"Keep your head down, and your ears open." My father choked out between gulps of dark wine and some kind of thick pudding. "And for all of our sakes don't show that face of yours around here again." I hadn't truly talked to my father in close to nine years, and though he had shown me no kindness in the past I had prayed to old gods and new that he would today. It was my 18th name day, and the day that I would be plucked from my mother and my brothers and awarded to house Frey as a contract agreement, and husband to whichever of his daughters that I chose. None of my father's 4 wives birthed any daughters, but sons there were many, nowhere near as many as Lord Frey of course but many nonetheless. 17 brothers have I, and not a single one of them was forced into marriage, but I being father's least favorite, and I being the only son of his second wife Lindara, from the free city of Pentos, and I with the face a mirror of hers and a fire burning inside of me a thousand times as wild as hers, I am sent to The Twins to pick a wife and train Lord Frey's sons into acceptable archers.
I didn't bother mentioning how a Greyjoy would make a much better archery teacher, or how any one of my three elder brothers, none with wives of their own, would have been a wiser pick, but I did manage to catch a glimpse of my father's inner being, as my mother called it, a glimpse of the man that he might have been had he not buried his entire family as a 13 year old lord-ling. He rose from his lavishly pillowed seat on the marbled floor and handed me a dragon's bone bow, with a quiver of polished black steel, adorned with silver set amethyst in the sigil of our house, the shield and dagger, and with arrows crafted as fine as the Stepstone islands and all of Essos could muster. My father, Darius Aurelius the third of the isle of Isicipe, Lord of the Stepstones and leader of The Peacekeepers stood in front of me and by the gods I swear, a tear rolled down his crepe paper skin. My mother brought a cloak of deep black dyed wool, it was lined with thick Braavosi silk, dyed as purple as the amethysts on my quiver, with a collar of panther's hide; no use to me on the hot and humid islands, but invaluable in the north, or so my mother told me as she fastened it about my shoulders. "You will represent house Aurelius in Westeros, my little love, and bring honor to our name" she said and kissed me on the cheek. My brothers paid me their goodbyes, or their respects, almost mourning me, though the prospect of one less son to occupy father's mind must have tasted so sweet. I slung my new quiver across my back and my bow next to it and turned to walk out of my father's study. The Aurelius house words are "No Fears, No Tears, No Goodbyes," but had I not had so much of my mother in me I may have wept.
Darius the fourth, my younger brother by three months and so named for being a spitting image of my father, was beaten by our Maester Emont for crying when our eldest brothers Elgen and Elron went to war 10 years ago, and Elgen was beaten on the battlefield by our father for vomiting when he found out Elron was killed. No fears, no tears, no goodbyes. Living on the sea, traveling by wooden ships and constantly fighting for peace, there is no room for fear in our lives, there is no time for tears, and saying goodbye is an acceptance of your inevitable death. In truth, I cried when the raven arrived with news of Elron, but my mother never told anybody.
