A.N.: I've always been struck by Lord Bloodraven's wisdom, so this chapter was named for the advice he gave Bran - advice that was ignored, and led directly to the Bloodraven's, Summer's and Hodor's deaths. Bad Brandon.

I've just discovered the male model Lucky Blue Smith - is it me, or could he be a lovechild of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Lena Headey? It's making me rethink where I'm going with some of the sub-plots…

Also, as I've given Larra intensely blue-violet eyes (think purple crocuses almost, or purple lobelia), and I want to keep some details from the books - like the fact that Targaryen hair is silvery-gold not dead old-man white - I'm giving Daenerys her purple eyes back, though they'll be mallow-flower mauve, more traditionally purple than Larra's blue-toned violet eyes.

Valyrian Steel

11

Beneath the Sea

A crumbling holdfast provided their shelter, when Larra felt the threat of an ice-storm in her marrow. Like the wildlings, Larra had learned intuition when it came to the hints that nature provided when a storm was brewing. And they were lucky to reach the holdfast when they had: As it was, they lost near a dozen people overnight, from sickness and age and one from cold.

Not Larra's boys, though. She would not lose another.

Little Jon Umber and the wildling boy Ragnar were thick as thieves and perhaps it was Jon's influence that helped speed Ragnar's recovery, beyond the physical mending of his arm, which had been set and splinted and bandaged expertly by a quiet, half-blind maester who never spoke above a murmur. During the ice-storm that shook the rundown walls of the holdfast, Larra watched them in the firelight as Little Jon and Ragnar giggled, and spoke together in hushed secret whispers and played the simple game Larra had carried past the Wall and back, bone die and carved wooden tokens and etched conkers wrapped in a painted doeskin pouch that opened to a game-mat made of scraps of embroidered silk.

She had invented the game long ago, with Maester Luwin's help. Septa Mordane had helped her with the stitching.

It was her little-brothers' favourite game, long after Robb had gone off to war with Theon, and Bran and Rickon had wiled away their last hour before an early bedtime playing at a table by the hearth in Father's solar, as Larra worked and sipped blackcurrant and liquorice tea, and kept an eye on them.

She watched the two little boys, one dark and sombre and one fair and unruly and her heart hurt. And she realised the boys had learned to communicate. Without realising it, and with stunning speed, Little Jon had learned some of the Old Tongue dialect from the Frozen Shore; and Ragnar had learned enough words of the Common Tongue for them to design their own language to communicate. To play. Larra remembered the ingenuity of her siblings at play. What had ever been out of their reach that they could not imagine a way to climb to? They were not the only ones: All around Jon and Ragnar, little children seemed to congregate, for games and play.

Larra loved it. She loved the chaos of the children gathered around her like honeybees swarming to wildflowers, buzzing with excitement. She had forgotten how much she missed her little brothers.

As the winds howled, and the babies whimpered, the men argued and the Watch were looked upon to maintain order among the fractious and frightened, and the horses whickered and neighed at another loud clap of thunder that seemed set on bringing the roof down around them, Larra glanced around in the half-light. It was near noon, but no-one would know it, inside the abandoned holdfast, the storm raging, black clouds illuminated silver in brief flashes of lightning, putting their hearts in their mouths as thunder rumbled to a roar, exploding overhead, and sheets of ice-rain thrashed down. The simple luxury of fires made the large rooms close and almost humid, chasing away the cold, with the refugees of the North somehow managing to make the most of the brief respite from their march southwards, cooking, singing, celebrating…

Her stomach ached with loneliness.

Larra glanced up as a familiar silhouette appeared beyond the flames.

"He's asking for you," Meera said tiredly.

"Get some soup," Larra told her quietly, nodding toward a cluster of people tending to a cauldron over a fire, savoury smells wafting from it. She stood slowly, massaging her sore muscles. She had been so long on foot, and on Brandon's sled, that her muscles had forgotten that they had been trained for riding since Larra was old enough to sit a saddle by herself. Her body had forgotten; and reminding it was painful work. Still, it was necessary, and she preferred riding Black Alys to riding in that blasted wagon. She preferred being away from the strange man-boy who had replaced her brother Bran. It was an unkind thought, but it was an honest one: She didn't know who Brandon Stark was any more, or if he even still existed.

Meera had been with him all morning: Larra had made the conscious decision to let her, while she looked after Little Jon and Ragnar.

She had made the decision to put her choices first, not Brandon's needs. Now south of the Wall, and headed to Winterfell, surrounded by people who were happy to help them…it wasn't just her anymore. And Larra knew there was more to the coming war than Brandon, though the Night King would savour the victory of finding and killing Brandon too…

Larra was choosing to make her own choices matter once again. For…nearly seven years, her life had been all about her younger brothers - nearly all her adult life so far. At sixteen, her family had divided; by eighteen, she was fatherless, and in charge of his castle and lords and lands while her eldest brother was off at war and her younger brothers grew up too quickly, broken and bewildered. Since Lady Catelyn cloistered herself away in Bran's chamber, ignoring her youngest, most bewildered child, Larra's entire world had been Rickon - and then Bran, when Lady Catelyn had gone south and never returned, and Bran had awoken, broken. Nothing else had mattered.

Rickon was dead. Brandon was altered.

But then, so was she.

If Bran had been replaced with an unrecognisable Brandon, then so too had Larra been replaced by a different version of herself, honed and fashioned for survival, not…not thriving. Just scraping by, by the edge of her sword, had been enough; and she had become as sharp and unyielding as a blade, a weapon, a tool…a tool to protect Bran, and to provide for him…

Headed to Winterfell, which she had never thought to ever see again, Larra had decided that enough was enough.

She could not go on for much longer as she had been for too long. It would kill her.

Larra wondered if Bran knew it. She was never quite certain whether he knew her thoughts, or merely her actions.

The holdfast had a godswood, as all Northern castles did, and the weirwood had been the marker for Larra on their journey: They had camped beneath the great scarlet boughs of the weirwood on their way north all those years ago. The holdfast was crumbling, but the weirwood was still growing, enormous, and moving the walls out of its way, its roots rupturing the foundations of the holdfast, and in places holding up the walls, a great canopy of scarlet leaves glowing in the firelight among the ancient hammer-beams, hazy in the rising smoke of the fires below. At the foot of the curling bone-white roots digging through the walls sat Brandon, wrapped in his furs, his eyes for once dark, glinting with dozens of sparks of fire reflected from the fires blazing around them. It made his eyes seem as beady and dark and glittering as a raven's, and eerily older than his sixteen years.

He always had a guard from the Watch with him now, a favour from Edd though Larra had not asked. She was well aware that Brandon unnerved people. And when they were unnerved, they became frightened and confused, and did things they would later regret. She handed the guard a bowl of soup as she passed; he took it gratefully, offering a murmur of thanks. Larra was known by sight, but not as well-known the way Jon was to his brothers: She was Jon's sister, no-one could deny that with their looks, but she was a stranger to the men who had claimed her as their sister, as Jon was their brother. She approached Bran, who waited patiently.

"You were gone a long while this time," she warned carefully.

"I was learning," Bran murmured. "You needn't worry."

"I always worry," Larra told him, and he nodded subtly to himself as she perched on the bone-white weirwood roots. The earthy, musty smell of organic detritus hit her, and for a second she could believe they were back in the cave again, Brandon entangled in weirwood roots, the cavernous ceiling full of eerie shadows, the ground littered with skeletons, and the whisper and crackle and muted rush of an unknowable language constant around them as a river… They were not in the cave any longer, and only she, Meera and Brandon had escaped it.

She had one, horrifying moment wondering whether the Night King now commanded the Children… Lord Bloodraven… Hodor…

If so, she was glad the Night King's hordes were so large; there was no way Larra would ever see their decomposing, reanimated corpses with glowing blue eyes…

"You need not worry about Bran, any longer," the Three-Eyed Raven told her, gazing solemnly at her. "The boy is gone."

"That is quite clear to me," Larra said, with a bite. "Where were you today? Watching something illuminating, I hope."

If he was going to drift off, he had better well make his ventures useful to the rest of them. After their loss, her effort, she thought it was their due. She would not allow Brandon to create a cavern in the wilderness at Winterfell: They needed him to share his knowledge, not hoard it like a miser.

"Yes. I should like to show you," Brandon said, and Larra watched him cautiously. Show her? She frowned, thinking…of Hodor… He gave her a bland smile, knowing. "Bran Stark had no control over his powers. I am Brandon the Broken, the Three-Eyed Raven. I know you dread my power for what it did to Hodor. I have learned much since then."

It was on the tip of her tongue to argue that a full moon's turn had not yet occurred since they fled the cave, so how could he have learned so much? But she did not say it. She was too startled that he realised she blamed him for Hodor. She had never said it aloud…perhaps her Bran was still in there, behind those dark stranger's eyes…that Bran would have blamed himself too…

"What is it you'd like to show me?" she asked quietly, eyeing him shrewdly.

"Things that were. Things that are… Some things that may yet come to pass," Brandon said evasively. He held out one large, pale hand that had long ago lost any callouses from training with a sparring-sword in the yard with Ser Rodrick. Now Bran's greatest weapon was his mind, his awesome, unknowable power… She eyed his palm. "He had no sight." She flicked her eyes to Brandon's face, and there was a flicker, just a heartbeat's familiarity, a ghastly sense of grief and guilt, it was Bran staring at her, trying to explain. She blinked, and he was gone, Brandon the Broken in his place. But her brother was there, hidden however deeply.

"You mean Hodor."

Brandon nodded. "But you have the wolfblood. And you have blood of Old Valyria. Dragon-dreams, they were called…you need not fear the deep," Brandon said.

"Are we to go swimming?" Larra asked; she remembered Lord Bloodraven's warning - it is beautiful beneath the sea, but if you stay too long, you'll drown…

Brandon's smile was sad and amused at once. "Unless you have something better to pass your time. The storm shall not break before midday tomorrow. And the boys have not noticed your absence." Something twisted in her gut, a small, searing stabbing pain, and she flinched, glancing across the hall where she thought she could see the two boys bent over their game, with Meera watching over them as she ate her soup. They had been in Larra's care fewer than ten days but she had taken on the responsibility of protecting and providing for them. She looked at them and saw her brothers, as they once were; it hurt to think her loyalty and care was not reciprocated…because she felt it was not reciprocated by Bran…

Ungrateful as they had been, in their youth and inexperience, she would not give her brothers for the world: She had given Winterfell and the entire North for them.

Larra looked at this unfamiliar Brandon before her and felt a swell of anger writhing hotly in the pit of her stomach, her hands clenching in her lap. She fought very hard to rein in her temper, to be constant, to be what her brothers had needed her to be after their abandonment; her fingernails dug into the toughened skin of her palms, and she thought of Father's warnings of the wolfblood in her veins… Not just wolfblood…dragonfire…

She stared at Brandon's hand for who knew how long; and when she unfurled her fist to place her smaller hand in his, her palm smarted from freshly-reopened wounds that reminded her of childhood, of the wolfblood, of her rage that was so familiar to her in Rickon, of unfairness and pent-up fury and pain…of loneliness, and disdain and unmasked hatred… Scars had torn; tiny, bloody crescents had appeared in her palms, her fingernails biting so deeply into her skin, the only way she used to have of channelling her anger and pain without hurting anyone else. Her fingers shook as she unfurled her clenched fists; she let out a slow, ragged breath, and placed her blood-spotted palm in his. It was startling, to see how small and pretty her hand looked in Brandon's paw - his skin was unblemished, hers was calloused and tough, but she had fine elegant fingers and except for the colour of one bruise-blackened fingernail she had pretty nails, and slender wrists.

Bran had a man's hands. He was almost a man. Her little brother…

She glanced into his eyes, and saw Bran there, just a hint of him, the earnestness and stubborn tilt to his chin, the endearing impishness glittering in his eyes mingled with sorrow and wisdom beyond his age. Beneath the icy sheen of a brittle façade, the Three-Eyed Raven was still, at heart, her brother. She had to trust him.

Larra placed her hand in his. She blinked.

And she stood amid an inferno.

Her heart flew to her mouth with the shock of it. One moment, they sat listening to the sleet-storm, the next, they were half a world away. She could feel the searing heat of the flames, but they did not touch her; could taste the dust and smoke on her tongue, but was not choked by it; could smell horse and excrement and exotic spices, sex, wine and sun-baked earth. She had the memory of those smells and the heat and her sight, knew by intuition and memory that some smells meant one thing, others another, though she had never been to this place, never seen Dothraki, had no personal knowledge of sun-baked dusty earth and throbbing bazaars full of exotic wares, only rippling seas of fresh green grass vibrant with the scent of new summer snow…

Copper-skinned men screamed and cursed in a guttural tongue, their oiled braids, meticulously plaited with tiny silver bells, catching alight in the blaze as they tried the great curved doors, barred against their escape. Copper-skinned, rippling with muscles, their goatees braided and dark eyes wide with an unfamiliar terror as flames consumed the great, dusty hall. Braziers had ignited the conflagration: As the khals of the Dothraki screamed and fought against in impossible enemy no blade could subdue, a small woman stood in the very centre of the burning temple - and it was a temple. Larra knew where she was, without ever having been there herself. Those were khals, and this was their most holy temple, the home of the dosh khaleen - the widowed wives of every khal to come before them. She was in Vaes Dothrak, the only city of the horse-lords.

And the khals were being burned alive by a tiny woman with pale silvery-gold hair shimmering and sparkling in the firelight. She stood serenely in the heart of the dosh khaleen as fire raged around her, illuminating her purple eyes until they glowed. She had a heart-shaped face, with a delicate chin and expressive dark eyebrows, a pretty nose and lush lips; it was a haughty face, very beautiful. Queenly.

As the roof came down, the last of the khals huddled at the great door, using all their brute strength to try to open it; it held fast. The woman approached the last standing brazier, the flames burning merrily to join the rest, and as she did so, she smiled at the tallest and strongest of the khals, whose mouth stood agape as he watched the woman's clothing - Dothraki raiment of a woven grass vest and painted silk trousers - catch alight. The woman lifted her slender hands to the brazier, and heedless of the burning metal, placed her palms upon it: She smiled benignly, and the khal's eyes widened as the flames roared toward him.

Larra had seen men swiftly, cleanly beheaded. Seen them skewered by sword and spear. Seen them torn apart by mindless corpses. Seen them drowned. She had never watched men burning alive. The way their hair caught alight, the way their skin smouldered and blistered before it blackened and cracked with angry red fissures, the stench of their burning skin and their hair, the way their eyeballs melted down their cheeks as their screams turned high-pitched as all sense fled them, leaving only pain…

She felt bile rise in the back of her throat, burning, but refused to look away.

The woman's clothes burned away, leaving her smooth pale skin unmarred, baring her small, high breasts and the pale golden hair between her legs. She did not see Larra; she stared benignly at the khals as they screamed and died in agony, their horsehair vests and oiled braids feeding the fires that consumed them. The largest of the khals glared, and tried to dodge the flames long enough to reach her, his huge hands twitching to choke the life from her.

Weapons were forbidden in Vaes Dothrak, where all khalasaars were one blood. But a khal knew how to kill without one. The flames caught him, before he could reach her. The woman stared with unflinching, bored detachment as the fires consumed him before her eyes: It was the detachment, almost amusement, that made a shiver go up and down Larra's spine.

Don't look away. Father will know if you do… Father had always taught them that if they were to take a man's life, they owed it to them to look them in the eye; if they found they could not, perhaps they did not deserve the fate you had condemned them to.

But this…

This was…something else entirely.

There was…righteousness, amusement in this woman's eyes that Larra found unsavoury.

Cloaked in the protection of pure zeal, she seemed to be revelling in the deaths she was causing, wielding fire as a weapon. The flames licked at her skin almost lovingly, the khals' screams died, and the great fiery structure started to groan, embers raining down.

Larra was reminded of the Red Woman whom Edd had told her about. A priestess of R'hollor, the Lord of Light. Only death can pay for life… She had said so to Jon when she resurrected him, Edd had told Larra.

The woman had burned the khals; intending to or not, she had offered them up to the Red God. And he had granted his protection of her in turn, leaving her unharmed by the flames that consumed the Dothraki's most sacred temple.

Huge doors cracked and groaned and fell; the roof started to crumble, and the woman strolled to the entrance. The great fire could be seen for miles; every man, woman and child in Vaes Dothrak gathered to weep and scream and stare in awe and horror as a single small woman traipsed past the smouldering, cracked, unrecognisable bodies of the fierce khals to stand naked before them, her shoulders thrown back, staring imperiously - expectantly - around at the masses gathered, their faces shining with tears at the ruination of their most sacred place, the deaths of their leaders… A single, tiny woman with small tits and shining silver-gold hair and an cool demeanour in the face of true horror, surrounded by fire, and the masses fell to their knees.

She had killed the khals and stepped unscathed from the monstrous pyre she had made for them.

Larra might have been impressed, if she wasn't so sceptical. If she did not dread that eerie serenity, the glitter of arrogance in the woman's eyes as she had pushed that last brazier at the khals…if she had not smiled as she set men alight.

It was that glimmer of relish, almost amusement, victory that unsettled Larra, had Father's softly-spoken stories of the Mad King murmuring through her mind.

There was nothing amusing about death, nothing to relish in acts of violence. It was destructive; it caused dark spots to appear on the heart, plaguing the mind…or it should.

She distrusted anyone who smiled in the face of suffering of their making.

"Daenerys Stormborn," said a gentle voice in her ear, and Larra jumped, glancing around. Her jaw dropped.

Bran stood beside her.

His hands were clasped loosely behind his back, watching the tiny woman with a detached sort of curiosity, as if she was an unusual beetle he was not quite certain of.

Brandon stood, several inches taller than her, lean as a young wolf. He seemed taller to her because it was so startling to see him fully upright. She had become accustomed to looking down to speak to him. And he was clothed, not in the furs they had wrapped themselves in for years, but in the Northern dress he had grown up in: a quilted tunic under a leather doublet, linens beneath, his boots polished to a shine. Still finer than what Jon had worn. No armour, though. It struck Larra that, especially in his visions, Brandon was still very much vulnerable to harm. He did not wear the direwolf-embellished collar he had donned as de-facto Lord of Winterfell. Nothing about his dress indicated his Stark heritage, only the Northern cut of the doublet. Nothing denoted his allegiance.

Her lips parted, to ask, but she realised even as the thought came, it didn't matter. Inside his mind, Bran was whole. It is beautiful beneath the sea…

"Daenerys Targaryen," she said softly, clearing her throat, turning back to the woman. She was similar age to Larra, perhaps a little younger - she looked younger, due to circumstances that never calloused her palms or bruised and scarred her body, sapped the joy from her mind. Larra felt years older than her true age. She was certain she looked them, too. Pain and despair took its toll on the body. "Why did she burn the khals?"

Brandon turned dark, glinting eyes on her; behind him, the fire raged, consuming everything, and the temple of the dosh khaleen collapsed, sparks flying a hundred feet into the air, spitting at the crowds pleading supplication to Daenerys Stormborn.

"When her husband died, the wife of Khal Drogo should have returned here to live out her days with the dosh khaleen," Brandon murmured, watching Daenerys Stormborn carefully. "She did not: The khals were discussing her fate when she set them alight."

"Her fate?"

"She was their khaleesi: Her place was with the crones of all the khals who came before," Brandon said softly. "She dishonoured their traditions when she refused to take up her place as one of the wise-women of the dosh khaleen."

"She dishonoured worse when she burned their sacred temple," Larra murmured darkly, frowning at Daenerys Stormborn. A quiet smile haunted the corners of Brandon's lips.

"Daenerys Stormborn killed the khals - all of them. She proved her physical strength to every khalasaar gathered at Vaes Dothrak."

"Even if it is an illusion?" Larra frowned, and Brandon's smile widened.

"Now, why do you say that?"

"What the Red Woman told Edd…only death can pay for life," Larra said. "She offered those men to the flames; the Lord of Light accepted the offering and granted her protection." Brandon gave her a measuring look, smiling contentedly.

"The Dothraki follow strength. And the most powerful blood-rider gains the best mount. And Daenerys Stormborn…her mount is the most fearsome any khal could ever dream of. Balerion reborn…"

She blinked, and the vision changed. A pure forget-me-not sky made her eyes water, the sun high and hot above. Behind, a column of black smoke rose a thousand feet into the sky, and a river of bodies throbbed as it wound through two enormous horse statues glinting in the sunshine that made the rocks around Larra hiss with the heat, as if they stood among burning embers. Blood-riders on fiery stallions formed the head of the column, led by a dragon.

Larra's breath caught in her throat. A dragon. A real, live dragon. He was extraordinary. Hulking, reptilian and predatory, elegant and sleek, there was a terrifying beauty to him. Any mammoth Larra had seen in the True North could have walked comfortably down his gullet, and his wings must have spanned two-hundred feet unfurled. They were leathery and black, the tough membranes washed with blood-red as the sun shone through them, his wings snapping and unfurling with the sound of thunder-claps; his horns and spinal-plates were blood-red, and his eyes smouldered like fiery red embers. As he snarled and roared to the sky, Larra saw his teeth, triple rows of fangs longer than her forearms, black as onyx and lethal as the Valyrian steel sword belted at her waist.

Queen Visenya's sword. Her ancestress.

Also the ancestor of Daenerys Stormborn, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea. The first dragon-rider in centuries.

"She rides Drogon, named for her dead Dothraki husband," Bran murmured, standing placidly beside Larra as she gazed in wonder, drinking in the dragon, almost aching with grief at the thought that…Bran would've loved to see it; her Bran… So would Arya… She was so consumed with grief over her dead siblings that Larra barely noticed the tiny speck on the dragon's back; a woman with her silvery-gold hair coiled in elaborate plaits that made Larra's fingers twitch to pat her own unkempt braids. It was the first time in a very long time she had considered her appearance at all; she knew she looked half a wildling herself, and it had never mattered until now, narrowing her eyes at the impeccable Khaleesi.

Riding on Drogon's back, Daenerys Stormborn called to the Dothraki blood-riders. "What's she saying to them?" Larra asked, turning to Brandon. He smiled serenely.

"Listen," he said simply, and Larra frowned in the blazing sun to stare at the Khaleesi. Her lips parted in wonder - but of course, these were Brandon's memories now, and he had coaxed her into them; she understood the guttural Dothraki tongue, because Brandon now did.

Her voice raised so the masses could hear, Daenerys Stormborn addressed the column of blood-riders. And Larra listened, and understood: "Every khal who ever lived chose three blood-riders to fight beside him and guard his way! But I am not a khal! I will not choose three blood-riders. I choose you all!" The blood-riders roared their approval, arakhs raised to the air, their mounts snorting and prancing at the ruckus. "I will ask more of you than any khal has ever asked of his khalasaar!" Another roar, more arakhs raised to Daenerys Stormborn, dust churning, and the great black dragon shook his spiny head, adding his roar to the din.

Daenerys Targaryen smiled in satisfaction, her eyes a darker due to the black vest she wore, a pearl ring draped on a leather thong around her neck, and raised her voice once more: "Will you ride the wooden horses across the black salt sea? Will you kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses?"

Larra narrowed her eyes on the Targaryen girl. Kill my enemies in their iron suits and tear down their stone houses…

Stone houses. Castles. Westeros.

"Will you give me the Seven Kingdoms, the gift Khal Drogo promised me before the Mother of Mountains?" Daenerys Stormborn bellowed, and the khalasaar screamed its support. "Are you with me? Now…and always?"

"You are dissatisfied," Brandon murmured to her, and Larra turned her eyes from Daenerys Stormborn with her elaborate braids and terrifyingly beautiful dragon and frowned.

"Yes. Did she succeed? Has she brought the Dothraki across the seas?"

"Yes," Brandon said softly. "One hundred and sixty thousand Dothraki screamers. Seven and a half thousand Unsullied infantry sword- and spearmen, with three thousand training boys. Two thousand Meereenese freed slaves who have taken up arms to support the Breaker of Chain's cause. One hundred ships from the Iron Fleet and three thousand men to crew them, led by Yara and Theon Greyjoy. A combined fleet from Yunkai and Astapor commandeered, along with their crews, after an unsuccessful attack on Slavers' Bay… Even now, an emissary from Dorne resides as guest to Queen Daenerys Targaryen on Dragonstone while they negotiate a potential alliance through the Queen's hand, Tyrion Lannister, and her new Master of Whisperers, Lord Varys: Lady Olenna Tyrell determines to get the measure of the Dragon Queen before committing the forces of the Reach to her cause."

Larra wanted to sit down. She could not catch her breath as she gaped, watching the khalasaar surge past her in the dust.

Over two hundred thousand men at the command of a dragon-rider.

She frowned, glancing over her shoulder, at the dragon now snapping its wings straight. With a sound like the clap of thunder, he launched himself into the sky, beating his wings, churning up dust; Larra raised her arms to guard her face against the sting of sand and dust, but felt nothing. Brandon stood beside her, unflinching.

"It is only memory," he told her gently. "It cannot harm you."

She blinked, lowering her arms. The dust never settled; the greatest khalasaar the world had ever known followed their new Khaleesi on her fierce mount, churning the dust and sand beneath hundreds of thousands of hooves, slaves on foot beside their masters. Vaes Dothrak had emptied.

"Why the Dothraki?" Larra mused, narrowing her eyes on the speck that Drogon had become. "One dragon and half a thousand Unsullied would suit her purposes." She remembered her lessons with Maester Luwin, the convoluted, frustrating, months-long campaigns she and her brothers had designed and played out in cyvasse. "Kill her enemies in their armour, and tear down castles? She doesn't need nearly two-hundred thousand Dothraki screamers for that. Why seize leadership of them? What are they, but a deficit to her resources? She intends to invade. Winter is coming."

Brandon smiled blandly, and touched her shoulder. She blinked, and started. Robert Baratheon sat at a table, sheer curtains billowing softly in a breeze carrying birdsong into a light, airy room with pale gold stone floors and painted walls, a grand bed carved with vines and antlers, dressed in cotton and richly-embroidered silk. A squire in red was just disappearing through a secret passage, taking away an empty carafe; a full one sat on the inlaid table by Robert's hand, his wine glass full almost to the brim. The door opened, and Cersei Lannister appeared, pausing on the steps. In the soft golden light, the Queen looked almost pretty, with her hair shimmering to her waist, and a layered pink silk gown draped elegantly and belted at the waist with gold plate links. An elegant locket of gold glinted at her breast, a Lannister lion roaring on its face. Hers was drawn in the characteristic frown Larra remembered.

"I'm sorry your marriage to Ned Stark didn't work out," she said gently. "You seemed so good together."

"Glad I could do something to make you happy," Robert said despondently. Even half-drunk, he looked troubled. Cersei sauntered into the chamber, pretty hands clasped before her, a delicate organza shawl draped from her elbows, glinting gold.

"Without a Hand, everything will fall to pieces," she warned, resting her hands on the posts of the empty chair opposite Robert.

"I suppose this is where you tell me to give the job to your brother Jaime," Robert grumbled irritably.

A tiny smile played at Cersei's lips. "No. He's not serious enough. I'll say this for Ned Stark; he's serious enough. Was it really worth it? Losing him this way?" Larra frowned at Brandon; he was watching Robert carefully.

"I don't know," Robert sighed, and set his wine-glass down, rising from his seat. "But I do know this: If the Targaryen girl convinces her horse-lord husband to invade, and the Dothraki horde crosses the Narrow Sea, we won't be able to stop them." Again, Larra glanced at Brandon. This was many years ago; Father was still alive, she was sure, and serving as Robert's new Hand following the death of Jon Arryn.

Robert had predicted Daenerys Targaryen's invasion.

"The Dothraki don't sail, every child knows that," Cersei said, and Robert turned away from her, gazing out of the open window, the pretty balcony that oversaw all of King's Landing, a great, glittering, stinking city of orange and terracotta roofs, sprawling markets, a thriving port-city with the best brothels on the continent and more work for the smallfolk who flocked there hoping for a better life, more entertainments for the indolent and wealthy. "They don't have discipline, they don't have armour. They don't have siege weapons."

"It's a neat little trick you do," Robert sighed. "You move your lips, and your father's voice comes out."

Even as Cersei scoffed gently, Larra smiled to herself: Did they not all become their parents? She echoed Father often enough, as she knew Jon always did. "Is my father wrong?"

"Let's say Viserys Targaryen lands with forty-thousand Dothraki screamers at his back… We hole up in our castles, a wise move. Only a fool would meet the Dothraki in an open field… They leave us in our castles. They go from town to town, looting and burning, killing every man who can't hide behind a stone wall, stealing all our crops and livestock, enslaving all our women and children," Robert said fiercely, and Cersei moved to the table, pouring herself a glass of wine. Robert's voice turned soft, sorrowful, as he asked, "How long do the people of the Seven Kingdoms stand behind their absentee King, their cowardly King hiding behind high walls? When do the people decide that Viserys Targaryen is the rightful monarch after all?!"

Cersei thought before answering, sitting herself down before the table. It struck Larra as an exquisitely intimate moment between Robert and Cersei - between the King and his wife. No courtiers, no servants, just them, sharing a glass of wine, and discussing the greatest threat to Westeros in three centuries. "We still outnumber them."

"Which is the bigger number?" Robert asked her. "Five or one?"

Cersei rolled her eyes impatiently. "Five."

"Five," Robert said, holding up his hand, fingers splayed. His other hand, he raised as a fist. "One. One army. A real army united behind one leader, with one purpose…" Robert refilled his glass, shaking his head. "Our purpose died with the Mad King. Now we've got as many armies as there are men with gold in their purse. And everybody wants something different. Your father wants to own the world. Ned Stark wants to run away and bury his head in the snow…"

"What do you want?" Cersei asked. Robert smiled sadly, raising his wine-glass. The Queen rolled her eyes, barely hiding her disdain. Robert drained half his glass before he sat, sighing.

"We haven't had a real fight in nine years," he sighed miserably. "Backstabbing doesn't prepare you for a fight, and that's all the realm is now. Backstabbing and scheming and arse-licking and money-grubbing… Sometimes I don't know what holds it together."

"Our marriage," Cersei mused, and Robert started to laugh. They caught each other's eye, and Cersei joined him, smiling. She looked almost pretty.

"So, here we sit, seventeen years later, holding it all together," Robert sighed heavily. "Don't you get tired?"

"Every day," Cersei admitted.

"How long can hate hold a thing together?" Robert pondered miserably.

"Well, seventeen years is…quite a long time."

"Yes, it is," Robert agreed, raising his glass in a toast tinged with irony.

Cersei raised her own glass. "Yes, it is… What was she like?"

Robert went still, staring at his wife. "You've never asked about her, not once. Why now?"

"At first, just saying her name, even in private, felt like I was breathing life back into her. I thought if I didn't talk about her, she'd just…fade away for you," Cersei said softly, and Larra knew who she was speaking of. Lyanna. Her mother. The reason Cersei had had Larra flogged all those years ago; she had breathed life into Lyanna again. "When I realized that wasn't going to happen, I refused to ask out of spite. I didn't want to give you the satisfaction of thinking I cared to ask. And eventually it became clear that my spite didn't mean anything to you; as far as I could tell, you actually enjoyed it!"

"So why now?"

For a long moment, Cersei did not answer. When she did, her words were tinged with sadness and regret. "What harm could Lyanna Stark's ghost do to either of us that we haven't done to each other a hundred times over?"

"You want to know the horrible truth?" Robert sighed, leaning heavily over the table. "Until I saw Ned's bastard girl at Winterfell, smiling, with flowers in her hair…I couldn't even remember what she looked like. She was the one thing I ever wanted. Someone took her away from me, and seven kingdoms couldn't fill the hole she left behind."

Cersei pondered this, then said, "I felt something for you once, you know."

"I know," Robert said sadly.

"Even after we lost our first boy...for quite a while, actually," Cersei said softly. "Was it ever possible for us? Was there ever a time, ever a moment?"

Robert's honesty was terrible, and may have sealed his fate. "No. Does that make you feel better, or worse?"

"It doesn't make me feel anything," Cersei admitted. She set her wine-glass down, and left the King's chamber. She left Robert to his wine, and his regret.

And Larra was left reeling. He had been a reluctant King, but Robert Baratheon had been one of the best military minds of the age. Only once defeated in battle, by Lord Randyll Tarly. He had laid waste to the royalists' armies, defeating every other enemy, he had slain Prince Rhaegar in single-combat in the rushing waters of the Trident, caved in his breast-plate, crushed every rib he had…

If there was one thing Robert Baratheon knew, it was war. He had proven himself an immense warrior, a skilled commander, and a completely disinterested monarch - he had given the Seven Kingdoms nearly eighteen years of almost unbroken peace, but bought that peace at a terrible price, considering all that came after, and all that had happened before.

She had never been to King's Landing, of course, never set foot inside the Red Keep. Had this always been the King's chamber? Would Robert have rested easy in the Mad King's chamber? From what she knew of Robert's bloodlust for dead Targaryens, she thought he might; this might even have been Rhaegar's chamber.

Had her brother and sister played in this room? Rhaenys and baby Aegon. Had their giggles and coos echoed off the golden stone, their mother singing to them, perhaps, as her ladies flocked about her? Perhaps she sat out on the balcony, enjoying the sunshine, yearning for the Water Gardens of her home.

Larra sighed, and turned away from Robert, still drinking his wine, staring morosely at the inlaid table.

"Daenerys Targaryen's husband was dead before his khalasaar could sack enough cities to fund her campaign," Brandon murmured, "but she achieved her aim regardless. Now it is she who rides at the head of the khalasaar, who brought Dothraki to Westeros for the first time in our history… How shall Cersei proceed?"

"I know Cersei Lannister very little," Larra frowned, "and the Targaryen girl even less."

"True; but you trained for this with Jon and Robb and Theon," Brandon murmured. "Westeros faces invasion. How would a monarch proceed?"

"Robert made a disinterested king, but he was a strategist to rival Tywin Lannister. I imagine… I imagine he would have been impressed the lad named for him died undefeated in battle," Larra said, thinking of Robb with a twisting, painful, hideous feeling in her gut. "Cersei was foolish and impetuous but has maintained her position this long for a reason. When she learns Daenerys Stormborn has landed in Westeros with armies of Dothraki screamers…she will remember what Robert said; how could she not, when it was the only time she ever asked about Lyanna…"

"So what will Cersei do?"

"She will not allow her armies to hole up behind high walls; but she will remain protected behind them. After all, she is not a warrior-queen. Certainly her brother the Kingslayer will lead her armies," Larra said, after a moment's consideration. "If I were Cersei I would devise a way to destroy the Dothraki without ever having to meet in the field of battle; as her father destroyed the Northern army when he arranged the Red Wedding… I would find a way to kill the dragons before they could turn King's Landing to ash. History tells us they are not invulnerable. Use the past as a weapon against the Mad King's daughter…destroy any credibility before she lands on our shores, unite the lords of Westeros against her to fling her back into the Narrow Sea. Less than Cersei Lannister on the Iron Throne, the lords of Westeros want a return of the Targaryen dynasty."

Her family.

"Brandon… We must learn more about Daenerys Targaryen," Larra said softly, dread curdling her stomach as she fully evaluated the implications of Daenerys Targaryen's invasion. She had come to claim the Iron Throne. The Seven Kingdoms. Jon was King in the North: the North had declared its independence from the Iron Throne when Robb marched south with the Northern army.

It was always the Starks, who acted as catalyst for rebellion. Rickard and Brandon Stark: Eddard and Robb Stark. A father had gone south to plead for his son's life: A son had raised an army to protect his father's life.

The North would not kneel to a Targaryen queen any more than they would the Lannister one.

Gone were the days the North knelt to anyone.

And history told them what Targaryens did to those who refused to kneel…

"How is it Daenerys Targaryen came to be in Vaes Dothrak, to usurp the khalasaars?"

"That is a long journey," Brandon said softly, his eyes alight with something close to merriment, as if he had been waiting for and was delighted by her request. "And I am gratified you are not so wholly consumed with the Night King that you underestimate the threat brewing in the south… There is one thing I would show you before we go…" He smiled softly, and the memory changed…

A.N.: That scene between Robert and Cersei is possibly one of my all-time favourite GoT scenes. Not because Robert waxes nostalgic about his undying love for Lyanna - I'm not sure if that was lust mingled with his ideals of what the perfect woman was, and he overlaid those on Lyanna when he met her - but because it's such a simple scene, and beautifully written. It showed the complexities and nuances of Robert and Cersei's relationship.

I also thought it about damn time that Brandon started using his powers to benefit everyone. He sees all; surely he understands the threat of Daenerys Targaryen's invasion better than anyone? He was educated by Maester Luwin and was a bright boy even before his visions and powers: He'd know that Daenerys has already sacked cities and burned people alive.