DAVOS

The early autumn sun shone brightly over Storm's End this afternoon, high and clear and golden. A strong sea breeze whistled past the walls of the ancient fortress, wailing through cracks in the stone of the great tower that yet stood against them. King Stannis cast a pensive, wistful look backward, for just a moment, and then turned ahead. It was one of the only acts of weakness Davos had ever seen from him.

Sharp-eyed Lord Monford Velaryon, the Master of Driftmark, spied something on the horizon. He turned to the king. "They come."

Shortly later the others saw it as well. The forest of banners in the distance were manyfold: the Tyrell green field with a rose of gold, another green field with a dark green turtle for House Estermont, another with a scarlet huntsman for the Tarlys, Caron's small black birds on a field of yellow, the golden tree on a silver field of the Rowans, the russet field with two white feathers that stood for Penrose, House Oakheart's three oak-leaves on gold, the quartered yellow suns on pink and white moons on blue that stood for Tarth, and even, provocatively, the red-golden head of a fox encircled by blue flowers that was the sigil of House Florent, King Stannis's wife's House. But the tallest banner, and of greatest expanse, was a crowned black stag rearing on hind legs on a golden field, the same sigil that fluttered in the wind above them now. Davos saw the king tense as he saw it. His vain little brother did not seek merely to usurp him but to mock him, too, with the knowledge that his father and uncle by marriage had chosen Renly's side.

Lord Renly's rebel bannermen rode through the Vale of Ranimon with confident gait on their magnificent war-bred horses. Stannis's men, having reached the place of meeting first, awaited them. Their own snorting stallions were equally well-bred, but both sides knew it was an illusion. King Stannis had fewer than a thousand mounted men here, while Lord Renly had taken twenty-thousand from Bitterbridge.

"My lord brother," the pretender called out cheerfully. The youngest Baratheon was clad far too extravagantly for a battle; he wore a satin cloak over his velvet doublet and, around his neck, a gold and emerald necklace. Davos noticed that for once he was not isolated among Stannis's counsellors. The eyes of Lord Sunglass, Lord Velaryon and Lord Celtigar, too, were narrowed with contempt.

Stannis acknowledged, tersely, "Lord Renly."

"You ought not to use my banner," Renly Baratheon admonished. "If you do, the battle will be terribly confused."

"Your banner?" It had not taken long for his rebellious brother to stir Stannis's wrath. Davos thought it was deliberate. "I am the eldest living scion of House Baratheon. You have less right to that banner than I do."

"I am the king," Renly said with a smile, "and you are not, so I will use whatever banner I may choose. Tell me, brother, if our beloved Robert ever meant you to be head of House Baratheon, why did he make you Lord of Dragonstone?"

The blow struck with a vengeance. After Stannis had failed to stop Prince Viserys and Queen Rhaella, the last Targaryens, escaping from Dragonstone across the Narrow Sea, his elder brother King Robert Baratheon, out of petty spite, had deprived him of their ancestral seat and given it to Renly, exiling Stannis to that very same remote, poor island with few vassals and few comforts, so that he might never forget his failure. Lord Renly was the sort of man who delighted in mentioning it.

King Stannis was long in replying. "Robert meant to be succeeded by the rightful heir of our House," he replied with clenched teeth, "and that is I, not you or Joffrey. I daresay you know it well. If you did not, would you have thought it possible to displace Cersei and put your supposed wife into Robert's bed as the new queen?"

Stannis was not without skill in taunting his brother as well. Renly was so caught up in the wording of the accusation that he did not bother to deny it. "My supposed wife, Stannis?" he said with a laugh. "Margaery and I were wedded in the sight of the gods and many of the men of the Seven Kingdoms, and without being exiled from our own marriage bed."

The poor jibe failed to rile Stannis. He scented blood. "Wedded, yes," he said, "I don't doubt that. But a marriage requires a bedding too, and that you have never been able to provide." He flung the final blow. "Though mayhaps Ser Loras will gainsay me."

The proud lords arrayed behind Renly, the flower of the nobility of the stormlands and the Reach, shuffled in voiceless discomfort. Some things were open secrets but best not said aloud. "What do you mean by that, Lord Stannis?" Loras Tyrell demanded, urging his horse forward from his place at Renly's side. He drew his sword. "If you dare insult me, do so to my face."

"My lord brother," responded Stannis, "will the sanctity of a banner of peace be violated by your man?"

That is quite the parting blow, Davos thought. 'Your man' usually meant a man sworn to service, but under the circumstances it could mean something different. "Put up your steel," Renly was forced to say. When Loras did not, he raised his voice. "Put up your steel!"

Stung by the anger in his king's voice, the Knight of Flowers sheathed his sword and returned to Renly's side. Stannis leant back in satisfaction. Davos thought, At least the battle of words is his.

"Enough of this," King Stannis said. "I'm told you came here with a proposal, my lord brother. Make it."

"Very well," said Renly, shaken but not off-balance for long. His poise was swift in returning. He spoke calmly, pleasantly, as if he truly expected to be obeyed: "I propose that you dismount, bend your knee, and swear me your allegiance."

Stannis choked back rage. "That you shall never have."

"You served Robert, why not me?"

"Robert was my elder brother. You are the younger."

"Younger, bolder, and far more comely…"

Comely? He thinks his handsomeness should make him king? Davos supposed that Renly might have meant it as a joke, but it made little difference. He traded disdainful looks with Lord Sunglass, not bothering to make it subtle. For a moment Lord Renly flushed.

Stannis saw the reaction and pounced on it. "Comely," he repeated, drawing out the word. "Yes, I suppose you are at that. Were the comeliest man in the realm to earn kingship, perhaps 'twould be you. But that is not how men are ruled. The elder brother comes before the younger."

Lord Guncer Sunglass added, quietly, "My lords, would it please you that there be precedent for an unscrupulous man to alter that law among yourselves?"

The high lords Renly had taken with him traded glances. It was a blue-armoured knight next to Renly, bearing his standard, who urged his horse forward and declared, "Our loyalty to King Renly is absolute."

"Is it?" said Stannis. "So you would that in your own House the claim of the younger son should come before the elder?"

"Your claim," said Renly, "matters as much as did Aerys Targaryen's, and for the same reason. No man wants you to be king, brother. Even your lords bannermen follow you only out of duty."

Stannis clenched his jaw, his face taut. "I swore I would never treat with you while you wore your traitor's crown. Would that I had kept to that vow."

"You would that you had died?" asked Renly. "You cannot possibly defeat me. I've four times your numbers, and ahorse rather than foot. You are my own blood and I've no wish to slay you. I am merciful. If you still prefer to live among the memories of old grievances than the harshness of your present world and Storm's End is still what you wish for, you may have it, even after this defiance. I will give it to you as Robert gave it to me, as a brother's gift. All I need to see are your knees falling."

Then there is little else to say, Davos thought. His king said, "We shall see."

"We shall," acknowledged Renly. "I regret it. Brother."

"Brother."

"Sers, my lords." Renly's men wheeled around, and retreated from the afternoon sun.

Stannis looked older than Davos had ever seen him. "My brother has made his choice. Sers, my lords, with me."

They returned to Stannis's camp around Storm's End. The castle stood defiant still, but it had been quiet. The king was not so great a fool as to attempt to storm his brother's castle. He had near five-thousand men. As Mace Tyrell had proven, for a castle like Storm's End, if well-garrisoned, a dozen times that number might not be enough.

It was not long after reaching camp that Davos was tapped on the shoulder by a messenger boy leading a horse. "Ser," the lad said, "His Grace the King wishes to see you at your earliest convenience."

Davos mounted the horse and headed to Stannis's tent, a great sprawling thing of cloth-of-gold with dancing stags in black, inherited from some particularly gaudy ancestor among the Lords of Storm's End. Stannis did not like it much. "Davos," he said, with no further greeting. "I wished to speak with you without my lords near."

"I am at your service," Davos said with a bow.

"I know," Stannis said, not ungently. "I wonder. What is it that we are to do with my lord brother?"

"Hope he is captured in the battle," Davos offered at once. "You said he was never a great warrior. It sounds to my ears it can be done."

"Or he will die."

Stannis had not lost his penchant for blunt speaking.

"Or he may die," Davos acknowledged. "But it's he as chose to set himself against you. All you can do is try."

"You may be right." The king seemed oddly pensive. His voice was soft. "I never thought it would come to this. The fool that I am, I truly thought—or mayhaps I truly wanted to think—that he might listen to reason. My own brother. I sheltered him in the siege of Storm's End, you know. Even when the rest of us were subsiding on the thinnest scraps of boot leather and rat, myself with no greater share than the lowliest of my servants, I always made certain he was to get more than the rest of us did. He was a child, I told myself, a growing boy, but that was not the reason why. Since our lord father died and Robert saw fit to continue his gallivanting about in the Eyrie with his friend Ned Stark, without the slightest thought for his own family… Maester Cressen and I were both as fathers to him."

Stannis Baratheon steepled his fingers.

"You were a smuggler for a time, Davos. You must know of what I speak. Tell me, how is it that a man may disobey the ties of law and honour and blood in thirst for land and gold and power? Why take joy in such things? Why is there such disloyalty?"

Davos heard the unspoken subtext of the question: What did I do, that my brother went so wrong?

He sighed. "I know not how to answer you, my l—Your Grace," Davos said. "For me, it started when I was a poor lad who didn't want to live all my life as a poor beggar in Flea Bottom like as those around me were. I did little tasks for the smugglers, moved things—men are less like to suspect a child—and I got little coins to reward me for it. It was easy to go from there and become one of them myself. There came a time when I was no longer poor, not at all, in truth, a married man with money enough to feed four sons, but I kept at it, as I still wanted the gold it could get for me. But Lord Renly is different. As a child he never wanted for anything, save, it may be, in the siege, and even then, less than others did. What can I say? For some men 'tis in their nature."

"In their nature," Stannis mused. "Mayhaps so. 'Tis a dark thought, yet also, someways, a bright one." He did not have to say why. If it were in Renly's nature, Stannis was not at fault for it. "Yet it could have been avoided. It very nearly was. You know of what transpired in the Eyrie?"

Davos did not understand why his king had moved to this subject. "Yes."

"'Tis more than passing queer," Stannis said, still in that strange soft voice. "My lady wife told me Lady Arryn seemed not at all mad as some had said of her, and, moreover, near to agreement. She had but to consult her lords bannermen and counsellors further, and thought a treaty within reach a few days away. Lady Arryn was conciliatory in the morning, and yet later that very same day, she was wroth as my lady wife had ever seen her, ranting and raving about greyscale and how it might contaminate her son. Greyscale! I'm told she had asked of it before, on the second day of treating, and discounted it and never spoken of it since. One might suspect a maester of the Citadel, but any maester could have told her that once greyscale stops growing on a woman or a man 'tis over; it rarely stops, but 't has never been heard to stop and start again. And my lady wife tells me Maester Colemon was sympathetic to us. How did Lady Arryn's mind change so suddenly? Is that also in her nature?"

Davos had not the faintest idea, so in all honesty, he said so. "I know not, Your Grace. Mayhaps it is."

Stannis barked a laugh. "That is of little enough use to me, but at least of my onion knight I can expect truth. Of my lords I cannot say that. Begone, Davos. I will see you again on the morrow."

Author's Note: I am curious as to whether anyone will figure out, with the information that I've given here, the answer to a mystery I set up earlier in the story. No single PoV character has all the information necessary to work it out, but the reader does.