was the trouble. It was a very good thought, from where Alyn stood.
Casterly Rock was the richest seat in the Seven Kingdoms. The Westerlands could put fifty thousand swords in the field. And if the man who held all that gold and all those swords was Alyn's own brother—his little brother, who had hurled himself at Alyn across the nursery rug every day of his life, who wanted nothing more in the world than to be a knight as good as Alyn was—then the greatest power in the realm after the throne itself would be bound to the throne by blood and love both. No more Lannister pride to manage. No more old lion in the west, counting his gold and his grievances. Only Lyonel.
When the long night came, Alyn would need the gold of Casterly Rock. He would need its swords. He would need a man in the west he could trust absolutely.
He could not think of a man he would trust more.
And yet.
He did not know what his father would say.
He had turned it over every way he could. His father loved Lyonel—loved all of them, fiercely and loudly and without condition. And his father hated Tywin Lannister. Not openly. Not in the council chamber. But Alyn had seen his face, sometimes, when his grandfather's name was spoken: a flicker of something old and bitter and dark. Something to do with the sack of King's Landing, perhaps, and the bodies wrapped in Lannister cloaks that Tywin had laid at the foot of the Iron Throne. Something to do with being given a throne by a man who had waited until the last possible moment to choose a side.
Would Robert see it as a gift? A son of his, holding the richest seat in the realm? Robert had never cared much for gold, but he cared for his children. He might laugh and slap his knee and say aye, let the old lion raise him, means one less mouth at my table.
Or would he see it as theft? A Baratheon son, taken from his father's house and given another man's name? Robert had fought a war once because a man took a woman who had been promised to him. He was a proud man, in his way. The stag was his. His children were his. Would he give one of them up to Tywin Lannister, of all men, to be made into a lion?
Alyn did not know. And he did not intend to be the one to ask. Not yet.
That was a fight for his grandfather to start. And Alyn suspected his grandfather knew it.
And then there was Olenna Tyrell.
The old woman had been busy. Alyn could see it everywhere he looked, once he knew to look. She had not asked for another audience with him. She had not sent any more notes about granaries. She had not, in fact, so much as spoken his name in his hearing since he came home.
She had simply arranged for Margaery to be everywhere he was.
Or rather—and this was the clever part, the part that made Alyn want to applaud—she had arranged for Margaery to be everywhere his siblings were. And then she had waited for him to come to them.
He went to the Queen's Garden on the second evening of his training, to sit in the shade and nurse his bruises, because the triplets played there in the evenings and he liked to watch them. Margaery was there. Sitting on a bench beneath the climbing roses, with Cassana beside her, the two of them bent over a book together.
He went to the stables on the fifth morning, because the triplets were to be given new ponies and Lyonel had begged him to come and see. Margaery was there. Walking a little grey mare around the paddock, with Argella perched on its back, scowling with concentration.
He went to the sept on the seventh-day, because his mother insisted. Margaery was there, three rows ahead, kneeling before the Mother, and when the service ended, Cassana slipped out of the royal pew without a word and went to stand beside her.
It was every day. Every time. Never quite where he was. Always where his siblings were. And so, by the simple and inescapable fact of loving his brother and sisters, Alyn found himself in Margaery Tyrell's company five times in a week, and every single time, it had been entirely by chance.
Cunning old fox, he thought, with real admiration.
It was Cassana that surprised him.
He had expected Lyonel. Lyonel liked everyone. Lyonel had liked Margaery from the first moment he saw her, the way he liked dogs and horses and kitchen boys and the High Septon and the man who emptied the privies, with total, uncritical, joyous enthusiasm. He had flung himself at her skirts in the gardens and demanded to know whether she could climb trees, and when she said she could, he had insisted she prove it. She had, to Alyn's astonishment—hitching up her green silk skirts and swinging up into the lower branches of the old oak with an ease that suggested a great deal of practice—and from that moment on, Lyonel had considered her a very great lady indeed.
Argella was harder. Argella did not like anyone, as a matter of principle, and she had said No to Margaery the first time they met, and the second, and the third. She had refused to hold her hand. She had refused to let her help with the pony. She had sat on the far end of the garden bench with her arms crossed and glared at her for a full hour.
But she had not left. And when Alyn asked her about it afterwards, she had scowled at him and said that she didn't like the Tyrell girl, not at all, but Cassana did, and so Argella supposed she would have to put up with her. For now, she had added darkly.
It was Cassana who surprised him.
Cassana did not like people. She did not dislike them, either. She simply did not seem to notice most of them, the way most people did not notice the furniture. She had her family, and her books, and her window over the sea, and that was enough for her. In six years, Alyn could count on one hand the people outside the family she had ever chosen to sit beside without being made to. Celia. Ser Barristan, once, for reasons no one ever discovered. And their grandfather, during his visit, which had astonished everyone, Tywin most of all.
And now Margaery.
Alyn did not know how it had happened. He had not been there. But somewhere in that week while he was away at sea, or lying in his bed, or getting beaten in the yard, his quiet little sister had decided that the Tyrell girl was a person worth noticing. She sought her out. She sat beside her. She brought her books to read, and shells from the gardens, and once, a pressed flower from the godswood that Margaery had tucked into the pages of her prayer book with an expression of great solemnity. She held her hand at the sept.
And Margaery—
Margaery was very good with her. That was the only way Alyn could put it. Patient and gentle and unhurried. She did not chatter at Cassana the way most grown-ups did. She did not coo over her or pat her head or call her sweetling. She simply sat with her, and read with her, and let her be quiet, and answered her questions as though they were the most important questions in the world.
She had given Cassana a ribbon. A green one, with a thread of gold woven through it, the colours of House Tyrell. Cassana wore it every day now, tied in her black hair, beside the black-and-gold one she had once given Alyn for the melee.
He did not know how much of it was real.
That was the question that sat in his chest, every time he watched them together. He had walked through the Queen's Garden with Margaery Tyrell on his arm, and he had not been able to find the seams in her. She was too good. Too practised. And she was her grandmother's granddaughter, and her grandmother had sent her here, to sit on this bench with this little girl, for a reason that had nothing at all to do with books.
Alyn knew exactly what the reason was. The way to the queen was through her children. And the way to Cassana was through patience.
But then he would watch Cassana's face, turned up to Margaery's as she listened to her read—his quiet, solemn little sister, who did not smile at anyone, smiling—and he would think: It doesn't matter. Whatever it is for Margaery, it's real for her.
And he would wonder, uneasily, what would happen to Cassana if it ever stopped.
And then, on the seventh day, coming out of the sept behind his family, he had seen his mother look down the aisle at her youngest daughter standing hand in hand with Margaery Tyrell—and he had seen her face do something complicated. A flicker. A tightness. Then, very slowly, a softening.
She had said nothing. She had swept out of the sept with her ladies behind her and her chin in the air.
But she had looked back, once, at the door.
Gods, Alyn thought. It's working.
_________
Varys did not sleep much, as a rule. Tonight he did not sleep at all.
The letter had come at the hour of the owl, by the usual roundabout way—a Pentoshi trading cog into the harbour, a sailor with a sealed oilskin packet sewn into the lining of his boot, a fishmonger's boy at the River Gate, a kitchen girl, a servant. It had taken sixteen days to cross the narrow sea. It was written in Illyrio's private cipher, the one they had made together as hungry young men in the alleys of Pentos, forty years ago, which no one else alive could read.
Varys had sat down to it with a cup of hot water and lemon and the faint, comfortable expectation of reading the usual things.
And for the first two pages, he did.
Viserys had flown into another rage. He had struck a servant and broken a vase and screamed at Illyrio that he was the blood of the dragon and would not be kept waiting like a beggar. Illyrio had soothed him with wine and promises. The girl was well. Quieter than ever. She had begun to grow tall, and to look more like her mother, and it would not be long now before she was of an age. The khal's people had come again to the manse—three of his bloodriders, sniffing about, asking questions—and Illyrio had fed them and flattered them and shown them the girl at a distance, and they had gone away satisfied. The matter progressed. A year, perhaps less. The dragon eggs were safe in the magister's vault, where they had been since he bought them, waiting for the wedding.
All as expected. All proceeding.
Then Varys turned to the third page.
He read it once. Then he set down his cup, very carefully, so that his hand would not shake, and read it again.
There is a thing I must tell you, old friend, which I like not at all.
Twelve days ago a woman came to my door. A red priestess of R'hllor, out of Asshai by way of Volantis. Tall. Beautiful. Hair the colour of copper, and a great ruby at her throat that seemed to me to glow in the dark. She asked for no alms. She asked for the dragon's children by name.
I sent her away. She came again the next day, and the next, and on the third day I found her in my garden, though my gates were locked and my guards swore she had not passed them. She was speaking with the girl.
I do not know what she said. The girl will not tell me. But she has been strange since. She has asked twice to see the eggs. And when I brought her to the vault, the priestess was waiting there before us—though I swear to you by every god I have ever mocked that I had not told her where the vault was, nor that we would be going.
She stood over the eggs a long time, Varys. She did not touch them. She only looked at them, and smiled, and spoke a word in a tongue I did not know.
The brother is enchanted with her. He says she has seen him in her fires, crowned in flame upon the Iron Throne. He calls her his priestess. He will not hear a word against her.
She calls herself Melisandre.
I do not know what she wants. But I think, old friend, that she did not come for the brother.
Varys sat in the dark, in his chambers in the Red Keep, with the letter in his lap and the candle burning down beside him.
He did not move. He did not breathe. Somewhere far away, very faintly, as though it came from the bottom of a deep well, he heard a sound he had not heard in forty years. A crackling, hissing, whispering sound.
The sound of something burning.
And beneath it, very soft, a voice answering from the flames.