Balon Greyjoy stared out the window as his maester finished reading the letter that had arrived that morning by raven from King's Landing, doing his level best to contain the anger boiling through his veins. "Read that last part again," he said, his voice rigid with self-control. "The part just before the salutation."

There was a light cough as the maester cleared his throat and a soft rustle of parchment as he raised the letter again. "We require you, therefore," he quoted in the calm voice of a professional reader, "in accordance with the law of the Realm, to forestall, stay, and prevent any attempt by Ser Harras to resume his place in the succession of House Harlaw or to assume the lordship of that House or any cadet branch thereof, by whatever means you deem fit and proper. Any aid you may require in this regard shall be provided. Given under our hand . . ."

Balon silenced him with a raised hand, not trusting himself to speak without losing his hold on his temper. By the God, the arrogance, he seethed in the privacy of his mind. That he, the Lord Reaper of Pyke, the Son of the Sea Wind, should be spoken to like some damned servant . . .

Ruthlessly he bottled his rage, forcing his still-raised hand to uncurl from the fist he had clenched it into. It had been difficult, the first few times, but he had gotten much better at it, over these past two years. The God knew he had plenty of practice.

Ever since his father had sailed away to the Dornish rebellion he had been given cause for fury, and no opportunity to remedy it. First he had been left in the Isles when there was blood to be spilled and reputations to be made; the only reputation Balon had made from that war had been that of a stay-at-home, and one who had come when called like a dog to boot, after Stannis had summoned him to Sunspear to pledge his fealty. Given a choice, Balon would have stayed on Pyke, but that would have risked Euron being asked to pledge fealty on his behalf, which would all to easily have led to the impression that, as Euron was the one who had done homage, it was Euron who was rightfully Lord of the Iron Isles.

And then his brother, his faithless, false-hearted, traitorous brother, had refused his direct command to come home and instead set himself up as a lord in his own right; a lord who welcomed all who found themselves dissatisfied with Balon's rule, or who simply wanted to honor the Old Way as they couldn't in the Isles. The flood of men, and not just runaway thralls and nameless karls, but fighting-men and lords, to join the traitor's standard had been galling. Even worse, some of them were now coming back, telling tales to any who would listen of the wealth and fame that could be gained in the east, and the honor in which the Ironborn were held as the Kingdom of Myr's seaward shield.

Balon spat out the window. As if it did not matter that to go to Myr was to become one of Robert the Brief's dogs, little better than a hired hand. The Isles were poor, he admitted it, but here the sons of the sea were the masters of their fates, and answered to none but their freely chosen lords. Unfortunately, few of the Ironborn seemed to share his view of the situation; of the fifteen thousand trained warriors that House Greyjoy could theoretically call to their banner, barely eight thousand remained in the Isles. And those that remained were not all they might be. Many were older men, already settled with wives and families and reputations, while others either didn't have the ambition to sail so far to make their reputations or were so troublesome and cross-grained that they couldn't find a crew that would take them. Of the rest, a minority were established lords and their housekarls who had no need to seek fame and fortune in foreign lands, but many more simply didn't like House Greyjoy to the point where even a rebel Greyjoy was unpalatable; those, Balon had learned, often spent their evenings muttering that the current occupant of the Seastone Chair was unworthy of it.

Not that Balon feared an attempt at overthrow; Pyke was not the richest or the largest of the islands, but his hold over those of his directly sworn warriors that still remained to him was still strong, and none of the potential usurpers had the strength to defeat him and every other claimant. For a certainty none of his other brothers would attempt it; Euron seemed content enough as one of Stannis' lapdogs, Urrigon was a dullard, and Aeron was a drunk. And as popular as Victarion was, Balon was still the Lord Reaper, with the power and the ability to reward his followers that that entailed. He was not loved, but he was not openly hated or despised either.

And there were ways of winning the love of the Ironborn. He turned away from the window to fix his maester with a look. "Take dictation," he said, driving the maester to produce parchment, quill, and ink. "To His Grace King Stannis," he began, "I fail to understand the necessity of preventing Ser Harras' assumption of his rightful inheritance. He has done good service in your brother's wars, is a true and faithful son of the Isles, and has committed no crime for which he deserves to be disinherited. All this being so, I cannot justly or honorably forbid him from assuming his inheritance of Grey Garden and his place in the succession to the Lordship of Harlaw." He waved his hand. "Add the usual titles and write out a fair copy for my signature."

As his maester busied himself at the desk he turned back toward the window. Of all qualities the Ironborn respected courage and strength most of all, and the best way for him to show both in this situation was to champion his bannerman's cause against the king, wherever that road led him. If nothing else his good-brother the Reader would be properly grateful; Harras was his cousin, after all. And if what he had heard of Harras' deeds in the east was true, then he would be no mean personage himself in years to come. He would only be inheriting Grey Garden and not Harlaw itself, as the Reader had two living sons, but a man with a name such as Harras had earned in Myr would not be one to trifle with.

Although if Balon played his cards right, his name would grow to outshine even his treacherous brother's. Victarion might bend the knee to a greenlander king and eat the scraps from his table, but Balon would stand tall and tell an even greater king where to shove his commands. He knew which course would earn greater respect from his people.

XXX

The Bahaan Bakery was one of the institutions of Blackpetal Lane. Owned and worked by the same family for three generations, it served almost every family in a three-block radius, as well as a few noble houses before the Siege, and it had done so with a consistency of quality, price, and quantity that had made them one of the most formidable bakeries in their district. Bakers starting a new shop knew better than to try and open a storefront in the area Bahaan's served; they would never be able to survive, much less turn a profit.

Old Janos, the current patriarch of the Bahaan family, lived his life after the Siege in almost exactly the same way that he had done before it. Every day at the fourth hour before sunrise he awoke, along with his wife, his two adult sons and their wives, and his six grandchildren, and led them downstairs to light the ovens. That first ritual of the day done, he led them in a quick prayer to the Lord of Light; strictly speaking, the Dawn Prayer had to be said, well, at dawn, but High Priest Danikos had issued a dispensation to the city's bakers in view of the fact that dawn saw them already hard at work, and High Priest Kalarus had confirmed it after his ascension.

Prayers finished, the bakery became a hive of activity as the family prepared for the day's business. While the children put out the day-old bread and made sure the front of the store was swept and clean for their customers, the adults mixed the day's dough. Janos led the storm of activity at the mixing and kneading counters as he had done every day for the forty years since his father's early death, the precision with which he measured out water and flour and salt and yeast and the care with which he mixed and kneaded belied by the speed with which he did so. Under his knobby-knuckled hands a loaf of bread could go from raw ingredients to rising dough with almost unbelievable speed, faster even than his sons, whom he had taught every trick and secret he knew and had the strength and stamina of comparative youth to speed their work. There were things you learned in almost sixty years as a baker.

It was said that Janos Bahaan was the finest baker in the tradesmen's district, perhaps the finest in Myr. He never said so himself, had never dreamed of saying so. To him it was simply his life, the life given to him when he had been born in the upstairs bedroom where he and his wife had brought their children into the world.

By the time that the last round of loaves were leaving the oven the sun was coming up, and the customers with it. Old Arario and Vogonno, the two City Watchmen who had walked the night patrol in their part of the district, had been killed in the sack that had followed the Siege, but they had been replaced by Varynno and Lazello, also City Watchmen of the night patrol, who on their way home from the Watch house stopped by to pick up a loaf apiece. Janos chatted with them briefly, as he had done with Arario and Vogonno, and learned that they had had a quiet shift, with no murders, only two robberies, and, unusually, a burglary. He assured them that he kept his windows locked during the nights (he did) and kept his valuables safely hidden (under a floorboard underneath the bed he shared with his wife for the most part, although his sons had convinced him to open an account with the Iron Bank that the weekly profit now went into) and they went on their way, Lazello ruffling the hair of Janos' youngest grandson affectionately as he went.

Next there came the servants, maids and errand boys collecting the standing orders of those noble houses that Bahaan's provided bread for; a noble house's cook certainly could and would make bread, but that was the bread that was served on special occasions or to guests. The bread that the household ate on a day to day basis could only be provided in the necessary quantities by a dedicated bakery. They were paid servants now, not slaves, but the gossip was much the same, even if most of the names had changed; Lord So-and-So was in a temper about taxes, young Master Such-and-Such was chasing after Lord So-and-So's daughter, Lady This-and-That was entertaining male callers while her husband was out on business. Janos responded to all of these little tales with a shake of the head, or a laugh, or a wry comment, or an exaggerated shrug, as the case called for, while he filled their baskets with their orders, and sent them on their way with thanks for their business and a kind word or two to those who seemed to need it.

Then there came everyone else; tradesmen, small merchants, notaries, day workers, students, City Watchmen, even a few soldiers seeking to supplement their daily rations with better bread than they received in the barracks kitchens. With these last Janos had initially decided to charge them less than the usual rate, in order to be on the safe side, but the soldiers had insisted on paying the full price; their sergeants, they had explained, would go spare if they found out that they were cheating their own people. Janos, in some bemusement, had acquiesced, and had spread the word to his fellow bakers to not even think about cheating the soldiers. If a sergeant's threatened wrath could make soldiers behave then a sergeant was a fearsome creature indeed, and not one that it would be wise to cross.

After the first rush of business the day settled into its usual ebb and flow. A slight lull in the mid-morning during which the family ate their second meal of the day (the first was usually eaten on the move, or in what few lulls existed in the pre-dawn hours) followed by another rush around noon as people who hadn't gotten their loaves that morning got one for luncheon and one or two more for supper. A final spurt of activity occurred around the third hour past noon, when those who discovered that they didn't have quite enough bread for supper dashed in to buy a loaf or two, and then the shop closed. But the daily work didn't finish there. The children plied their brooms again, while the adults banked the oven fires and cleaned the counters; bakers learned to be fastidious from a young age, in order to stave off mice and ants, and Janos was a firm believer that if you took care of your store, then your store would take care of you.

The family ate supper earlier than non-bakers did, around five hours past noon, thanks to their earlier start to the day, and then the usual household affairs occurred. The grandchildren would take their lessons from their grandmother, Janos' sons would do whatever work was needed around the store or the upstairs living quarters while their father calculated the daily take, and their wives would do whatever washing, sewing, or cleaning came to hand. It was a day like any other, and in the forty years since he had taken over the shop Janos had only missed twenty such days of work. Four for the births of each of his children (his two sons, a daughter who was now married to a butcher, and a second daughter who had been stillborn), three for the marriages of his children, eight for the births of his grandchildren (four from one son, two from the other, and two from his daughter), one when his mother had died, the day in which the city had been stormed, and the three days of the sack.

Bahaan's had survived the sack of course; by law buildings containing bakeries had to be constructed entirely of stone, against the risk of fire, so what few fires had been set had posed no danger. And Janos had never owned a slave, had never had the wealth to buy and maintain one or the need for one, and he had been known as one who would give a sympathetic ear and a kind word to anyone, even if they wore collar and brand. Even in the artisan's district they had heard that of him, and so he and his had been spared, thanks to the small band of former household slaves who had joined him and his sons in guarding the bakery and directed potential looters to look elsewhere.

Immediately after the sack had ended he had reopened the bakery. People didn't stop needing bread simply because the world had been broken into pieces and reassembled in entirely the wrong order, after all. And more than that, Janos had needed the world to feel normal, after the sack, and the only way in which his world could be normal was to open the bakery and put in a solid day's work. That had been noticed, and his name writ down somewhere, though he had known it not. If he had had his say his name would have been forgotten, but that was out of his hands. Lord Stark had not given much thought to the use of informants among the people of the city when he was the King's Hand, but the new Hand, Ser Gerion or whatever his name was, had less faith in his fellow subjects it seemed. Which had led to the change in Janos Bahaan's life.

It had been three months since the man had come to him and explained what the Hand wanted him to do. In most ways it was quite simple; do as he had done for forty years and more and listen to the talk of his customers, but this timeremember what they said, and if anything struck him as dangerous or something that the Hand should know about, report it. And also report if there was nothing much to say in either regard, so that they would be able to know if someone was impersonating him.

That last part had struck Janos as really quite silly (Impersonate him, of all people?) but the man had been quite serious. It was a known device, he had said, his brow furrowed, and people had died because of it before. So after Janos finished calculating the daily take (reading, writing, and figuring were necessary skills for an independent man of business to have, even a baker, who was normally considered among the lower occupations worthy of a guild), he pulled a sheet of parchment across the desk towards him and began to write. It was the report which he was supposed to hand off to a courier once every sennight, and so far he had nothing of interest to report.

Oh to be sure, he had heard rumors of complaint; the Myrish noble class had been all but extinguished during the sack but the remaining rich merchants and burghers lived in fear and horror that they would be remembered and dragged out to their deaths, the guildmasters and the other rich men of the city complained about taxes, the few small ship captains who came through his door complained incessantly of the vagaries of wind and wave and trade, but everyone complained, didn't they? Janos considered his life to be very nearly perfect, in its way, but even he had some complaints about how it had all gone. He could have done without his mother dying, for instance, and while time had dulled the pain hardly a day went by that he didn't remember the daughter who hadn't survived. And of course there were the myriad minor frustrations of everyday life. People went through hardships, they complained about them, and then, for the most part, they picked up and moved on. So those grumbles he didn't set down in his report; they simply weren't important, in his opinion.

Nor did he have any dangerous rumors to report. For pity's sake, he ran a bakery not some smoky tavern down by the docks where you could buy a slit throat for the price of a mug of ale. It wasn't as if foreign spies were going to walk through his door and spill their darkest secrets like rolls from a dropped basket.

So he simply wrote down the date and nothing of interest to report, folded the parchment carefully, and put it back in the ledger that only he and his wife ever touched and only he ever opened. Two more days, and he would be able to take it out, carry it into the alley behind the store, and leave it under a certain rock, where it would be replaced by a handful of copper coins; due consideration for his services, he had been given to understand, given the lack of danger in his work and the unlikelihood that he would uncover something worth silver or gold. Janos shrugged; he was a respectable man who ran the most successful bakery in the tradesmen's district, it wasn't as if he needed the money. He would never be rich, but he wouldn't leave his family poor, ether, and in all honesty he was content with that much. An excess of money, he had observed over the years, seemed to act like some kind of disease that made a man incapable of thinking right. If he were the ambitious sort he might have thought about how high he could rise in the Crown's service, but Janos was fundamentally an unambitious man. He was a baker, his father and grandfather had been bakers, and his sons and grandsons would be bakers. That was how the world worked.

He poured another mug of ale for himself and blew off the foam. He would much rather, he thought sourly, have never come to the Hand's attention.