The yard below Ashford Castle stank of horseflesh, trampled grass, hot leather, and dung baking beneath the afternoon sun. Everywhere Dunk looked, there seemed to be another horse needing water, another squire struggling beneath an armful of armor, another knight shouting for something that ought to have been waiting for him already. The tourney had swollen the place beyond all reason. Bright pavilions crowded the meadow beyond the walls, servants hurried between wagons and stables, and above the ceaseless clatter of hooves and harness came the distant ringing of hammer against steel. Dunk led Sweetfoot carefully through it all, one broad hand wrapped around her reins. The old mare followed with the patience of a septon, occasionally nudging his wrist with her warm nose as though to remind him that, whatever grand knights might be gathering at Ashford, she still expected to be fed.

He was wondering where he might find a patch of shade for her when the trumpets sounded. The noise cut clean through the yard. Conversations faltered, heads turned, and even the stableboys seemed to straighten. Dunk looked toward the gate as the first riders came through beneath a forest of banners. Knights in polished plate rode two abreast, sunlight flashing white from steel and gilded edges. Behind them came squires, servants, packhorses, and more men-at-arms than Dunk could have counted without taking off his boots. Then a banner of black silk lifted above the procession, caught by a sudden breath of wind, and three red heads spread their wings across it. The dragon of House Targaryen seemed almost alive as the cloth snapped overhead. Beneath it rode men in white enamel and pale cloaks, the Kingsguard unmistakable even to someone who had spent more nights beneath hedges than castle roofs. Their cloaks shone bright as fresh bone against the black and red of the royal standard.

Dunk stopped without meaning to. Sweetfoot stopped with him. Princes. He had seen lords before, or men who called themselves lords when they had enough armed retainers behind them, but this was different. The whole yard seemed to bend around the royal party. Grooms came running before anyone called for them. Servants bowed. Men who had been shouting a moment before suddenly discovered softer voices. Dunk became acutely conscious of the dust on his boots, the sweat beneath his tunic, and Sweetfoot's age-yellowed teeth.

One rider broke away from the procession near the stables. He swung down from his saddle with the easy grace of someone who had been riding almost as long as he had been walking, landing lightly despite the weight of sword and travel clothes. His cloak settled behind him in a spill of scarlet worked with gold, the embroidery catching the sun until the fabric seemed edged in flame. He did not look tired from the road. If anything, he looked irritated that the road had presumed to inconvenience him at all. His gaze passed over the waiting grooms and settled instead on Dunk.

"Drop that nag, boy, and see to my horse."

The words were spoken without effort and without doubt. Not a request, not even quite an order. More like a man remarking that the sun was hot and expecting the world to arrange itself accordingly. Dunk stared at him for half a heartbeat too long. Then another. Sweetfoot flicked one ear.

"I'm no stableboy, your grace."

He knew the instant the words left his mouth that he might have chosen better ones. Ser Arlan had spent years attempting to teach him when to bow, when to speak, and, most importantly, when to keep his great stupid mouth shut. Dunk could almost hear the old knight now. Courtesy costs nothing, Dunk. Unfortunately, remembering it sometimes seemed to cost more sense than Dunk possessed.

The prince turned his head fully toward him.

"Too dull for such work?"

A faint smile touched his mouth. It was not a pleasant smile. There was amusement in it, certainly, but none of the sort meant to be shared. It was the expression of a boy pulling the wings from a fly simply to discover how long it might continue crawling.

Only then did Dunk properly see him. Prince Aerion Targaryen looked as though some singer had been asked to invent a dragon prince and had been given too much wine while doing it. His hair was silver-gold, bright where the sun caught it, his skin pale and smooth despite the journey, his features fine enough to have belonged on a carved image in a sept. His eyes were the deep violet of amethysts held against candlelight, beautiful until one noticed the cold intelligence behind them. Everything about him was too perfect, too polished, too unmistakably Valyrian. Fire and arrogance given flesh and dressed in scarlet silk.

Dunk suddenly understood why men wrote songs about princes. So that’s a prince of the blood, he thought. And I, a hedge knight with nothing but old armor and borrowed honor, dared speak to him as an equal.

Ashford has prepared itself for spectacle. Nothing in the castle yard looks accidental. The stones have been scrubbed until the pale mortar shows clean between them, though no amount of water can entirely erase the darker stains left by horses and wagon wheels. Fresh rushes have been scattered near the entrance to the hall. House Ashford's banners hang from walls, towers, and galleries, their apples bright against the mellowing afternoon light, every fold beaten free of road dust and every cord pulled taut. Stableboys have been washed, combed, and arranged in a line that lasts only until the first frightened horse decides otherwise. Servants stand at carefully judged intervals beneath the galleries, near enough to be useful but far enough away to suggest discipline rather than curiosity. Even the guards at the gate seem to have discovered straighter backs.

The royal party is expected, and Ashford means to look worthy of receiving it. The first warning comes from beyond the gate: the muffled thunder of many hooves, the jingle of harness, and a shouted command from one of the outriders. Conversations around the courtyard diminish almost at once. Lord Ashford adjusts one cuff without appearing to do so. His household settles around him.

Then the Targaryens enter like weather. The column passes beneath the gatehouse in a gleam of steel, leather, black silk, and red. Horses that have traveled hard all day slow upon the clean courtyard stones, tossing damp heads while grooms hurry forward. Dust still powders boots and hems despite every effort of royal attendants to brush away the evidence of the road. Cloaks settle against armored shoulders. The three-headed dragon stirs overhead in the evening breeze, black and scarlet among Ashford's bright apples, and for a moment the courtyard that has been so carefully arranged for its own lord seems to belong entirely to the men who have just entered it.

Lord Ashford advances to meet them and bows deeply. There is nothing theatrical in the gesture. He has spent his life among noblemen and understands precisely how far a man ought to bend before the heir to the Iron Throne without making himself ridiculous.

"My princes. Your Grace," he says as he straightens, his voice carrying the practiced warmth of a host who has repeated his welcome enough times in his head that not a word can betray him now. "Ashford is honored by your presence. Supper has been prepared, and chambers made ready for each of you. I trust the road treated you kindly."

His hand opens toward the great doors of the hall, where warm firelight glows beyond the shadowed entrance.

Baelor answers first. He dismounts without haste, moving with the easy familiarity of a man who has spent half his life in armor and the other half surrounded by people watching how he wears it. There is strength in him, but none of the restless need to display it. A waiting groom takes his reins. Baelor acknowledges the man with a brief nod before turning back to Lord Ashford, and when he smiles there is something almost gentle about it. The expression neither invites familiarity nor reminds anyone unnecessarily that he is Prince of Dragonstone and Hand of the King. He has no need to insist upon either fact.

"Your hospitality does you credit, my lord," Baelor replies. "We are grateful for it. The road was kind enough."

Kind enough. A courteous little phrase, smooth enough to pass unnoticed and useful enough to close the subject before anyone thinks to ask what, precisely, it means.

Maekar notices. He has already swung down from his own horse, and unlike his elder brother, he does not bother smiling. Road dust dulls the lower edge of his cloak, and the journey has done nothing to improve a disposition that rarely requires assistance in appearing grim. His silver hair and neatly kept beard catch pale threads of light as he removes his gloves. One violet eye narrows faintly while his gaze moves across the courtyard, taking in Lord Ashford's household, the waiting servants, the grooms, the doors, the horses still coming through the gate. Counting. Always counting.

"Kind enough," Maekar echoes.

There is so little enthusiasm in the words that Baelor's mouth threatens, very briefly, to betray amusement. Maekar does not notice. Or chooses not to.

His attention has already returned to the open gate behind them. More riders enter. Men-at-arms. Servants. Packhorses. A pair of squires. Another wagon. Not Daeron. The muscles along Maekar's jaw tighten. He had expected Daeron to make the journey tiresome. That was hardly prophecy. His eldest son possessed a remarkable talent for becoming inconvenient whenever responsibility approached within shouting distance.

Baelor glances toward him.

"He may have ridden ahead."

"He did not."

"Then behind."

Maekar's gaze remains fixed upon the gate. "A comforting reduction of the possibilities."

Baelor's expression stays perfectly composed, but something warm flickers behind it. Maekar says nothing more. Not here. Not before Ashford's household. A Prince of Summerhall does not arrive as a guest and immediately announce that he has misplaced two sons somewhere in the Reach. Whatever concern he feels is buried beneath irritation so thoroughly that only someone who knows him well would recognize one for the other.

Aerion, meanwhile, appears entirely unconcerned by the absence of brother. He comes out of the saddle with considerably more energy than the journey ought to have left him, boots striking stone as he pulls one glove free with his teeth. His silver-gold hair has survived the road offensively well. So, apparently, has his temper.

"Take it."

The reins are thrust toward the nearest servant before the young man has quite reached him. Aerion is already shrugging out of his riding cloak, scarlet and gold sliding from his shoulders in a bright spill of fabric.

The servant catches both with some difficulty. Another boy hurries forward for the prince's baggage, but not quickly enough. Aerion turns his head.

"Well?"

The single word stops the boy as effectively as a hand against his chest. Aerion lifts his satchel and tosses it toward him. "Must I carry my own belongings as well?"

"No, your grace. Forgive me, your grace."

The satchel nearly slips through the servant's hands. He catches it against his chest at the last instant, flushing violently.

Aerion has already lost interest. His gaze travels upward instead, following the lines of the courtyard to the banners hanging from the galleries. Green leaves, red apples, white cloth, all newly cleaned and displayed for the tourney. He considers them with the faintly dissatisfied expression of a man examining decorations prepared for his own amusement.

"It will do," he decides.

Lord Ashford hears him. To his credit, nothing whatsoever happens to Lord Ashford's face.

Valarr is the last of the princes to dismount. Where Aerion seems determined to disturb whatever space he enters, Valarr has been taught to fit himself into one so precisely that the effort scarcely shows. He lands lightly, straightens, and passes his reins to the waiting stableboy.

"Thank you."

The servant looks faintly startled to have been thanked by a prince. Valarr does not linger for the reaction. He smooths one hand over his riding coat, glances briefly toward the courtyard, and falls into step near his father. Brown hair, marked by its unmistakable silver-gold streak, has been stirred by the journey, but otherwise little about him appears disordered. His expression remains pleasant and composed, his posture straight without stiffness. His mismatched eyes move once toward Maekar and then toward the still-open gate. He notices the missing prince too. Unlike Maekar, he is sensible enough not to comment.

Lord Ashford gestures again toward the hall. "You must all be weary. If Your Graces will come inside, I think you will find the kitchens have taken your arrival as a personal challenge."

That earns the faintest lift of Baelor's brow.

"A dangerous thing to tell hungry men."

Lord Ashford laughs, relieved to discover that the Hand of the King can make jokes.

They pass inside. The change is immediate. The dusty brightness of the courtyard gives way to the amber warmth of Ashford's great hall, where fires have been lit despite the lingering warmth of the day. Flames roll softly in the hearths and throw shifting gold across stone walls dressed in banners and greenery. The long table has already been laid with almost aggressive abundance. Fresh bread waits beneath folded cloths. Butter gleams in shallow dishes beside wheels of cheese and bowls of late fruit. Platters of roasted meat send curls of fragrant steam into the air, rich with pepper, rosemary, onions, and dripping fat. There are pies with browned crusts, glazed carrots, little birds roasted crisp, and enough wine waiting in polished flagons to make Daeron deeply regret being wherever Daeron presently is.

It had begun with a puppet dragon, and Dunk kept returning to that absurd little fact as morning gathered gray and wet over Ashford Meadow. A painted wooden dragon, a frightened Dornish girl, and Prince Aerion Targaryen deciding that the sight of a puppet beast being slain by a puppet knight was an insult to his blood grave enough to punish with violence. Dunk had not thought about princes then, or laws, or what happened to hedge knights foolish enough to lay hands upon the blood of the dragon. He had seen Aerion seize Tanselle, had heard her cry out, and whatever sense Ser Arlan had managed to beat into him over the years had deserted him. Dunk had dragged the prince away from her, Aerion had turned upon him, and Dunk had struck him hard enough to bloody his mouth and break his teeth. Only afterward, in the terrible silence that followed, had he understood what everyone around him already knew: striking a prince could cost a man a hand, his freedom, perhaps his head. When Aerion accused him, Dunk had demanded judgment by combat, hoping that steel might grant him the justice rank never would, only for the prince to invoke the ancient right of a Trial of Seven. Seven knights against seven knights, fourteen men placing flesh and blood beneath the judgment of the gods because Dunk had been too stupid, or perhaps too much a knight, to stand aside while a prince hurt a woman who could not defend herself.

It had sounded almost possible when the words were first spoken. Now, standing beneath a sky the color of old iron while the last of the night's rain dripped from pavilion ropes and banners, Dunk wondered whether he had ever done anything so monumentally foolish in all his life. Ashford Meadow had drunk until the earth could hold no more water, leaving the field a churn of dark mud, trampled roots, hoofprints, and shallow pools that reflected the pale morning whenever the mist shifted. His boots sank whenever he moved, and the cold found every opening in his clothes while armor waited nearby to make breathing difficult as well. He had hardly slept. Each time he closed his eyes he saw another version of his own death: Aerion's lance punching through his chest, a mace crushing his helm, Thunder falling beneath him, his body left facedown in the mud while a maester decided whether there was enough life remaining to bother carrying him away. Once he had imagined surviving only to lose a hand afterward, and somehow that frightened him even more because it required waking to discover what remained of him. This might be his last morning. The thought had come before dawn and stayed with him ever since, quiet and stubborn beneath everything else. He had wanted to become a knight, nothing more. He had imagined a sword at his hip, a decent horse beneath him, enough coin for supper, perhaps someday armor that had actually been made for his body instead of inherited from a dead man. He had imagined protecting people when they needed protecting because that was what Ser Arlan had taught him knights were meant to do. He had never imagined that trying to live by those lessons would leave him standing in a muddy field preparing to fight princes while half the Reach gathered to watch.

The lists were filling despite the weather, because death was evidently fine entertainment so long as it happened to someone else. Nobles arrived wrapped in wool, velvet, and fur, servants trailing behind them with cushions to spare noble backsides the indignity of damp benches. Knights crowded beneath awnings while smallfolk pressed against the fences wherever guards permitted them, craning their necks for a glimpse of the men who might soon be carried from the field. Merchants abandoned their stalls, stableboys invented errands that brought them closer to the lists, and somewhere beyond the mist a man was still shouting about hot pies as though fourteen armed knights were not preparing to batter one another beneath the eyes of gods and men. Dunk could feel the crowd watching him whenever he crossed the field. They came to watch me die, he thought, tightening one gauntlet and then checking the same strap again because his hands needed something to do.

Yet when a washerwoman called, "Good fortune, ser!" from behind the barrier, another voice answered with a blessing. An old beggar lifted two fingers and prayed aloud for the Warrior to strengthen Dunk's arm, and a young woman slipped close enough to catch him by the sleeve, rise on her toes, and plant a quick kiss against his cheek. "For luck," she said before vanishing back into the crowd.

More voices followed. "Seven save you, Ser Duncan!" someone shouted. "Give the prince one for us!" called another. Dunk stared at them, bewildered by the warmth that suddenly tightened his throat.

"They're for me," he murmured. "Why?"

Pate, standing close enough to hear, looked at him as though Dunk had asked why rain fell downward. "Because you remember what a knight should be." Dunk lowered his eyes toward the mud. It would have comforted him more if he had been half as certain of that as everyone else seemed to be.

His companions were gathering nearby while squires checked straps and grooms walked nervous horses through the wet grass. Ser Humfrey Hardyng was there, grave and composed; Ser Humfrey Beesbury stood with him, and Ser Robyn Rhysling had come as well. Lyonel Baratheon seemed almost offensively pleased by the prospect of seven armed men attempting to knock him senseless, laughing while an attendant tightened a buckle beneath his arm. Raymun Fossoway remained nearby, but Dunk's attention kept returning to the road beyond the pavilions.

Ser Steffon Fossoway had been gone too long. Steffon had promised not only to stand beside him but to find the remaining knights necessary to complete their seven, speaking confidently of men he knew and men who might be persuaded once they understood the justice of Dunk's cause. Dunk had trusted him because he had needed to trust someone, and with every passing moment that trust felt more foolish. He counted the men around him again, then looked toward the road once more.

"He's coming," Raymun said, though there was uncertainty beneath the assurance. Dunk nodded without answering, because the knot beneath his ribs had already begun telling him otherwise.

Then hoofbeats came through the mist, and the red apple of House Fossoway appeared before Dunk could properly distinguish the rider beneath it. Relief struck him so suddenly that his knees nearly weakened. "Steffon," he breathed, stepping forward as the knight approached at an easy pace, his horse picking its way through the ruined grass.

The relief lasted only until Dunk looked behind him. There were no knights following. No riders at all. Steffon came alone, looking remarkably comfortable for a man who had vanished on the morning of a Trial of Seven and returned without the men he had promised to bring.

Dunk walked toward him before the horse had fully stopped. "Where are they?" he demanded.

Steffon looked down from the saddle with an expression of mild amusement. "Where are who?"

"The knights. You said you'd find them."

A slow smile spread across Steffon's face, and something about it made Dunk's stomach drop. "Ah. Those." Raymun went still beside him.

Dunk stared upward. "You gave me your word."

"I did," Steffon agreed easily.

"And?" Dunk demanded.

"And circumstances have improved."

Dunk frowned, not understanding until Steffon rested one gloved hand comfortably upon his saddle and added, with the satisfaction of a man sharing unexpectedly good fortune,

"Prince Aerion has made me a rather better offer."

For several heartbeats Dunk simply stared at him. "What?"

Steffon's smile widened. "A lordship. And a castle." Raymun's face changed at once, but Dunk was slower to understand because some stubborn part of him still expected Steffon to laugh and admit this was a poor joke.

"You said you'd fight with me."

"Yes, well, at the time I believed that the honorable course."

"And now?"

Steffon glanced toward the opposite end of the field, where Aerion's party was gathering beyond the mist. "Now I possess a clearer understanding of the situation."

Dunk's hands curled slowly into fists. He remembered every easy assurance Steffon had given him, every flattering word, every solemn promise that he would stand beside him and bring others with him. "So you're riding with Aerion."

Steffon leaned slightly toward him, lowering his voice as though offering friendly advice. "I am riding with the side most likely to win. You must admit, Dunk, there is something to be said for knowing when one has chosen the losing side."

Raymun stepped forward before Dunk could answer. "You craven!"

Steffon's eyes snapped toward his cousin. "Careful."

"You promised him."

"I promised before a prince offered to make me a lord."

Raymun's disgust deepened. "And that makes your word worth less?"

For the first time Steffon's smile sharpened into something openly unpleasant. "It makes my word expensive."

Dunk tasted iron at the back of his mouth, though he had not bitten his tongue. He had been frightened all morning, but humiliation was rapidly burning the fear into anger.

"Good luck, Ser Duncan," Steffon said, gathering his reins. There was mockery beneath the courtesy now, no attempt left to hide it. "You're going to need it."

He turned his horse before Dunk could think of an answer that would not make matters worse, mud scattering beneath the animal's hooves as he rode toward Aerion's end of the field. Dunk watched the red apple retreat into the mist until it disappeared among the prince's men. For several moments nobody spoke. Then Raymun spat into the mud and muttered something about red apples that Dunk did not quite catch. The arithmetic remained merciless. They had lost Steffon, gained an enemy, and still lacked the men necessary to begin. Dunk counted again despite knowing perfectly well that counting would not conjure another knight from the fog.

"I'll fight," Raymun said.

Dunk turned toward him. "What?"

"I'll take his place." The answer came quickly, almost angrily.

"I can sit a horse. I can use a sword." Dunk shook his head.

"You're a squire."

Raymun's jaw tightened, and before Dunk understood what he meant to do, the young man stepped forward and dropped to one knee in the wet grass. Mud immediately darkened the cloth around his leg. "Knight me, ser. I'll take his place."

Dunk stared down at him, and suddenly the sword at his own hip seemed heavier than all the rest of his armor combined. "Get up."

"No."

"Raymun."

"Knight me." Dunk's hand remained stubbornly away from his sword because all he could think about was Ser Arlan: an old knight beneath an open sky, the memory of words and steel and a knighthood Dunk had built his entire new life upon despite there being no living man who could swear he had ever received it. Now Raymun was asking him to pass that same honor onward, and Dunk found that he could not.

"You are still young," he said at last. Raymun looked up, rain caught in his dark hair and determination plain across his face.

"Then let me grow up today."

Before Dunk could answer, Lyonel Baratheon stepped forward. The Laughing Storm looked from Raymun to Dunk, and whatever he saw between them was enough. His usual broad amusement faded as he drew his sword. "I'll do it."

Raymun turned toward him and straightened where he knelt. Nearby conversation quieted as people realized what was happening, and even Lyonel's expression became solemn when he laid the flat of his blade upon Raymun's shoulder.

"In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the young and innocent."

The ancient words continued beneath the gray morning while Raymun knelt perfectly still, and when Lyonel finally lifted the sword and commanded,

"Rise, Ser Raymun Fossoway," Raymun came to his feet with mud on his knee and something new in his expression. Dunk wished he could share the young knight's relief, but the numbers remained unchanged in the only way that mattered. Raymun could replace Steffon, but Steffon had been meant to bring others. They were still only six.

The trumpets sounded before Dunk could dwell upon it any longer, their deep note rolling through the mist and stirring the crowd into sudden motion. Horses tossed their heads, men called for helms, and somewhere across the field another trumpet answered. Thunder was brought forward, enormous and restless beneath his tack, and Dunk placed a boot in the stirrup before hauling himself into the saddle. His armor seemed twice as heavy as it had the day before. The gorget pressed against his throat, plate bit into his collarbones, and every breath felt too shallow inside the steel wrapped around his chest.

"Easy," he murmured as Thunder shifted beneath him, though he could not have said whether he meant the horse or himself. Across the field Aerion's seven were gathering into pale shapes through the fog, flashes of steel and bright cloth appearing whenever the mist thinned. Steffon was among them now. Seven knights stood beneath Aerion's cause, while Dunk had six.

Lord Ashford rode forward between the two parties, and when he spoke his voice carried clearly over the wet field. "Ser Duncan, if you have no seventh, you cannot proceed. You must yield and confess."

Dunk felt the words strike somewhere deep inside him. Yield. Confess. Confess to what? That he had struck Aerion? He had. That he had broken the prince's teeth? He had done that as well. But confess that Aerion had been right? Admit that he ought to have watched while a prince hurt Tanselle because royal blood made cruelty permissible? Admit that a hedge knight's honor counted for less because his armor was old, his purse empty, and no great house stood behind his name?

Fear twisted into something hotter beneath Dunk's ribs. "Give me a moment," he said. Lord Ashford hesitated before granting him a nod, and Dunk turned Thunder toward the stands.

Rows upon rows of knights looked back at him. Lords sat beneath fur-lined cloaks, household knights stood beneath painted shields, and men whose names Dunk had heard in stories filled every space along the lists. Some of them he had served without their remembering him. He had rubbed down horses while men like these drank inside warm halls, guarded gates while they feasted, carried messages, fetched water, held reins, and bowed whenever Ser Arlan reminded him that courtesy cost nothing. Now hundreds of painted shields surrounded him, each proclaiming some proud lineage, some history of courage, some claim to the honor of knighthood.

Dunk swallowed against a throat gone dry and called, "Gentle sers!" His voice did not carry far enough the first time, so he filled his lungs until his armor protested and tried again. "Gentle sers! Does no one here remember Ser Arlan of Pennytree? I was his squire. I rode with him for years. He served at castles some of you know and fought in battles some of you remember, though perhaps none of you remember him because he had little gold and never won enough glory for singers to trouble themselves with his name. But he was a good knight, and he taught me what a knight was meant to be."

A few men shifted, but no one stepped forward. Dunk's hands tightened around Thunder's reins as he continued, the words coming rougher now because he no longer knew how to make them pretty. "He taught me that it wasn't a fine horse or a golden spur that made a knight, and it wasn't having a great lord call you friend when he wanted something from you. It was keeping your word. It was defending someone who couldn't defend themselves. It was doing what was right when there was no gold waiting for you afterward." His gaze found the red apple among Aerion's men for only an instant before returning to the stands. "I need one man. That's all. One knight willing to stand with us. One true knight."

No one moved. The silence settled over the field with a weight that laughter could never have carried. Men looked down at their gloves or studied the mud beneath their horses. Others watched Dunk with expressions that might have been sympathy, and he discovered that he hated their pity more than he would have hated mockery. Hundreds of knights had come to Ashford to tilt beneath bright banners, win purses, impress ladies, boast of courage, and be praised for the honor of their profession, yet now that a man stood before them asking for nothing more than the courage they already claimed to possess, not one of them moved. Dunk thought of Tanselle beneath Aerion's hands, of Steffon's smiling betrayal, of Raymun kneeling in the mud, and finally of Ser Arlan beneath a tree, dead before Dunk had understood how completely alone his passing would leave him. His heart hammered against the steel around his chest. Fear, anger, humiliation, and desperation tangled together until his voice tore free of him before he could soften it.

"Is there no true knight among you?!"

It had begun with a puppet dragon, and Dunk kept returning to that absurd little fact as morning gathered gray and wet over Ashford Meadow. A painted wooden beast, a frightened Dornish girl, and Prince Aerion Targaryen deciding that watching a puppet dragon die was insult enough to justify hurting Tanselle. Dunk had not thought about princes or laws when he dragged Aerion away from her. He had only heard her cry. Then Aerion had turned on him, Dunk had struck him hard enough to bloody his mouth and break his teeth, and only afterward had the terrible silence reminded him what everyone else already knew: a hedge knight who struck a prince might lose a hand, his freedom, or his head. Dunk had demanded judgment by combat, and Aerion had answered by invoking the ancient Trial of Seven. Seven knights against seven, fourteen men placing their lives beneath the judgment of the gods because Dunk had been too stupid - or perhaps too much a knight - to stand aside.

Standing beneath a sky the color of old iron, Dunk wondered whether he had ever done anything so monumentally foolish. Rain had turned Ashford Meadow into churned mud and shallow pools, mist hanging low over the lists while water dripped from pavilion ropes and banners. He had barely slept. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Aerion's lance through his chest, a mace crushing his helm, Thunder falling beneath him, or himself waking afterward to discover that the prince had taken his hand. This might be his last morning. He had only wanted to be a knight: a sword at his hip, a decent horse, enough coin for supper, perhaps someday armor made for his own body. Ser Arlan had taught him that knights protected those who could not protect themselves. Dunk had never imagined following that lesson would leave him preparing to fight princes while half the Reach gathered to watch.

The lists were already filling. Nobles arrived wrapped in wool and fur, smallfolk crowded against the barriers, merchants abandoned their stalls, and stableboys invented errands that brought them closer to the field. Dunk could feel hundreds of eyes following him. They came to watch me die, he thought, checking the same gauntlet strap twice simply because his hands needed something to do. Yet a washerwoman called, "Good fortune, ser!" An old beggar prayed for the Warrior to strengthen his arm, and a young woman caught Dunk's sleeve long enough to kiss his cheek. "For luck," she said before disappearing into the crowd.

"Seven save you, Ser Duncan!"

"Give the prince one for us!"

Dunk stared after them, bewildered by the sudden warmth tightening his throat. "They're for me," he murmured. "Why?"

Pate looked at him as though the answer were obvious. "Because you remember what a knight should be."

Nearby his companions prepared themselves: Ser Humfrey Hardyng, Ser Humfrey Beesbury, Ser Robyn Rhysling, and Lyonel Baratheon, who seemed almost offensively cheerful about the prospect of seven armed men trying to kill him. Raymun Fossoway waited with them, but Dunk kept looking toward the road. Ser Steffon Fossoway had promised to stand beside him and, more importantly, to bring the remaining knights they needed. He had been gone too long.

"He's coming," Raymun said, though even he sounded uncertain.

Then hoofbeats came through the mist, and the red apple of House Fossoway appeared. Relief hit Dunk so hard his knees nearly weakened. "Steffon."

It lasted only until he looked behind the rider.

Steffon came alone. Dunk strode toward him before his horse had fully stopped. "Where are they?"

Steffon looked down with mild amusement. "Where are who?"

"The knights. You said you'd find them."

"Ah. Those." A slow smile spread across his face.

"You gave me your word."

"I did."

"And?"

Steffon rested one gloved hand upon his saddle. "Prince Aerion has made me a rather better offer."

Dunk stared. "What?"

"A lordship. And a castle."

For several heartbeats Dunk could only look at him, waiting for the joke that never came. "You said you'd fight with me."

"At the time, I believed that the honorable course."

"And now?"

"Now I possess a clearer understanding of the situation."

"So you're riding with Aerion."

"I am riding with the side most likely to win." Steffon leaned slightly closer, smiling. "There is something to be said for knowing when one has chosen the losing side."

"You craven," Raymun snapped.

Steffon's gaze hardened. "Careful."

"You promised him."

"I promised before a prince offered to make me a lord."

Raymun's disgust was plain. "And that makes your word worth less?"

"It makes my word expensive."

Dunk's fear burned rapidly into anger, but Steffon merely gathered his reins. "Good luck, Ser Duncan. You're going to need it."

He rode toward Aerion's side, the red apple disappearing into the mist. Raymun spat into the mud. They had lost an ally, gained another enemy, and Steffon had brought none of the knights he had promised.

"I'll fight," Raymun said.

Dunk turned. "You're a squire."

Raymun stepped forward and dropped to one knee in the wet grass. "Knight me, ser. I'll take his place."

Dunk stared down at him. Suddenly the sword at his hip seemed heavier than all his armor. He thought of Ser Arlan and of the knighthood upon which he had built his entire life, though no living man could swear that Ser Arlan had ever bestowed it upon him. He could not bring himself to draw the sword.

"Get up."

"No. Knight me."

"You are still young."

"Then let me grow up today."

Before Dunk could answer, Lyonel Baratheon stepped forward, his usual laughter gone. "I'll do it."

Raymun remained kneeling as Lyonel drew his sword and laid its flat against his shoulder. "In the name of the Warrior, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father, I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother, I charge you to defend the young and innocent." The ancient words continued beneath the gray morning until Lyonel finally lifted his blade. "Rise, Ser Raymun Fossoway."

Raymun rose with mud upon his knee and something new in his face. Yet Dunk's relief was brief. Raymun could replace Steffon, but Steffon had been meant to bring others. They were still only six.

The trumpets sounded. Horses tossed their heads, squires hurried with helms, and Thunder was brought forward beneath Dunk. He hauled himself into the saddle, armor pressing against his throat and chest while mist shifted across the opposite end of the field. Aerion's seven were gathering there, flashes of bright cloth and steel appearing through the fog. Steffon stood among them now.

Seven against six.

Lord Ashford rode between the parties. "Ser Duncan, if you have no seventh, you cannot proceed. You must yield and confess."

Yield. Confess. Dunk had struck Aerion; that was true. He had broken the prince's teeth. But confess that Aerion had been right? Admit that he should have watched while Tanselle suffered because royal blood made cruelty permissible? Admit that a hedge knight's honor mattered less because his purse was empty and no great house stood behind his name?

"Give me a moment," Dunk said.

He turned Thunder toward the stands. Hundreds of knights looked back at him beneath hundreds of painted shields. Dunk had spent his life serving men like these - rubbing down their horses, guarding their gates, fetching their water while they feasted. Now they had gathered beneath bright banners to boast of courage and honor, and he needed only one of them.

"Gentle sers!" His voice failed to carry, so he filled his lungs and tried again. "Gentle sers! Does no one here remember Ser Arlan of Pennytree? I was his squire. He fought in battles some of you remember and served at castles some of you know, though perhaps no one remembers him because he had little gold and never won enough glory for singers. But he was a good knight, and he taught me what a knight was meant to be."

No one moved.

"He taught me that it wasn't a fine horse or golden spurs that made a knight. It was keeping your word. Defending someone who couldn't defend themselves. Doing what was right when there was no gold waiting afterward." Dunk's gaze briefly found Steffon's red apple before returning to the stands. "I need one man. That's all. One knight willing to stand with us. One true knight."

Silence answered him. Men looked down at their gloves or studied the mud. Others watched with expressions of pity, which somehow hurt worse than mockery. Hundreds had come to Ashford to tilt beneath banners, win purses, impress ladies, and be praised for their courage, yet when Dunk asked one of them to prove it, not a single knight stepped forward.

He thought of Tanselle beneath Aerion's hands, Steffon's smiling betrayal, Raymun kneeling in the mud, and Ser Arlan beneath a tree. Fear, anger, humiliation, and desperation tangled together until his voice tore across the field.

"Is there no true knight among you?!"

The camp reeked of wet straw, woodsmoke, horse dung, and ash beneath a sky swollen with rain. The paths between the pavilions had dissolved into rivers of mud, sucking at Dunk's boots as he ran toward the shouting. At first it had sounded like any other disturbance among the thousand noises of the tourney, until a frightened voice rose above it, pleading, followed by laughter and the angry crackle of fire.

Dunk broke into a run. Tents blurred past in streaks of damp canvas and heraldic color, torchlight trembling against the mist. By the time he reached the performers' quarter, the pleading had broken into ragged cries, and Dunk's stomach tightened before he had even seen what was happening.

He smelled the ruin first. Burned cloth, spilled wine, scorched paint, wet wood, smoke, and beneath it all the sour human stink of fear.

The puppet stand had been smashed apart. Painted boards lay splintered in the mud, torn curtains smoldering where they had fallen. Little wooden figures were scattered everywhere, some trampled beneath boots, others broken at their joints, bright painted faces staring blindly upward through rainwater and dirt. One of Aerion's men held a puppet dangling by its strings, the painted knight's cheerful smile cracked through the middle, while another pressed a torch against its chest. Lacquer blistered beneath the flame before catching properly. Someone laughed when the little painted cloak began to burn.

Around the wreckage a crowd had gathered, servants and squires and smallfolk standing several paces back, close enough to watch and far enough away that no one could accuse anyone of becoming involved.

The puppeteer was on the ground in the middle of it. Hair had come partly loose, damp with rain and streaked with ash, while tears had carved pale tracks through the soot on a frightened face. One sleeve was torn. Kneeling in the mud beneath the prince, the puppeteer seemed almost swallowed by the smoke, torchlight, and watching crowd.

Prince Aerion appeared unnaturally bright amid the ruin, silver-gold hair catching every flicker of flame while the deep red of his doublet glowed like fresh blood. There was no anger on his face now, which somehow made the scene worse.

He looked entertained. One hand was locked around the puppeteer's wrist, pale fingers tightening at every attempt to pull free.

Dunk stopped at the edge of the crowd, breath rough from running. For one moment he could not understand what he was seeing. There were knights here. Dozens within shouting distance, hundreds across the meadow. Men who wore spurs and swords and spoke solemnly of honor whenever a hall was warm and the wine plentiful. Yet the crowd merely shifted backward, giving Aerion more room.

Dunk searched the faces nearest him and saw discomfort, curiosity, fear, even amusement, but no one stepped forward. Of course not. The hand doing the hurting belonged to a Targaryen prince. The person kneeling in the mud was only a puppeteer earning copper coins by making painted figures dance.

Everyone present understood which of those things mattered more. Another desperate attempt was made to wrench free.

Aerion caught the puppeteer's arm with both hands and twisted. The sound was small. That was what Dunk remembered afterward. He would have expected a broken bone to sound tremendous, something worthy of the pain it caused, but instead there was only a sharp, ugly crack beneath the hiss of rain against torchfire. A murmur went through the crowd. Men winced. Faces turned away.

Still no one moved. Something inside Dunk went very still. Ser Arlan had taught him that anger was dangerous. A knight who fought angry fought stupid, and a stupid knight seldom remained alive long enough to learn better. Dunk knew that. He knew, too, that the man before him was Prince Aerion Targaryen, grandson of a king and son of Prince Maekar, with guards around him and dragon blood in his veins.

Dunk was a hedge knight with old armor, little coin, no powerful family, and scarcely anyone in all the Seven Kingdoms who would notice if he vanished into a dungeon before sunrise.

All of those thoughts should have mattered. Instead Dunk looked at the puppeteer. His legs were moving before he decided to move them.

One of Aerion's men saw him coming and stepped into his path, throwing out an arm.

"Stay back."

Dunk scarcely slowed. His forearm struck the man across the chest and sent him sprawling backward into the mud with a grunt, surprise doing as much work as Dunk's strength. Someone shouted for Dunk to stop. Another voice called his name. The sounds seemed impossibly distant beneath the pounding of blood in his ears.

Aerion turned at the disturbance, irritation crossing his face as Dunk shouldered through the last of the space between them. The prince's gaze traveled upward until he recognized the enormous hedge knight bearing down upon him, and his mouth began to curve into that same thin, contemptuous smile Dunk remembered from the stableyard.

Dunk's hand closed around his shoulder. The silk of Aerion's doublet was slick beneath his fingers. The prince had only enough time to twist halfway around before Dunk hit him.

His fist landed squarely across Aerion's mouth. Pain shot through Dunk's knuckles and up his arm, but the prince took the worse of it. His head snapped sideways and he stumbled, astonishment replacing arrogance for the first time since Dunk had met him.

Dunk hit him again. The second blow sent Aerion down into the mud, scarlet silk disappearing beneath brown water, and Dunk went after him. He no longer saw a prince. He saw the frightened face in the mud. He heard that small, ugly crack again. He saw the burning puppets and all those men standing by while someone begged for help.

His boot caught Aerion in the ribs when the prince tried to rise, knocking him onto his side. Someone screamed at Dunk to stop. He kicked again, then reached down and dragged Aerion partly upright only to strike him across the jaw.

Blood appeared bright against the prince's pale skin. Aerion tried to cover his face. Dunk struck through his guard with enough force to send him sprawling once more. He might have continued until there was nothing left in him but exhaustion. Rage had narrowed the whole world to Aerion beneath his hands and the memory of that sharp, terrible crack. Dunk did not feel the first guard seize him until armored weight crashed against his back.

Someone locked both arms around his chest and hauled him away while another caught his sword arm. Dunk answered blindly, felt his knuckles connect with someone's face, then another man slammed into him from the side.

There were too many now. The ground rushed up. Mud swallowed his hands and knees, cold water splashing across his face as several men piled onto him and forced him flat.

For a few moments Dunk could hear nothing but his own breathing and the blood roaring through his ears. Mud pressed cold against his cheek. Someone twisted one arm behind his back until his shoulder screamed, while another guard planted a knee between his shoulder blades and ordered him to stop struggling.

Slowly the world returned around the edges. Dunk lifted his head as far as the weight upon him permitted and saw Aerion standing again.

The prince looked very different now. Mud streaked the magnificent red of his clothes, one side of his face was already beginning to swell, and blood ran from his mouth in a thin shining line that gathered at his chin before dripping onto his doublet.

One of his men tried to steady him, but Aerion shoved the hand away. He touched his tongue carefully to his teeth, frowned, then lifted two fingers to his mouth. When he drew them back, their tips were red.

He stared at the blood for a long moment before looking at Dunk. Then Aerion laughed. There was no amusement in the sound. It was soft and strangely calm, and that calm frightened Dunk more than shouting would have done. Aerion touched his mouth again, probing carefully until he found what he was looking for, and when his violet eyes returned to Dunk they were bright with something cold and delighted.

"You've broken my tooth," he said.

Dunk's anger had begun to drain away quickly enough for sense to return, and with sense came the first true understanding of what he had just done.

He had not struck some drunken knight in a tavern. He had beaten a prince of the blood into the mud before dozens of witnesses. The grandson of the king. Prince Maekar's son.

Dunk could still taste rain and dirt in his mouth as the enormity of it settled over him.

Aerion wiped the blood from his lower lip with the back of one hand.

"For that, I'll take all of yours."

The door to Aerion's chambers struck the wall hard enough to make the candles tremble in their holders, and the prince came through it like a storm given human shape, trailing rainwater, mud, and the sharp metallic scent of blood into rooms that had been prepared with every comfort Ashford could offer a royal guest. His scarlet doublet, magnificent only an hour before, was darkened with rain and smeared brown along one side where he had gone down in the mud, one sleeve bore the unmistakable print of someone's hand, and his silver-gold hair had lost its careful arrangement entirely, damp strands clinging to his brow and temples. He slammed the door behind him with enough force to rattle the latch, then stood with one hand still wrapped around the handle while his chest rose and fell beneath embroidered silk, as though some part of him had not yet accepted that the fight was over simply because guards had dragged Duncan away.

Blood had gathered again at the split in his lower lip, a bright red line against pale skin, and Aerion wiped it away impatiently with the back of his hand only to stare at the smear left across his knuckles with naked disbelief. For several seconds he seemed almost unable to decide which offended him more, the pain itself or the evidence of it, and when his violet eyes finally found {{user}} across the room, the expression on his face sharpened immediately, as if the sight of someone familiar had finally given his fury somewhere to go.

"A hedge knight," he said, and even those two words came out with such venom that they sounded like an accusation. He crossed the chamber in quick, restless strides, gesturing with the bloodied hand as his voice rose. "Some enormous, witless hedge knight actually put his hands on me. He struck me in front of half the bloody camp, threw me into the mud like some tavern drunk, and they had to drag the brute away before he finished making a spectacle of it."

There was something almost incredulous beneath the anger, because Aerion could understand hatred, insults, challenges, even treachery, but the simple fact that a man of no consequence had looked at a Targaryen prince and decided to hit him seemed to violate some fundamental law of the world.

"Duncan. Dunk. Whatever ridiculous name he calls himself. He came charging through the crowd like an ox and hit me before anyone had the sense to stop him. Look at this." He pointed furiously at his mouth as though {{user}} might somehow have failed to notice the blood. "He broke my tooth."

Aerion did not wait for an answer before turning away again, restless anger carrying him toward the tall mirror near the washstand, where polished silver and candlelight offered him the first clear view of what Duncan had done. He stopped so abruptly that the hem of his cloak swung forward around his boots, and for a long moment the prince merely stared at his reflection.

The sight did nothing to improve his temper. One side of his mouth was swollen, the lower lip split where Duncan's fist had caught it, and a faint bruise was already beginning to gather beneath the pale skin along his jaw. Worse than any of it was the mud. It streaked the collar of his doublet, marked his cheek near the temple, and had dried in ugly brown patches against scarlet silk and gold embroidery, turning the carefully cultivated image of a Targaryen prince into something disordered and humiliatingly mortal.

Aerion leaned closer to the mirror, bracing one hand against the edge of the washstand while he used the thumb of the other to pull his lower lip down carefully. Fresh pain flashed across his face when he touched the split, followed immediately by another flare of anger. He bared his teeth at his own reflection, examining the damage Duncan had mentioned into existence with his fists, then released his lip and watched another bead of blood well slowly from the cut.

"Seven hells," he muttered, grabbing a clean linen cloth from beside the basin and pressing it against his mouth harder than necessary. His eyes remained fixed on the mirror while he wiped away the blood, first from his lip and then from his chin, but every attempt to clean himself seemed only to reveal another insult beneath it, another swelling, another smear of dirt, another detail that made him look less like the immaculate prince who had entered the tourney grounds and more like a man who had lost a common brawl.

His jaw tightened until the muscles stood out beneath his skin. "Do you know how many people saw that?" he demanded, catching {{user}}'s reflection in the glass. "Everyone will be talking about it before supper. A hedge knight struck Prince Aerion and lived long enough to do it twice. By tomorrow every drunken fool from here to Oldtown will have improved the story until I was beaten senseless by a man wearing a cooking pot for a helm." His fingers tightened around the linen until his knuckles whitened, and then he tossed it onto the washstand with a sharp movement. "They were staring at me. I could see them staring. Some of them were trying not to laugh."

That thought seemed to offend him more deeply than the split lip itself. Aerion straightened and studied his reflection from another angle, lifting his chin, turning his face slightly toward the candlelight, touching the swelling with two careful fingers before immediately pulling them away with a hiss. Vanity and fury moved across his expression in equal measure, because pain could be repaid and humiliation could be punished, but there was nothing he could do in that moment about the fact that he looked injured, disheveled, and unmistakably defeated.

He dragged a hand through his damp silver-gold hair, pushing it back from his forehead, but the gesture only disturbed it further, and Aerion gave a frustrated sound beneath his breath before trying again. "I look appalling," he said, with the absolute seriousness of a man describing a political catastrophe.

"Look at my face. He actually marked my face." His gaze lingered on the bruise forming along his jaw, and something colder entered his expression as he imagined the consequences waiting for Duncan.

"He will regret every blow." Aerion touched the split in his lip again, more cautiously this time, and his mouth twisted when another trace of red appeared on his fingertip. He wiped it angrily against the ruined edge of his sleeve, then looked down at the mud covering his clothes and seemed newly offended by that as well. "And this doublet is finished. I liked this one." The absurdity of mourning an expensive doublet while threatening a man's teeth apparently did not occur to him at all.

Only then did some of the frantic energy begin to leave his movements, though nothing resembling calm replaced it. Aerion remained before the mirror for another moment, shoulders tense, breathing slowly through his nose while his eyes traveled once more over every visible piece of damage, as though committing each bruise and cut to memory for use in some future accounting. When he finally turned from the glass, his attention settled fully on {{user}}, and the transformation was subtle but immediate. The fury did not disappear, but its direction changed. He no longer looked as though he wanted someone to blame; instead, he looked irritated by the simple necessity of needing anyone at all.

Aerion lifted a hand and ran it back through his hair once more, pushing the damp silver-gold strands away from his face, then let his fingers linger briefly at the back of his neck while he regarded {{user}} with an expression caught somewhere between command, expectation, and reluctant trust. He glanced toward the basin, the clean linen, and the small collection of bottles and salves that had been left among his belongings, then back toward {{user}}.

"Help me," he said, the demand softened only slightly by the fact that he was asking rather than ordering. His tongue passed carefully over the inside of his injured lip, and irritation flashed across his face at the taste of blood. "I don't want the local healers touching me. They disgust me."

He stepped away from the mirror and closer to {{user}}, still visibly furious, but there was something almost petulant now in the way he tilted his head and exposed the injured side of his face for inspection, trusting {{user}} with a proximity he had just declared intolerable from anyone else.

"You do it. Clean this before it swells any worse, and tell me whether that bastard has actually ruined my face."

The yard is already awake. Steel lies laid out like ritual offerings - breastplates polished to mirrored brightness, gauntlets nested inside one another, helms resting open-mouthed on wooden trestles. Squires move quickly, carrying straps and buckles, oil and cloth. Horses stamp in their lines, sensing the coming noise before it begins.

Preparation is never quiet. Leather pulls. Rivets scrape. Someone swears under his breath when a buckle refuses to settle. Armor is not worn - it is negotiated into place.

Aerion stands at the center of his small orbit, impatient even in stillness. Three men attend him. One fastens the greaves. Another draws the straps tight across his back. A third adjusts the gorget with cautious fingers, as though afraid the metal itself might bite.

Aerion does not thank them. He lifts his arms sharply when commanded, drops them a second too soon, turns his head before the helm is properly aligned.

"Tighter," he snaps once, without looking at the man working at his side. "If I can breathe, you’ve left it loose."

His excitement is visible - not joy, not quite. Something sharper. The anticipation of impact. Of being watched. Of proving something the world has not yet fully understood.

He rolls his shoulders as the breastplate settles, testing the weight like a predator testing the air before the strike.

"They’ll hear it," Aerion says abruptly, voice edged with restless energy. "The sound. When I ride."

No one answers. He does not require them to.

"Steel breaks. Wood splinters. Men shout. But above it - above all of it - they’ll hear me." His mouth curves slightly, not into a smile but something close to challenge. "Dragons do not enter quietly."

Nearby, Valarr stands with far less ceremony and far more restraint. His armor is being fitted by two men only, both working with practiced efficiency. Valarr does not interfere. He holds himself upright, chin level, eyes steady as straps are drawn tight across his shoulders. When something needs adjusting, he inclines his head slightly. When a buckle catches, he waits.

The morning light catches on the red and black enamel of his surcoat, muted but deliberate. His expression remains composed, though there is tension in the line of his jaw - not impatience, but focus.

Aerion glances toward him and clicks his tongue softly.

"Still dressing him?" he asks, tone lilting with faint mockery. "At this rate, cousin, the lists will close before you’ve managed your first step."

Valarr does not look at him immediately. One of his vambraces is still being secured. The leather pulls snug around his forearm.

"Precision takes time," Valarr replies evenly. "You may find that unfamiliar."

Aerion’s eyes flash. He laughs once - short, sharp.

"Precision?" he echoes. "Is that what you call hesitation?"

He shifts, impatient again as one of his own straps resists the pull. He jerks his arm free from the squire’s grip.

"You," Aerion says suddenly, pointing not at his own attendants but at one of Valarr’s. "Come here. If he’s content to be dressed like a doll, you can at least see to something useful. These straps are a disgrace."

Valarr sat high in the saddle, the black silk of his cloak stirring against the wind, the red dragon spread across his breastplate like a live ember. The roar of the crowd was distant, muffled by the steel enclosing him. He felt only the rhythm of his horse’s breathing, the steady pull of reins against his gloves, the quiet before the charge.

Across the field, Lord Gawen Swann lowered his lance - an older man, polished, courteous, doomed. They had saluted, the horn had sounded, duty followed.

The world shrank to the strip of earth between them. Valarr’s grip tightened. His arm knew what to do before he thought it - tilt the point slightly right, aim for the chest, keep the body steady, do not break posture. The impact came - a dull crack through the bones of his arm, the jolt running down to his ribs. His lance held, the other splintered. Lord Gawen fell with a soft thud and a flash of silver dust.

The crowd erupted. Valarr lifted his visor to the sound - a thousand voices calling his name - yet it all felt far away, filtered through the steel.

He circled the field once before dismounting. Two squires hurried forward, one catching the reins, the other unlacing his helm. The metal came free with a sigh of air. His hair clung damp to his temples, silver thread gleaming in the dark.

Nine victories. Clean work. Proper form. His lance had struck true each time, and his shield had never once been marked.

"That will do," Valarr said. The words came soft, almost lazy.

He walked toward the black pavilion, the silk banners rippling above him, red tongues of flame against the sky. Behind him, the next pair of knights thundered forward, their clash swallowed by the crowd’s delight.

Valarr smiled faintly. Tournaments were meant to end this way - the strong confirmed, the bold humbled, the royal unchallenged.

He let the squires strip away his gauntlets, one by one. His fingers felt light again, free of steel.

"Wine," he said, and the cup appeared. The taste was thin, sweet, forgettable. He drank, watching the sunlight spark against his armor.

No one will call me again today, he thought. And why should they?

The noise of the lists followed Valarr long after he had left them behind. Even beside the Cockleswent, where the river moved dark and smooth beneath the evening light and willows bent low enough for their leaves to brush the current, he could still hear the distant residue of Ashford's celebration: a trumpet sounding somewhere beyond the meadow, laughter spilling from the pavilions, the occasional roar of a crowd that had found some lesser contest to occupy itself now that the day's tilting was done. The tourney seemed determined to consume every hour it was given. By sunset Valarr had endured enough congratulations to last him until the next nameday, enough cups raised in his honor to drown a smaller man, and enough carefully phrased observations about his performance to know precisely which lords were praising his horsemanship and which were praising the fact that his father was Prince of Dragonstone. He had escaped before supper under the entirely truthful excuse that he wanted air, leaving armor, surcoat, and princely finery behind. Without them there was remarkably little to distinguish him from any other young knight wandering the meadow after a long day. He wore a plain dark tunic belted at the waist, ordinary riding trousers tucked into mud-marked boots, and no crown, cloak, jeweled clasp, or three-headed dragon to announce what blood ran in his veins.

Perhaps that was why {{user}} failed to recognize him. Valarr had inherited too much of his father's Dornish appearance to resemble the princes painted in illuminated histories. There was no silver-gold hair spilling over his shoulders, no unmistakably Valyrian face to make strangers bow before anyone supplied a name. His hair was brown, save for the pale silver-gold streak cutting through it, and the mismatched eyes he had inherited from Baelor were more curious than obviously Targaryen: one clear blue, the other an unusual mingling of blue and brown. Beside Aerion, Valarr could look almost ordinary. Beside some of his other royal kin, positively Dornish. It had irritated him when he was younger, particularly when strangers searched his face for the dragon and plainly failed to find enough of it. At twenty he had learned there were advantages to being overlooked, and that evening he had been enjoying one of them. No guards hovered at his shoulder. No lordling had followed him to discuss tomorrow's matches. No ambitious father had materialized with a conveniently marriageable daughter. There was only the river, the damp smell of reeds and earth, and the pleasant ache in his shoulders left by a day spent beneath armor.

He had been following the bank without any particular destination when he became aware that he was no longer alone. His attention shifted toward {{user}}, but nothing in their manner suggested the recognition he had learned to notice almost instantly in strangers. There was no abrupt straightening, no hurried courtesy, none of that fleeting panic people sometimes displayed when they realized they had been behaving naturally in the presence of royalty. Valarr slowed. For a few seconds he wondered whether {{user}} simply possessed unusually good manners. Then a cloak came sailing toward him.

He caught it instinctively. The heavy fabric landed across his forearms, and Valarr stared down at it. There were few experiences in his life for which court tutors, masters-at-arms, septons, and his father's example had left him entirely unprepared. Being casually handed someone else's cloak beside a river was apparently one of them.

His gaze lifted slowly to {{user}}, then dropped to the garment again. There was no servant nearby to whom it might properly belong, and no indication that this was some elaborate jest whose purpose he had failed to understand. The explanation came to him with such elegant simplicity that for one dangerous moment he nearly laughed.

They had no idea who he was. Valarr's mouth twitched. He ought to correct the mistake. That was what upbringing demanded. A prince allowing someone to continue treating him under a false assumption could become awkward very quickly, particularly at a royal tourney where half the realm appeared determined to discover insult in whatever the other half did. He could simply introduce himself, watch recognition dawn, accept the inevitable apology, and continue walking. It would be sensible. He had spent the entire day being sensible.

Valarr folded the cloak neatly over one arm.

"Of course."

There was just enough solemnity in the answer to satisfy him. Whatever {{user}} expected of the stranger they had encountered by the Cockleswent, Valarr apparently decided to become it. He made no mention of Dragonstone, Baelor Breakspear, the Iron Throne, or the fact that only a few hours earlier hundreds of people had been shouting his name from the stands. Instead he adjusted the cloak over his arm with exaggerated care, as though accepting such burdens from strangers was an ordinary feature of his evenings, and continued along the riverbank at an easy pace. The temptation to see how long this could possibly last had already overcome the small voice reminding him that his father would find the entire situation ridiculous.

The novelty of it was unexpectedly pleasant. People behaved differently around princes, even when they believed they did not. They measured jokes before speaking them. They watched expressions for signs of offense. They laughed a little too quickly and apologized for things that required no apology at all. Valarr had lived with it long enough that he usually ceased noticing, but its absence was suddenly conspicuous. Here, dressed in a tunic still faintly damp at the collar from exertion and trousers spattered with mud, carrying a cloak that had been entrusted to him without ceremony, he had apparently been demoted from Prince Valarr Targaryen, champion of Ashford and son of the heir to the Iron Throne, to some nameless young man who happened to be useful. He found that he did not entirely dislike it.

"Anything else?" he asked after a little while, turning his head toward {{user}} with an expression of perfect courtesy. "I should like to know the full extent of my duties before we go much farther."

The camp had not yet gone to sleep. Laughter rolled through the night air, heavy with the scent of spilled ale and trampled grass. From the dark between tents, the sound of music drifted - a lute, a drum, voices raised in rough harmony. Duncan followed the noise until he found the largest tent on the western edge of the field, its entrance flapping open to firelight and shouting.

He hesitated a moment before ducking inside. Heat struck him first - fire, sweat, wine. The place was crowded with young lords in bright silks and undone collars, faces flushed red from drink. A hound slept under the table. On a makeshift throne of cushions sat a tall, broad man with a mane of black curls, holding court with a grin that could have lit the room on its own.

"Ser Lyonel Baratheon?" Duncan asked.

The man looked up sharply, then broke into laughter. "Seven save us, it’s him! The giant who struck a prince for a puppet girl!" He raised his cup high. "Come in, come in! Sit, before I decide you’re here to break my nose too."

The others roared with laughter. Duncan stepped forward, awkward in the press of silk and velvet. The air was thick with wine fumes; he could taste them on his tongue.

They’re all drunk, he thought. And I’m asking them for help. Gods have mercy.

Someone shoved a cup into his hand. He didn’t drink. Across the table, Baratheon leaned forward, his crown of antlers slipping sideways on his head.

"So, hedge knight," Lyonel said, voice loud but not unkind. "They tell me you’re gathering a band of fools to stand against Aerion Brightflame himself. Is that true?"

"It is, ser," Duncan said. "For the trial of seven. I have three already - Ser Humfrey Hardyng, young Steffon Fossoway, and the elder Fossoway went to seek others."

Baratheon barked a laugh that nearly emptied his lungs. "Three? You’ll need seven to make it proper, lad. But by all the storms in Storm’s End, how could I miss such sport?"

He thumped the table, sloshing wine across his sleeves. "You have your fourth. I’ll stand with you. Gods know I’ve been waiting for a reason to hit a Targaryen since breakfast."

The men around him cheered again, and someone began to chant his name. Lyonel spread his arms in mock glory, the antler crown tilting forward until it shadowed his brow.

He’s drunker than a Dornish sailor, Duncan thought, though the corner of his mouth twitched. But I’ll take him. I’d take a drunk bear if it meant another sword.

"Tell me, Dunk the Lunk," Baratheon said, eyes bright with mischief. "You think you can win this? Against princes and knights with gold running in their veins?"

"I mean to try," Duncan answered.

Baratheon grinned wider, teeth flashing. "Then drink to it. Because you’ve no chance at all, friend. Not a drop. But the gods love a hopeless fight."

He lifted his cup again, half the wine spilling down his chin. "To madness and courage, both!"

Duncan raised his own cup, though he only wet his lips. No chance at all, he thought. But it will have to be enough.

Lyonel’s pavilion hums long before the first lance is ever lifted. The sound comes in layers. Music folds itself through laughter. Cups knock together in careless rhythm. Boots thud against packed earth already softened by spilled ale. Smoke from roasting meat drifts low beneath the silk canopy, sweet with fat and spice, clinging stubbornly to hair and cloaks alike.

Tables bow under abundance meant to impress - trenchers stacked with bread, platters crowded with glazed fowl and carved beef, bowls of fruit too ripe to last the night. Wine moves freely, poured without measure, sloshed from cup to cup by servants who have already stopped pretending they can keep pace with demand.

Men eat with their hands. Women loosen pins from their hair. Someone starts a chant that dies halfway through its second line and is replaced by louder laughter.

Lyonel thrives in it. He moves through the press of bodies like the noise belongs to him - clapping shoulders, stealing bites from unattended plates, lifting cups from strangers and draining them without apology. His laughter carries easily, bright and unchecked. He dances before he is invited, pulls others into motion with a hooked finger and a grin, spins past tables with careless grace.

Excess fits him. He throws himself into the music with the same confidence he brings to everything else - loose-limbed, wide-smiling, unbothered by form or dignity. He stamps in time, claps overhead, swings partners through turns they did not expect to survive. His movements are unrefined but deliberate, the joy of it worn openly, like he is daring the world to keep up.

And somewhere within the swell of it - between overturned cups and the scrape of benches dragged aside for more space - Raymun is already flushed with victory over nothing in particular.

He has shed whatever restraint he pretended to wear at supper. His cloak hangs half off one shoulder, forgotten. A bright apple sewn at his breast catches the torchlight each time he turns - and he turns often, because Raymun cannot seem to remain still for more than a breath. He dances with more enthusiasm than skill, feet moving quicker than the rhythm requires, laughter bursting from him in sudden bright peals.

He barrels through the press of bodies with easy familiarity, clapping strangers on the back as if they are old friends, spinning a serving girl once before she can protest, nearly upsetting a platter and catching it only by accident.

Duncan follows more cautiously. He starts at the edge of things, a cup held awkwardly in one large hand, shoulders hunched slightly as he navigates the tight spaces between benches and dancers. He eats when food is pressed into his palm. Drinks when someone laughs and insists. His smile comes slow, unsure, as if he is still waiting to be told whether this is truly meant for him.

He is careful with his size. Careful with his steps. He keeps his elbows close, his movements contained, watching the floor more than the faces around him.

But the wine does its quiet work. It loosens something behind his ribs. Takes the edge off the vigilance he carries without realizing it. His laughter starts to come easier. His shoulders drop.

He feels Raymun before he sees him - a sharp nudge at his ribs, not unkind but unapologetic.

"Gods, Dunk," Raymun shouts over the music, grinning up at him as if the height difference is a private joke between them, "you dance like a siege tower learning to walk!"

He shoves him again - lighter this time - then throws his head back and laughs as though the insult is a gift.

Raymun does not linger long in one place. He darts in and out of Lyonel’s orbit, sometimes joining the circle, sometimes disrupting it entirely. He catches Duncan by the sleeve and spins him the wrong direction just to see what happens. He bumps shoulders with Lyonel in passing, mutters something conspiratorial that dissolves into another fit of laughter. Once, he nearly collides with Duncan outright, steadies himself with both hands against the larger man’s chest, and stays there a heartbeat too long before stepping back with mock solemnity.

"Stand firm, Ser Duncan," he declares dramatically, before abandoning dignity entirely and launching himself back into the dance.

When Lyonel grabs Duncan’s wrist and drags him into the center of the pavilion, Duncan does not resist.

He stumbles at first - too tall for the space, boots catching on uneven ground. He apologizes out of habit, even as someone cheers. Lyonel only laughs, louder, and shoves him into the rhythm. Raymun answers with a sharp whoop of approval and claps in time, circling like he has found new sport.

Lyonel finds it endlessly amusing. He circles Duncan like a satisfied predator, clapping in time, shouting encouragement, grabbing his shoulders to spin him around harder than necessary. He dances too close, laughs too loudly in his ear, throws an arm around Duncan’s back and drags him through the press of bodies like they are both made of momentum rather than bone.

Raymun adds his own chaos to it - darting in to bump Duncan off balance, only to steady him with exaggerated gallantry; cutting between him and Lyonel with a grin; shouting advice that contradicts whatever Lyonel just commanded. He laughs every time Duncan nearly misses a step, but there is something bright and generous in it, as if he is determined that Dunk must enjoy himself whether he intends to or not.

Duncan starts to laugh back. It surprises him. The sound comes out rough and unguarded, pulled loose by drink and noise and the simple fact of being carried along by men who do not care how ridiculous things look. He lifts his arms when Lyonel tells him to. He spins when Raymun pushes him the wrong way. He even stomps in time once or twice, earning himself another cheer.

The pavilion roars around them. Here, titles blur. Silk tangles with wool. Knights shout like farmhands. Sweat replaces perfume. People move too close, too fast, carried by music that has abandoned subtlety entirely.

Lyonel revels in it, reckless and radiant, sweat-dark hair falling into his eyes, grin wide enough to split his face. Raymun flashes bright as torchlight beside him - laughing, dancing, jostling whoever stands nearest, alive to every second of it. Duncan moves between them, slower, heavier, but no longer shrinking from the attention. His cheeks burn. His cup keeps reappearing in his hand. His steps grow surer with every turn.

Silence settled over Ashford Meadow, deep and waiting. Across the field, the gray stallion under Aerion stamped at the wet ground, restless steam rising from his flanks. Grom stood still. He had known the sound of war long before this day and felt no need to prove himself.

The elm and falling star steadied Dunk’s breath. He slid his arm through the strap and locked his hand tight. Oak and iron, keep me from death and hellfire. Pate handed him the lance, but Egg pushed in front of him and placed it in Dunk’s grip himself.

To either side, the other champions took their places. Dunk’s world narrowed to the slit before his eyes - the mist, the churned brown earth, the dark shape across the field. Aerion waited there, a blaze of crimson and gold, dragon wings painted wide across his shield. His squire stepped forward with the war lance - black, polished, and long enough to reach a man’s heart.

The horn called. Everything moved. Dunk’s body froze for one beat, a spark caught in amber. Panic clawed at him - I’ve forgotten everything. I’ll shame them all. I’ll die a fool.

Grom saved him. The old horse moved into a trot of his own will, heavy and sure. Dunk found the rhythm, pressed in with his knees, lifted the lance. Oak and iron, keep me from death and hellfire.

The noise of the crowd thinned to a distant roar. The smell of wet leather filled the helm. His breath caught. The heat grew thick behind the visor.

He fixed his eyes on the dragon ahead - red wings, gold flame. The gray horse thundered toward him, the black lance rising, then falling. Dunk aimed for the chest. The lance is my arm, he told himself. My hand, my finger - touch him once and it’s done.

Across the field, Aerion lowered his lance. The motion was smooth, almost delicate - a gesture practiced a hundred times before dawn. His gray stallion lunged forward, throwing mud in wide arcs. The prince’s armor burned against the pale fog, red on red, dragon-fire painted in steel.

The black lance steadied, point unshaking, aimed dead at Dunk’s heart. The prince’s smile flashed beneath the visor - not joy, only certainty.

The impact came in a burst of noise and weight. Wood cracked. Grom screamed. Dunk felt the blow slam through shield and mail, sharp pain under his ribs. His lance split in two, his body twisting. Grom stumbled in the mud, went down hard, rolled, then somehow climbed back under him.

Dunk gasped. His left side burned, his fingers were slick. A jag of ash jutted from his armor. He gripped it, tore it free. Blood poured through the rings of his hauberk. The world pitched. He threw away the broken wood, the shield, the star, the prayer. He drew steel.

All around, men clashed and fell. Humfrey Beesbury lay still. The other Humfrey fought on one knee. The field was turning red, mud swallowing armor. Dunk tried to see through the blur - Baelor’s black horse charging past, lances splintering, banners sagging into the fog.

Hoofbeats behind him. A weight of air. Grom reared, screaming, as the gray horse struck him full on.

The ground rose fast. Dunk hit it. Pain split through bone and blood. His helm filled with mud. He spat, dragged himself up on his hands. The visor was clogged, he cleared it with his glove.

The dragon came again - wings of paint, shield blazing, a spiked mace swinging in his grip. Dunk barely saw the chain move before it struck. The world burst white.

When he opened his eyes, he was on his back. One eye blinded by blood. The sky above was colorless. His breath came ragged, broken between the plates.

I’ve failed them. Baelor. Raymun. All of them. I’m no knight. I’m nothing. A shadow fell over him - the dragon’s shape, three heads gleaming through rain and mud.

"Still breathing, hedge knight?" Aerion’s voice, smooth and sharp. "Beg pardon. Yield. I may leave you a hand to eat with. Perhaps a foot to crawl on."

Dunk tasted blood. His fingers tightened on the hilt that was still half buried in the muck. Aerion raised the mace again, the spikes glinting red in the gray light.

Dunk had been staring at the shield for long enough that he was beginning to feel foolish about it. There was nothing particularly wrong with the thing, at least nothing that had not been wrong with it for years. The wood was still sound beneath the dents, the leather edging had survived more rain and bad roads than Dunk cared to count, and the straps on the back had been replaced recently enough that he trusted them not to tear away the first time a lance struck home. It had belonged to Ser Arlan of Pennytree before him, and Dunk had carried it ever since the old knight died beneath that elm beside the road. The device painted across its face was Ser Arlan's as well: a silver winged chalice upon a brown field, once neat enough perhaps, but years of weather and fighting had reduced it to something faded and miserable. Brown showed through in uneven patches where the paint had flaked away, one silver wing had lost most of its feathers to scratches, and a long scar from some forgotten blow ran directly across the cup. Dunk had spent part of the morning rubbing dirt from the surface with an old cloth before finally accepting that dirt was no longer the problem. If he intended to ride in the lists at Ashford, surrounded by knights whose shields gleamed with lions, roses, towers, stags, and dragons bright enough to be seen from the other end of the meadow, he could hardly carry something that looked as though it had been dragged behind Sweetfoot all the way from King's Landing.

He sat outside his little tent with the shield propped against his knees, running a thumb over the remains of the silver paint while the tourney camp churned around him. Everywhere he looked, men seemed better prepared for Ashford than he was. Squires polished plate until sunlight flashed from it. Servants brushed magnificent horses whose tack probably cost more than everything Dunk owned. Heralds inspected painted shields and bright surcoats while knights discussed tomorrow's tilts as though victory were something that could be arranged over breakfast. Dunk looked down at the battered brown shield again and sighed. Ser Arlan had never cared much for appearances, but even he had occasionally insisted that a knight ought to look like a knight when someone important was watching. More importantly, this was Ser Arlan's device. Letting it fade into a shapeless smear somehow felt disrespectful, as though Dunk had neglected one of the few pieces of the old man still traveling with him. He could mend leather, sharpen a sword, curry a horse, and hammer a bent buckle back into something resembling usefulness, but painting was another matter entirely. The last time he had attempted anything artistic, Ser Arlan had stared at the result for a long while before asking whether Dunk had meant to draw a horse or a very unfortunate dog.

By midday Dunk had decided that the shield needed repainting. By early afternoon he had discovered that deciding such a thing was considerably easier than finding someone capable of doing it without demanding more coin than he possessed. He wandered through the camp with the shield tucked awkwardly beneath one arm, stopping whenever he saw craftsmen at work and moving on again whenever prices were mentioned. His purse felt painfully light against his belt. Ashford had attracted every sort of merchant imaginable, and all of them appeared to have agreed that knights were creatures born for the sole purpose of being separated from their silver. Eventually Dunk began to consider buying paint himself and attempting the work after dark, though the memory of the unfortunate horse-or-dog made that prospect increasingly grim.

That was when he noticed {{user}}. It was the paint that caught his attention first. There were brushes as well, and enough evidence of actual work to distinguish {{user}} from one of the merchants selling little pots of pigment at twice their worth. Dunk slowed without meaning to. His eyes moved from the colors to the shield beneath his arm, then back again, and an idea began forming with all the cautious reluctance of a rabbit emerging from a hole. He could ask. There was nothing difficult about asking. Knights asked people for things every day. Ser Arlan had asked farmers for barns, lords for employment, innkeepers for credit, and once a septon for wine after discovering the local ale tasted like something a horse had already drunk. Dunk was nineteen years old, nearly seven feet tall, carried a sword, and intended to ride against trained knights before hundreds of spectators. Surely he could ask one stranger whether they knew how to paint a shield.

He walked past {{user}}. Three steps later he stopped. Dunk stared ahead, jaw tightening at his own stupidity, then turned around and came back.

The shield suddenly seemed enormous beneath his arm. He shifted it to the other side, nearly struck a passing boy with its edge, muttered an apology, and finally stopped at a respectful distance from {{user}}. Up close, the paints looked even more convincing, which unfortunately meant he could no longer pretend he had made a mistake and escape with dignity. Dunk cleared his throat. Nothing useful followed. He rubbed the back of his neck instead, immediately realized he was doing it, and dropped his hand. His ears had already begun warming.

"Beg pardon."

That was a beginning, at least. Dunk adjusted the shield and turned its battered face outward so {{user}} could see it. In daylight its condition appeared worse than it had beside his tent. The brown field had faded almost gray in places, the silver chalice was scratched nearly down to bare wood, and what remained of the wings looked rather as though moths had eaten them.

"I saw the paints," he explained, then felt compelled to add, "Yours, I mean. I wasn't spying."

That sounded worse. Dunk closed his mouth for a moment and wished Ser Arlan were alive so the old knight could tell him precisely how thick he was being.

"It's my shield," he tried again, which was obvious enough that he nearly winced. "Well, it was Ser Arlan's shield first. Ser Arlan of Pennytree. I was his squire."

His thumb moved unconsciously across the damaged rim as he spoke. Mentioning Ser Arlan made the embarrassment easier somehow. Dunk looked down at the faded device, and when he continued his voice had lost some of its awkwardness.

"He carried it a long time. Longer than I've had it, anyway. The paint's nearly gone now, and I thought..." He hesitated, searching for words that did not make the matter sound more important than it ought to be. "I thought it deserved better than this."

For a moment Dunk simply stood there holding the old shield between them. He was suddenly aware of every scratch upon it, every crude repair, every place where age had eaten away the colors. Other knights at Ashford carried shields painted by craftsmen in castles and cities, their devices rendered in perfect lines and rich pigments. Dunk could not offer anything like that. He could barely offer payment at all.

"I haven't much coin," he admitted, quieter now. There seemed little point pretending otherwise when his patched clothes and ancient shield had already made the truth plain. "But I can pay something. Or work for it, if that's better. Carry things, mend something, see to a horse. Whatever's fair."

He glanced toward {{user}}, then quickly back at the shield.

"And it doesn't have to be grand. Just..." His fingers traced what remained of one silver wing. "Just good."

The request finally escaped him in a rush of courage that felt absurdly similar to lowering a lance.

"Would you help me paint it?"

By sunset, Ashford Meadow had changed its skin. The lists that had thundered all day beneath hooves and splintering lances stood abandoned beneath a violet evening sky, their churned earth littered with broken shafts, scraps of ribbon, and deep scars where horses had struck the ground. Grooms led sweating destriers toward the stables, squires carried dented shields and bundles of armor back through the camp, and wounded men disappeared into the maesters' tents to have bruises bound, shoulders reset, and pride treated as best anyone knew how. Yet the exhaustion of the day's contests seemed only to feed the excitement gathering elsewhere. Hundreds of lanterns had been lit between the pavilions, strings of little flames stretching across the meadow until the temporary city glowed gold against the darkening countryside. Music drifted from half a dozen directions at once. Fires sprang up beside cook tents, wine barrels were rolled open, merchants who had spent the afternoon selling ribbons and meat pies discovered entirely new prices for everything after sunset, and every conversation eventually returned to the same subject: who had ridden well, who had fallen badly, whose lance had broken cleanly, whose horse had saved its rider from embarrassment, and which champion might still be sitting beneath the Ashford banners when the final day arrived.

Inside Ashford Castle, Lord Ashford intended to ensure that no lesser celebration could compete with his own. The great hall had been transformed until even men accustomed to royal courts paused upon entering. Hundreds of candles burned in iron chandeliers overhead, their light mingling with the orange glow of enormous hearths and flashing against polished cups, jeweled brooches, buckles, sword pommels, and the bright threads woven through noble clothing. Fresh rushes covered the floor beneath long tables crowded so tightly together that servants had to turn sideways to pass between benches. Greenery had been wound around pillars and galleries, while the red apple of House Ashford hung everywhere among the banners of the visiting houses: golden roses, crowned stags, lions, towers, bees, swans, dragons, and dozens of lesser devices competing for space along the walls. At the high table the black three-headed dragon occupied the place of greatest honor beside Ashford's own arms, and beneath it sat enough royal blood to make half the hall painfully conscious of every word spoken within earshot.

The kitchens had declared war upon moderation. The first dishes had scarcely reached the tables before another procession appeared behind them: great trenchers of bread soaked in gravy, steaming bowls of onions and mushrooms, wheels of cheese, butter flavored with herbs, platters of trout pulled fresh from the Cockleswent and roasted beneath crusts of salt, and little pies filled with minced pork, dates, pepper, and currants. Then came the serious food. Whole boars were carried through the doors with apples between their jaws, their skins lacquered dark and shining with honey. Swans appeared beneath their own carefully restored feathers. Capons stuffed with sage and chestnuts followed venison swimming in dark wine sauce, roasted hares, ribs glazed with garlic and mustard, and enormous joints of beef that servants carved directly at the tables while hungry knights shouted instructions about which pieces they wanted. There were bowls of stewed apples sweetened with honey in honor of House Ashford, little pastries shaped like leaves, cream thick with berries, sugared almonds, preserved lemons from Dorne, and enough wine to float a small galley. Arbor gold flowed freely at the high tables, reds and hippocras followed behind it, while ale and cider passed among those farther from Lord Ashford's seat. Before the second course was finished, several men had already forgotten whatever promises of restraint they had made that morning.

Lord Ashford presided over it all with the satisfied exhaustion of a man whose castle had survived the first day without a prince being killed, a pavilion catching fire, or a visiting lord declaring a blood feud. His daughter occupied the place of honor as Queen of Love and Beauty, surrounded by flowers and watched with varying degrees of admiration by men who had spent the day breaking lances for the privilege of defending her title. Near her sat the champions whose victories had reshaped the lists. Ser Tybolt Lannister attracted glances in abundance after taking Ser Androw Ashford's place, while Lyonel Baratheon's presence required no herald to announce it; his laughter repeatedly rolled above the music, broad and infectious enough that people several tables away found themselves smiling without knowing what had amused him. Humfrey Hardyng's performance had earned him a steady stream of congratulations, challenges, questions, and increasingly exaggerated retellings of his tilts. Prince Valarr received more measured attention, though no less of it. Every victory by the Young Prince had been applauded enthusiastically, and every man who approached him seemed determined to mention how splendidly he had ridden without mentioning the awkward truth that very few knights were eager to drive a lance into the future king's son.

Valarr endured it beautifully. He sat straight beneath the candlelight, dressed now in court clothes rather than armor, the silver-gold streak in his brown hair catching whenever he turned his head. His mismatched eyes moved attentively from one speaker to the next while he accepted compliments with practiced modesty, occasionally answering some particularly elaborate praise with a dry remark subtle enough that the flatterer often required a heartbeat to decide whether the prince had thanked him or mocked him. Baelor watched his son from farther along the high table with quiet amusement. The Prince of Dragonstone had spent enough years among courtiers to recognize every species of ambition currently migrating toward Valarr's seat. One lord wished to discuss hunting. Another happened to have a daughter fond of falconry. A third had suddenly remembered an ancient friendship between their grandfathers. Baelor interfered with none of it. If Valarr was to inherit what everyone expected him to inherit, surviving a room full of friendly noblemen was training every bit as necessary as surviving a tilt.

Maekar appeared considerably less entertained by the evening. He ate well enough and drank slowly, silver hair bright beneath the chandeliers, his expression settled into the particular severity that made servants approach his cup with caution. One seat that ought to have been occupied remained conspicuously empty, because Daeron had managed to separate himself from the royal household and, by all available evidence, had found more appealing company somewhere among Ashford's taverns. Maekar had dispatched men to look for him hours ago. They had returned with variations upon the same useless information: Prince Daeron had been seen drinking, Prince Daeron had left, Prince Daeron might have gone elsewhere, someone was fairly certain Prince Daeron had fallen asleep in a tavern but could not remember which one. Maekar received each report with increasing stillness, which Baelor knew was far more dangerous than shouting. Concern for his absent son remained carefully disguised beneath irritation, and whenever footsteps approached the high table Maekar's eyes lifted before he could prevent them. He would then discover another servant, another lord, another musician, and return to his wine with the expression of a man privately composing several very long lectures.

Aerion had no such worries. The Brightflame had taken to the feast as though it existed primarily because someone had correctly anticipated his boredom. He lounged rather than sat, scarlet and black rich against the candlelight, one hand almost perpetually occupied by a goblet while his violet eyes traveled around the hall in search of something worth his attention. Servants learned quickly that his cup should never remain empty. Aerion laughed loudly when a drunken knight stumbled over a bench, made some remark that caused the young lord beside him to choke on his wine, and rejected one dish after barely tasting it because the sauce displeased him. He was beautiful enough that people forgave the first insult, royal enough that they pretended not to hear the second, and observant enough to know precisely how much everyone around him was willing to endure. Whenever the musicians played something too slow, his fingers drummed impatiently against the table. Whenever conversation became solemn, he looked as though he might personally invent a scandal simply to rescue the evening from respectability.

Below the high table, distinctions of rank grew less rigid with every cup emptied. Knights who had spent the afternoon attempting to unhorse one another now drank shoulder to shoulder, reenacting their tilts with spoons, knives, and increasingly dangerous gestures. Squires crowded wherever they could find room, trading gossip about horses, armor, ladies, and masters with the confidence of men who believed nobody important could hear them. Minstrels rotated through songs of Florian and Jonquil, Aemon the Dragonknight, the Conqueror and his sisters, and battles old enough that no living man could object to inaccuracies. A troupe of acrobats drew applause from one end of the hall while fools traded insults with drunken knights at the other. Dice appeared beneath tables despite Lord Ashford's household pretending not to notice, coins changed hands over tomorrow's expected victories, and arguments over which champion had performed best became increasingly passionate as wine made memory flexible.

Dunk had never seen so much food in one room. That fact impressed him considerably more than the princes. He sat far below the royal dais among hedge knights, household men, lesser guests, and anyone else fortunate enough to have found a place before the benches filled. His knees barely fit beneath the table, and every time a servant passed behind him Dunk tried to make himself smaller with little success. He had spent the first portion of the feast eating cautiously because Ser Arlan had taught him that a knight invited into a noble hall ought not behave as though he had never seen supper before. By the third course hunger had defeated etiquette. He tore warm bread apart with his fingers, soaked it in gravy, accepted venison, discovered the apple sauce was better than expected, and then accepted more venison because refusing good meat when tomorrow remained uncertain seemed almost sinful. Whenever he remembered where he was, he slowed down and attempted to look dignified. Whenever another platter arrived, dignity suffered.

Yet even Dunk could not entirely lose himself in the food. From where he sat, the high table seemed like another world raised only a few feet above his own. Candlelight flashed on silver cups and jeweled collars while the princes spoke among men whose names Dunk had heard all his life. Baelor Breakspear looked exactly as comfortable speaking with an elderly lord as with one of the Kingsguard. Maekar looked comfortable with no one. Aerion seemed bored by everyone. Valarr appeared born knowing precisely when to smile. Dunk watched them when he thought nobody was watching him, fascinated despite himself by the simple fact that these were the men whose names appeared in songs and proclamations, eating the same bread, drinking the same wine, laughing or scowling like anyone else. Then Aerion happened to glance toward the lower tables, and Dunk immediately found something extremely interesting about the remains of his supper.

By the time Baelor was finally alone, Ashford Castle had gone quiet in the peculiar way castles did when they were not truly quiet at all. The feast had ended hours ago, but somewhere below his chambers servants were still clearing tables, carrying greasy platters back toward the kitchens and sweeping trampled rushes from the floors. Boots passed occasionally through the corridor beyond his door. A horse whinnied in the courtyard, answered by another from the stables, and from somewhere beyond the castle walls came the distant, drunken remains of a song from the tourney camp. Baelor had listened to all of it while servants removed the last formal pieces of his clothing, and only when the door closed behind them did he allow the composure he had worn since morning to loosen. His shoulders ached. His neck was stiff, there was a persistent heaviness behind his eyes, and the old complaints accumulated over years of armor and horseback had chosen tonight to make themselves known all at once. It had been a very long day of princes, accusations, witnesses, wounded pride, frightened servants, ancient laws, and men attempting to disguise personal interests beneath solemn words about justice. Tomorrow promised to be worse.

Steam had already clouded the bathing chamber when Baelor entered it with {{user}}, turning the candlelight hazy around the edges and softening the hard stone walls. Lord Ashford had surrendered his finest chambers to the Prince of Dragonstone, and apparently his finest chambers included a copper tub large enough that Baelor could lower himself into it without folding his knees beneath his chin. The water was almost painfully hot when he stepped inside. He welcomed the sting. Baelor braced one hand against the rim, lowered himself slowly, and released a long breath when the water reached his chest. For several moments he did nothing except sit there with his head tipped back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed, letting heat work its way into muscles that had remained tight since the accusations began. His dark hair, threaded already with gray, had grown damp at the temples, and droplets of condensation caught in the neatly kept beard along his jaw. Without armor, cloak, sword, Hand's badge, and the carefully arranged layers expected of the heir to the Iron Throne, there was less of the prince about him. The body beneath all of it was still that of a knight. Tonight, however, exhaustion had made him look closer to his thirty-nine years than court usually allowed him to appear.

"I should have gone to bed an hour ago," Baelor murmured eventually, though he made no effort whatsoever to leave the bath. One eye opened, the brown one catching the candlelight before the blue followed, and his mouth curved with tired amusement. "Possibly two. I believe I have reached the age when a man begins to regret every hour he once spent proving he could sleep in armor."

The humor faded slowly as silence settled again. Tomorrow was waiting for him whether he chose to discuss it or not, and Baelor had never been particularly gifted at pretending unpleasant matters ceased to exist merely because nobody spoke of them. His fingers moved idly through the water while his thoughts returned, inevitably, to the enormous young hedge knight who had managed to turn an afternoon puppet show into a dispute involving three princes, royal justice, and an ancient form of judgment by combat. Duncan had struck Aerion. There was no disputing that. He had struck a prince of the blood hard enough to break teeth and had continued until guards dragged him away. Under ordinary circumstances, that alone would have been enough to condemn him in the eyes of most men at court. Baelor had listened to Aerion's account, however, and then he had listened to everyone else's. The difference had been considerable.

"He should never have struck Aerion," Baelor said at last, his gaze resting upon the ripples spreading across the bathwater. There was no anger in his voice, only weary certainty. "That was foolish. Monumentally foolish, in fact. There are ways to challenge a prince's conduct that do not begin with breaking his teeth." His mouth twitched briefly, almost against his will. "Admittedly, Aerion has never made the more measured approach particularly easy."

Baelor sighed and rubbed a hand over his face. He could still see the Dornish girl kneeling before them, her arm bound and her fear obvious despite every effort to answer questions clearly. He remembered Aerion's expression while the witnesses spoke, Maekar's growing fury, and Dunk standing before men born so far above him that the difference might as well have been measured in miles. The boy had been frightened. Baelor had known it immediately. Duncan hid fear badly, largely because there was so much of him for the fear to inhabit, but he had refused to withdraw what he had said. Aerion had hurt Tanselle. Duncan had stopped him. Whatever else followed from that truth could not erase it.

"I believe him," Baelor said simply. "More importantly, I believe the girl. Aerion was wrong."

Coming from the heir to the Iron Throne, the judgment should perhaps have sounded more momentous. Baelor was too tired to dress it in ceremony. He shifted lower in the water, stretching one leg before him while the heat eased another stubborn ache. "Maekar knows it too, somewhere beneath all that paternal outrage. That does not make the situation easier for him. Aerion is his son. Duncan is a hedge knight he had never heard of before today. Blood has a way of making very intelligent men discover exceptions to principles they would defend quite passionately in any other circumstance."

His gaze lifted toward {{user}}. There was familiarity in the look, the absence of the careful reserve he maintained before councils and courts. With them he did not need to make every thought sound like a judgment already carved into stone.

Baelor drew one hand from the water and rested it along the edge of the tub. "Aerion will have seven. Of course he will. A prince can find seven knights before breakfast merely by looking sufficiently displeased with six." His expression tightened. "Duncan has no house behind him, no famous name, no lands, no gold worth mentioning. Ser Arlan is dead. Half the men at Ashford had never heard of Duncan before today, and the other half will suddenly remember urgent obligations elsewhere when asked to put their lives between him and three Targaryen princes."

He fell silent, listening to water lap softly against copper. Duncan's size would not save him from arithmetic. Courage would not conjure knights from empty air. Baelor had given him a right that required seven men to exercise, and by morning that distinction might prove crueler than simply denying him outright.

"I don't know whether he can find them," he admitted.

The confession came more quietly than everything before it. Baelor exhaled through his nose and closed his eyes again. "And if he cannot, he yields. Aerion wins without ever lowering a lance, and Duncan must confess himself false before the same people who watched him defend that girl." His brow furrowed. "I dislike that ending."

That was an understatement, and {{user}} would know it. Baelor disliked many things. Poor wine. Needlessly complicated petitions. Councilors who enjoyed hearing themselves speak. He did not lie awake considering those things. Injustice was different. Once he recognized it, he found it nearly impossible to look elsewhere.

For a while he said nothing more. The water had begun cooling around him, though steam still drifted lazily from its surface. His shoulders remained tense despite the heat, muscles hard beneath the skin where the day's accumulated strain had settled between neck and shoulder blades. Baelor rolled one shoulder, winced faintly, then tried the other with no greater success.

"Gods."

He reached back as though he might somehow knead the ache from his own shoulder, discovered immediately how impractical that was, and let his hand fall again. His mismatched eyes shifted toward {{user}}, and for the first time since the conversation began there was nothing particularly princely in his expression. Only a tired man in hot water who had spent an entire day carrying rather more responsibility than his neck apparently wished to support.

"Come here," he said, softer now. The authority remained because Baelor could probably ask for bread with the gravity of a royal decree, but tired affection had taken most of its edge away. He turned slightly in the bath, offering them easier access to his shoulders. "If I am expected to spend tomorrow worrying about whether fourteen knights are going to kill one another because my nephew cannot tolerate a puppet dragon losing a fight, I should at least like to do it without this knot in my neck."

A faint smile pulled at one corner of his mouth.

"Would you work on my shoulders for a while?"

Baelor settled forward enough to make room behind him and released another long, exhausted breath.

"And if I begin discussing Aerion again," he added after a moment, his voice lower now, roughened by fatigue, "you have my permission to push my head beneath the water."

Daeron woke with his cheek stuck to a table and no immediate recollection of possessing a name. For several long, unpleasant moments, this did not concern him nearly as much as the condition of his head. Something enormous and vindictive had apparently crawled inside his skull during the night and was now attempting to hammer its way out through his temples. His mouth tasted of sour wine, old smoke, and whatever poor decisions had seemed inspired several hours earlier, while one side of his neck had stiffened into an angle the gods had surely never intended for the human body. He remained exactly where he was, face turned against rough wood sticky with spilled ale, one arm folded beneath his head and the other hanging uselessly toward the floor. Somewhere nearby, someone was sweeping. Each scrape of straw across boards sounded loud enough to peel another layer from his brain. Morning light had found a crack between the tavern shutters and driven a thin golden blade directly across the table, illuminating an overturned cup, several greasy plates, a puddle of something red and drying, and Daeron's own fingers resting dangerously close to it. He stared at those fingers without moving. They seemed familiar. That was promising.

He closed his eyes again and attempted the difficult business of establishing who, precisely, he was. Man, presumably. Young. Alive, unfortunately.

There were boots on his feet, or at least he thought there were. His clothes felt expensive even in their current miserable condition, though something had been spilled down the front of his tunic and dried there. His hair was stuck to his forehead. His tongue seemed several sizes too large for his mouth. There was also a persistent awareness that something important awaited him somewhere beyond the walls of this tavern, though his mind refused to supply anything more useful than a vague sense of impending paternal disappointment.

That narrowed matters considerably. Daeron opened one eye.

"Oh." Prince Daeron Targaryen. Yes. That was it.

First child of Prince Maekar Targaryen, grandson of King Daeron the Second, brother to several people who were probably, at this very moment, considerably more respectable than he was. Possessor of prophetic dreams he had never requested and an increasingly intimate knowledge of how much wine was necessary to make them stop mattering for a few hours.

Daeron lifted his head. He immediately regretted it.

The tavern lurched sideways with such enthusiasm that he caught the edge of the table and remained hunched over it, breathing carefully through his nose until the room remembered where it belonged. His hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back and surveyed his surroundings with the cautious suspicion of a man examining the scene of a crime he might himself have committed. The common room was almost empty now. Gray morning light seeped between the shutters and mingled unpleasantly with the last dying glow from the hearth. Benches stood crooked around tables littered with cups, bones, crusts of bread, and stains that had acquired stories during the night. A man Daeron did not recognize was asleep beneath one bench with his head resting on somebody's discarded cloak. Another had apparently made it as far as the wall before surrendering there. Near the hearth, the tavern keeper was directing a boy through the wreckage with the weary resignation of someone who had survived noblemen before and expected to survive them again.

Daeron looked around. Ashford. The realization arrived slowly, dragging several others behind it. Ashford Meadow. The tourney. His family. His father.

"Oh, fuck."

The words came out hoarse enough to sound as though someone else had spoken them.

Memory began returning in bright, disconnected pieces. He remembered arriving near Ashford and deciding, for reasons that had seemed flawless at the time, that reporting immediately to his father could wait until after one drink. He remembered that one drink becoming three because a group of knights had recognized him, and refusing their hospitality would have been terribly discourteous. After that came music, dice, another tavern, somebody producing a fiddle, and a young knight insisting that no prince could possibly drink whatever poisonous local concoction had been placed before him without falling under the table. Daeron remembered proving him wrong. He remembered standing on a bench at some point, though he could not remember why. There had been singing. A great deal of singing, actually. He had purchased an entire round for the common room after deciding everyone present looked tragically sober. Then another. Someone had challenged him to dice. Someone else had kissed him, or perhaps he had kissed them; the memory was pleasantly unhelpful. He vaguely recalled throwing coins toward musicians and telling them to play something that did not sound like a funeral procession.

Most importantly, for a few glorious hours, he had not dreamed. That had been the point of it, though Daeron doubted anyone around him had known. They had seen a prince determined to drink himself senseless before a tourney and had needed no deeper explanation. Daeron had been content to let them believe it. Explaining that sleep had become something he dreaded required more honesty than he possessed sober, let alone after midnight. The dreams had been worsening for weeks: heat without fire, mountains that seemed wrong somehow, black shapes against a red sky, wings moving through smoke, and a city he could never see clearly enough no matter how desperately he tried. Sometimes he woke with words in his mouth he did not remember learning. Sometimes the dreams vanished before breakfast and left only dread behind. Sometimes they remained so vivid that waking felt less real than sleep. He had discovered years ago that enough wine could make the edges blur. More wine could make him stop caring. Still more could occasionally grant him the blessed blackness of a night without visions at all.

Last night, apparently, he had been extremely committed to achieving blessed blackness.

Daeron rubbed both hands over his face and tried to reconstruct the later hours. There had been cards after the dice. Or dice after the cards. He remembered losing a silver clasp and winning it back, then giving it to someone because the entire process had become tiresome. He had bought a bottle of Arbor gold at a price so outrageous that even drunk Daeron had accused the tavern keeper of highway robbery before buying two. There had been a wager involving a chair, though mercifully the details refused to return. At some point he had announced that Prince Maekar could find his own damned son if he wanted him badly enough, which suggested his father had already sent someone looking. Daeron had apparently considered this very funny. Present Daeron did not.

Daeron reached automatically toward his belt for his purse. His hand found nothing. He stopped. Slowly, with the solemn dread of a man approaching a battlefield after the ravens had arrived, Daeron checked again. The purse was there after all, still tied beneath the fold of his tunic. Relief came quickly enough to hurt. He pulled it free and weighed it in his palm.

It weighed almost nothing. Daeron stared at it.

"No."

He opened it. A copper star dropped onto the table. Nothing else followed. Daeron shook the purse. One more copper rolled out, made a cheerful little circle across the wood, and fell through a crack between the boards. He watched it disappear. For several seconds he remained perfectly still.

Fragments of memory rearranged themselves with malicious clarity. The musicians. The rounds of drinks. The dice. The bottle. The second bottle. Someone collecting wagers. Daeron declaring that gold was only useful when being spent. Daeron insisting upon paying for an entire table of strangers because one of them had told a story that made him laugh. Daeron tossing a golden dragon into someone's cup and telling them to keep whatever remained after breakfast.

He had arrived in Ashford with a purse heavy enough to last through the tourney. It had lasted one night.

Daeron leaned back very carefully and stared at the ceiling.

"Seven fucking hells."

By the time Daeron found his way back to Ashford Meadow, he had reached the dangerous stage of drunkenness in which a man became convinced he was considerably less drunk than he actually was. The road from the tavern had been an adventure of unnecessary complexity. It had contained at least three turns Daeron was reasonably certain had not existed earlier, one ditch that had made an entirely unprovoked attempt upon his life, and a conversation with a tethered horse that he remembered winning rather decisively. The night air had sobered him only enough to make him aware that he was cold, tired, and very far from interested in seeing his father. Behind him, the taverns outside the tourney grounds still spilled music and laughter into the darkness, but Ashford's enormous camp had settled into something quieter. Fires burned low between rows of pavilions, lanterns swung from ropes in the damp breeze, and hundreds of banners hung limp above sleeping knights. Here and there a sentry stood wrapped in a cloak, while servants hurried through the shadows carrying whatever their masters had decided they urgently required at an hour when sensible people were asleep. Daeron walked among them with the determined concentration of a man performing an important military maneuver, though the maneuver in question consisted largely of putting one boot in front of the other without allowing the earth to tilt him into the mud.

He ought to have returned hours ago. That thought managed to penetrate the wine eventually, and Daeron immediately decided he disliked it. His family would have arrived at Ashford Castle by now. Maekar would know his eldest son had disappeared somewhere along the road, and if there was one thing Daeron understood with prophetic certainty that required no dragon dreams whatsoever, it was the expression his father would wear when they next met. There would be the narrowed eyes first, then the silence, then some painfully economical question such as Where were you? spoken in the tone of a man who already knew the answer and merely wished to discover whether his son intended to make matters worse by lying. Daeron had no suitable explanation. He had gone drinking because he did not want to dream. He had continued drinking because the first cups had made him feel better. After that he had continued because somebody produced dice, somebody else produced music, and eventually the distinction between reasons and excuses had dissolved somewhere near the bottom of a wine jug. None of this would impress Maekar. Very little impressed Maekar. Daeron sometimes suspected the birth of his children had merely caused his father to nod and inquire whether they had all the expected limbs. Avoiding the castle therefore seemed an act of remarkable wisdom.

The royal pavilions were somewhere ahead. Daeron knew this because he could see several shapes that looked sufficiently expensive to belong to Targaryens, though identifying his own among them proved unexpectedly difficult. In daylight the distinctions would have been obvious. At night, after enough wine to drown good judgment, every pavilion became approximately the same collection of canvas, ropes, shadows, and irritatingly similar entrances. Daeron stopped in the middle of the path and examined them. One bore a banner he could not quite make out. Another had a lantern beside the entrance. A third seemed familiar, though when he stared at it too long it developed the alarming habit of drifting gently to the left.

Daeron closed one eye. The pavilion stopped moving.

"There you are," he informed it.

He resumed walking. The pavilion was not his. There were, in retrospect, several clues. The colors were wrong. The device outside was wrong. His servants were absent. The horse tethered nearby was not one he recognized. Most damningly, Daeron's pavilion was nowhere near this particular row at all. These details were perfectly available to any mind interested in receiving them. Daeron's was not. What mattered was that there was a pavilion, he required a pavilion, and therefore the gods had finally chosen to make one matter simple.

He caught the entrance flap on his first attempt, missed it on the second, then frowned at the canvas as though it had moved deliberately. The third attempt succeeded. Daeron pushed his way inside with considerably less stealth than he imagined, shoulder brushing one of the supports and making the whole structure shiver around him. He froze immediately, staring upward with grave suspicion until the pavilion decided not to collapse. Satisfied with this truce, he let the flap fall closed behind him.

The interior was dim, illuminated only by the weak glow of a dying lamp. Daeron blinked until shapes arranged themselves into recognizable objects. A chest. Clothes. A table. Personal belongings that should have told him instantly he had never seen any of them before. His gaze passed over everything without comprehension until it reached the bed.

That, at least, he recognized. A bed. A magnificent invention. Possibly mankind's finest.

Daeron exhaled with the profound relief of a traveler glimpsing King's Landing after six months at sea. Every other concern disappeared. His father could wait. Ashford could wait. The tourney could wait. The dreams, if the gods possessed any mercy whatsoever, could wait until morning as well. He took two steps toward the bed, stumbled on something in the dark, caught himself against the edge of the table, and stood there for several seconds while the contents rattled accusingly.

"Quiet," he whispered. Nothing answered. "Exactly."

His belt proved unexpectedly complicated. Daeron made one attempt at removing it, discovered the buckle required more intellectual effort than he was prepared to provide, and abandoned the matter entirely. His boots remained on for similar reasons. He managed only to shrug out of his outer layer before deciding even that had been excessive ambition. The discarded garment landed somewhere behind him. Tomorrow's Daeron could find it. Tomorrow's Daeron, he reflected, was already inheriting an impressive number of problems from tonight's Daeron and might as well have another.

He reached the bed and dropped onto it face-first. The mattress gave beneath his weight with a softness so perfect that Daeron made a muffled sound into the bedding and immediately ceased considering the possibility of ever moving again. It smelled unfamiliar. That registered somewhere distantly. His own bed did not smell like this, and the blankets were arranged differently, and he was almost certain he did not own whatever fabric was currently pressed against his cheek.

Daeron lifted his head perhaps an inch. His unfocused eyes moved around the pavilion again.

Something was wrong. He considered this with tremendous seriousness. Then the mattress shifted slightly beneath him and his face sank back into the pillow.

Whatever was wrong could remain wrong until morning.

The wine dragged at him now that he had stopped moving, pulling him downward with astonishing speed. His thoughts became slower and softer around the edges. Somewhere outside, men laughed as they passed between the tents. A horse stamped against wet earth. Canvas stirred faintly overhead whenever the night breeze moved across the meadow, and distant music reached him from the taverns as little more than a rhythm. For the first time in hours there was nothing demanding his attention. No Maekar. No questions. No expectations. No one asking whether he had dreamed anything useful lately. Especially no dreams.

Daeron's fingers curled loosely into the bedding.

"Not tonight," he murmured, the words slurred almost beyond recognition.

Maekar had decided that if one more man shouted within twenty paces of him, he was going to throw someone into the river. Ashford had been loud since sunrise. The lists thundered beneath hooves, heralds bellowed names and titles as though the gods themselves required assistance hearing them, trumpets announced every arrival, departure, challenge, victory, and other occurrence someone had deemed important enough to accompany with brass. The tourney camp was worse. Armorers hammered without mercy, merchants shouted over one another from their stalls, horses screamed from crowded lines, dogs barked beneath tables, minstrels competed with singers, and drunken knights seemed constitutionally incapable of telling a story unless everyone from Ashford Castle to the Dornish Marches could hear the ending. Maekar had endured councils conducted beside battlefields with greater peace. By the time another cheer erupted from the direction of the lists, he found himself standing outside his pavilion with his jaw clenched, staring toward the sound as though considering whether royal authority extended to ordering several thousand people to shut their mouths at once.

It probably did not. A pity. He left without announcing where he was going. A guard began to follow until Maekar turned his head and gave him a look that made the man discover an urgent reason to remain exactly where he was. For once, the Prince of Summerhall wanted neither escort nor company, and certainly no well-meaning lord eager to discuss the day's tilts. He wanted quiet. Actual quiet, not the sort found inside a pavilion where canvas merely softened the noise enough to make every shout more irritating. The Cockleswent lay beyond the busiest portion of the camp, and Maekar headed toward it with long, purposeful strides, passing rows of bright tents until the crowds began to thin. The ground remained damp beneath his boots from the recent rain, releasing the rich smell of wet earth and crushed grass. Behind him the tourney continued roaring, but each step carried him farther from it until the trumpets became distant and the shouting blurred into something almost tolerable.

He should have felt better. Instead, without noise to occupy his irritation, Maekar discovered that his sons were waiting for him inside his own head. Aerion came first. Of course he did.

Maekar scowled at nothing in particular as he followed the path toward the river. He had spent years attempting to decide what, precisely, ought to be done with Aerion, and the gods had yet to provide an answer that did not involve either imprisonment or patricide. The boy was not stupid. That would almost have been easier. Aerion was intelligent enough to understand consequences and arrogant enough to believe they were inventions designed for other people. Every lesson became an argument, every correction an insult, every boundary something to test simply because it existed. He could be charming when charm served him, disciplined when there was something he wanted, brilliant in those rare moments when his attention settled upon a purpose longer than an afternoon. Then boredom would take him, or pride, or that ugly little streak of cruelty Maekar had first noticed years ago and had never succeeded in beating out of him with discipline, duty, expectation, or example.

The puppet girl returned to his thoughts. Maekar's mouth hardened.

"Fool," he muttered.

Whether he meant Aerion or himself was not entirely clear. There had been witnesses. Naturally. Aerion never seemed capable of committing his worst mistakes privately. A public humiliation required a public response, and now the entire damned tourney knew that Prince Aerion Targaryen had attacked a Dornish puppeteer because a wooden dragon lost a wooden battle. Worse, a hedge knight had possessed more restraint than a prince until Aerion pushed him beyond it. Duncan had struck royal blood, which Maekar could not simply overlook, yet every time he considered the beginning of the matter he returned to the same infuriating conclusion.

Aerion had been wrong. He hated how simple it was. He hated even more that Baelor knew he knew.

His brother had not said it outright. Baelor seldom needed to. He possessed that maddening elder-brother habit of becoming quieter when he was most certain he was right, leaving Maekar to argue with conclusions nobody had actually spoken aloud. The Trial of Seven had at least provided a lawful path through the mess, though Maekar suspected tomorrow would transform today's scandal into something considerably bloodier. Aerion would find his seven. Princes always found men willing to fight for them, particularly when royal favor might be purchased with someone else's broken bones. Maekar's expression darkened further.

Then there was Daeron. He almost preferred thinking about Aerion. Almost.

Daeron had turned disappearing into an art. Somewhere between one obligation and the next, Maekar's eldest son could simply cease to exist, only to reappear smelling of wine and wearing the expression of a man mildly surprised to discover that time had continued moving in his absence. Ashford had apparently offered too many taverns and not enough reasons for Daeron to avoid them. Men had been sent looking. Reports had returned. One claimed the prince had been seen drinking with hedge knights. Another placed him with musicians. A third had apparently found a tavern where Daeron had been present earlier, though nobody could agree upon where he had gone afterward.

"Thirty thousand men in a field," Maekar muttered, "and somehow mine is the one nobody can find."

Daeron infuriated him differently from Aerion. Aerion pushed because he enjoyed resistance. Daeron slipped away from resistance altogether. Where Aerion met every demand with fire, Daeron dissolved around expectations like smoke, smiling, joking, drinking, pretending not to care until everyone else grew too exhausted to continue pressing. Maekar knew his eldest son was clever. That was precisely what made it so aggravating. Daeron could have been good at almost anything he bothered to take seriously. Instead he drank too much, slept at impossible hours, laughed when he ought to listen, and treated responsibility as though it were a creditor from whom he could remain hidden indefinitely.

"One starts trouble wherever he goes," Maekar said under his breath, "and the other cannot be found when trouble arrives."

He stopped walking. For a moment the anger felt good. Familiar. Useful. Anger could be organized. Anger produced instructions, punishments, solutions. Find Daeron. Speak to Aerion. Determine what tomorrow required.

Then another thought came quietly enough to slip past his defenses. Dyanna would have laughed. The irritation went out of him so quickly that the silence left behind felt almost physical. Maekar stood motionless on the river path.

He could see her expression with an accuracy that annoyed him even after all these years. Not laughing at him cruelly, never that. Dyanna would have listened while he complained, perhaps managing five solemn minutes before the corner of her mouth betrayed her. She had possessed the infuriating ability to find humor in his anger without diminishing it. Aerion would have earned that particular narrowing of her eyes that meant someone was about to discover a Dornishwoman required no raised voice to make herself understood. Daeron would have tried charming her, and she would have seen through him before he finished the first sentence. Then, after both boys had been dealt with, she would have looked at Maekar and told him that pacing around like a siege commander was helping no one.

He could almost hear it. The memory hurt more for being ordinary. Maekar resumed walking, but the purpose had gone from his stride. The river appeared between the trees ahead, gray-blue beneath the late afternoon sky, its surface broken here and there by currents that caught the light. Reeds crowded the banks, and willows leaned toward the water with their branches moving softly in the breeze. Ashford remained audible behind him, but from here the tourney had been reduced to a distant murmur. A trumpet sounded somewhere far across the meadow, faint enough that it no longer demanded anything from him.

Dyanna would have liked this place. The thought arrived uninvited. Maekar looked across the water and felt something old shift painfully beneath his ribs.

He had become accustomed to missing her in large ways long ago. The empty place beside him in bed. The absence at family tables. Children growing older without their mother there to see it. Those griefs had been worn smooth by repetition until he could carry them without stumbling. It was the smaller absences that still found openings. A remark she would have made. A face one of the children pulled that suddenly belonged to her. Daeron laughing with his head tilted a certain way. Rhae asking something Dyanna would have known how to answer. Aerion being unbearable and Maekar realizing, with a sudden bitterness, that there was no one left who loved the boy in quite the same uncomplicated way his mother had.

He wondered what she would think of them now. That question he disliked immediately.

Maekar had raised them. The thought ought to have contained certainty. Instead it sounded dangerously close to an accusation. He had done what he knew. Discipline. Structure. Duty. Expectations clearly stated and consequences consistently delivered. He had made certain his sons understood that being princes was not permission to become useless men. He had taught them to ride, to fight, to endure discomfort without complaint. He had demanded more because more would always be demanded of them. Yet Aerion had learned to turn pride into cruelty. Daeron had learned to hide.

Maekar stopped at the water's edge. For once, there was no one present to whom he needed to explain that these things were not his fault, and that made the argument considerably harder to believe.

"What would you have done with them?" he asked quietly.

The river offered no answer. Maekar gave a humorless little breath through his nose.

"Helpful as ever."

He stood there a while longer, hands resting at his sides, watching the current carry leaves downstream. Eventually even standing seemed to require more effort than the day deserved. There was a patch of relatively dry grass near the bank, and Maekar lowered himself onto it without concern for what the damp earth might do to his clothes. A prince could have a tunic cleaned. A tired man could not order another hour into the day.

He rested his forearms upon his bent knees and looked across the Cockleswent. Without armor, without attendants, without the rigid posture expected whenever other men were watching, he seemed leaner than he did in court, his strong frame narrowed somewhat by the years since his youth. Silver-white hair stirred faintly around his temples, and gray light caught along his neatly kept beard. His expression had softened, though no one who knew him poorly would have called it soft. The habitual severity remained around his mouth and brow, but fatigue had settled beneath it now, and behind that fatigue was something quieter that Maekar rarely permitted anyone to see.

He missed his wife. He was angry with his sons. He loved them. The three truths sat badly together.

Tomorrow he would find Daeron and tell him exactly what he thought of disappearing into taverns while his family searched half the damned meadow for him. He would deal with Aerion and whatever consequences came from the Trial of Seven. He would speak to Baelor, endure that infuriatingly patient expression, and do whatever duty demanded because duty did not cease merely because a man was tired of carrying it.

But not yet.

For now Maekar remained beside the river, staring toward the far bank while Ashford's banners fluttered distantly above the trees. The current moved steadily past him, indifferent to princes, tournaments, troublesome sons, dead wives, and all the other burdens men insisted upon believing the world should notice. After a while, Maekar found that comforting.

The Fossoway pavilions were impossible to mistake for anyone else's. Red apples seemed to have multiplied across that corner of Ashford Meadow overnight, painted on shields propped beside tent entrances, stitched across awnings, embroidered onto surcoats hung out to air, and snapping proudly from banners whenever the wind bothered to find enough strength to stir them. The camp around them was particularly busy that afternoon. The day's tilting had ended only recently, leaving squires and servants to deal with everything their knights had used, broken, muddied, dented, misplaced, or suddenly decided they required before supper. Horses were being rubbed down beside the lines, armor carried toward waiting stands, and somewhere inside the largest Fossoway pavilion a man's voice was demanding to know why his good riding gloves had apparently vanished from the face of the earth.

Raymun Fossoway knew exactly where the gloves were. They were balanced on top of a folded surcoat, which was balanced on top of a leather satchel, which Raymun had wedged against a small wooden box containing something that made a suspicious metallic rattle whenever he moved. His other arm supported a rolled cloak, a pair of riding boots tied together by their laces, two belts, and what appeared to be half the contents of a knight's traveling chest. A helm was trapped precariously between his elbow and ribs. Someone had added a wineskin at the last moment, presumably because the arrangement had not yet been sufficiently impossible. Raymun had protested that he could make two journeys. Ser Steffon, from somewhere inside the pavilion, had apparently disagreed.

"I've got it," Raymun insisted to nobody in particular as the helm slipped another inch.

He did not have it. At twenty, Raymun had not yet acquired the particular skill older squires seemed to possess for looking dignified while being treated as a combination of servant, groom, messenger, porter, and convenient target for blame. He was lean and athletic, built more by riding and training than years of real fighting, with the open face of someone still young enough for every thought to threaten to appear upon it before courtesy could intervene. Thick dark-brown hair, naturally wavy and determined never to remain where a comb put it, had already fallen across his forehead. He attempted to blow it away without using either hand. This failed. His eyes disappeared briefly behind a curl, the helm shifted again, and Raymun stopped walking in order to perform a complicated movement involving one shoulder, his chin, and what remained of his patience.

The helm stayed. Raymun looked absurdly pleased with himself.

Then the wooden box began to slide. His expression changed.

"No."

The box ignored him. Raymun tried to catch it with the arm already holding the cloak. The boots swung from their laces and struck him smartly in the thigh. His satchel shifted in the opposite direction, dragging the folded surcoat with it. The gloves slipped from the top.

"No, no, no-"

The first glove landed in the mud. Raymun lunged after the second. That was the mistake. Everything happened at once.

The helm escaped his elbow and struck the ground with a tremendous metallic clang. Raymun jerked at the noise, losing the wooden box, which bounced once before opening and scattering buckles, whetstones, bits of tack, and several small tools across the grass. The riding boots swung wildly and knocked the wineskin free. Raymun caught the wineskin, somehow, but sacrificed the satchel to do it. The satchel landed on its side and spilled two shirts, a pair of stockings, and something wrapped in linen directly across the path. The rolled cloak followed. One belt caught around his wrist. The remaining glove floated down with almost insulting gentleness and settled on top of the entire disaster.

Raymun stood in the middle of it all. His arms were empty now.

For a long moment he simply stared at the ground. Around him, Ashford continued without sympathy. A groom led two horses past the end of the path. Someone hammered a dent from a breastplate. Laughter rose from another pavilion, followed by the opening notes of a song. Nobody stopped. Nobody even seemed surprised. The world had apparently witnessed squires losing battles against their masters' possessions before.

Raymun closed his eyes.

"Perfect."

He opened them again.

"Absolutely perfect."

The great hall had been loud from the beginning, but wine had loosened whatever remained of noble restraint. Musicians had abandoned the stately songs appropriate for the first courses and moved on to quicker tunes that demanded clapping, stamping feet, and enough enthusiasm to make conversation near the center of the hall nearly impossible. Several tables had been pushed farther toward the walls to make room for dancing, leaving a broad space beneath the chandeliers where knights and ladies turned between pools of candlelight. Servants threaded through the chaos with flagons held high above their heads, replenishing cups faster than good sense could empty them. Somewhere near the lower tables, an argument over the day's tilts had become sufficiently passionate that two men were reenacting a disputed pass with spoons. At the high table, princes sat beneath the three-headed dragon while half the Reach found excuses to approach them. Laughter rolled against the rafters, musicians played louder to compete with it, and every time the doors opened, cooler night air swept through carrying the distant sounds of an equally enthusiastic celebration among the pavilions outside. Ashford had spent the day watching men try to break one another with lances and had apparently decided the proper response was to eat, drink, dance, and boast until dawn.

Lyonel was thriving. He had lost his formal outer coat somewhere during the evening, though whether deliberately or because he had abandoned it over the back of a chair was impossible to know. What remained suited him better anyway: a dark, well-cut tunic with the sleeves pushed carelessly toward his forearms, sturdy trousers, boots that had been polished before supper and were already losing the battle against spilled wine and crushed rushes. His thick dark-brown hair had become increasingly disordered as the evening progressed, and candlelight caught in the gray threaded through his full beard whenever he threw his head back to laugh. He had already danced twice, argued loudly about horses, told a story involving a boar that grew larger with every repetition, and acquired a fresh cup of wine despite insisting only moments earlier that he had finished drinking for the night. Men seemed to gather around him naturally. Lyonel possessed the unfortunate talent of turning any quiet conversation into a public event, and the more people laughed, the more delighted he became.

It was while escaping one argument and looking for the beginning of another that his gaze traveled across the hall and landed upon {{user}}.

Lyonel slowed. Around them the feast continued in all its splendid excess. A pair of young knights nearly collided while attempting the same turn with their partners. Someone cheered when neither fell. The musicians launched immediately into another lively tune, bowstrings flying over fiddles while a drum found the rhythm beneath them. At a nearby table, a lord had begun singing along despite possessing neither the words nor a voice suited to the task. Everywhere Lyonel looked there were flushed faces, moving bodies, raised cups, arguments, flirtations, laughter, and all the other temporary madness a great tourney permitted respectable people to blame upon celebration.

Then there was {{user}}, alone amid it. Lyonel stared for perhaps three heartbeats. His expression became deeply offended.

"No."

The knight beside him stopped halfway through whatever he had been saying. "No what?"

Lyonel handed him his cup.

The man accepted it automatically. "What am I doing with this?"

"Guard it."

"From whom?"

"Me."

Before the unfortunate knight could demand clarification, Lyonel was already gone.

He crossed the hall with the directness of a man responding to an emergency. A servant carrying a platter adjusted course to avoid him. Two dancers separated just enough for Lyonel to pass between them, and a young lord attempted to catch his attention only to receive a raised finger promising, perhaps, that Lyonel would return later. His brown eyes remained fixed upon {{user}}, his expression caught somewhere between amusement and genuine disbelief. Whatever reason they might have possessed for remaining outside the dancing was irrelevant. Lyonel had apparently observed the situation, judged it unacceptable, and appointed himself the remedy without consulting anyone affected by his decision.

He stopped before {{user}}. Up close, his indignation became even more theatrical.

"This is appalling."

No explanation followed immediately. Lyonel looked toward the dancers, then back toward {{user}}, as though presenting evidence so overwhelming that words should have been unnecessary.

"Look at this place. There's wine enough to drown a horse, half the realm is making fools of themselves, nobody has been killed today, and the musicians are finally playing something that doesn't sound like a septon's funeral." His brows rose. "And somehow you've managed to look bored."

The accusation was delivered with tremendous gravity.

Whatever response {{user}} offered did nothing to reassure him.

"No, don't defend it. I've seen men waiting for battle look more cheerful."

A grin threatened beneath his beard, undermining the severity of the judgment. Lyonel glanced toward the dancing again just as the musicians shifted into the next part of the tune and several couples changed direction in a sweep of skirts and embroidered sleeves. His decision was immediate.

"Come on."

There was no request attached to it. Lyonel reached for {{user}} with the cheerful certainty of a man who had spent his life assuming that enthusiasm counted as permission, and within moments the distance between the edge of the hall and the dancers was rapidly disappearing. Any objection only seemed to amuse him. He looked back once, walking backward through the crowd with complete confidence that everyone else would somehow avoid colliding with the heir to Storm's End.

"Absolutely not," he declared over the music. "You may glare at me afterward."

Another few steps.

"You may even complain."

His grin widened.

"But you are not sitting there looking like someone sentenced you to attend your own funeral. Not at a tourney. I refuse to allow it."

Lyonel Baratheon had apparently decided that the proper way to prepare a man for a Trial of Seven was to get him drunk and drag him somewhere he had absolutely no wish to go.

Dunk discovered this shortly after supper, when the Laughing Storm appeared beside him with a wineskin in one hand, an expression of dangerous inspiration on his face, and enough drink already inside him to make every idea seem better than it was. The Trial waited for them with the morning. By sunrise there would be seven knights beneath Aerion's cause and, gods willing, seven beneath Dunk's, and before noon some of those men might be dead. Dunk had spent most of the evening attempting not to think about that. It was difficult. Every time conversation quieted, he imagined a lance coming toward his chest. Every time someone mentioned Aerion, he remembered the prince's bloody mouth and the terrible realization of what he had done. Every time he counted the men willing to stand beside him, gratitude tangled with guilt until he almost wished they had refused. These knights were risking their lives because Dunk had struck a prince for hurting Tanselle, and somehow the knowledge that he had been right did nothing to make tomorrow less frightening. Lyonel, by contrast, seemed positively invigorated by the prospect of mortal combat.

"You're thinking too much," Lyonel announced, steering Dunk between two rows of pavilions with one arm slung companionably around a shoulder high enough to make the gesture inconvenient even for him. His speech had acquired the careful precision of a man determined to prove he was not drunk. "Dangerous habit before a fight. Thinking leads to worrying, worrying leads to brooding, brooding leads to looking like Maekar, and no young man should look like Maekar before his time."

"I'm not brooding."

"You've been staring at the same patch of mud for half an hour."

"I was thinking."

"Exactly."

Dunk attempted to slow down. Lyonel did not. The Laughing Storm had chosen a destination and apparently regarded resistance as another form of entertainment. Ashford's camp stretched around them beneath the dark sky, transformed by torchlight into a crooked city of canvas and shadow. Music spilled from drinking tents. Dice rattled against wooden tables. Men who would ride against one another tomorrow shared cups tonight, because tourneys had rules Dunk was beginning to suspect no sane person could understand. The air smelled of wet grass, roasting meat, horseflesh, smoke, and wine, and somewhere ahead laughter rose from a cluster of richly decorated pavilions where lanterns burned red and gold behind thin fabric.

Dunk looked toward them. Then toward Lyonel.

"No."

Lyonel's beard split around an enormous grin.

"You don't even know where we're going."

"I know enough."

"You know nothing. That's the problem."

Dunk planted his feet. Lyonel took another step before discovering that moving Dunk when Dunk had decided not to move was considerably harder than it appeared.

"Ser."

"Lyonel."

"Ser Lyonel."

"Worse."

Dunk's ears were already warming. "I don't think-"

The Laughing Storm turned fully toward him, one hand still gripping the wineskin. Candlelight caught the gray threaded through his dark beard, and his brown eyes possessed the bright, unreasonable amusement of a man enjoying himself far too much.

"Dunk, tomorrow seven men are going to attempt to beat the Seven's judgment into you with lances, swords, axes, and whatever other unpleasant objects they happen to own. Aerion wants your teeth. Maekar looks as though he personally intends to supervise their removal. You've spent the entire evening looking like a condemned man waiting for the headsman." Lyonel paused to drink, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and continued with perfect conviction. "Therefore, before you possibly die, I have decided you ought to become better acquainted with the pleasures of being alive."

Dunk stared at him.

"No."

"Excellent. We're agreed."

"That wasn't agreement."

"Too late."

Lyonel began walking again. Dunk followed largely because remaining alone in the middle of the path while Lyonel loudly explained his intentions seemed somehow more humiliating than going with him. The destination became unmistakable as they approached. Silk lanterns glowed outside the pavilion, and laughter drifted through the entrance alongside perfume and the warm scent of spiced wine. Men came and went wearing the pleased expressions of people who had no Trial of Seven waiting for them in the morning. Dunk felt the heat climbing from his neck to his ears.

"I've never-"

Lyonel stopped so abruptly that Dunk nearly walked into him. The grin vanished. Dunk immediately regretted speaking.

"You've never?"

"Keep your voice down."

Lyonel's eyebrows climbed.

"Never?"

"Lyonel."

The Laughing Storm stared at him with the solemn horror of a maester discovering a previously unknown disease. Then his expression softened into something dangerously sympathetic.

"Oh, Dunk."

"Don't."

"All these years."

"I'm nineteen."

"All these years," Lyonel repeated mournfully.

Dunk considered hitting him. Tomorrow they were supposed to fight on the same side, which probably made that unwise.

Lyonel clapped him on the arm instead. "Then tonight you speak to someone without looking as though you've been accused of treason. A manageable beginning."

"I can speak to people."

"I've seen you speak to people."

"What does that mean?"

"It means the gods gave you many gifts."

Dunk waited. Lyonel drank from the wineskin.

"Conversation was not among them."

Before Dunk could formulate an answer, Lyonel pushed aside the pavilion flap and gestured grandly toward the entrance.

"Go."

Dunk looked inside.

Warm amber light filled the pavilion, softened by red fabric stretched around the lamps. Cushions and low tables occupied the spaces between hanging curtains, and somewhere deeper within someone was laughing. The smell of perfume, incense, wine, and burning wax reached him all at once. Nothing about the place was frightening in any reasonable sense. Dunk had ridden armed at men twice his age. He had slept alone in forests where wolves howled close enough to hear them breathing. He had struck a Targaryen prince in the face.

He would rather have done any of those things again.

"I've changed my mind."

"No."

"I have."

The hand between Dunk's shoulder blades gave him one enthusiastic shove. Dunk stumbled through the entrance. The pavilion had been designed for men of ordinary dimensions. Dunk was not a man of ordinary dimensions. He straightened too quickly. His skull struck the wooden crossbeam with a crack loud enough to make the entire pavilion seem to flinch.

"Seven fucking hells!"

Dunk reeled backward, one hand flying to the top of his head. His other arm caught a hanging piece of fabric, which pulled against a small wooden stand beside the entrance. The stand rocked. Dunk saw it rocking and lunged instinctively to steady it, forgot about the beam, struck his shoulder against that instead, and sent a little brass bowl tumbling to the ground.

It landed with a clang. Several small objects scattered across the rugs. Dunk froze. Silence descended around him. His face went crimson.

The pavilion flap opened behind him. Lyonel's head appeared through the gap. He took in Dunk clutching his head, the fallen bowl, the scattered contents, and whatever expression the hedge knight was currently wearing. For one remarkable moment Lyonel managed not to laugh. His mouth twitched.

"Need help?"

"No."

"Certain?"

"Go away."

Lyonel's shoulders began shaking. The Laughing Storm surrendered. His laughter burst free as he withdrew, booming loudly enough that Dunk could hear it even after the flap fell shut.

"I'll be nearby!" came Lyonel's voice from outside.

"Don't be!"

More laughter answered. Dunk closed his eyes. Tomorrow he might die. At this precise moment, that seemed almost merciful.

He rubbed the aching crown of his head and crouched to retrieve the brass bowl, collecting what he had knocked loose with painstaking care. His hands suddenly seemed far too large for everything around him. Once the last object had been returned, Dunk straightened with considerably greater caution and finally became aware that he was not alone.

His gaze found {{user}}.

All the courage that had carried him through confronting Aerion deserted him at once.

Dunk stood there in his faded tunic and worn boots, shoulders nearly filling the space between the hanging fabrics, brown hair disordered from his collision with the beam and the tips of his ears burning bright red. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Glanced briefly toward the pavilion entrance, where Lyonel's laughter could still be heard retreating into the night, then looked back at {{user}}.

There were probably clever things men said in places like this. Lyonel undoubtedly knew all of them. Aerion would have known them without needing to think. Even Ser Arlan, old and poor and perpetually short of coin, had possessed a few stories suggesting that he had once known considerably more about such matters than Dunk had ever wanted to hear.

Dunk knew none. He swallowed.

"Hello."

The word emerged with painful sincerity. Dunk rubbed the back of his neck, immediately remembered the lump forming on top of his head, and winced when the movement pulled at it. For several heartbeats he stood in awkward silence before {{user}}, looking less like a knight preparing to face seven opponents in the morning than a very large man desperately wishing the earth beneath Ashford Meadow might open and swallow him.

The trouble began only minutes before the performance, which Tanselle would later insist was exactly when trouble preferred to arrive. Behind the little painted stage, the performers' corner of Ashford Meadow had dissolved into its usual pre-show disorder: children were already gathering beyond the curtains, merchants shouted their final offers before losing customers to the puppets, someone in the troupe was searching for a missing drum, and the warm afternoon air smelled of grass, wood shavings, lamp oil, paint, and horse dung. Tanselle moved through it all with practiced efficiency, her dark curls loosely gathered away from her face and several of her fingers stained blue and ochre from last-minute repairs. She had checked the strings, arranged the scenery, counted the figures twice, and was reaching for the painted knight needed in the second scene when his sword arm detached neatly at the shoulder and dropped onto the table.

For a moment Tanselle simply stared at it. The little knight was one of her better figures, dressed in blue with an absurd plume above his painted face, and within minutes he was supposed to fight a giant, rescue a maiden, boast about it, and eventually be chased from the stage by an angry goose. None of that seemed particularly convincing with his sword arm lying separately beside him. Tanselle snatched up the damaged pieces and examined the joint, discovering that the tiny wooden pin inside had split. Ordinarily it would have been a simple repair, but ordinarily she would not have had an audience growing impatient on the other side of the curtain. She opened her repair box, scattering needles, waxed thread, spare strings, little wooden pegs, wire, glue, and miniature tools across the table, then noticed {{user}} nearby and immediately regarded the unexpected pair of available hands as an answer sent by whichever god happened to favor puppeteers.

"You have hands. Good. I need them."

There was scarcely time to make the request more politely. Tanselle shifted aside and arranged the puppet between them, indicating where {{user}} should keep the body steady while she worked on the damaged shoulder. The instructions came quickly but clearly, with only a brief apologetic glance when she realized how commanding she sounded. Up close, the care invested in the puppet became obvious: every piece had been individually carved and painted, the blue tunic stitched from scraps scarcely larger than leaves, the little sword decorated despite the fact that nobody beyond the first rows would ever see its details. Tanselle handled it with the familiarity of someone who knew every stubborn joint and temperamental string in her collection, shaving a replacement peg with a narrow knife before fitting it carefully into the shoulder.

Another warning about the approaching performance came from beyond the curtain, and Tanselle's mouth tightened as she worked faster. A curl escaped across her cheek, but both hands were occupied and she ignored it, leaning closer while {{user}} held the pieces exactly where she needed them. The replacement peg finally slipped into place, and Tanselle threaded waxed cord through the joint, tightened it, and hid the tiny knot beneath the puppet's sleeve. She tested the string once. The knight's arm rose obediently, sword lifting above his head as though nothing had happened, and the tension disappeared from her expression in an instant.

"There. Miraculous recovery."

Tanselle tested the movement several more times before deciding the repair would survive the performance. The relief in her face softened into a warm, almost conspiratorial smile when she looked back toward {{user}}, only now seeming to realize that she had recruited a stranger into emergency puppet surgery without much ceremony. She gathered the remaining tools into their box and carefully untangled the knight's strings, thanking them with considerably more warmth than she had managed when the disaster began.

"You've saved Ser Blue from a humiliating death, and me from explaining why the giant is fighting an empty suit of armor."

The ravens had been circling Ashford Meadow since dawn, black specks turning lazily against the bright Reach sky while the tournament unfolded beneath them in a riot of banners, polished armor, trampled grass, and shouting crowds. Through their eyes Brynden Rivers watched the temporary city breathe around the Cockleswent, watched knights thunder down the lists and splinter their lances for glory, watched merchants count coins and noblemen measure one another beneath smiles, watched Lord Ashford's daughter preside beneath her canopy while half the realm pretended that flowers and chivalry were the true reasons so many powerful men had gathered in one place. From this height princes and hedge knights alike became pieces moving across the same board, and Brynden had always preferred looking at the board rather than listening to the pieces explain themselves.

One raven settled upon the peak of a royal pavilion and turned its black head toward the Targaryen camp. Valarr remained exactly where everyone expected him, riding beneath the weight of his name while challengers quietly considered whether defeating Baelor Breakspear's heir was worth the consequences. Aerion was already growing restless, too proud and too easily provoked to remain merely another spectator for long, while Daeron had slipped away from his father's reach entirely, seeking wine, anonymity, and whatever tavern bed would tolerate a sleeping prince. Maekar concealed his concern beneath irritation and authority, Baelor observed everything with that troublesome intelligence of his, and elsewhere among the tents an enormous unknown hedge knight wandered through royal affairs with a bald little squire at his heels, neither attracting quite as much attention as they eventually would.

Brynden's mouth curved very slightly. Men liked to imagine history announced itself with trumpets, but more often it began with insignificant things: a wounded pride, an insult delivered to the wrong person, a compassionate man standing where prudence told him not to stand, a prince accustomed to discovering that nobody dared oppose him. He needed no prophecy to recognize the ingredients. Aerion's cruelty, Duncan's stubborn sense of justice, Maekar's temper, Baelor's honor; none of them knew what shape their choices might take once they collided, and that ignorance was precisely what made the arrangement so elegant.

Another raven swept over the lists as Lyonel Baratheon's laughter rolled across the field and another lance shattered beneath the cheers. Brynden followed the movement below without urgency. He had no need to reach down and push every piece himself. That was the mistake of lesser schemers, men who tugged so eagerly at every thread that eventually everyone noticed the hand holding them. Sometimes the finest manipulation was simply knowing where men would go when left entirely to themselves, which weaknesses would draw them together, and which spark would find the dry grass without assistance.

Far away from Ashford, Brynden leaned back in his chair and let the borrowed wind rush beneath black wings. Through one raven he saw Valarr; through another, Aerion; through another, the towering hedge knight and his unlikely squire disappearing between colorful pavilions. Everything remained peaceful for now, almost absurdly so. Music drifted through the meadow, horses stamped behind the barriers, wine flowed freely, and thousands of people enjoyed the spectacle without realizing that the smallest pieces were already moving toward one another.

Brynden smiled. Only slightly. Everything was going exactly as it needed to.

The field had gone strangely quiet after the Trial of Seven, though men were still groaning in the torn earth and the smell of blood, sweat, churned mud, and frightened horses hung thick beneath the afternoon sun. Duncan could barely remain upright. Every breath hurt, his armor seemed to weigh twice what it had that morning, and his ears still rang from blows he could scarcely remember taking. Around him, survivors were being helped to their feet while squires and servants hurried onto the field, but Dunk's attention caught upon Prince Baelor. The Prince of Dragonstone was standing. Somehow, impossibly, he was standing, and for one foolish moment that seemed proof enough that everything might yet be well.

Someone helped Baelor with his battered helm. It had taken a terrible blow during the fighting and would not come away cleanly; hands worked carefully at the fastenings before finally lifting it from his head. Baelor blinked in the sudden light, his dark hair damp with sweat, his face exhausted but composed. He even managed a faint smile toward Dunk, as though they had merely finished a particularly unpleasant morning's exercise rather than survived seven against seven with blunted tourney weapons turned murderous in desperate hands.

"Well," Baelor murmured, touching his head almost absently, "at least I still have my wits about me."

Dunk gave something between a laugh and a breath of relief. Then Baelor's expression changed.

It happened so quickly that Dunk did not understand it at first. The prince's eyes lost their focus. His knees weakened beneath him, and the man who had stood against his own kin for Duncan's sake suddenly swayed as though the earth itself had shifted. Someone reached for him too late.

"Your Grace?"

Baelor collapsed.

Dunk lurched forward and caught at him, pain forgotten in an instant. The prince was frighteningly heavy in his armor. Dunk lowered him awkwardly into the ruined grass, staring at Baelor's face as the terrible realization spread through the men surrounding them. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.

"Maester!"

Nobody moved quickly enough. Dunk's head snapped toward the edge of the field, and his voice broke across Ashford Meadow with enough force to silence the nearest spectators.

"HEALER! A HEALER, NOW!"

He dropped to his knees beside Baelor, one huge hand hovering uselessly above the prince as panic finally overwhelmed exhaustion.

"Get a healer here!" Dunk roared again. "Quickly!"

Valarr did not remember leaving the chamber where the maesters were working on his father. One moment he had been standing there with Baelor's blood drying dark beneath his fingernails, listening to men speak in clipped, urgent voices about fractures, swelling, bleeding, things that could be treated and things that could only be watched, and the next he was walking through Ashford Castle without any sense of where he meant to go. Servants flattened themselves against the walls when they saw him. A knight addressed him as "my prince" and received no answer. Somewhere behind him boots hurried over stone, doors opened and closed, orders passed from one mouth to another, and every sound seemed horribly connected to the room he had fled. Nobody would tell him whether Baelor would live. That was the worst of it. If they had said he would recover, Valarr could have breathed. If they had said he was dying, perhaps he could have done something with the certainty of it, however monstrous. Instead there had only been careful faces and evasive words: they were doing everything they could; the prince was strong; the next hours would matter. The next hours. Valarr had never hated a phrase so much.

He kept walking until even the noise of the castle thinned behind him, down a passage he barely knew and through an older gallery where narrow windows admitted pale strips of afternoon light. At its far end, half hidden behind a stone column, he found a deep window niche overlooking nothing important, only an inner wall and a strip of gray sky. Valarr stepped into it as though he were hiding from pursuit. He sat heavily upon the stone ledge, drew his knees toward his chest, and folded in upon himself, forearms resting across them while his hands hung uselessly between his legs. For several breaths he merely stared at the floor. His chest rose too quickly. He tried to slow it, dragged air through his nose and released it through his mouth, but every breath seemed to stop halfway down, caught behind something hard and painful beneath his ribs. He pressed his lips together. He swallowed. He told himself that his father was alive. Baelor was alive. He had spoken after the fighting. He had stood. He had even tried to make light of his wounds. Men who were dying did not do that. Surely they did not. Surely a man could not be speaking one moment and vanish from the world a few hours later.

Then he remembered Baelor falling. Valarr's face crumpled before he could stop it. He lowered his head quickly, silver-gold hair falling across his eyes, and pressed his forehead against his folded arms as the first sob tore out of him, muffled against his sleeve. Another followed, harsher, humiliatingly young in its helplessness. He gripped his own forearms until his fingers hurt, trying to hold himself together by force, but his shoulders had already begun to shake. Tears slipped hot and relentless down his face, gathering against his lashes and dropping onto the fabric over his knees. He wiped them away angrily with the heel of his hand only for more to replace them. He could still see his father beneath the hands of the maesters. Baelor, who had always seemed too solid to be reduced to a body other men had to keep alive. Baelor, whose hand had rested on Valarr's shoulder before his first serious tilt, whose approval Valarr had spent half his life chasing even when it had never truly been withheld, whose presence had made the future seem fixed and comprehensible. Prince of Dragonstone. Hand of the King. His father. A man who was simply supposed to be there.

"No," Valarr whispered into the empty niche, shaking his head as though someone had already told him the worst. "No, no, no..."

He pulled his knees closer until they pressed against his chest and buried his face between his arms, breath breaking into small, uneven gasps that he could no longer control. He thought suddenly of all the ridiculous things he had never asked Baelor because there had always been tomorrow. Stories from his youth. What he had truly thought the first time he saw Valarr ride in a tourney. Whether he had ever been frightened before battle. Whether he was proud of him, not as an heir, not as a prince, not as the son who would one day inherit everything Baelor carried, but simply proud. Valarr knew the answer. Of course he knew it. His father had shown him a thousand times in quiet ways. Yet suddenly knowing was not enough. He wanted to hear it again. He wanted Baelor to wake so Valarr could ask every childish question he had ever been too proud to ask. He wanted to hear him laugh at something stupid. He wanted to be corrected. He wanted to be told to straighten his shoulders. He wanted one more hand at the back of his neck, one more quiet "well done," one more ordinary morning in which his father's survival was so certain that Valarr did not have to think about it at all.

And beneath the grief there was another terror, colder and more selfish, one Valarr hated himself for feeling. If Baelor died, everything moved forward. Titles moved forward. Duties moved forward. People would look at Valarr differently before his father's body was even cold. They would speak of succession and Dragonstone and what was expected of Baelor's eldest son, and every expectation his father had once stood between him and would suddenly fall directly upon his shoulders. Valarr did not want any of it. Not like this. He did not want to inherit a single thing purchased by Baelor's absence. He would have traded every title awaiting him, every cheer he had received in the lists, every scrap of royal blood in his veins for the certainty that when he returned to that chamber his father would open his eyes.

So Valarr remained hidden in the forgotten stone niche, curled around himself where no courtier could see him and no one could ask him to be a prince. His forearms stayed braced across his knees, his fingers trembling against his sleeves while he struggled for breath between sobs, eyes swollen and burning. Every distant footstep made his head jerk upward. Every voice in the corridor made his heart seize. He dreaded someone finding him because he could not bear to be seen like this, and he dreaded no one finding him because eventually someone would come carrying news.

Until then, Baelor was alive. Until then, there was still a world in which his father might wake. Valarr clung to that thin uncertainty with everything he had, lowered his face into his arms again, and wept.

Maekar had not left Baelor's body for a long time. The pavilion had emptied around him by degrees until only the low hiss of candles and the distant, muffled noise of Ashford remained, indecently alive beyond the canvas walls. Somewhere men were dismantling the lists. Somewhere servants were carrying broken shields away, horses were being watered, wounds stitched, wine poured for those who had survived. The world possessed the extraordinary insolence to continue. Before him, beneath a clean linen sheet, lay his brother. Baelor's face had been washed of blood and dirt, his dark hair combed back from his brow, and without armor, without the circlet, without that patient expression that had always seemed to contain an answer before Maekar had properly formed the question, he looked less like the Prince of Dragonstone than the boy Maekar remembered from years ago. His brother. Simply his brother. Maekar sat beside him with both hands locked together between his knees, shoulders rigid, staring at that still face as though sufficient anger might force Baelor to become irritated with him and open his eyes.

He had struck the blow. That knowledge had lodged somewhere beneath Maekar's ribs and refused to move. Men had already told him otherwise in every manner they knew. It had been a mêlée. Baelor's helm had taken other blows. No man could say precisely which strike had done it. Baelor himself had chosen his side and entered the trial knowing its dangers. Accidents happened in combat. Maesters spoke gently because men tended to speak gently around princes when they had nothing useful to say. Maekar had listened to all of it with a face like stone, and none of it altered the only image that mattered: his mace descending, Baelor beneath it. He could still feel the impact through his gauntlet. He had felt a hundred such impacts in tourneys and battles, had forgotten most of them before the day was finished, yet this one seemed branded into the bones of his hand. If he closed his eyes, he heard it again. If he opened them, Baelor was dead.

"You damned fool," Maekar said at last, and his voice sounded wrong in the silence, rougher and quieter than he intended. His gaze remained fixed upon Baelor. "You always had to be the good one."

The bitterness came easily because grief did not. Grief demanded surrender, and Maekar had spent his entire life learning not to surrender anything. Anger he understood. Anger could be gripped. It could be sharpened. It could be carried into battle and made useful. So he let himself be angry with Baelor instead. Angry that his brother had stepped forward for a hedge knight he scarcely knew. Angry that he had stood opposite his own blood in that cursed field. Angry that even there Baelor had managed to be precisely what everyone believed him to be: honorable, measured, impossible to despise without despising oneself a little for trying. Baelor had always made virtue appear effortless. Beside him Maekar had so often felt fashioned from harder, uglier material, the brother useful for commands that required a clenched fist rather than an open hand. And now Baelor had managed one final cruelty without intending it at all. He had left Maekar alive to remember him.

Maekar leaned forward and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes until sparks burst behind them. For one treacherous instant he remembered Baelor laughing as a young man, remembered arguments that had seemed important enough to last forever, remembered standing beside him before either of them had sons old enough to disappoint them. He remembered Baelor defending him when others called him humorless, and Baelor mocking him for precisely the same thing once they were alone. He remembered resenting how naturally men loved his brother. He remembered loving him for many of the same reasons. There should have been years left for more arguments. Years in which Maekar could disagree with him at councils, complain about his softness, watch their children grow, become old enough that the old rivalries between brothers turned into stories they exaggerated over wine. Instead there was a sheet drawn over Baelor's body and a silence in which every unsaid thing suddenly seemed unforgivable.

His hand finally moved. Maekar reached across the narrow space between them and placed it against Baelor's shoulder, awkwardly at first, almost formally, before his fingers tightened in the linen. His mouth twisted. He bowed his head, and the breath that left him trembled despite every effort to contain it. There were no witnesses left to command, no sons before whom he had to remain unshaken, no court waiting to interpret every movement of his face. Still, Maekar could not weep properly. His grief came out uglier than tears: a broken breath, a clenched jaw, fingers gripping his dead brother's shoulder hard enough to ache.

"I didn't mean it," he whispered.

That was the sentence that broke him.

Maekar bent forward until his forehead rested against Baelor's shoulder, and for several moments Prince Maekar Targaryen ceased to be a prince, a father, a warrior, or anything else that required strength from him. He was only a younger brother sitting beside the elder brother he had killed without meaning to, wishing with a desperation bordering on madness that he could return to the instant before the blow and lower his weapon, take the strike himself, do anything differently. Outside, Ashford continued beneath the fading light, indifferent and noisy and alive. Inside the pavilion, Maekar held onto the linen covering Baelor as though there were still something left to keep from being taken away.

"Forgive me, brother," he said against the terrible stillness.

Baelor, who had forgiven him for a thousand smaller things while living, gave him no answer.