It was dark today. Not as dark as every other day was, but dark all the same. The rumbling storm clouds crawled across the sky, extinguishing the sun behind their grey and black masses. Waves of sea crashed against the stony cliffs of the island, and salty spray licked the stone sides of the tower, staining them to black.
She waited and watched at her window, which was up very high. The maester said it was good for her to watch and listen and pay attention, and she thought so too. She liked watching from up high, where she could see the waves and all the big ships coming and going by. Today a ship was coming right to the island, and she was very excited for it.
Not many little girls had a ship full of people and treats come to them on their birthdays, the maester had said. She thought she must have been a rather important girl, to have a ship come to her little island filled with things all for her. The maester told her she was special, and she thought so too.
With a last look out at the roiling sea and the brightly dressed fat man that was waving up at her, the little girl ran away from her window to wait for her presents. Today was her fourth birthday.
"What is your name, sweet child?"
"Rowena," the little girl replied, not really paying attention to who was asking the question. She sat before the fat man at the table in the tower, piling her new colored blocks on top of each other, building a pretty wooden castle. The storm had followed the fat man and the thunder boomed all around her and the wind flung the curtains away from the windows. She was afraid of the wind, afraid that it would blow all her blocks away. She didn't want that. She had worked hard on it for a long time, this pretty wooden castle. It was her father's castle, the fat man had said, and she thought so too. All the blocks she had used for the big part were red, deep bloody red, and for the towers she'd used yellow blocks. But those colors had seemed wrong, so she took away all the red blocks and replaced them with black ones. Now it looked like her father's castle, he had said, and she thought so too.
"Very good, and what is your house?"
"Baratheon!" she shouted, raising her hands in the air. She liked to say the name. It was her father's name, the fat man had said, and it was hers too. It was a good name and a strong name, a name that everyone knew. But it wasn't her mother's name, and that had been sad to learn, but the fat man had said her mother was special, and she thought so too.
"Excellent, child, very very good. Now, what are your words?"
This one was tough. They were special words. Sometimes she felt angry because the fat man knew them, and he wasn't like her or her father. They were her special words, not his. But everyone knew them, he had said – from lords and ladies to tavern wenches and stableboys. They were very special, like her name, so maybe it was good that others knew them.
"They're MY words," she said, glancing up at the fat man with her big, big eyes, "not yours, not anybody else's?" He laughed a silly giggle that made her smile and shook his head.
"Yes child, they are your words, not mine. I don't have any words."
"Because you're a spider!" she said excitedly, and he giggled again.
"Yes, indeed I am. You're very clever, Rowena. Now, can you tell me your words?"
She stared at her pretty castle, imagining her father sitting inside it, sitting on his chair of swords, laughing as kings did. The fat man had said her father laughed a lot, and she thought so too. She thought all kings laughed all the time, because they were kings and everyone loved them. She imagined little lords and ladies inside the castle and big knights in lots of armor with big, big swords, laughing with her father and keeping her father safe. The fat man had said there were lots of knights to keep her father safe, and that made her happy. She worried about her father, even though he never rode on a ship to see her. She worried because the fat man said he couldn't come to see her, never could, because a lion lady held him hostage in his castle.
The lion lady knew her words, and her house, but not her name. And the fat man had always told her that she could never tell the lion lady her name, because then she'd snatch her up and feed her to the lion soldiers. That thought had scared her all the time, at most when the sky was darkest and the storms were quiet. At night, after the maester had tucked her in and there was no thunder booming or waves crashing, the little girl thought that she could hear the soft padding of lion paws on the stone steps. It made her scared. It made her angry.
"I am the fury!" And with a great big swat of her little hand, she sent a shower of pretty colored blocks into the wall, where they crashed and shattered into pretty little pieces.
She was eleven now, almost a woman. Her hair was as "black as a storm cloud" and "straight as an arrow," they said, and she thought so too. They said other things about her, here in the village of Downpour, south of Storm's End. Things like "impatient," and "bastard." When she heard them (and she always heard them, for she had learned to watch and listen and to always pay attention), she could not help but smile at their ignorance. Oh, she still had as little patience as she did when she was younger, but now she could mask her anger behind laughing eyes and a pretty smile. And "bastard" had hurt her before, she remembered, when she had still clung to Lord Varys's robes. But it was nothing to her now. Bastard or no, she was of Robert Baratheon's blood, and had more claim than anyone, as she was the eldest (aside from her uncles).
So she resigned herself to smiling her lady's smile while listening with her eager ears and knowing that, bastard or not, she was still a Baratheon of Storm's End, and an heir to the Iron Throne.
But of other things, she was not so sure.
She remembered her times with Lord Varys in the secret tower on the island near Shipbreaker's Bay. He had always been kind to her and always paid her special attention. But, looking back on those times, when she recited the names of lords and the banners and the castles, she had realized that he was grooming her. To what end she did not know, only that it had made him happy to hear her know so well the goings on of the Seven Kingdoms. Her kingdoms, he once had called them, and perhaps she thought so too.
"M'lady," someone said, and Rowena started. She had not heard anyone opening the door. She had been too deep in thought, too focused on the fat raindrops that were sliding down the window.
"Yes?"
"Lord Varys is here to see you."
"Send him in." She frowned in annoyance at the servant boy and he had the grace to turn his head. "And next time knock, if you please. I don't like being interrupted or caught unawares."
"Yes m'lady," he said meekly, and bowed his way out of the door.
I am the fury, Rowena thought to herself. A funny little play on the words of her house, a joke between herself and Lord Varys. He had said many times that she was the fury, the embodiment of a storm trapped within a lady. She thought so too.
"Dead?" The word filled her mouth with a bitterness she had never tasted before, and a rage she feared she could not control.
Lord Varys's face was a mask; though he played at being mournful, it did not reach his eyes.
"I am sorry, princess." He often called her that now. "I'm afraid your father was murdered."
"By the Lannister woman?" she asked with anger.
She would not call her "queen" as long as there was blood still in her body. Her hands shook and her teeth clenched at thought of it. Queen. She did not think the Lannister woman a queen so much as a lion. A lion in a cage, she had thought, until this news of Robert's death had come to her. The lion's claws had come out and struck down the King at last. She wondered, with a sickness in her belly, why it had taken so long.
"Of that I am not sure. I have heard whispers of poison, but I fear it was the boar that killed our beloved Robert."
"Do not call him that!" she snapped. Beloved. Robert was no more beloved than she was herself – a usurper of the throne, a bastard-siring drunkard, a selfish man that had taken the kingdom down into the depths of bankruptcy and ruin. Robert Baratheon may have been her father, but she knew the truth of him now. The last five years had seen to that. Lord Varys was not the only whisperer that had come to call on her as of late. Others knew. Jon Arryn knew, as did her uncle Stannis. Though Renly had not concerned himself with her personally, he had heard, and so he knew. But the falcon and the old stag, they had come. They had come with questions and suspicions, with half-hearted comforts and with ultimatums. Stay hidden, swear fealty.She had grown sick and angry with all their talking and their honor, and each time they told her of Robert Baratheon, she had cursed the day he'd put his prick in whatever whore she could call mother.
Yet, there was sadness in her still. He had been a man she once admired, a man she had dreamed to meet and love and call "father." A man she had vowed to honor with her knowledge and her cunning and her beauty, to make so proud that he would cast aside the damning shroud of bastard and claim her to all of Westeros. And now, a man dead. As dead as her dreams.
"Forgive me, princess, but I fear the time for mourning is not with us," Varys said as he watched the sadness pass over her face. She glared at him, with eyes as blue as swirling seas, and put her own mask on.
"On that we can agree. I will not mourn a dead man I never knew. I mourn the loss of one of my own – a Baratheon of Storm's End. This Robert I have only known through tales. 'Father,' you called him, but he was no father. The simple sowing of his seed makes him no such thing. It is deeds and words that make a man a father – this Robert spared none for me. A proud, powerful man he was, but disgraced by his own shadow. No, there is no time to mourn, and even if there was I would not spare it. I have no father – I never had – and nothing of myself or the life I have lived is changed by that."