Steffon Seaworth
He had known what reading was for a long time, because Devan never stopped doing it. The Princess Shireen either. And Father read constantly. Everywhere his elders went it seemed crackling parchment trailed them, or they were splattered with the black ink Steffon wasn't allowed to touch. First it was Devan and then Father. Then they had roped in Stanny. His big brother who was only almost two years older but always said he was two years older and so Steff had to do what he said. Devan and Shireen and the royal maester had started Stanny in on the parchment and Steff almost wished he would just come back and boss him around occasionally, just so he'd be around. Steff had to play with the babies of the court now, the little Florents and all the Tommys and Jons.
He was allowed into the Small Council once — only once, when His Grace the King Stannis was in a particularly good temper. "Come in, young ser," the king had said to him, passing him by in the long corridor leading to the council chambers. Steff had hidden behind Devan. Surely there was a mistake. "Steffon Seaworth, I mean you," and his voice was somehow commanding and amused at the same time. In the year Steff had been at the castle, he had never heard the king sound like that. "Come to council and see how your father and brother serve at court. You will need to know in time."
Steff would never forget that first Small Council meeting. Men talking loud, then low, then loud again, and always his father to keep a lid on the tempers the way he had at home. This is home now, Steffon reminded himself.
Then it came time to read the ravens. Steff thought that was funny, the image of someone picking up a raven and reading it — but no, it was just what lords said when they meant a parchment that had come from a raven. Devan began to read, but the king interrupted.
"My Hand will read the raven," he said, taking the first parchment from Devan. That meant Father. Father read well, though not as wonderfully as Devan, who sounded like a knight from the stories when he read aloud. Father read the raven, and when he was done, the king nodded once in approval and set the parchment aside. Devan began to read the next one.
"My Hand will read this as well," said the king. Devan stared. Father raised his bushy eyebrows and took the stack of parchment, very gently, from Devan. He read the rest of the ravens in his calm, steady voice that Steff had so missed while Father was away all those months. All the lords talked while Steff looked at the tapestries on the walls. A stag chased a cat chased a stag all the way around the room. When he got to the end he started again, and then the Small Council was over.
Later, he told Princess Shireen what had happened. "Is he angry with Devan?" Steff fretted. "Why wouldn't he want Devan to read?"
The princess had laughed. "The king is very proud of your father for learning to read," she said. She leaned over and set a book of her own in front of Steffon, opening to the first page. "And I would say it's your turn to learn soon, too. Perhaps we should begin."
Shireen Baratheon
The history books were full of kings, of course. And where there were kings, there were Hands. She had heard her uncle Robert's famous proclamation on what the Hand's duties were to the king — it was whispered in the hallways, laughed over in the stables — "The King eats, and the Hand takes the shit." It had shocked her the first time she heard it, but she was younger then. It was true of Jon Arryn and Ned Stark, surely. Shireen knew that. It was true of Tywin Lannister before that. Perhaps it was true of Prince Viserys and of Hightower and Merryweather and Connington, perhaps they all built what the king dreamt and all washed their hands in vain, all those Hands in the books that Shireen had been reading since she was big enough to hold a book up.
"My first memory is reading the spine of a book on Maester Cressen's table," she had told Devan once. "No one believes that, though. They say I was too young to read. What was yours?"
Devan had said something about docks and a wailing baby brother. But he had also said: "I believe you. Why shouldn't I?" That was the beginning of her confiding in Devan. Now she trusted him like a brother, like more than a brother — she trusted him like a king is meant to trust his Hand.
Like her father trusted Davos.
Baratheon and Seaworth, she thought often. The dreamers and the builders. When she was queen, if the king did not somehow father a baby brother — which seemed unlikely, given that her mother Selyse had been traveling in Essos for over a year with only her priestess for company and her god for protection — would Devan be her Hand? She hoped not, but she couldn't say that. She wanted him as her equal, not her servant. She could tell Devan anything, but she couldn't tell him this.
Instead, she spoke to Maester Pylos. She remembered when he had come to serve her father — a pleasant, grave young man, nothing like the maester she had loved from birth, who had loved her as a granddaughter. Pylos was not family. He was a teacher and a healer, and as Shireen grew older he began to be something like a friend, but he was not family, and that was one reason she was able to ask him things she couldn't ask anyone else.
"Was there ever a Hand who was so well-respected by his king until Ser Davos?"
Pylos looked at her for a very long time. She wondered what she had said wrong.
"Your ancestor Orys Baratheon," he said after some time, "was Hand to Aegon Targaryen. You have read of Aegon the Conqueror, of course ..."
Shireen interrupted. "He rode a dragon, and he married his sisters."
Pylos nodded. "And he caused the Painted Table to be created. Do you know he was born on Dragonstone?"
"Like I was," Shireen mused. "But my great-great- ... whatever he was ... was his Hand?"
At this question, Pylos became silent again.
"What is it? Please don't tell me they hated each other too."
"No. It is said that Orys Baratheon was Aegon's only friend. Aegon respected him above any other man, and trusted him with his life and his kingdom. And so Aegon created the office of Hand of the King to honor Orys." Pylos closed his eyes, searching for the exact words. "'My shield, my stalwart, my strong right hand.'"
Shireen clapped her own hands. "That's exactly it," she said, gladness in her voice. "That's Davos to my father." She was not a demonstrative girl by nature, but she had been affectionate as a child with Cressen and on instinct she threw her arms around Pylos before running lightly out of the room. She was going to tell Steff and Stanny about Orys Baratheon and how he became the Hand to the king Aegon the Conquerer. They would love to hear the story.
Samwell Tarly
Sam had hardly known King Stannis at the Wall, but he remembered a harsh, cold man, a demanding ruler whose words were edged with serrated iron. He had tried mainly to stay out of the king's way. He hadn't seen the Wall again, and he hadn't seen Stannis, or sweet Shireen, now a woman half-grown, for well over a year until he arrived in King's Landing. Sam could not say he looked forward to the meeting. What would Stannis be like as a monarch? Harder and more brutal, Sam reckoned. Better to deliver the news about the dragonglass cache and go on his way. Back again to Oldtown, and Gilly and the young boy he had learned to love.
But first, King Stannis.
"Your Grace," Sam said, bowing as low as his girth would allow him. He winced for the inevitable remark about his weight, but it did not come.
The first thing he noticed about the king when he rose again was that he looked healthier. Sam's training taught him to look for signs of disease, and he had seen plenty and more at the Wall. Stannis hadn't looked ill, exactly, but he had hardly looked hale. He had looked, Sam thought, like a shadow in armor. Only Gilly understood him when he talked like that.
There was not exactly warmth in the king's face as they spoke but Sam thought Stannis looked like a man comfortable in himself, secure and high and proud. Noble, in a way he had never looked at the Wall.
Sam was surprised to find himself thinking that Stannis Baratheon made quite a good king.
In Oldtown, he had heard about the Hand of the King who had returned from the dead, bringing Rickon Stark, all the Manderly host, and a great direwolf. Davos Seaworth had gone to the island of the cannibals, had enlisted unicorns, had been brought back from a beheading by a little girl with hair as green as grass. Sam thought Lord Seaworth must be a man who could enslave magic, ensnare myth — a worthy lieutenant to the fearsome Warrior of Light.
"And where's the wife?" Sam overheard two women cleaning chamber pots. "In Essos with the Red Woman, that's where. His Grace won't be getting an heir any time soon at that rate."
"His Grace won't be getting an heir on any woman now Lord Seaworth is back," said the other. Sam raised his eyebrows and stayed silent.
"And his wife knows that, but she's got her three," the first maid laughed. "Marya Seaworth knows more than she lets on."
They passed by and Sam stood, blinking. So Stannis and Lord Seaworth — the king and the Hand? It seemed impossible. It was said that Stannis was incapable of love, even of feeling. Jon Snow had said it himself. "When he only threatens to kill me once a day," he'd said, grinning, "I'll know he's fallen in love with me."
The steward Satin had laughed then too — a knowing, sardonic laugh — and Sam remembered being very uncomfortable. Of course Satin laid with men, and whether or not he kept Jon company on those long frigid nights was a matter of much debate. But not King Stannis — surely not, even with the formidable Davos Seaworth, warrior of the unicorns and mermen though he may be. Sam found himself pacing the floor.
The sun had gone down before a squire came to summon Sam to dinner. Candles lit the table, spread with fruit and meats and ale, and at the head of it sat the king. Just to his right was a smaller man, unprepossessing, with salt-and-pepper in his beard and thinning hair. He wore gloves, even while eating.
When he stood to beckon Sam to them, his bearing was friendly, fatherly, peaceful. He could see why Stannis was more at ease with this man around.
"Samwell Tarly — my Hand, Lord Davos Seaworth," said the king by way of introduction. And from the way he said it — savoring the words of the title and name like a Dornish winemaker relishing a rare vintage — Sam knew.
Sam made polite, quiet conversation, but watched the Hand and the king for long hours as the meal passed, how Shireen sat between them sometimes and was equally affectionate with both, how the king seemed to inhabit his life more comfortably than he ever had at the Wall, how the time passed on the waves of their conversation — and how Lady Marya Seaworth kissed her husband goodnight, smiling at his soft word to her, before taking their two youngest sons to put them to bed.
Late that night, Sam went to his bed full of wine, good food, a head full of Davos' stories of his travels and a pleasant satisfaction that all was well in at least small part of this vast kingdom. And if the cause of that was one seafaring man who had dropped anchor and steadied a volatile king, he could not protest.
Lady Asha
Jon Snow had not accepted the lands or title Stannis would give him, but Ser Justin Massey had had no such qualms. "But I would have turned them all down for you, my lady," the smiling knight said on the day they were betrothed.
"I don't believe you," she'd told him. He had never had to choose. But his face fell — so sad, on such a happy face! — and she kissed him sweetly, and he smiled once more. He was not a bad sort. He had been the only man to be truly kind to her on that long and deadly march that seemed so long ago. She would never forget how he had shared the last food and his furs with her. So they were wed, Justin and Asha, with His Grace standing witness. Asha had once believed Stannis was jealous of Massey; that he had wanted her for himself, despite his own marriage vows and despite the fire priestess who was said to warm his bed at the Wall.
It had been a long time since Asha thought Stannis wanted her.
She was waiting for Justin outside the council chambers when she saw him instead — the king with whom she had starved, with whom she had pleaded for her brother's life, and whose humanity she had seen finally win out. She had seen so much of Stannis Baratheon, in every mood from bitterly angry to triumphant. But the look on his face now was new and it stopped her heart for a moment.
What was it?
He was speaking to someone — his Hand, the Onion Lord, or whatever the fools in this castle called him now. He had not noticed Asha, indeed she thought he might not notice a dragon if it happened to come down the corridor. His eyes were fixed on Davos Seaworth, his gaze burning — she could feel it from where she stood. The color was in his cheeks and when Davos spoke to him Asha saw an expression pass over his face that she could only describe as a mixture of longing, bliss and hunger. The king looked, Asha thought, like a man who was being fucked all too slowly by the most talented courtesan in the seven kingdoms. And he still had all his clothes on!
Justin emerged from the other door then. "My lady!" he exclaimed, all eager surprise.
She sank her fingers into his forearm. "To our chambers, Justin," she said. She did not care who heard her. "Now."
"To what can I attribute this sudden mood, my lady?" Justin obviously could not believe his luck as Asha stripped his breeches off, not bothering with laces or tunics, and forcibly dragged him into their bed.
"Attribute it to King Stannis, if you like."
"Stannis!" Justin gasped. "If he has dishonored you — no, he is our king — but my lady wife — if he has somehow —"
"Shut your mouth, ser, or I will do it for you."
Justin shut his mouth. Asha closed her eyes and — she almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it — let her husband be Stannis in her mind and herself the Onion Knight, on the receiving end of that starving blue stare.
Varys
The Master of Whisperers knew when to keep quiet. The King and his Hand, it seemed, did not.
Even in the dead of night, the king should be wary of listening ears, ears in the walls, ears in the wardrobes. Though even the guards dozed, the horses stood sleeping, and the ravens were quiet, His Grace should have been more cautious.
The man who held the Seven Kingdoms in his hand, the man who had slain the Great Enemy and slain many evil men, the man who seemed to fear no death and wish for nothing, was begging his lover for more, for his body to overcome, for his lips to tease and release, for the shortened fingers to roam over hot skin and mussed hair.
"Davos, Davos," Stannis said, his voice a desperation. And the answering whisper, so quiet only a spider could hear. "Yes," Davos said. And then there were no more words.
The Spider had heard it before.
He closed the door quietly, and he held his tongue.
The Hand of the King
"You'll let Devan read this time, I hope," Davos ventured to say, his smile warm to take the sting out of his words.
"If I must," the king replied crossly, lacing up a stiff leather boot.
"Devan reads well," Davos said. "The Tarly boy also — I only wish they'd had more time to spend together."
"Sam Tarly was in a tearing hurry to get back to his woman. And Devan — yes, he reads well." Stannis stood, stretching with a wince — Davos swallowed dryly at the sight. It was no wonder Stannis' muscles were tight, he thought, he had clung to Davos so tightly just hours ago that it was all Davos had been able to do not to cry out. He reached a hand out now and ran it down Stannis' side, but Stannis stepped away jerkily with a reproachful look on his face. "He reads well," the king continued, once safely out of Davos' reach. "But it is your voice I want."
The wave of tenderness for Stannis that overwhelmed Davos then almost made him weak, and he was bereft of speech. So many years of their life had been spent achingly apart, but now they were together and would stay so, Davos reckoned, until they died.
"I'll read to you again this evening," he managed. Stannis was becoming the king, changing from Davos' rapturous lover to the iron-fisted ruler of the Seven Kingdoms before his eyes. Yet when he looked at Davos, the artifice slipped. The spellbinding blue eyes met his own, and despite all Stannis' efforts to hold it back, the quiet contentment shone through.