Here, at least, Quentyn did not come up short.
"If you do one another harm," Maester Kedry called from under his canopy by the mast, "you will sew up your own wounds."
"Your concern does you credit, maester," Cletus laughed, sun flashing off his bright sword and white teeth. "His Highness and I are as brothers, though - we will do no harm, I promise you."
Quent said nothing, choosing instead to watch Cletus, a little pleased to notice that his friend had still not learned to lower his shield when fighting a man of Quent's lesser height.
"Your silence on the matter gives me little comfort, Quent," Cletus teased, stepping left, starting to circle. Quent remained calm, used to Cletus' japes and jesting, and chose instead to watch Cletus' footwork. It was smooth, steady, and as perfect as ever, even with the gentle sway of the ship beneath him. Quentyn did not have even half Cletus' natural grace, but he had the sea-legs of House Nymeros Martell, and had taken to sailing and seafaring with greater ease than he had anything else in his life. His mother had once told him that her mother's family, Volantene nobles, had been seafarers - smugglers, once, turned princes of trade but not princes in truth, because none who did not have pure Valyrian blood were considered such in Volantis - and so he supposed it was in his blood twice over, as nothing else was. Perhaps that was why this alone seemed to fit him, when nothing else ever had.
Cletus' sword snapped up, and Quent caught it easily on his shield - a testing blow, without any real speed or strength behind it.
"Perhaps you should meet the Queen without a shirt, cousin," Nym called from her place beside Kedry, and Quent did not need to look to know she was grinning her best, sharpest viper's smile. "It might distract her so much you need not flirt."
He did not look, but he did flush with embarrassment - it was simply too hot to spar in armour, and even their padded gambesons left them all over-hot and incapable of proper fighting. Kedry was not wrong in being concerned that they would hurt one another, although he perhaps should have been more concerned with Gerris and Arch, already hammering at one another just on the far side of the mast, taking advantage of the spacious deck.
Did Nym mean it, though? Quent had never thought himself much to look upon, not with Cletus and Gerris for comparison, but he supposed his arms and chest were fine enough, well muscled from so many years of hard work in the yard, and his stomach was flat, his hips narrow-
He only just caught Cletus' second blow, this one with his own sword, and scowled to hear Nym laughing - a ruse, then. He wondered for a moment if she and Cletus were sharing a bed, for it was unlike Nym to show even the slightest favour without good cause, and then forgot to wonder when Cletus spun and came at him again, fast and vicious and with his shield just a little too high.
"I still do not know what to do with our visitors," Quent said, later on, when it was him and Nymeria alone over the cyvasse board. "The lady at least I am sure of-"
"Sure only that she is who she claims," Nym pointed out, sweeping two of his elephants aside with a well-placed trebuchet hit. "Not sure that anything else she says is true. Do not be swayed by your pity, Quentyn - she is beautiful, and sorrowful, but she is dangerous. My father would not remember her so fondly otherwise."
That was true, Quent had to admit - while his own father found many people who might be considered boring to be worth great esteem, his uncle was easily bored, and needed companions of a similarly reckless bent. It was a major cause of strife between the sons of Loreza Martell, and would surely always be so.
"And I would doubt even her identity, if not for the fact that I remember the Lady Belowdecks in her previous life. She was our aunt's closest companion, aside from my father."
Quent was surprised by that - Nym spoke of their aunt as rarely as their fathers did, even though she was doubtless the one with the best recollection of her. Obara had yet been at Oldtown when their aunt died, Tyene yet in the motherhouse, Sarella yet in her mother's belly. Nymeria had been there, though, clinging to Oberyn's fingertips and watching, with those same wide, dark eyes Quentyn found himself arrested by just now.
"And she is so unchanged that you do not doubt her?"
"She is," Nym said, toying with her butter knife, thoughtful and concerned. "Which is a concern all on its own, I suppose, but we have other concerns which weigh more heavily on me just now - I wish I could write to my father, or even to yours, and ask their advice."
He was as stunned as if Cletus had knocked him overboard - Nym was never so uncertain and unsure that she admitted to needing advice. Hells, she was usually the one teasing everyone else for being less than absolutely confident!
"We are sailing into unknown waters, little cousin," she said, "in this and in a thousand other things. We must be as careful as your father, and as brave as mine."
Quentyn thought his own father a tremendously brave man, for facing his courtiers and bannermen every day despite knowing how they laughed behind their hands at his infirmity, but he did not say so aloud. Nym was melancholy in a way he had never seen before, and it seemed wisest to bite his tongue just for now.
He knocked aside one of her dragons, and she cursed in brilliant Volantene - that, at least, was more usual.
"You fight well, cousin."
Quentyn lowered the waterskin, wary now, and watching. The man-who-would-be-King was shackled in the shade, not far from where Kedry and Nym were pouring over their maps. Volantis was next on the horizon, where they would dock and gather supplies and perhaps seek out Nym's mother, who was sister to a triarch and might be of use to them. Nym had not seen her mother in over twenty years, and seemed uncertain as to what sort of reception she might expect, but determined to seek it out nonetheless.
"I am capable with a blade," he said, wondering now if it had been wise to practice their swordsmanship in sight of such an uncertain companion - too late to wonder, really, but he did so all the same. "Such things are necessary."
"I have not had the chance to practice since we met, cousin," Aegon-in-name said, beseeching and charming and a thousand other things Quent would never be. "Might I be allowed-"
"No," Quentyn said. "No, I am afraid not. Perhaps another time."
He scrubbed the linen one of his attendants handed him through his hair and over his neck and chest, rubbing away the worst of the sweat - they would be in Volantis the day after next, and when there, he could bathe properly, but for now he had to make do with scant water rations and copious layers of scent - and taking a moment, with his face hidden, to consider his next words.
"I wish things could be different," he said, accepting a loose linen shirt with a smile of thanks. "But you must understand why they are not."
"Your doubt and suspicion do you credit," Aegon said, dipping his head in what seemed to be admiration. "And yet, much and all as I admire it, I still resent it. I wish for us to become friends, cousin."
"And we may, in time," Quent said, shrugging into the long jacket of plain red silk his attendants held out behind him. "But for now, we must be cautious. Were our roles reversed, doubtless you would do the same."
Connington, sitting just behind Aegon, snorted in obvious annoyance, but the Lady trilled a laugh, sitting beyond Connington with her face almost hidden in shadow.
"My dear Prince Quentyn," she said, "were our roles reversed, there would be no need for caution."
Quent watched her, the sliver of tired face visible to him, and wondered if perhaps he and Nym had been wrong to consider her their best chance of an ally among the maybe-prince's company. It seemed, in flashes and starts, that she was more dangerous than Connington or the big knight in the hold could ever be.