The Lords of Small Matters - The Onion Knight

Ser Davos Seaworth was appointed the Master of Ships, an offer he was glad to accept. Although Sansa Stark had offered to maintain him in her service at Winterfell, he had declined: 'I have a desire to stay in King's Landing,' he told Tyrion when he was approached. 'I might not have been with them through the last years, but they are still my people.'

One of the first task he was given was the reconstruction of the royal fleet, a concern all the greater due to the pressing need for a resumption of trade to the capital and its neighbouring cities. In the first few months following the Great Council, the Crown was forced to rely upon the ships owned by the houses of the Narrow Sea and the eastern shores. Prime among these houses was House Velaryon of Driftmark, who had retained a dozen ships from the destruction of the Baratheon fleet during the Battle of the Blackwater. Although this allowed traders to return to the capital in small numbers by the sealanes of the Narrow Sea, neither Davos nor Tyrion were satisfied by this idea as a long term solution.

'We need a fleet which is beholden to no house, only to the Crown,' Tyrion said one day, in council. 'Is that at all possible?'

'Of course,' Davos answered. 'But we'll need a lot of coin to build such a fleet. And we don't have it. Not yet.'

'We don't need that much coin to start.'

Tyrion's scheme was smart, and Davos's implementation of it was even smarter. A royal decree was soon signed by the king requesting that every house on the shores of the kingdom provide one ship to the new royal fleet, a measure that would only be used once. If the houses could not provide a ship, they would be required to provide enough coin for the Crown to have one built. Davos first spoke out against the idea of such a tax, arguing that the lords would be reluctant to pay a new tax so soon after the end of the war. Instead, the Master of Ships provided a new idea to soften the blow and prevent discontent: while the houses would be required to provide some measure of financial assistance, they would not be required to pay the price of a whole ship. They could provide the Crown with the materials or the hands needed to build the ships. Also, it was insisted that the ship tax would be used only once, not be enshrined as a permanent levy. For the better part of the next year, Davos sailed to the furthest reaches of the shores to convince lords and ladies of the importance of granting the ship tax to the Crown. Haggling and negotiating was something he was so used to that Davos proved a natural at convincing them to fund or equip the new royal fleet.

During his travels on the king's behalf, Davos made two visits that were much closer to his own heart's desire than any need of the Crown.

As he returned from Sunspear with two of Prince Doran's ships, his journey led him through the Stepstones, where he made a stop on Bloodstone, the largest of the small islands which had once made up the Arm of Dorne. There, as he had heard from reports sent to the capital, he found his old friend Salladhor Saan and his fleet.

'He returns like a pale, fucking ghost,' Saan said, his head shaking and eyes incredulous when he saw Davos land in the small port of Bloodstone. The Master of Ships smiled, knowing his friend well enough to know that he was happy to see him. They clasped hands and Saan laughed as he always did after the initial incredulity. 'I would have believed that you would have died with your king and his fire witch.'

'Sometimes, it seems everyone about me dies and only I remain.'

'You are cursed. Any man should know to stay away from you.'

'And yet you never refuse to see me.'

'I have a weakness for cursed men who had their fingers removed by a man they came to love. Such fools are so foolish they cannot truly be fools.'

'You made your share of benefits from Stannis's follies. Did the wildling brews bring you fortune?'

'In ways you couldn't imagine.'

Saan's fleet had been the one to ferry Stannis's army and the sellsword companies he had hired in Braavos from Dragonstone to the Wall… later, he had also taken Jon Snow and his men to Hardhome. He had not, himself, fought against the wights but the screams he had heard had been enough to scare him back to the south. Not before he got his hands on several wildling goods. After the defeat of Mance Rayder's army, Saan had tried one of their drinks… and almost choked himself on it. When he sailed for the Stepstones, he had brought some with him. Not only did he force merchants to pay him a toll to pass through the islands, he also presented some of them with the new drink. Soon, Dornish merchants and Essosi traders had come in flock to buy this new 'Burn', as they had taken to calling it.

'I do all right,' he said, smiling.

They ate and drank, and traded stories for a time until Davos asked the question he truly wanted to. 'Where is she?'

Saan's smiled faded. 'In Braavos, with my wife. She is well.'

'I wish to see her.'

'I do not believe she wishes to see you, however.'

Davos had feared as such.

'She is still my wife.'

Saan sighed. 'In old times, I would not have cared about your family or your problems. I would have been an honest pirate who only cared about himself. But you found a way to make me care. I hate you for that, Davos Seaworth.'

The next morning, Saan's ship set sail from Bloodstone for Braavos, where Davos would be reunited for the first time in years with his wife Marya. As Saan had told him, she was not happy to see him.

The sting was worse than the pain of the slap, taking months if not years of speculation away from his mind with it. He had long wondered how Marya would greet him if and when he returned to her. Often, he had regretted not following Saan's advice and leaving to find her after the Battle of the Blackwater, a time when they could have mourned the loss of their son together. But duty to Stannis, and hatred of the Red Woman, had called him back to Dragonstone.

After she had slapped him, she looked at him with barely contained fury in her gaze. 'Why?'

Davos had expected many questions, but this had been the one he had been dreading most of all. Because he wasn't certain he would be able to answer it.

'I had to,' was all he said. To his own ears, the excuse sounded hollow and half-hearted, and he wished he'd had another answer to give her. But he didn't.

She looked at him with unforgiving eyes, patiently waiting for him to continue although the judgment never left her face. Davos tried his best to explain, to defend his choices and why he had not returned to Marya when she had needed her, all the while aware that nothing he could say would ever dampen her anger or sooth her pain. He wanted to tell her about the Red Woman, about why he couldn't leave Stannis alone with such a being, about Gendry and his responsibility for the ritual that he had been forced to endure, about Shireen and the fatherly love that he had developed for the happy young princess, and the overwhelming despair and grief when he had learnt that they had died before Winterfell. He even tried to explain that, once he had left for the North and lost everything, only surviving by serving new masters could have saved him.

But she accepted none of his excuses.

Nor did Davos expect her to. He knew he hadn't been honest with her, but he could not tell her as such. Because the truth was that he didn't know himself why he had returned to his wife. Sometimes, in his moments of greatest doubt, he had told himself that it had been for Shireen.

None of his words swayed the strong woman he had abandoned after the death of their son, and nothing could pierce the cold anger she felt at him. Eventually, he stopped trying. When Davos Seaworth left Braavos the next day, he was alone.

Marya had refused to accompany him back to King's Landing.

For the next few months, Davos threw himself into his work as Master of Ships. The end of the war and the pacification of lands that had been plagued for years by brigands and war had brought a steadily growing stream of coin into the coffers of the treasury. Soon, the Onion Knight had enough funds to beginning the construction of larger galleys. Additional monies were unlocked when, by royal decree, Bran the Broken granted the island of Dragonstone to the Admiralty, with all its lands and incomes. Davos complimented the King's decree by creating a new body to assist in him with command of the royal fleet; six admirals were appointed to serve the Crown with three remaining with the Master of Ships and the King at court, and another three overseeing the safety of the shipping lanes from Dragonstone. By tradition, Davos suggested that one of the admirals be Lord Velaryon of the Tides.

Davos divided his time between King's Landing, Dragonstone and sailing upon the ships that he was building for the Six Kingdoms. His face had become well-known to the shipwrights of King's Landing as he enjoyed overseeing the work on the new ships. He did not expect that, one morning, he would descend to the shipyards to find someone waiting for him.

When he first saw Marya's face, he was so surprised that he did not react. Only after several heartbeats did he move towards her. 'What are you doing here?' he asked, utterly incapable of keeping the surprise out of his voice.

She didn't answer at first. He could see in her eyes that she had yet to forgive him, but her anger was not as strong as it had been when they had seen each other in Braavos.

'I haven't come to see you,' she answered eventually. 'I've come for… answers.'

Davos could not hide his disappointment. 'Would you at least allow me to accompany you to the King?'

A battle seemed to rage for a time within Marya until she eventually consented. They spoke very little during their march up to the Red Keep, and the speaking was often worse than the strained silence. Although his mind was entirely focused on it, not once did Davos ask Marya what question she intended to ask the King.

When they reached the courtyard, Davos left his wife to join the line that had formed before the stairs up which she would find Bran the Broken, flanked by Ser Brienne and Ser Podrick..

Davos returned to his rooms after leaving Marya, giving instructions that he not be disturbed. He tried to focus on his work but found himself unable to. For hours, he paced his quarters, his thoughts drifting to his wife's continued resentment towards him and his inability to find the words that would repair their marriage. And he dwelled on her sudden re-apparition in the capital; Marya had never liked King's Landing. When he had been in Stannis's service, they had divided their time between Dragonstone and Cape Wrath. He had sent her back to their small keep when Ned Stark's messenger had reached the island with word of Robert's death and the illegitimacy of his children. They had not seen each other since. But more than this, he wished to know what she had travelled all this time to ask of the seer-king. In the months since he had taken the throne, Bran the Broken had held the sessions the commons had taken to calling the 'courts of answers', a name that had caught on even in high halls. Thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands, had come to King's Landing to see him. But few had ever dared to reveal to others what question they intended to ask or the answer they sought. Marya would certainly not reveal any such information to the husband she could barely look upon anymore.
But the phantom of the question haunted Davos for the remainder of the day.

Until night came…

…and Marya came to his rooms.

When the knock came upon his door, he shouted at whoever was on the other side to leave him be.

When his wife walked in, he almost jumped out of his chair.

Instantly, he could see that something was different. The resentment wasn't gone. Not yet. But she wasn't looking at him the same way. There was something new in her eyes, something that hadn't been there when he had seen her again in Braavos. It almost looked like understanding.

'Would you like some wine?' he asked, unsure what to do or say, or what she had come to him for.

'No,' she said simply. There was no hostility in her voice.

'Did you see the King?'

'I did.'

Another silence followed. One Davos could stand only so long.

'Did he answer your question?'

'No.'

Davos's surprise must of shown on his face because the closest thing to amusement he had seen appeared on that beloved face. 'He told me that I already knew the answer to the question I wanted to ask. And that he wasn't the one I needed to ask.'

She moved tentatively towards him, as if she was unsure whether she wanted to get any closer.

'He said he would answer my question if I wanted him to… but that only one person could answer it and give the comfort I want.'

She took one more step. 'Here goes she said,' and Davos saw the nervousness in her face and heard it in her tone. He drew a sharp breath.

'Did you cry?'

For the first few beats, they merely looked at each other. Davos was more surprised now than at any other point in this whole unreal day. For a time, he didn't understand what answer Marya was looking for.

'Did I cry?'

'Yes. For Matthos.'

It was as though someone had suddenly lit a candle in a dark room… or broken a dam and let the water out. Except the water was pain.

'What?' he asked, aghast.

'Did you cry… for our son.' She said the last part with a sob in her voice.

His first thought was to say that he had…

…but he couldn't.

He thought back to all that happened since the Blackwater, all the betrayals and disappointments he had faced, all the joys and heartaches. None of which pierced him as much as the memory of Shireen's cruel and pointless death. The pain of pledging his service to a man who had sacrificed the best thing he had made for power. The horrors he had witnessed at the Battle of Ice and Fire. The wonder of beholding living dragons, and the devastations they could cause. He had raged, he had smiled, he had even laughed. And yes, he had even cried.

But, as his mind raced through the past seven years of horrors and carnage that had been the Song of Ice and Fire, he realized that not once in the onslaught of madness, cold and flame that had been his life among the high and mighty of Westeros had even shed a single tear for the son he had lost.

The realization numbed everything out of Davos, driving any other thought and concern from his mind.

He felt his knees giving way beneath him.

His eyes were wide open but he could no longer see what was in front of him.

The word struggled to make its way through his lips…

…but it eventually did.

'No.'

And he collapsed to his knees as the wave of grief that he had been pushing back for seven years came crashing into him. His life of service, his dedication to finding the solutions to solve other people's problems, had protected him for all these years… but could not withstand the simple truth.

Now, Davos remained on the ground, tears falling down his face as he cried for Matthos, the boy he had not even gotten to bury. He wailed at the cruelty of a world that had let him live but had taken his son. He cursed all gods, old and new, of death or fire, who had robbed him of the best thing he had ever made.

He wasn't sure for how long he cried before he felt Marya's hands around him, comforting him. She was crying too, tears of grief and joy mingled together.
Grief for the son she had lost.

Joy for the husband who had returned to her.

For the whole of the night, Davos and Marya cried and comforted each other until they felt utterly spent. Not once did they leave the floor. Not once did they let go of each other.

It wasn't until the morning that they felt the strength to rise.

And once they were both standing, they embraced as though they had just found each other again. Which they had.

The next day, Davos met with both the King and Tyrion, begging for leave to remove himself to Dragonstone for the foreseeable future. Lord Velaryon could assume his duties in his capacity as Lord Admiral, until such time as Davos needed to return. Tyrion wished to protest; he had a need for the former smuggler who had become such an invaluable part of the Small Council. But he was overruled by Bran.

'Take as long as you require, Ser Davos.'

'Thank you, Your Grace.' The King and his Master of Ships locked eyes for what seemed like a long moment. There was more that passed in that look than mere gratitude for the granting of leave, Tyrion saw.

For the next few months, Davos and Marya remained on Dragonstone, reconnecting after so many years apart. Sharing stories of the son they had lost and grieving his loss as they had always been meant to: together.

When they agreed that their grief had been born long enough, they returned to the capital.

Davos returned to his usual routine, managing the affairs of the Crown and the growing royal fleet.

Marya, as the highest lady of the realm in the absence of a queen, became the new mistress of the Red Keep. Soon, she was managing the King's household and managing the formalities of the growing courts of answers, which grew to include feasts of charity for the most desperate.
Never again would Davos Seaworth and his wife be apart.

Author's Note: This chapter took me so much longer to write than I wanted but I'm really glad with how it turned out. Davos is one of my favourite characters and I wanted to do him justice. I wanted all the four members of the Small Council to be faced with a situation they had not expected and with something that would challenge them while staying true to the character. In Davos's case, how would he be greeted by a wife he had not seen in seven years? One he had not returned to to share in the grief of losing a son?