"Look at meeeeeee. I'm a draaaaaaagon." Renly extends his arms, flapping them vigorously as if they were truly wings.
Stannis frowns. He has no time for this playacting, for this childish indulgence. Not now. Especially not now.
Renly's hand is tugging Stannis' sleeve, insistently. "Staaaaaaaannis."
"What?"
"I'm a dragon, see? A glorious, glorious dragon."
"No, you're not. You're Renly Baratheon, and you must eat your supper as you're told."
"I don't want to eat that. Nasty! It's nasty and it smells bad."
"It is meat. You like meat." Rat meat, cooked and charred black beyond recognition, true, but still rat meat for all that. There is nothing else. What else is he to do? What else is he to feed his brother and the other mouths in the castle with? He could not conjure food out of thin air.
Lord Steffon and Lord Robert would have been able to feed us. He feels the accusing glares everywhere in Storm's End; in the great hall, in the courtyard, in the corridors, even here in his younger brother's bedchamber.
You are imagining things, my lord, Maester Cressen would insist. Imagining things. But what imagination? Everyone always insists he has none.
He pushes the plate closer towards Renly. "Eat," he orders.
Renly is still resisting, pushing the plate away with a strength surprising in a boy his age. "It's no meat I've ever eaten before. And anyway, I'm a dragon. Dragons don't eat burnt meat. We eat them raw, raw and fresh and bloody," Renly says, flashing his fingers in front of Stannis' eyes with flourish. For a moment, it almost seems like Renly's fingers are truly bloody, stained with the blood of fresh kill. Stannis shakes his head, to clear his vision, to allow nausea to recede.
It must be the hunger. I am seeing things. He almost laughs, a bitter, mirthless laugh. Imagine that. Imagine if starving to death finally gives him an imagination after all.
"Sheep. I want sheep, and lots of it," Renly gleefully continues his tale.
"Enough! You're not a dragon. You're a silly boy playing a silly game. A real dragon would fly over these walls to drive away the Tyrell men besieging the castle before we all die of hunger. A real dragon would fly across Shipbreaker Bay to break up the Redwyne fleet surrounding us before everything in this castle is reduced to bones, blood and ashes. Can you do that? Can you do any of that?"
Renly is close to tears, hugging his knees, rocking back and forth on his bed. "I was just playing. It is only a game," he murmurs, voice barely audible. "You're so mean, Stannis."
Then the sobbing comes. Loud, wailing cries will be next, Stannis knows from experience. And then Renly's nursemaid will be hurrying into the room, strenuously avoiding Stannis' gaze, saying nothing, asking nothing, her determined silence a harsher rebuke than any word could ever have been.
A real dragon would fly over these walls to drive away the Tyrell men besieging the castle before we all die of hunger. A real dragon would fly across Shipbreaker Bay to break up the Redwyne fleet surrounding us before everything in this castle is reduced to bones, blood and ashes.
He has gone too far. Even he knows this. He does not need Renly's nursemaid or even Maester Cressen to tell him this.
He sits on the edge of Renly's bed. The boy has his head down, staring at the sheet as if the white contains a multitude of bright colors. Clearing his throat, Stannis begins, awkwardly, "Father said he dreamed of riding a dragon, when he was a boy."
Renly slowly raises his head. "Did he?"
"He even named his imaginary dragon. Stormdancer, he called it. His grandsire the king asked if he would not prefer to call his dragon Stagdancer."
A hint of a smile threatens to break on Renly's face. "Because of the stag in our banner?"
Stannis nods. "Father replied that his other grandsire was known as The Laughing Storm after all, not The Laughing Stag."
Renly laughs. "Stagdancer. The Laughing Stag. Those are really, really silly names. I like Stormdancer much, much better. Is it a boy dragon, or a girl dragon?"
"What?"
"Is Stormdancer a boy dragon, or a girl dragon?
"I don't think Father ever said." Or if he did, Stannis had forgotten. You think you will remember everything, but you don't. You vow that you will remember everything, but you still forget. And then there are the things you never even knew, the secrets never uncovered. The dead live on in the memory of the ones they leave behind, but not all of them, not them in their entirety, only a small part, a very small part, miniscule compared to the whole. An ever-shrinking part, as more and more years passed.
"It's a boy dragon," Renly decides. "It's a boy dragon who loves a girl dragon called Turtledove. They marry, and they have three baby dragons. The youngest baby dragon is the cutest and the most precious and –"
"I'm sure he is," Stannis says dryly.
Renly is not discouraged. "Don't you want to know what the baby dragons are called?"
"What are they called?"
"You should name them, Stannis."
"I don't want to name them." Then, rethinking the matter, he says, "If you eat your supper, then I will name the baby dragons."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
After supper is eaten and the baby dragons are duly named, Renly turns to his brother to say, "I wish Father really did have a dragon. He has the blood of the dragon in him. Maester Cressen said so."
And once I wished that Father and Mother had gone to Volantis on the back of a dragon, Stannis thinks, but does not say. A storm could not have sunk a dragon so easily.
Instead, he tells Renly, "We must not think of ourselves as dragons. We are Baratheons, not Targaryens." Despite their Targaryen blood. Despite Rhaelle Targaryen's blood giving Robert his claim to the throne.
"But stags are not fierce like dragons," Renly protests. "A stag can't come and rescue us."
If there is any stag left within the walls of the castle, it could lengthen the number of days they would survive the siege. A dead stag could save them. For a while, at least.
"Maybe a dragon really will come and rescue us after all," Renly continues.
"Renly –"
"I know. There is no dragon, not really. But maybe a man who is like a dragon will come and rescue us."
Many years ago, the first time they were taken to court by their lord father, Stannis and Robert mistook Tywin Lannister for the king. For a dragon. They both agreed that he looked as impressive as the dragons were fearsome. But that one will never stir from Casterly Rock. Why would he, after all? They are no one to him, the sons of Steffon Baratheon. The close companion of his childhood is many years dead, and that friendship had not survived their years of manhood in any case.
We grew apart, Father said, but no one is to blame for the growing apart. Only time, only distance, only circumstances. Only life.
The king calling for Robert's head had also been an inseparable childhood companion of their father, and a cousin besides. These things do not count for much, if at all.
We will save ourselves. He could hold on, hold the line. He must, after all. That is his duty. He had sworn an oath to Robert. But for how long will he be able to hold the line? And how many will still be alive at the end of it? This boy, this boy chattering on and on about the savior who would come from the sky to rescue them; will he live? Stannis could not bear to think otherwise. He flees his brother's room without saying another word.
When the smuggler comes with his onion and his salt fish, Renly dances and shouts, "The dragon! The dragon has finally come to save us."
"I am not a dragon, m'lord, merely a man of trade."
"You're a dragon," Renly insists. "Your name is Seadancer, because you came from the sea to rescue us. I thought you'd come from the sky, but the sea is just as good."
"But why dancer, m'lord? Why not Searunner, or Seawalker?" the smuggler asks, eliciting a grin from Renly.
He is good with the boy. Perhaps he has a son that age. A son who will grow to inherit his trade, as he calls it. A son who will grow to be a lawbreaker, just like him.
This lawbreaker is bringing us food. Desperately needed food.
He is still a lawbreaker.
Savior and lawbreaker, he is both.
"My father had a dragon called Stormdancer," Renly continues his chatter.
The smuggler's eyes – he has a name, Stannis, his mother's voice, he hears it still, though the timbre is wrong, not as rich, not as melodious as hers had truly been - Davos' eyes glance towards Stannis. "A dragon, m'lord?"
"Not a real dragon, of course," Stannis replies.
Only one in his imagination.