Rickard

They're all filing their way out of the throne room, he, Ty, and Harry burrowed in conversation, when someone taps him on the shoulder. He turns, expecting to see Petyr Baelish's smug smirking face back again, but he's wrong. "Renly," he says, ponderously, "what is it?"

His ordinarily kindly, smiling face is set to concern, and he says seriously, "He wants to talk to you."

"Mmm."

No point asking who he is. He's stood up from the Iron Throne, staring at him. Harry and Tyrek are at his back when they realise he's been quiet for too long. "What's to do, Baratheon?" Harry asks, barging through a throng of courtiers.

"The King wants to see Rick alone."

They both groan. "Not again."

"So, is it another beating? Or is he going to hold my hand to the fire until I apologise."

He goes without a fight. After the Throne Room has emptied till it's just the two of them, Renly leading him to the rooms behind the Iron Throne, where his father is waiting. It's a small room, with a fire, and his father is at a table laying into a goblet of wine. Renly hurries, murmurs a good luck to him, but besides that he'll receive no help.

"Your Grace?"

He just sits there drinking, unacknowledging him, again.

"If I'm here for another beating, can we make it quick? I have things to do."

Still nothing.

"Or is it a different punishment this time? Something that'll leave scarring this time." He goes to the fire, takes up the poker, and waves it in the flames. "Brand me with this? Eh? Or if you prefer-"

"Oh, Shut up! Shut your smug bastard mouth, and sit down!"

To emphasize his point, his Father kicks out a stool from beneath the table. He hesitates, before he acquiesces, thinking, probably best, I'll get into less trouble, hitting him with a stool than I would a white, hot poker. So, they sit, the Prince and his King. One twiddling his thumbs, the latter drinking goblet after goblet, tapping his feet, and fidgety. He can wait, for his father to cough out what he means to.

After all, it is for the King, not the Prince, to speak first when they are on even ground like this. He can wait. After all, this Prince is so very humble now.

Finally: "How are you?"

So, whatever it is must be serious. He shrugs. "Well enough, Your Grace."

"Ah, bugger it!" The King swats the table. "Dammit, Rick. Don't call me that."

"What you prefer me to call you, sire?"

His father starts to speak, but stops when he looks at him, his son, and sees that instead of being mocking, he is quite serious. It makes him pause, and think hard. Because, of course, this son of his has never called him anything else other than Your Grace.

"Call me… call me…"

"If I might, what did you call a King before you were one?"

The King looks at him again, and must at least believe he is being serious. "I'd prefer you call me what I called my father, before I was one."

"Which was?"

He'd expected his father's temper to burst at that but instead he just stares right at him, all of him, perhaps even through him, and says, "You look like him."

"What?"

"Or at least I think you do. How I remember him, at least, that's how you look, Dick."

This catches him off guard. Watching his father: he looks sadly into his wine, closes his eyes, pinches his nose.

"My grandfather told me the same thing once."

It'd been when he was a squire at the Rock, after a lesson he'd had with the Maester, about the recent history of House Baratheon and House Lannister. Where he discovered that his grandfathers, the dead Lord Steffon and the very much alive Lord Tywin, were friends. He'd gone to his living grandfather afterwards to ask him about it, and they sat for a good hour talking of the long dead Steffon Baratheon, how he had been as a squire, how he was made Lord of the Stormlands at fourteen, once his father, Lord Ormund Baratheon, was struck down in the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Their talk had been long and thoughtful: it was how Rickard felt he was finally begging to know his grandfather, when he casually slipped in: 'You are very much a portrait of Steffon, Rickard. In many ways.' His voice as though it were the finest compliment.

But that was long ago. And now he is sitting here, with the son of the man whom he resembles. His face mournful.

"He would have."

He, Rickard, says nothing.

"I remember the first time my father took me to court. Stannis came with us." He says his brother's name bitterly. Sore point there, he thinks. Best not mention it. "I had to hold his hand. I should have been five, six?" He asks the question directly to him, but what answer is there for him to give? He wasn't there.

"Which would have made that ungrateful swine three, or maybe five?"

He waits.

"When we saw the King, afterward we agreed that the king had been as noble and fearsome as… as…" He wants to suggest dragon, but he must still be humbly waiting. Anyway, that might distract him, set him off against the Targaryens.

"Years later, our father told us that Aerys had cut himself on the throne that morning, so his Hand had taken his place. It was that bastard grandfather of yours, who'd impressed me."

And?

He lets his father go on. Stumbling his way through their conversation, through his cups.

"He was a better father than man. Would have been a better King. A better father."

Which one? Tywin or Steffon? Surely not Aerys. Or some other party he's speaking to the air of?

"And so… well…" The King looks at him again. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Dick."

He nods. How touching, Your Grace.

Part of him wants to shrug. Part of him just wants to walk away, wash his hands of this. And part of him wants to take back that poker and ram it down his father's throat.

"I can't go on this way. It's killing me."

He thinks, you're killing yourself. With all your whores, all of that drinking you do, your continuous eating, with even that very wine cup in your hand. And then what? Across Westeros, people are having this conversation. The King often had it with Jon Arryn, his brother Stannis. He, his son, has had it many a time with Ty, with Harry, with Willas Tyrell, even with his living grandfather.

Suppose the King does dies. Suppose that he comes off his horse one day, and the fatal should happen? Suppose while he out hunting, the worst shall happen? Say what you would of Aerys Targaryen, the gods gave him a son that he was happy with and that men would follow. But what became of the realm when Rhaegar fell? The sharp knives came to cut up the Conqueror's legacy, carve up the Seven Kingdoms.

Joffrey is a child of ten-and-seven, who everyone is waiting to grow up. He'd hold the realm as long as he's willing to do what he's told. But he will grow up eventually, and be damned if any man will tell him what he must do. Myrcella? A girl: a woman on the Iron Throne goes against the will of the Seven. And Tommen is Tommen, not even ten. A child cannot hold the Kingdom. Not when you have a beggar in Pentos, going out on the streets to find anyone fool enough to grant him his heart's desire.

So, who is left? Me, your grace, who you so despise. Who half of Westeros thinks is in his grandfather's pocket, and the other see him as a new Blackfyre. Except those who sealed his Charter, but you can't hold Westeros with the luke warm support of less than half of the four southern kingdoms. Anyway, nothing to do about it for the nonce but pray.

The King looks at him, half looking sorry, half looking expectant. "Well?"

"'Well', sire?"

His Grace flinches at the curtsy. Then he frowns and leans forward. "Well? Aren't you going to say something?"

"No."

Robert looks confused and then, what a miracle, puts down his wine. "No? You… You're… What?!" He really cannot believe this.

The Princeling raises his hands, and shrugs. "What? What did expect me to… No, what did you want me to say? Really, I'd like to know." His father only sits there dumbfounded. "Did you want this to be some kind reconciliation? To which your only olive branch was 'sorry'? What a fucking waste of time." He stands, tears off the bandages and shows off his begotten digit. "You cut off my damn finger! Accused me of murder, which now half the court will. Sorry isn't about to do it, squire." His fathers on his feet now, colour rising in his face. "You want forgiveness, do what I do: Go see a Septon. Better yet, do what you always do: See a whore." Then he turns to walk out.

"Don't turn you back on me!"

So, he doesn't, he turns and bows, throws down his gauntlet, and says, "Or what?"

The King readily starts to storm over, but he sees his sons face resolute, and he falters. He cries out, almost desperate, "I'm still your bloody father!"

"So you are." He says, and walks out, mumbling, "Only when it suits you."

Days go by.

They're long, and stressful. Planning their drive North, which against all advice he is still going on. Not that he doesn't understand the arguments why, in fact he sympathizes with them. But it's any excuse to get out of King's Landing. You spend too long in the same, stinking city, any reason to get out is a good excuse. So tomorrow they're away.

But tonight, he's restless. It's late. Harry and Ty have snuck out hours ago, a final trip around their local hotspots. Had he known he'd have no easy rest he'd have gone too. But instead Rickard elected to stay behind, in his room. Bored.

He's on his balcony, large enough for a few chairs and a small table. It's chilly, the breeze cutting through his night clothes and even bear pelt dressing gown so he's brought furs out thrown them over his bare legs, even dragged out a brazier and lit it. On the table, his first book lies forgotten.

The Rogue Prince, or, A King's Brother. A study of the life of Prince Daemon Targaryen.

In truth, he's a bad reader, in the sense that new books like this rarely take his fancy, and he always ends setting them down for a more familiar one. Tonight, he's taken back up is copy of the Seven-Pointed Star. To him, this copy is sacred: bound in cloth-of-silver, the star on the front has tiny gems pressed on top of the star points, inside the writing is gilded, golden and in High Valyrian. It's one of the copies which Baelor the Blessed translated into the Dragon tongue himself. Admittingly, he's not always been strictly able to read the words inscribed onto the pages, when the book first came into his possession, he'd flick through pages just to admire the gilding and the art. Still, now he can read it and he has greater admiration for it. High Valyrian has a certain beauty in makeup of its words, how they form a language into something poetic.

This is his guilty pleasure: his moral refuge, from this city of sinners, and palace of liars. Even the Royal Sept, even Baelor's Great Sept, he cannot find this kind of shelter. Still, he can't enjoy it, not right now, with a servant walking out on to his balcony.

She's baring a tray, upon which is a goblet. Before she can lay it upon his table, he rises, protesting. "Forgive me. I didn't ask for anything."

But still she puts it down anyway, answering, "A gift. From an admirer."

"A gift…" He starts, but his voice catches when he looks at her and recognises the voice, and her eyes: those dark, beady viper eyes, threatening, amused. "Ari." He reaches out a hand to touch face. Then he pulls back, his fingers smudge with white. She's painted herself to look paler. A disguise. A good one. Anyone else might not have known her.

"I thought I'd give you a visit. Seeing as though you will be off tomorrow, and I will be staying here." She tells him, answering the question written on his face.

He recovers himself quickly. "You are the emissary from Dorne. It is within your right to go where the court is."

"And the court is remaining in King's Landing, Rick. As you well know. His Grace has dubbed this a private matter."

He snorts. "Oh yes. Very private, with all of Westeros watching for what will happen."

"Please," she says, grasping his arm, "you needn't tell me what I already know. You're not with Harry now. Speaking of whom, where are he and your coz?"

He smiles, enjoying her touch through his bear skin dressing gown. "Out. The Wolf's Den inn. A favourite of theirs."

"And yours?" She says, a twinkle in those deadly eyes.

He laughs, low and throaty. "Have you not heard, Princess? I have no favourite den of vice, for I visit too many to tell them apart." It's more tempting to admit, that sometimes he feels like giving into these rumours and lies, make truth out of untruth. Nevertheless, he resists, as the Mother wishes him to resist all temptation.

Arianne is grinning. His amused face stares back.

"Come inside," He motions, after a shiver runs through her. "I'll bring in the brazier. And you can wash this paint off." To emphasise he runs a thumb across her check, taking more of her disguise off.

He bundles his sleeves up to watch his hands against the hot metal, and pulls the iron and burning fuel inside slightly barring the door of his balcony, so the smoke might escape and not clog the air. But soot gets caught in the fur, spitting from the disturbed flames, and the hot iron still burns his night clothes. Arianne, wiping her face clean sees this and protest and bemoans the loss of good fur, as he discards it across the room.

"I have others. Or if I wish, I could have a new one by morning." He says, smiling.

Yet Arianne chides him, smirking, "What it is, to be a Prince."

He cocks his head, narrows his eyes, "Gods forgive me. I should have realised I was within the presence of a Princess of Dorne, the humblest of creatures." Before adding a bow to her, and turning away to fetch his books and pipe.

On his return, Arianne is laid across his bed, her face clear and staring at the ceiling; her hair spread out in curls across his sheets, snaking their way over his furs and pillows; one leg is crossed over the other, drawing shapes in the air with her foot.

It makes him stop, and curse.

She hears him, and she stares.

"Rick."

His fingers flex around the Seven-Pointed Star. All he can think to do is start praying in his head. But even there the words are a gibberish fumble of begging for mercy and deliverance; of sworn oaths and honest pleas; and, Seven help him, her only reply is to say his name again.

"Rick."

Even now, she is an enigma to him. Her face is a work of fiction: true and honest; but the truth is rarely pure. So, yet she is a lie, an exaggeration of herself. The uncertainty of which is held like a knife to his throat.

"Rick."

But, therein–

"For Godssake, Rick! You're on fire!"

And – by God – so he is.

"FUCK!"

The wind has come in from the window, and blown his night shirt into the brazier, where the flames licked at him and caught his sleeve. Its over in a few seconds: he shits himself, he jumps six feet away, shouts and balls and curses, pulls the godforsaken thing off of him, before he's beating out the flames with his hands. Again, it's all over quickly. And then he's rolling on the floor, groaning, clutching his chest, his forehead pressed to the floor, his shattered ribs screaming at him.

"Rickard. Rickard, what's wrong?"

His breaths come in slow and deep and soul shuddering in their shaken and hollow forms drawing in and out. He hears Arianne. Her own voice breaking into concern. By his side, her hand stroking his back, voice soothing.

"Nothing. Fine, fine. Just chest… winded… from the…" Gods but it hurts.

"Calm down, sweetling. Shh. You're holding your breath, let it out now." He does. "Now, take another one, come on." Arianne, God bless her, takes it with him. "Hold it now. Hold. Now let it go, and breathe even." Her hand rubs circles across his back, one circle: one breath. "Feeling dizzy? Here, sit up. Slowly." By the time he's even on the floor, he's even more dizzy and things are blurring for a moment. "Breathe easy, sweetling. Shh. Don't speak, just breathe." Remarkable, her transformation from seductress to nursemaid.

She has a hand on his cheek as well, knuckles brushing the line where his beard had been growing before she had sheared him of it. "I think I prefer you with the beard, darling. Makes you look older than you are. Without it you look no older your brother. Still, I'm surprised you let me take it off for you. You know I'd never held a razor before you offered it me?" His breathing returns to regular, head stops spinning, he can see straight again. See how the distance has shrunk between them both: Prince and Princess. "You really ought to have asked, but then you can be a foolish boy sometimes."

"Man." He coughs out. "I'm no boy."

"No." She says, one hand slipping from his cheek to his neck, where she can feel the humming in his throat as he draws her fingertips over his skin, while her other hand slips from his back to his chest, where she can feel the beating of his hear through his broken bones. "I suppose you're not."

"Did you plan this?"

"Of a sort. But I'd be lying if I said I expected nothing from you. Though I'm more interested in what you expect of me."

He smirks, stiffens, resolute, "I expect nothing from you, Arianne. Men who expect anything from a woman are pigs. Women are gifts, treasures. Who have to agree to share themselves." He goes on in his own way, but she backs off, her head tilts and looks at him as though he's just started opening his veins. Eventually, he stops and looks at her, says, "What is it?"

She pauses, still and silent as a fallen leaf, her tongue teases itself out of her mouth, rubs across her lip, thinking. "I think I love you."

"What?"

Between them they both lean in, but through no fault of his own, he pulls back sharply, wincing, cursing, apologising. But she smiles at him. "Perhaps I should lead, sweetling. Just this once."

"Just this once," he whispers to her, before she slips herself onto him.

At the Great Sept of Baelor, Lord Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, Warden of the East and Lord Paramount of the Vale, lies on a marble slab; funeral stones pressed onto his eyelids, to seal them closed in the realm of the living forever. He waits to be taken down beneath the Sept to the catacombs beneath, which harbour the bones of all the Kings and all the High Septons and dozens of the great men of the Realm since the Conquest. At the Red Keep, Princess Arianne Nymeros Martell lies naked on a ruined bear fur dressing gown, beside a smouldering brazier, her eyes on her new lover. Only her restless fingers move; she has them in her lover's hair, giving him a small braid by which to remember him by on his travels, twisting it into his long, curling hair. She does not leave until the brazier is cold.

It's the morning, and we're off to Winterfell – a train two thousand strong, stretched from the Red Keep, through the cobbled and paved streets of King's Landing to Dragon Gate; from Dragon Gate, across the green fields of the Crownlands passed Stokeworth. Their progress is slow and terrible, for the Queen has brought a carriage for the journey, which might look more at home on the Blackwater flying a dozen sails, than being dragged along by a fleet of ill-tempered horses and mules. And certain people are grumbling about the sizes of the entourages they must keep to.

The King has brought two hundred of his own men, excluding his own cooks, his bed servants, his kennel masters, his hounds, his falcons, his musicians, his Kingsguards and a few of his favourite whores, who go with the camp followers. The Princes have fifty men each, but only he, Rickard, has men who are his own, or at least paid by him. Tommen and Joffrey's are their Mothers men, who is allowed scant one hundred men. A High Lord is allowed forty men, to a Lower Lord thirty, while a knight must scrape by with twenty, including his squires.

His Grace is both giddy with excitement to see his old friend Ned and furiously bad tempered with their lack of progress after half a day. The two friends will not have seen each other since the war we now call the Greyjoy Rebellion, where both these titans of the last war fell upon Pyke like a torrent and almost drowned King Balon in the blood of his own sons. For this, Robert wants this to be all the greater meeting, all the grander, but he's uneasy about the specifics of the occasion.

It's said that the King offered Lord Stark to be his Hand before, back when they were still fighting in their own Rebellion. But the two fell out with one another after the King's Landing was taken. So, Jon Arryn was summoned to piece Robert's Kingdom together. But stories like this come and go and come again, sometimes the truth leaves with them.

Either way, he keeps his distance from the King, sometimes lagging. Harry and Ty keep with him, sometimes lagging themselves. They both know somethings off with him, the way a grin will tug at his face while he stares blankly into his horse's head, before setting off to a canter, or the way he'll stop suddenly and stare dead ahead, his face moved to frown.

He can hear Arianne whispering in his ear. "They fear for you, my love. They revolve around you; their fates are shackled to yours. You must forgive them their worry, for they love you."

That makes him stop again. His thoughts often turn to Arianne at times like these, when he's plain bored or thinking too hard. But in this way, never has she spoken to him, or has he felt he could hear her voice. Nor has it been this constant, as if she were riding behind him, between Tyrek and Harrold.

"Something wrong, Rick?" Ty asks.

"Fine."

"Nothing wrong with Thunderer?" Harry says, pulling alongside the old war horse.

"No." Thunderer is his first real horse, and still with him after all the years since he first put his feet in the spurs. A powerful, great stallion once upon a time, yet now he's grown past his time, and now the horse has become older these few years, past his prime, no longer suited to thundering up and down the lists at a man or carrying itself and a rider across a battlefield, but the Prince's attachment to the Old War Horse compels him to keep the beast around: Even if it does bite and kick at any poor soul unfortunate enough to get on its wrong side.

"You sure?" Harry presses him. "Chest still holding up?"

"Yes, I'm sure." He lies, given that every bump and knock on the road or every sudden move by Thunderer sends a tremendous shock of pain through his knacked ribs.

They let the issue lie there, Ty and Harry, but they don't forget it, and the worry still hangs in between the three of them, and it's still there by the time the King decrees the column halts and break for camp.

His Grace is moaning and complaining of how poor their progression across the Crownlands has been, and everyone in half a mile can hear him doing it. So: they camp further away, on the fringes of the royal procession. They build a fire, a huge one, big enough to seat a hundred of his men around, but by the time they cut down enough wood it's too late for them to hunt themselves, so they resolve to get drunk. Camp followers, lesser knights from the guard, men-at-arms are drawn to their bonfire like moths to a flame. Some of them bring more wine, and beer, and ale, and they dance around the fire with music playing, from lutes and drums and pipes, and the whole the becomes quite debauched. In the end, he loses sight of Tyrek, lost to whichever girl ensnared his fancies; Harry he can't seem not to see, surrounding himself with more and more women, one on each knee, on his lap, one wrapped round his neck. Still, he seems to enjoy himself. Meanwhile, their Prince is leading the singing and dancing round the fire, loosing himself in drink enough not to feel his aching ribs anymore. It goes on long into the night, long enough or loud enough for either the King or Queen to turn out the guards on them, but by then he's been ditched back in his tent, blacked out from the wine. Smiling to himself, a mumbling the same word over and over again: "Arianne."