The Best is Yet to Be

By littlelights

Apologies my friends for the lack of updates. I've been working on a few work projects which have sucked up my time. I wrote and re-wrote this chapter more than anticipated, and made great headway on the upcoming chapters. Can't wait for you to read them!

Disclaimer: I am not making any money, blah, blah, blah.

XxX

Chapter 12

Ser Davos clenched his teeth in worry and frustration. It was a habit he had adopted when serving King Stannis as his Hand, when circumstances were spinning out of control and there was little for the retired smuggler to do than clench his jaw and anticipate how to navigate the sea of troubles ahead. Duty and loyalty to Stannis Baratheon had often been a difficult balancing act. One knew what to expect when working with the stubborn Stag lord, and while it had landed Ser Davos in chains and a dark cell more than once, he'd walked away relatively unscathed.

This frustration was different. It caused his jaw to tighten longer and release only when a deep breath was required. Davos could explain away the reason why his heart pounded loudly in his chest to the quick pace he'd kept traversing the powdery paths through the nearby settlement. Worry, concern, and alarm contributed the stronger kick to his chest, if he was honest with himself. Not that he would be able to voice such a thing aloud or else the reputation of Winterfell's Stewardess would soon lay in tatters for all to see.

A sprinkling of fresh snow on the frozen paths of Winter Town covered up most of the animal dung, mud, and unidentifiable muck underneath, giving it a clean and agreeable appearance. The village folk in line for their midday meal near the communal kitchens were focused intently on the prospect of hot food instead of the hurried steps of the King's Hand and the blacksmith turned nobleman sporting a sooty face.

Turning from the main thoroughfare, the men wove their way through the roughly hewn wooden houses to the stand-alone structures near the last storehouse. Everything was as the kitchen boy professed. A guard was stationed outside the storage building, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other in an attempt to stay warm. Worried faces of women peeked through the slatted windows from the larger house, while the smaller structure to the right offered little discernable details apart from a thin wisp of smoke rising gently from the chimney.

Ser Davos accessed the small croft, his eyes examining the small slats for signs of life. He slowed his walk, stopping a good five feet from the door. The inner calm cultivated by decades of smuggling and service to the best and worst of kings settled in the forefront of his mind. It was better to have a clearer head than an emotional response to this situation.

"Aren't you going to knock?" Lord Gendry Baratheon asked, looking between the door and his friend. "She won't know we're here otherwise."

"Do you remember the last time Kings Landing was struck by sweaty pox?" Davos kept his voice low as to not be picked up by a passerby. The younger man shook his head in the affirmative, but the hesitancy in his response told the Hand of the King exactly what he needed to know. "You were little then, I take it."

"My mum died of it," Gendry supplied without emotion. "One of the women in the tavern said she and I were sick at the same time. I pulled through and she didn't."

"Confined to a room, I take it?"

"Yeah, she died in bed while I slept. A man came round the next day with a piece of cloth wrapped around the lower part of his face and put her body on a cart. I watched it disappear down an empty street, which was strange as I always saw so many people walking about."

"You were too young to know, but the sweaty pox was one of the gentler plagues on the city. The little ones like you came through alright. It was their parents and grandparents who died by the hundreds. The cart men were paid for by Jon Arryn to carry away the dead and burn their bodies so the disease wouldn't spread. What you won't recall are all the other illness which swept the city before your father became king. Bloody pox, sweating sickness, heaving fever, and red chills were just a few of the things that could kill anyone at any time. When disease swept through the city, it swallowed whole families. The nobles didn't care much. They just rode off to their castles and manors in the countryside or locked themselves in the Red Keep and let death carry parts of the population away. It didn't matter to them much. There would always be more people arriving from the farms or the far away cities who would replace the dead. It was like that for as long as anyone could remember. Until Jon Arryn, of course. He was a good man. Told everyone to stay in their homes and not come out if they were sick. I remember he told us to stand away from the doors and talk with those who were sick."

"Did it work?" Gendry asked, a disbelieving eyebrow arched into place.

"Well, it certainly didn't hurt." Davos retorted, his eyes scanning the structure for some sign of life.

The two men stood in the snow for a few minutes. The people in the neighboring house opened their door and called out to the Lord Hand and his companion. Grief was etched on the faces of the two graying mothers who stood in the doorway.

"How do you fare, goodmothers?" Ser Davos kept an upbeat tone in his voice, one which he adopted to assuage fear in those who needed help the most. Judging from the dullness in their eyes, all was not well.

"M'lords," The taller of the two women replied, worry and sorrow made the thin skin of her face look overtaxed and too white. "Three of the little ones are sick. Me oldest began sweating overly much this morning. All of 'em shake with fever and then chills over and over again. They're always crying for water, but the Stewardess forbade us from going out. We melted snow, but it's not enough. And we have no food to speak of."

An illness which struck multiple times during the night was a chilling reminder of Davos' upbringing in Kings Landing. With winter all around them, and with few places to run away from this form of death, the last thing Winter Town needed was panic spreading through the populace.

"We'll have someone fetch food and water and deliver to a spot just outside the door," Davos assured, nodding to Aden. Do you have enough wood for your hearth?"

"Enough to get us by for the day." The other woman replied shortly.

"I'll see that more is brought and stacked outside tomorrow." He assured in a calming voice.

Through the rustling of the wind through the snow, the weather-beaten door to the smaller croft opened. From the darkness inside, the Stewardess appeared. She had lost the trappings of her usual tidy appearance. Half her hair was pulled back from her face, leaving short tendrils flying away in the wind. She walked a few feet away from the cottage, placed the small cauldron in her hands on the ground, and began filling the pot with clean snow. It may have been her exhaustion or a dogged determination to complete the task, but Medda did not bother to look up from her work until the snow had been packed heavily in the pot.

She rose, rather ungracefully to her feet and clearly wobbled back to the cottage door. Davos' heart leapt with relief to see her alive, although the feeling was quickly muted by concern for her obvious exhaustion. Caretakers bore the brunt of keeping everyone in a house alive, and more often than not, those charged with caring for the wellbeing of others found themselves taken ill or dying alongside the family they served.

Although the lessons of the past had been on his mind earlier, his feet unconsciously moved toward the woman he'd been searching for. He dropped all pretenses when he saw her turn and look directly at him. "Medda," he called, heart pounding and shaking.

She eyed him wearily, as if weighing how much to tell him. This was the calculating look he'd only seen a handful of times, when a man was accused of beating his wife, or when word of a family found frozen dead of starvation reached the keep. Her dark brown eyes were red rimmed from exhaustion and time spent tending to the hearth. She was a shadow of herself, as if someone had plucked all the warmth out of her eyes and soul and replaced them with the bleak harshness of the frozen earth itself.

The ground beneath him refused to cooperate. Davos half-slid on a hidden patch of water, nearly falling down in the process of reaching forward. The powdery snow saved him from falling, and catching his balance he resumed his way toward the woman who stood alone in the distance.

"Are you well?" He certainly hoped she was. Davos had never seen her like this; remote and untouchable as the frozen ice he'd seen drifting through the Bay of Seals. Maybe he had gotten too used to feeling her draw close when they met for their walks. To see her standing still cut at a string in his chest, a small hurt he did not anticipate.

It seemed to take her a moment to respond. "Don't come any closer," she warned in a low rasp.

Ser Davos froze in his tracks, seeking a hint of something in her face. Anything which he could use to reach the distance between them. The warning in her voice was a reminder she had seen her fair share of death from the cold or otherwise, and it was the King's Hand who was a stranger in this place now.

"What's happened? What ails the women in the house?" Davos kept his voice in check, calming himself for her sake.

The sadness in Medda's face made her look much older than her years. "I don't know. It's nothing I have never seen before. It doesn't look like sweaty pox, but I can't explain away the sudden fever and chills."

"And it started last night?"

"Best we can well."

Davos nodded, the knowing feeling of what to do in the situation putting his mind momentarily at ease. "I'll send for the maester, he should be able to help."

"The maester is needed to see to the queen when she delivers." Medda countered. "The others in that house. They have it too, don't they?"

"Aye," Davos nodded. "Some of the children. They were playing near the storehouse and ate their midday meal inside while the needlewomen worked."

Medda's gaze turned thoughtful. "There was fabric, a fine rich red wool. It wasn't on the manifest sent from Kings Landing. I thought it was a gift from Lord Manderly."

"In White Harbor." Davos finished.

"Yes," her thoughts seemed to pour out easily now. "House Manderly trades with all the merchant ports across the sea. The wool was better than anything I've seen in the North since before the war. Dolyse said there was a red rust inside the bolts when she began preparing it."

From her description, Davos could see a patchwork of events coming together. All his years in the smuggling and legitimate trades, and he knew how an item moved from its origins in one half of the world into the home of a rich man on the other. "And the needlewomen were around this red fabric too."

Medda nodded. "All day yesterday. It struck all of them last night. They were shivering as if no fire could warm them, and then a few began burning with fever. Raving and pleading for water. The others followed them into the fever. Two of them are shivering again, and won't take anything beyond water. Sorcha died before dawn, she was so hot it was as if she'd caught fire."

"No marks or rashes?"

She shook her head. "No marks or rashes. I've never seen it before. They all came down with the same thing so quickly, I can't account for it. Was there something in the wool?"

"Maybe," Davos supplied, though he loathed to say more. "But what you're talking about is the sweating sickness. It spread through King's Landing when I was a boy. The fever and chills lasted a few days before I got better. It came to the city again when my son was little. There wasn't a house on the street that escaped it."

The wind swung up from the snow, dowsing Medda in a spray of snow. Davos blinked away the sharp cold, his eyes and thoughts intent on the woman standing so far away from him. "What do you need?" His chest ached, wishing for more to be said between them. The Stewardess looked down at the ground, the pot in her hands seemed to weight her down more than it should. "Broth, water, and a winding sheet for the dead. I dare not leave their bodies outside for the wolves to find. They need to be burned as soon as possible."

"We'll have everything you need left outside the door. If you can pull the bodies of those who have passed outside, Lord Gendry and I will see to the remains."

She nodded and closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before continuing with what would appear to be her last request. "The queen," Medda intoned softly. "Please inform her of where I am and to appoint another to uphold the duties she has entrusted to me. I would ask for her leave myself, but I cannot leave until this illness has passed. I fear it may be a few weeks until it has run its course. If anyone beyond these two cottages were to become ill, there's no telling where it will end."

Her mind was made up then, he thought. She was going to stay, even if it cost her life. If the sweating sickness was a bad as he'd seen in the past during his time in Kings Landing, it would be disastrous to the people of Wintertown and the rest of the north.

Ser Davos had little choice but to accept the predicament for the moment. He hated the feel of doom sneaking under his skin, an ever-present itch that never seemed to abate until the danger had passed. It was his experiences as a smuggler which had regulated that feeling to every third moment of his waking hours, but now there was so much more at stake.

Medda's life was now thrown in with the lot of those she was tending, and the Stranger would collect his due without hesitation. Even now in the bright midday sun, she stood apart from the fresh snowy landscape around them. Davos committed this moment to memory, the lushness of her dark hair and eyes and the way her cheeks blushed ruddy in the cold.

He wasn't ready to lose her. Not yet. Not when he had so much to say to here. Not when there were words unspoken between them. All those words would have to wait until he figured out what he was going to do, and what measures were need to keep this sickness from spreading to the rest of the keep.

Davos sucked in a breath, bitterness burning on his tongue from all he wished he could do and say without a small group watching from afar. "I'll make sure you have everything you need and help removing those who succumb."

"Thank you." There was a hitch to her voice, which sounded like a sour note of regret in his ears. As she lifted the heavy pot to her hip, the stewardess turned in the direction of the hovel she'd recently departed. She looked like a mirage on the water, something otherworldly cutting through the snow toward the graying wood, and was swallowed whole by the darkened doorway.

Davos unclenched the fists he hadn't known he was holding. Fingers stretched in the well-worn leather, the lost tips of his left hand were in the pouch around his neck, a heavy noose of duty around his neck. He'd told his friends and acquaintances the bones he carried brought him luck. Now, they rattled dryly, their luck was seemingly gone.

XxX

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