She was waiting for him at the gate, his daughter; the Princess of Storm's End not Dragonstone, for why should the heir to a Baratheon king be invested as the princess of the Targaryen's ancestral seat, instead of the Baratheon's ancestral seat? Flanking her on the right was Ser Devan her sworn shield, while Ser Lomas the castellan of Storm's End stood to her left.
"You have not arranged for a feast or any such nonsense, I trust?" Stannis demanded, brows furrowed, even before he had dismounted from his horse, even before the portcullis had come down with a clang behind him.
"No, Father," Shireen reassured him.
"It is hardly a suitable occasion to hold a feast," Lomas Estermont said, referring to the death of the Prince of Dorne, and the funeral Stannis had attended in Sunspear. "It will be a quiet visit, Your Grace," he continued, almost apologetically. "We have not had sufficient time to prepare for your arrival. The raven bearing your letter arrived only yesterday."
Shireen, however, did not look flustered. She had already expected that her father would wish to pay a surprise visit to Storm's End on his way back to King's Landing from Dorne. There had been other surprise visits since her investiture as the Princess of Storm's End on her sixteenth nameday. Her father was checking up on her, she knew. "If you cannot rule even the Stormlands, how do you propose to rule the entire realm?"
Richard Horpe dismounted from his horse in one swift motion. The other Kingsguard with Ser Richard was a man Shireen did not recognize, a new appointment to the sworn brotherhood no doubt, his white cloak looking as pure and as unblemished as freshly fallen snow.
The squire to whom Stannis was handing his gloves was no stranger to Shireen. Steffon Seaworth shared his brother Devan's fly-away brown hair – though Devan had been keeping his hair very short and closely-cropped lately – and the boy's face broke into a brilliant smile when he caught sight of his older brother. Devan nodded, slightly, but he did not smile in return, mindful of the king making various impatient gestures and noises.
"I will show you to your room, Father," Shireen said.
"No need," her father replied. "Ser Lomas will escort me. We have much to discuss."
You have much to question him about my ability, my progress and my conduct, do you not mean, Father?
Great-Uncle Lomas struggled to match her father's hasty strides, but he still made time to glance back, to give Shireen a quick, reassuring nod, before her father's querulous and impatient voice quickened Ser Lomas' steps once again.
The castellan of Storm's End had much praise and very little complaint about the Princess of Storm's End. Narrowing his eyes, Stannis asked, "Are you being too easy on her, because you think of Shireen as a lonely, pitiful child still?"
Glancing up with surprise, Ser Lomas said, "Princess Shireen is hardly a child, Your Grace. Her seventeenth nameday has come and gone."
And she is hardly pitiful, he should have added, but Ser Lomas disappointed Stannis in that regard.
Had it been a mistake, Stannis wondered, replaying that conversation in his head later. Had it been a mistake appointing Shireen's own great-uncle as the castellan of Storm's End? He had needed a man whose loyalty was steadfast, undisputed. His mother's brother had stayed loyal to Stannis' cause throughout the long, bloody war, through all the defeats and all the setbacks.
And yet, there was also no disputing that Lomas Estermont was no Harbert Baratheon, who had been the castellan of Storm's End for most of Stannis' early years. Great-Uncle Harbert with his sharp tongue and even sharper gaze. Great-Uncle Harbert who never minced his words, who always spoke his mind, who had told his nephew Steffon that he was a fool for wishing to believe that deep down, Aerys Targaryen was still the same man as the beloved cousin Steffon had known and cherished during the golden days of their shared youth.
Great-Uncle Harbert, who had told Stannis that he was making a fool of himself for stubbornly persisting with Proudwing, the goshawk that would never, ever soar. "Wishing for a thing really, really hard will not make it come true, lad. You must learn how to make a clean break."
"Do you need anything else, Your Grace?" His squire's voice interrupted Stannis' recollection of his great-uncle. The boy could not hide his smile when Stannis told him that his service was not required until dinnertime, eager to reunite with his brother Devan, no doubt.
Steffon Seaworth. Steffon, not Steff. "What your family wishes to call you in your own home is not my concern. But while you are serving as my squire, you will answer to Steffon, not Steff," Stannis had told the youngest son of his Hand, on the boy's first day serving as a royal squire.
He had felt no qualms about calling the boy "Steffon." And why should he? After all, he had never addressed his own father by that name. It was always "Father," or "my lord father," never "Steffon."
"His Grace is resting," Steff had told them, when he searched for his brother and found Devan shadowing Shireen in the Great Hall. After asking Steff a few questions about his mother and father, Shireen left the two Seaworth brothers alone, and went in search of her father.
She found her father not in his bedchamber, resting, but standing restlessly at the parapet, gazing out towards Shipbreaker Bay.
Her voice soft, Shireen asked, "I asked Great-Uncle Lomas where it was, the exact spot, but he was not certain."
Her father seemed to know, instantly, what Shireen was referring to. He did not have to ask what she meant. "Ser Lomas was not at Storm's End when Windproud sank. He came later with the other Estermonts, for the funerals."
Shireen strode closer to her father's side, standing next to him, her gaze following his gaze, trying to see what he was seeing now, seeking a glimpse of what her father had seen that day. But the sea was calm and untroubled, the sky was clear and cloudless, and no storm was gathering, let alone breaking.
They stood in silence for a long while, before Shireen finally said, "Devan thought it could only have been this parapet, or the one over there. Those are the only two with clear, unimpeded view of Shipbreaker Bay."
Her father turned, slightly, to catch her eyes. "Do you come up here with Ser Devan very often?"
She blushed, then tried to hide it, but her face reddened even more. "I come up here to be alone. Ser Devan is my sworn shield. He follows me, as is his duty."
A raised eyebrow was her father's only reply, and they stood in silence once more, until her father finally turned his gaze away from Shipbreaker Bay, saying, "There is nothing to see. I do not see it now, not even with my mind's eyes."
"Is that not a good thing, to forget?"
The reply came swiftly, sounding harsh and adamant. "No."
"I know so little about him," Shireen said.
"Who?"
"Your father. My grandfather."
There was always Shireen's mother to tell her all about her Florent grandparents, long dead as they might be, and there was Great-Uncle Lomas (and Cousin Andrew, once) to regale Shireen with tales of her grandmother Cassana - as a girl, as a young woman, on her wedding day, even as a mother. But the grandfather who shared her Baratheon name, whose blood would put her on the throne one day - she knew very little about him, except the manner of his death.
"l know how your father died. Tell me how he lived, Father."
Her father did not reply for the longest of time. Finally, he said, "Maester Cressen used to speak of him with you."
"He did, but not very often. And Maester Cressen saw my grandfather only as a lord, not as a man."
Her father shook his head. "No, you are wrong there. Cressen knew my father before he was any kind of lord, long before he was a man."
Stannis still remembered his boyhood astonishment at that realization – that his father had been a boy once, just like him. Well, perhaps not exactly like him - from the tales told by Great-Uncle Harbert, his father had sounded like a mischievous and outgoing boy, a boy who chattered brightly, laughed often and found many things endlessly amusing.
What happened to that boy, to turn him into this solemn man with hooded, troubled eyes? Stannis would wonder later, when he was old enough to know the difference.
Tell me how your father lived, Shireen had said. Tell me what kind of man he was.
How was he to answer that, after a lifetime of telling her almost nothing?
"My father lived his whole life in his father's shadow," Steffon Baratheon had told Stannis, about his own father, before he embarked on that ill-fated journey to Volantis.
And yet, this had not seemed to Stannis like a shallow, futile attempt to explain away a life, to sum up a man, to store its foregone conclusion in a neat, tidy box to be put away and forgotten, but more like a constant, continuing struggle by a son to understand the father who was no longer alive to speak for himself. And that was mainly because the declaration came on the heels of countless other tales and other stories, numerous other recollections and other memories about his father that Steffon had shared with his sons over the years, that had made Ormund Baratheon seemed as real to Stannis as anyone else who was present, in the flesh.
My father lived his life -
My father was the kind of man who –
He could not find the words to answer his daughter's questions. There was no possible way for him to finish those two sentences without it feeling like a craven, shallow attempt to explain away a life, to sum up a man Shireen had never known. He had never made his father come alive for Shireen; he had never conjured up her dead grandfather with his words, with his memories.
Steffon Baratheon had said a lot about how his father lived, and very little about how Ormund Baratheon died.
And this - this, ultimately, was the biggest difference between Stannis and his father.
I failed my daughter, and I failed you, Father.
You have to tell the story from the beginning, his father had said.
He was the kind of man who – must come later, much later.
Tell me, Father, Shireen had said.
And this time, Stannis did tell her, from the very beginning.