Continuity: This chapter takes place at around the same time or possibly before the first Daenerys POV chapter, "Evenstar".


WILLAS

He awoke to the click of a lock. Normally he never would have heard it, but after what he judged to be more than a month in this cell, the new sound was sudden and strange to Willas Tyrell's ears. What is happening?

Thunk. That was the bolt sliding across on the inner door. And then there was the slow screeching sound as the rusty hinges folded and the door swung inwards, slowly, slowly, picking up speed – and coming to a dead stop as it thumped against the frame.

The first thing he saw was that it was still night. There was little light down here in the black cells, but Willas had grown accustomed to even the slightest changes in the darkness. And this darkness was blacker than usual.

The second thing he saw was the torch. His pale, flickering salvation. And the third was the man who held it, some dusty, godforsaken sellsword. "Let's get you up, now, y'lordship. No time to waste." He held out a grubby hand and hauled Willas to his feet. "Careful on them legs. You haven't used them for a while, I wager."

"Who are you?" Willas asked, stepping forwards gingerly. "Who are you working with?"

"You're the smart one, y'lordship," said the man. "You tell me."

Willas had his suspicions, of course. And unless his wits had deserted him completely in that cell, he was sure his suspicions were right. But if it is Varys, why didn't he come down earlier? And why didn't he come down here himself?

He squinted at the man. The eunuch was known to use a a whole variety of disguises, but this one seemed a little too real. Willas thought back to a group of travelling musicians he'd seen at Highgarden when he was a child. The costumes were greatly exaggerated, their facepaints heavy with yellow and rouge, their accents greatly overblown to the point of ridicule, every man of them some caricature or other. Even Varys is surely guilty of that. So this is not him.

"You going to stare at my face all night?" the man asked.

"Sorry. You looked… familiar, that's all."

"You don't know me, y'lordship."

"Do you know Varys?" blurted Willas, knowing the question might well mark him out as a fool, or worse than that, for death. If the eunuch was still in King's Landing, plainly he didn't want his presence known.

"Do I know Varys?" said the man. "Good question. I don't think anyone knows that rat. Not me, not you, not his little friends."

"His little friends?"

"Little birds. Though there aren't so many of them any more. Not since the dragon queen sent her men through the tunnels—"

"Daenerys," said Willas, musingly. How had he forgotten about Daenerys, and the executioner's axe lying above his head? "Is she still here?"

"Sailed off to Dragonstone a few days back," said the man. "I imagine she was leaving you to the mercy of her Unsullied. Only problem is, there aren't no Unsullied guarding you no more."

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean."

He did, but that didn't make him any more comfortable. What will the Unsullied do when they come down here and find their comrades with their throats cut? What will they do to me if they catch me, and to Arianne—?

"Where's Arianne?" he asked. "Princess Arianne, I mean."

"She's been taken care of. She's safe."

"Are we going to meet her?"

"How the fuck would I know, m'lord? I'm just the messenger." The man laughed hollowly. "There's no way in seven hells that they'd tell me anything. I'm not trustworthy, you see." He turned to Willas and grinned through yellow teeth.

Willas smiled back. He had something too. Just the messenger. So this man, whoever he was, was working for someone with a bit of sense. And I am not entirely alone. A sudden thought came to him: what if this was not Varys's rescue at all, but Garlan's? "Highgarden," he said suddenly. "Are we going back to Highgarden?"

The man shrugged. "How would I know? I'm here to get you out, that's all. And then you can bugger off wherever you please."

As they rounded the next corner, Willas glimpsed two Unsullied in the light of the man's torch. His heart leapt for a moment, but then he saw the smears of blood on the wall behind them, and the crimson smiles drawn across their throats. Their life's blood puddled around their feet. Willas nearly retched, though this was far from the grisliest thing he had seen. No, the problem was seeing one grisly thing brought back all the others, the memories he had forgotten in the cell. That night on the Blackwater was first and foremost: the smells of burning meat, like the world's biggest and most evil campfire. Around the flames, men danced and sang songs – only they were not dancing, they were writhing in their death throes; and they were not singing, they were screaming. A dark shadow passed through his mind, beating great demon's wings.

"If you're gonna retch, m'lord, save it for when we're outside." The man pulled him forwards. "And if you're still feeling squeamish, best close your eyes for this part. We're going down. The fourth level of the dungeons."

"There are only three levels in the dungeons," said Willas.

"Best you keep thinking that, and close your eyes, unless you want nightmares for the rest of your life."

"What about you?"

The man turned to him, half his face shrouded in shadow. "I've seen enough shit to cope with most of it." Then, more quietly, "aye, most of it." To Willas he said, "Close your eyes, and hold on to my shoulders."

Willas did as he was told. Briefly he wondered if this was just the man's way of hiding their escape route – not that he would remember it anyway – but then he heard moaning, somewhere off to his right, and the scuffling of feet. He did not think the feet were his own, but there was no real way of knowing. I have been reduced to a rat, he thought, scurrying and scuttling through darkness.

He had been in blackness for about half a minute when it occurred to him that this might not be an escape at all. What if he is the queen's assassin, and no friend to me or to Varys? If he was going to murder me, where better to do it than down here, where no sane man would dare to look? That made him pick up the pace, just a little. "Hurry," he whispered, where he thought the man's ear was. "I think I heard someone behind us."

The man picked up the pace. Willas's legs, sore with misuse, started to burn, and he had to dig his fingers into the man's chainmailed shoulders to keep up. The strangest thing was that his lie had not been entirely false. It felt as though there was someone behind him the whole time, breathing in his ear. If he strained and listened a little closer, he might have been able to make it whole sentences, and the entirety of what they were saying, but as it was he heard only one word: please.

Willas screwed his eyes up even closer and prayed. Please, he thought, please take me out of this place. The walls were pressing in on him, the tunnel was getting narrower. Please, Mother have mercy, Mother have mercy, oh—

"You can open your eyes now."

Willas let out a shuddering breath and looked up. They had come to a gate, and beyond it he could hear the faintest hiss, the sussurus of the Blackwater river, he reckoned. The gate was old steel, worn and crusty with frost, which sparkled, sapphire bright, in the light of the man's torch. Beards of seaweed and black ivy clung from stalactites fixed in the cave roof. There was a drumbeat coming somewhere above them. Willas's heartbeat rose to match it: dumdumdumdumdum.

The man had no key, but the gate was old that all he had to do was smash the hilt of his longsword against it, and it crashed open.

Now they ascended through a cave, up through a forest of stalagmites, the path slippery with ice. Willas, in his worn and peeling boots, slipped at every opportunity. By the time they reached the cave mouth, his shins and knees were bruised and cut, and he felt like shit, but the pain had awakened something in him. And as he stood outside the cave mouth, stinking of sweat and musk and rat, with the thunder crashing down over the river, he felt alive for the first time in weeks. A louse crawled down over his cheek, clinging to the knots of his beard. He prised it off with his hand, and smashed it to a bloody stain against the cave wall. That bruised his hand, too, but he was glad of the pain. I am alive. Even if the sellsword turned on him now, and put a knife to his throat, he would feel the blood sluicing down over his chest, like some hot waterfall. He would feel the pain and the anger and the frustration. Surely that was better than dying alone like a dog in Daenerys's dungeon. Or living as her prisoner.

The sellsword did not kill him, though. Instead, he stepped out into the rain, waved his torch a few times, then extinguished it. A few moments passed, and then a shape emerged from the rain, as silent as a corpse. A single lantern was briefly unshuttered, marking the ship's position, a blinking eye, on and off, on and off.

"Oh, bloody shit," said Willas's rescuer. "They want us to swim."

"They don't want to waste time coming ashore," Willas knew. "Fair enough." He thought the swim would do him some good. He stumbled down the rocks from the cave mouth, and, neither knowing nor caring whether the man was behind him, he pushed out into the Blackwater.

The river felt curiously warm, though in truth it was freezing. But as he pushed his head under, and the other lice fled from his hair and beard, and the cold water forced the old dirt from his skin and sluiced him in river mud instead, he began to laugh.

Unfortunately he was underwater as he started laughing, so he broke the surface choking and spluttering, legs kicking weakly, barely able to stay afloat. Then the current had him, and dragged him backwards, and he was beating at the water with his hands, and someone was swearing; it might have been him or it might not have been, and the water went over his head, and then a man was shouting at him, and the water was fighting back, a strong flanking manouevre, and he knew this was a losing battle, and he could just lie here, lie back and die and try not to drown—

"You fucking idiot!" A hand passed by his face, and Willas grabbed it, despairing for air, almost crying. "You bloody fucking idiot!" said the voice of his rescuer. "I get you out of your cell, and the first thing you do is try to drown yourself!" Willas felt a sharp pull, all the way up his arm, and they dragged him up onto the deck, where he collapsed among a pile of ropes and sandbags, spitting out seaweed and snails.

The man dragged him along the deck. "You dumb cunt. If you'd found me on a bad day, I'd be gutting you right now."

"Piss on that." Willas was surprised to hear the words coming from his own lips. "Don't pretend you give a shit about my life. If you did, you'd have gotten me out of my cell a lot earlier. No. You're a sellsword. For you it's all about the money." He turned onto his side and vomited.

After that he fell asleep. He dreamed of the river, of the sound of drums, pounding through his ears. Only it was a different river, the Mander, and he was on a pleasure barge, and he was sailing through the little stone gate that marked the secret way into Highgarden castle, the way that only the Tyrells knew. Garlan was waiting for him up there, he could see him, up high on a stone balcony, and Loras, and Margaery, and even Sansa, for some reason, the wife who had run away.

They were laughing at him, pointing and laughing. Why are you laughing? he wanted to shout at them. But he had no mouth. So he would have to see for himself. He turned around, and nearly shat himself in doing so. The river was on fire, burning up red and green, and the black-winged dragon was flying overhead, coming straight towards him, screaming, its mouth a furnace, and he was no longer in Highgarden, he was in the seventh hell—

He woke, gasping and retching. Only this time nothing came out. He was lying, naked, in a narrow bunk. His chest was on fire, and his head burned with the nightmare, but his legs and arms didn't seem to be there. He was just lying there, and there was a noise in his head, a scream, rising and rising, shriller and shriller by the second.

Willas sat up. The noise faded, and everything was silent. All he could hear was the faint patter of the rain, and below that, the barest hiss of the river. He walked to the porthole window and looked out, but everything was foggy. Then he went over to the table. They had laid some fresh clothes out for him, so he forced them on, still dazed. He went to try the door of the cabin, but it was locked. I am as much a prisoner here as I was there, he thought. Only here they pretend otherwise.

There was nothing to do but sit by the porthole, and pretend that there was something to see out there. Then, after a long time, the motion of the boat began to steady, and when he heard footsteps coming down into the belly of the ship, Willas realised they were now moored in place.

There was some noise of a key scrabbling in a lock, and then the door swung inwards, and his sellsword rescuer stood in the doorway. "Come on, then," the man said. "There's people waiting to see you. Up in the castle."

"Castle?" said Willas, as the man shoved him roughly out of the cabin. "What castle?"

"Stop talking, and start walking, and you might find out." In the morning light, Willas could see his rescuer more clearly – greasy black hair, a windburned face – and in that light, he had the certain feeling he had seen this man before. He did not find that particularly reassuring.

They climbed the stairs to the deck. It was no clearer up here than it had been looking through his porthole window; the fog was everywhere, a swirling grey cloud of it. The river had calmed considerably, Willas noted; the strong currents from Blackwater Bay had petered out, and the steep rocky banks had become softly sloping ones, all mud and weeds.

Standing at the stern, he could see a narrow wooden jetty poking like an inquisitive finger out of the gloom. Very slowly they drew up alongside; the crewmen lowered the mainsail and cast their ropes out to the men on the platform. Led by his rescuer, and now wrapped up in a green wool cloak, Willas disembarked.

The men on the dock greeted him with mutterings of "Lord Tyrell." That sounded so strange to his ears that it almost made him sick. The last time he had been called Lord Tyrell… was it before Garlan had departed, or after? Had Arianne ever called him that, either meaningfully or in jest?

There was no time to question, because the path leading up from the jetty suddenly widened out and there the arches of a castle loomed up above. They passed through a narrow gateway – watched by soldiers whose blue-and-green livery he did not recognise – and then along a dark passage, stalked by the smells of livestock and soiled hay, and then up a flight of moss-slick steps. "Back entrance," Willas's rescuer explained, as they approached a pair of ominous-looking wooden doors.

"Where are we?"

"Maltwood Hall. Little castle on the edge of the kingswood."

"Maltwood?" He did not recognise the name.

"Aye. Owned by some thirdborn son of Lord… Lord Whatshisface."

"Who?"

The man shrugged. "Leave the explanations to the people who are good at them." He did not say who he meant, but then the doors to the hall opened, and Willas understood.

There was a moment of brief silence. Then: "You."

"Me." The eunuch, Varys, stood by an iron brazier, warming his soft pale hands. "But you knew that already, I think."

Willas felt very stiff. "I did."

"You may be wondering how it was that I got you out of your cell, Lord Willas. And you may also be wondering what took me so long."

"The thought had occurred to me."

"I had to speak to some friends, you see. In the capital. Lord Rosby and Lord Velaryon had both turned their cloaks to Daenerys, and as reward for their treason she had named them as castellans of the Red Keep in her absence. Do you see where I am going with this?"

"You needed to bribe them," said Willas heavily. "You needed time to bribe them."

"Yes. Quite so. But now that they are our men… they will tell Daenerys that you are on your way to the Wall. To the Night's Watch. As you are supposed to be. And in the meantime…" The eunuch shrugged. "Well, we will leave those matters for a few moments, I think. There are meetings to be had, first." He picked up a bell from the side table and rang it. Then the door at the back of the hall opened, and Arianne Martell entered.

There was a moment of breathless silence. Had she, Willas wondered, been expecting his arrival as he expected hers? But that was only a moment. Then they rushed together and they embraced, neither caring that the other was bruised or that they smelled like graveworms. She was here, she was real, and she was warm; the first warm thing he had felt in a long time.

When they drew apart Arianne turned to Varys. "Thank you," she said.

"Do not thank me just yet," said the eunuch. "There is still a way to go."

"To Highgarden?" asked Willas. "Did Garlan—?"

"Your brother made it back to Highgarden, yes. Once he was back within the castle walls, Daenerys dared not pursue."

"Why not?" Willas was admittedly surprised by that. "She could have subjugated him then and there. With Aegon dead—" He cast a cursory glance to Arianne, "—she would have found it easy to demand her fealty."

"Daenerys has seen fit to practise mercy, it would seem. My little birds inform that she intends to flee north, to the Wall. Something to do with aiding the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, I believe."

Willas frowned. "Do you believe her?"

"My dear boy," said Varys, patronisingly. "I don't know what to believe anymore. What does 'the truth' even mean now, I ask you?" He tutted.

"Something to believe in," Willas muttered.

"I'm glad you said that," said Arianne suddenly. "There are… other things now. Other things to believe in, I mean."

Willas looked at her, with a distinct sinking feeling. "Such as…" And then he noticed the way she was standing, with the hand resting – protectively, he realised – over her belly. She was not yet starting to swell, but there were other things: twitches in her hands, flickers of her eyelids, the way she moved, so slowly, so, so… "You're pregnant."

"I am."

"I… the king…" Or…

"Yes. Before he died."

You can't know that. You can't know it wasn't me. Willas nearly said it aloud, but if Varys had done all this hoping that the child would someday take back his father's seat, and solely for that purpose, and if the child was not Aegon's, then Varys had no use for them. For either of them.

Varys turned his attention back to Willas. "I trust you have made Ser Bronn's acquaintance," he said, gesturing to Willas's rescuer. "He's no fabled knight, I fear, but my friends are so rarely men of honour."

"I'm no friend of yours," said the man called Ser Bronn. "Just another person you've bribed into submission. Another person you've lied to."

Varys made a tiny scandalised noise. "Lied to? Why, Ser Bronn, I would never presume—"

"The boy. The money."

"Oh, very well." The eunuch waved a hand. "You can have the boy back now. You are free. Although… you may soon find out that you are under suspicion in King's Landing. And all across the Crownlands. Believed to have aided in the escape of both the lord of Highgarden and Aegon's queen. With a bounty on your head, and no shortage of men hunting it. Hunting you, hunting the boy, hunting everything you've gained, Stokeworth—"

Ser Bronn hawked and spat at Varys's feet. "You truly are a shit, aren't you?"

"You could say that. But we are rogues both, Ser Bronn. I doubt you expected any less."

If they are rogues both, what does that make me and Arianne? Willas wondered. And all our families, and all our allies. We are traitors all. Then the horrifying thought came to him. If Daenerys comes for us again, there will be no mercy this time. Instead it will be heads, spikes, walls, for all of us.

"And what say you, Lord Tyrell?" Varys said to him. "Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to stay here, too. You and the princess both." It was as if the eunuch read his thoughts – though that could not have been particularly hard, since the worry showed so plainly on his face.

"Highgarden." He choked out the word. "We go to Highgarden. Back to my brother. To live… or to die."

"To live free or die," said Varys, with a wink at both Willas and Ser Bronn. "But first, we have other places to go. To Bitterbridge first, I think."

"What is at Bitterbridge?" asked Arianne.

"You forget, Your Grace, that your late husband had far more friends than his aunt ever did. Not only the remaining Reachmen and Dornishmen, but others, and some new allies, even. Even without Magister Illyrio's funding from Braavos. Oh, the lesser companies broke on the Blackwater, but they will all come running back when they catch the sweet smell of gold. The Long Lances. The Windblown. And most numerous of all, the Second Sons. So, then: to Bitterbridge. Brown Ben Plumm is waiting for us."


The title of this one, "Live Free or Die", is the motto of the state of New Hampshire. Which is... completely irrelevant, actually.

I wrote this one ages ago, which is usually a bad thing as that often means it doesn't make sense... but surprisingly this one was, for the most part, readable. So there wasn't much editing to do, which is always a relief.

The KL plot starts getting exciting pretty soon, so hold on because it's going to be like the world's greatest rollercoaster. Probably.

BIG NEWS/2018 PLANS:

As I've vaguely alluded to before, I've had a hell of a lot of real life stuff going on which has meant that Knights of the Nightingale has proceeded at a snail's pace compared to the previous two instalments in this series. Unfortunately, it's probably not going to get a lot better, as my priorities have changed around a lot.

On the other hand, I am currently (albeit probably only briefly) operating on a ridiculous high as I found out today that I've been offered a place at Oxford, starting this October. Which has been a sort of lifelong dream, I suppose. But I still have to meet my offer grades, and as a result this story is taking a backseat. Not just because of my increasingly hectic schedule, but because I've got about three more projects crawling along at the same time as KOTN (film script, fantasy novel, and I'm starting a sci-fi concept thingy this week). Whereas previously I was working this every time I sat down to write, I now only write KOTN about one day in four.

None of this is to say that there will not be any new KOTN coming, but things will be uploaded A LOT slower than usual. For my ease, I've split the story up into 10 informal "parts", the first of which ends with the next chapter (Tyrion I). However, I've only written about 2 chapters of Part 2, with another 8 chapters incomplete. Already things with KOTN are going a lot slower than I had intended.

When all my exams are done in June, I should have time to get this story rolling again for about 4 months. But, assuming I meet my uni offer and start out in October, KOTN will be on hold again, so the end date may well be months or even years down the line - though at the same time, I have no intentions of putting this on permanent hiatus. And on the plus side, we might have TWOW to tide us over by then, fingers crossed.

Regardless of what comes up, though, thank you all so very much for reading, and supporting me all this way.