Chapter 14

Boom.

Willem woke to the groan of wood under a thunderous blow. At first he did not realise it. He moaned, sitting up in bed and rubbing red and weary eyes. What is it? It felt like he had hardly slept at all. A brief glance at the window showed the sky pitch-black.

Boom.

The floor shook. Willem jolted fully awake and reached for his sword, by old soldier's instinct. It was there. It was on his bedside table where it should have been. The cold steel in his hand reassured him.

He knew at once what was happening. They've come.

Willem flung aside the covers of his bed, rose to his feet and ran from his bedchamber. He saw none of the servants. They must be asleep or cowering. Pain shot through his knees, but on he went, until he burst through the door of his charges.

Little Daenerys was up first. "Hello, Ser Willem," she said, studying him with innocent curiosity. "Why are you still in your nightclothes?"

"There was no time, my princess," Willem answered. "Dress yourself as fast as you can. It's cold aside. You'll need to move—"

Boom.

"—quickly."

The whole house trembled this time, creaking timbers unused to this onslaught. Willem crossed over to the window. It was too dark for his old eyes to see much, and his sight was faint and blurry; but he dimly glimpsed a huge black shape outside the door.

"The Usurper's men," said Viserys. He was older, quicker to understand.

"Yes," said Willem. "The Baratheons will be here soon. Go, Your Grace. Go by the back door. Go to the Temple of the Moonsingers, they take care of lost children and the killers won't dare come in there." He spoke quickly. "Remember: keep quiet; keep crouched low; and always look around you."

"Why?" said Daenerys, a girl of six namedays, shivering in her dress. "I don't understand."

"Don't worry, Dany," said Viserys, plucking her up in his arms, "Ser Willem will be there to take care of us." He turned to Willem, doubt all of a sudden blooming in his eyes. "Won't you?"

"Not this time," Willem said sadly. He kissed the little princess on the brow, then turned to his king. "I'll find you if I can. If I don't come, take the first ship to Pentos you can catch. Before you leave, go into my chambers, take the gold with you, so you can afford it."

"But why can't you come too?" The princess was crying noisily while her brother wrapped a coat around her. "Don't send us away, ser, please, please, I don't want to go without you."

"Be quiet, Dany," Viserys told her, "Ser Willem is doing as he thinks best." He was not far from tears himself.

"There's my strong dragon king," said Willem. "Be brave. And take care of your sister."

Crash!

The shriek of failing metal stabbed at all their ears, the squeal of hinges, then the thump of something big, heavy and wooden landing on the floor. "Run!" Willem shouted. Not looking back, he sprinted for the stairs.

Fear stroked icy fingers in his heart, then, and despair rode upon it, but with it came resolve. Had this been what the guardians of the royal bedchambers heard and saw, when Lord Tywin's mad dogs came to murder little Aegon and Rhaenys? The huge dark figure, the heavy footsteps? It could well be Gregor Clegane the Usurper had sent to do his dirty work. Willem did not know how he could face such a foe.

Or had there even been any guardians, due to the Kingslayer's treachery? That was one thing, at least, in his favour. There were no traitors here.

He hit the last stair and turned out into the ground floor's corridor. On its far side, black against the darkness, standing on a red door he had torn off his hinges, there stood a man.

Willem was a tall man. The intruder was a full head taller. High as a tower, he was, yet broad like a fortress wall—no slender lanky figure but a big-built body bulging with the promise of violence. Willem's eyes moved swiftly past the matte black boots, the matte black cloak, the matte black robes, the longbow at the man's side that looked like burnt gold. They went straight to the face: pale-skinned, with short-cropped black hair, a firm nose and blue eyes.

This is no Clegane.

Terror tore at Willem like hungry wolves, yet his voice was steady and sure as he said, "So you've come at last, Baratheon."

The giant figure spoke at last, in a deep rumbling bass. "I am not Robert."

"What?"

"I am not Robert," the Baratheon repeated. "Flee, Willem Darry. You've done me no wrong; you need not choose to be my enemy. I do not kill men who do not give me cause."

Memory came, slow, as it often did. Ser Stannis Baratheon. Willem had heard of him—living here in Braavos, they said, then joining in one of the free companies. The Prince of Sunset, men called him now, and of him there were many tall tales.

"Why are you here?" Willem demanded. "Your brother hates you; half the world knows it."

"I am not here for him." A snake could have drowned in the venom which soaked that last hateful word. "And I have not come for you, old man. You know that you have not the strength to stop me; every Faceless Man in the House of Black and White could not. Flee and live, or stay and die. The choice it is yours."

Willem stared at the burnt-golden longbow at the other end of the corridor, considering how far he could run with sword in hand before the first shot. The Prince of Sunset was young, strong, and well-known for archery; Willem's bones ached when he walked.

"If you were here for the war, you'd be at the Sealord's Palace."

Stannis's lips quirked. "You imagine I am not."

Willem ignored that absurdity. "You're not. You're here. So you and your men doubtless mean harm against the children."

He waited. Stannis did not deny it.

"I am the king's master-at-arms—the true king, not Robert. So long as I stand here, none shall pass."

"So be it," said Ser Stannis, as Ser Willem was already running, reaching, sword held aloft, mouth open with a battle-cry.

"For the king!"

Pale hands flashed, left to a long arrow, right to a golden bow.

Willem knew he would be hit. He would have to withstand it. The first arrow to the belly or chest would be painful, and no doubt it would kill him soon. He accepted that. If he could reach the Prince of Sunset soon enough to deal one blow, the children would be safe.

He saw the moment Stannis Baratheon realised his intention, the moment when fear first entered those ocean-blue eyes. The arrow was loosed early, hasty. The bowstring thrummed; he saw the arrow leave; he saw it was aimed high, too high to hit his belly or chest; his heart soared. It flew straight as an arrow.

—until the arrow-flight twisted sharply down.

As Willem gaped at it, in his sight the narrow arrowhead grew very wide—

Hoh. Heh. Stannis breathed deeply in and out. That had been unexpected. He had guessed that Ser Willem Darry would try to kill him. He had known that Ser Willem would die in the attempt. He had not dreamt that the old man would know this and embrace his own death anyway, by a headlong rush to take Stannis with him.

A warning, that. He had not perceived how determined his enemies were to kill him. He must not again make that mistake.

Stannis Baratheon stepped over the corpse of the man who had come two steps from ending his life and towards the back door of the house. The old knight had thought that he could deter pursuit; that, by his sacrifice, he could buy time to keep the Targaryen children too far from sight for Stannis to seek out and find them. He had near been right.

Poor fool. Near won naught.

A shift… a thought… and Stannis surged into the sky and scoured the city through the eyes of eagles.

He was hopelessly lost. He had stopped knowing these winding streets half an hour ago. He ran on anyway, blindly intent that he must be away, away, away.

"There!" cried a small high voice, and he nearly leapt out of his skin, ere he realised that the shift in shadows was just a bird on a roof somewhere, not a hired knife come to murder him. He clutched her tighter and went going.

"Are we safe yet?" asked his sister.

"No," snarled Viserys Targaryen, turning into a tiny twisting alleyway.

"Where's Ser Willem?"

"He isn't with us." He's dead, Viserys did not say.

"Viserys, I'm scared."

He choked back tears. "I know."

His shoulders were shaking; his arms felt burning, carrying the smaller child who clung tight to his neck. No doubt he could have made a better pace without her. He did not even consider it.

On he ran, holding Dany with both hands. He turned into narrower and narrower streets, the smallest and most obscure that came in front of him. The Free City of Braavos was enormous; it made King's Landing look like a town. Surely he must be able to lose them, surely—

Something black and hard wrapped around his waist.

Viserys screamed as he rose unwilling into the air, high and keening like an animal. He flailed against his captor; he writhed, kicked and bit.

Nothing availed him. The grip that held him was robust, and he had only seen three-and-ten namedays.

Dany let go her grip on him and ran as fast as her legs could carry her. The man behind Viserys took one long stride that covered as much ground as three of her childish steps, then plucked her off the ground.

"You sumap!" Viserys cried, using a foul word he had heard from the sailors. "You hurt Willem! You're a traitor, a murderer, a Usurper's dog, a… a very bad man!"

"Be silent," came an angered voice as deep as the bottom of the sea. The man shifted Viserys and Dany both into the clutch of his left arm, freeing his right, then gagged them.

With that turning, Viserys caught his first glimpse of his captor. It was the tallest man he had ever seen up close: a massive figure in a robe and cloak that matched the colour of the night around them. It was hard to see much beneath the hood of the cloak, but despite it Viserys espied a pale face with dark blue eyes glaring down at him.

The man in black started walking.

In silence, Stannis Baratheon strode through dark alleys shadowed by high unsteady buildings on either side. Only the poorest folk of Braavos dwelt here, in this realm of the despised and forgotten. Doubtless no magister cared for them, or at least, no lord of Westeros would. The bright purple uniforms of the City Guard were rarely seen in these parts. Some inhabitants surely saw him, but they were a folk well accustomed to convenient silences, in the face of the cruel outlaws who dwelt often among them. Those few of the poor people of inner Braavos who were awake at this hour watched quietly from their homes, doing naught. They did not come out and challenge him, so he did not do any harm to them.

In his arm the Targaryen children squirmed and struggled, seeking to be free. They could not. He held them too tightly. Indeed, his grip was so firm that they could not breathe deeply, or so he presumed, for their breaths were short-sharp-shallow. Once, he stumbled, briefly, as he felt crossbow bolts—one, two, three—strike himself in another form. He fled from that form, taking refuge in his birth-self, and the pain vanished. The boy Viserys noticed his weakening and tried to wriggle free. He slipped from Stannis's grip, ran as fast as he could, and made it nine paces before Stannis's longer legs caught up with him.

Stannis crossed into the outer edges of the city, reaching the far end where the waters of the lagoon fed the Green Canal, and he sent forth his thought into the little winds and mists he had almost wholly forsaken. He had already made the requisite sacrifice—only a goat—and thus he was able to bind them to his will. Mist gathered about him once again while he took out the raft he had hidden underneath the bridge here and rigged its sail—black, of course, to hide him in the night. He stepped on, checking that his captives were still with him, and then he was off in the wind and away.

His thought was in the wind that drove him. His thought was in the mist that concealed him. His thought was in his eagle companions that kept watch from above for his enemies, so that himself-in-the-wind could steer him true. Most of all, however, his thought was of himself.

Traitor, the boy had called him. Murderer. Usurper's dog. That bothered him a great deal.

Stannis could not help but wonder, Is that all I am? Am I still no more than Robert's hound, even now?

There were few things in this world that Stannis hated more than King Robert Baratheon. Robert had dismissed and belittled him even as a child. Robert had cast out his family in his heart, preferring the company of the damnable Lord Arryn and Ned Stark. He had abandoned Stannis and Renly after the murder of their lord father and lady mother, fleeing to the Vale and to Ned Stark, even though he was the eldest of them and should have stayed in Storm's End. Robert should have ruled in Storm's End and taken care of his brothers. He had had a duty. Instead he had run away, to play at boyhood in the Eyrie with Ned Stark, with old Lord Arryn to watch over him, leaving Stannis, thankless, to take all the responsibilities that should have been Robert's own.

After that, Robert had risen in rebellion against the rightful king over the maidenhead of some Northwoman who was his precious Ned Stark's sister. That had been a hard choice for Stannis to make: to stay true to the true king, Aerys, or to betray the king and serve his brother. In the end he had chosen to cast aside his loyalty to his king in order to support his brother, and so he and Storm's End had been dragged into Robert's war.

Robert had never done anything for him, for Renly or for the Stormlands. He had forsaken them in their hour of need, then called them to his service anyway. When they had loyally come, he had spent their lives on his war with the same carelessness that he spent his gold on everything. Stannis had suffered and starved to protect his elder brother, despite Renly's urgings to do elsewise. He had done the impossible; he had held Storm's End past the brink of starvation, against all the power of the Tyrells, and then he had defeated them. When his little brother had betrayed Robert, Stannis had given up the one he loved most in the world and saved Robert's cause from the evil of the Tyrells—for surely Lord Mace would have marched north and Robert's vassals would have deserted him if he looked too weak to protect his own home. He had asked no reward—not a single land or title. And in return, Robert, useless oaf that he was, had taken Stannis's home from him.

Forgive me, Renly. Did I kill the wrong brother? He was not as sure of that as he once had been.

The black sail bulged, borne onward by the wind, and the raft under his feet glided silently through the water; and Stannis stood upon it with his captives in his arm, and pondered.

The thought that he was Robert's faithful hound—a dog kicked and beaten, forever either ignored or treated with contempt, never cared for, never mattering, valued less than Robert valued outsiders like Ned Stark, yet always coming back to pant and lick at the hand of his master… Stannis could not bear the shame of it. There was no worse thing a man could be.

Was he still Robert's? He wanted to think not. He was his own man, surely. He was fighting in a foreign land, serving his own purpose and Handtaker's, and neither of those had anything to do with Robert. Justin Massey may have come to serve him because of his birth, but Massey was more his man than Robert's now; Stannis felt sure of it. Moreover, he had other trusted servants—Alequo Nudoon, Bozyno Vunel, Marro Numerin, to name those closest to him—who bore no link to the king on the other side of the Narrow Sea.

He had gone into Handtaker's employment for the sake of coin to keep himself fed, not for the sake of Robert. Old allegiances mattered naught to him, no matter how oft Ser Justin might seek to remind him of them. In mind and body alike, he was far from Westeros. Handtaker had tasked him to find a way to take Braavos, so he had found one. If the way that he had found included removing Robert's exiled enemies, well, that was only chance, no more. No more!

I am not Robert's hound any more, he told himself. He was not sure that he believed it.

When the raft bumped quietly against the beach, Stannis took a leap back onto solid ground. He dragged the raft onto the shore, fully relinquishing his mists, and spied the firelight of the sellswords' camp, miles in the distance.

He took out the gags from the silver-haired children's mouths, and put them down.

This time they did not run. Experience had taught them the futility of that. But the boy Prince Viserys—twelve namedays, Stannis guessed, or at least not much more—immediately moved to stand in front of his little sister, shielding her behind his meagre height. The thought came unbidden: Like I would have stood in front of Renly, once. The memory was like grasping a dagger blade-first.

"Who are you? What do you want from us?" demanded Prince Viserys, his high voice sharp with command.

"My name is Ser Stannis Baratheon."

He saw the fear in the boy's eyes, at his first name as well as the last. Then my reputation is not unknown to him. The girl reacted only to 'Baratheon'; she was too young to know the fear she should. She must have been about Renly's age, when… when.

"You're here to kill us, then," said Prince Viserys.

Stannis said, "No."

Shocked silence. That small word seemed to contain the world within it.

Prince Viserys looked baffled. "Then what? Are we to be taken prisoner?"

"I am not Robert's dog," Stannis said, as if that were answer enough. "I am not here to kill his enemies for him." He turned to Princess Daenerys, not only in his birth form. Nine big golden eagles were flying now: four above the lagoon, two above the camp of the sellsword host, and three above the three of them. One of those last three birds fluttered down and landed on the girl's shoulder. "Go to the camp of the army you can see over there. Seek out Marro Namerin of the Company of the Cat. Tell him to find you a ship for another Free City. No man in that host will be fool enough to harm you when they see you with my eagle, by my will. Do not be afraid."

When the eagle's long curved talons took hold of her flesh, little Daenerys cried out. "It hurts, Viserys!"

Purple eyes met blue. Viserys gazed up at him, wondering. "Why are you doing this?"

The words came with chill finality. "Because it is not for her that I have come."

The boy understood. He turned around and knelt to speak with his sister. "Dany, you have to leave."

"No!" said the girl, stamping her foot.

"Leave, Dany," said the boy. Stannis noticed yet again how short he was. Only a boy. A child. "It's the only way you can be safe."

"Ser Willem said that, and we don't have him any more," she said. "I don't want to not have you. You're my brother, you should stay with me."

"I want to," Prince Viserys said, quivering. "Mother spare us, you don't know how much I want to. But I can't, Dany. It is not for me."

"Why not?"

Viserys glanced at Stannis. "Because I am not your sister. I am your brother."

"Yes. You're my brother," Princess Daenerys said, lifting her head stubbornly. "So I'll only go if you're coming with me."

The edge of begging crept into Viserys's voice. "Dany. Please."

She took one more look at Viserys, then at the looming man in black. She fled.

There was a very long silence. Viserys said nothing at all, perhaps fearing that if he spoke then Stannis may change his mind. Stannis indulged him. Why not? he told himself. I do not lack for time.

When Daenerys Targaryen had disappeared over the horizon, Viserys Targaryen looked up at him. "Thank you for letting my sister live," he said in a tone mixed between relief and weariness. He sounded old, Stannis thought. Those things should not have been heard in the voice of a boy so young that it had not yet broken.

Stannis said nothing. He only looked down at the boy. How strange that he had spent moons of effort, all seeking this moment, and yet, now that it had come, he knew not what he ought to do.

"So now you're going to kill me, then?" Prince Viserys said, sighing, running a hand through his silver hair. "Secure your brother's hold on the throne, and end the male line of House Targaryen for the Usurper."

"It is not for Robert," Stannis said. "If it were, I would not have spared your sister. Robert wants both of you dead. He shamed our uncle Eldon for not ending House Targaryen."

"Whereas it is enough for you to kill only the men of my House," Viserys said bitterly, with more of the petulance Stannis would have expected from a child facing death.

"I—that is not—" Stannis said, uncertain, and uncertain of how to deal with uncertainty. "That is not why," he settled on saying. "This is about my revenge on the Braavosi for their treachery. This is not about our Houses."

Why do I not just kill him? he wondered. And yet he stayed his hand.

"I nearly fought for your father, you know," Stannis rushed on. He knew not why he was saying this. "I would certainly have served the rightful king if the rebel had been anyone but Robert. It was not quick for me to choose between him and Robert. My brother or my king…"

"Wouldn't you always choose your brother?" asked Viserys. There was a curious turn to the prince's mouth. Stannis did not understand it.

"No," Stannis scoffed. "Robert is a worthless bloated bag of flesh. He cares nothing for his family, he only cares about Arryns and Starks. And food, of course, and war, and wine, and whores, and spending gold without thinking about it. He cares about a lot of things, I suppose. Everything except his family and his home."

Viserys said, "Then why did you fight for him, ser?"

"I thought I should," Stannis said, musing. He felt oddly at ease. The Targaryen boy was an enemy, of course, but an unarmed enemy too weak to do him harm. "I had my oath to Aerys, who was king by law, but there are older laws. A younger brother must bow before the elder." His voice darkened. "Though mayhaps I am alone in keeping those older laws. I bowed before Robert, but Renly certainly didn't bow before me. And Robert was meant to care for our family and for Storm's End, as the head of our House, but he never did. It was me. It was always me."

"Would you make the same choice, if you could make it again?"

"What does it matter? I cannot—"

Oh.

Stannis went silent. His thin lips pressed into a hard, flat line. His voice, a snarl: "You dare—"

"Yes, I dare. Think about it," Prince Viserys pressed. "You hate the Usurper. He'd be overjoyed to hear that I am dead, you know it. He'd think the same of you. Why serve his purpose, after all that he did to you? You don't need to. There is another way."

"There is no other way!" said Stannis, thinking of Braavos and of his revenge.

"There is," the boy insisted, defying Stannis's anger to his face. "House Baratheon and House Targaryen haven't always been foes. That was your brother's work. Why not undo it? Don't serve the Usurper. Don't serve some sellsword commander, either. Swear your fealty to the rightful king, as your father did, and his father, and his father before him, and together we'll take back our homes in Westeros. We'll crush the Usurper. We'll end both our exiles. And you will rise again as Stannis Baratheon, my Lord of Storm's End."

Stannis said faintly, "You would give me Storm's End."

The boy king smiled, triumphant. He must have sensed at once that those words mattered more than all else he had said. "Yes."

It could be mine again.

Sheer cliffs of memory loomed over Stannis whichever way he turned. He saw his old bedchamber and his featherbed, as clearly as if he had just stood up from them. He saw the waves of Shipbreaker Bay on a gentle noon from out his window. He saw smiling Maester Cressen sitting with him, ever-patient, never-judging, to discuss their lessons—liar, the maester lied to me—and Septon Danwell with his bald head and his sideburns in the sept with his reassuringly familiar monotonous drone. Gods, to think I would ever reminisce for Danwell… He did, though. He did. It had been a simpler time, a kinder time, the happiest time he had ever known.

He remembered the immense tower of pale grey stone that rose lordlike over land and sea, firm, unshaken and unshakeable, a rock to be depended on, unlike its lord. He remembered Robert being away, or, worse, being here and still a stranger, talking incessantly of Ned Stark and his friends in the Eyrie. That made him frown. He stopped frowning when he remembered the curtain walls a hundred feet tall that had kept out the hordes of locust-like Reachmen, and all the times he had ridden up to those walls from the woods in better days.

Stannis Baratheon had witnessed wars and wonders, lived and wandered through a hundred realms and cities, and studied secrets from far across the world. For all that, Storm's End was the only place that he could truly say was a home to him.

He remembered the hunts with Robert and his lord father in the Rainwood, his father sternly instructing them on so-and-so and such-and-such. He remembered little Renly running through the corridors in gales of laughter, shouting that he was a prince or a dragon or a knight.

He remembered the warmth of his mother's embrace, and suddenly there were tears in his eyes.

"Yes," said Stannis, quietly at first, then louder, "yes, yes, yessssssss." Joy, so much joy that a man could drown in it. He felt giddy with glee. He picked up the boy in his arms and whirled him in the air. Home. Braavos mattered nothing next to that—no, less than nothing. The greater part of his revenge was done; he had punished Anno Nusaris himself; the rest of it was less important. "Home, yes, we will go home, we'll gather an army and we'll both go home; I'll tear down Robert from the throne he fought his precious war for, the war that he dragged us into and cared more about than us; I'll make you king, yes, I will; and I will kill Robert myself for all the slights he's heaped upon me!"

He spun around, laughing. Above him, gloriously winged golden eagles danced patterns in the air. The boy king he held in his arms was frozen with fear, then let out a startled laugh. The child must be elated. He had talked his way out of certain death with nothing but his tongue.

My lady mother. It was hard not to think of her; he had not allowed himself, too long, for fear of the pain. Lady Cassana would have liked this child, he thought: young but not dim, and protective of his sister.

His sense of duty to Robert, that had dominated so much of his life, had never really been about Robert, had it? Stannis hated Robert. Even before he hated him, he did not love him nearly enough to want to dedicate his life to him. It had always been about Stannis Baratheon. It had always been about his love of the rest of his family, of which Robert merely happened to stand at the head, and his sense that selflessly carrying out a duty was a noble thing, and his guilt.

He remembered the warmth of his mother's embrace, and knew that he had killed her. He remembered it perfectly. He had been the storm that shattered her ship and sent her drowning in a watery grave.

On that night, he had made a foolish oath against all sorcery; but also he had pledged that his life was no longer his own. It belonged to his family. Stannis had murdered those he loved, deprived himself and Robert of them, and deprived Renly of the chance to ever know them. Could there be any more unpardonable deed? He owed his family too much to turn against them, more than anyone knew, even themselves. He had to spend his life for House Baratheon, not for himself, if he were ever to make up for this the blackest of his sins.

Mother, I am sorry.

His grip grew very tight.

…and the cool night breeze swelled, swelled, swelled to a roar that challenged the foundations of the earth. The wisps of cloud above him grew and darkened, black-bottomed beasts that blotted out the stars. Thunder snarled its warnings of the spears of blue-white lightning that were thrown down from the sky, but it was itself drowned out by a colossal keening howl.

They noticed. In the sellswords' camp, they noticed. In Braavos, they noticed. Nobody could not notice. Millions of men and women awoke, and their voices rose to a terrified babble that melded together like a wall of sound, but Stannis could not hear them. All of their voices as one were dwarfed by the surge of screaming air that soared over their heads.

The wind whirled around and around and around, building up to a fearsome thunderstorm. It stirred water, shifted soil, screeched on stone. Panicked captains barked their orders as the calm waters of the lagoon rose into frenzied rage…

…then calmed down again. Ripples died down; waves grew smaller; the rocking of ships ceased. Men sank to their knees and thanked their gods for their salvation, for making the shockingly fast rise in the winds be gone.

They are so blind, thought the storm. They did not know that himself-the-wind was not gone. In more ways than one, he was rising.

Two tall figures stood, one on each side of the Braavosi lagoon. The shining spires of the Queen of Cities lay straight in between them. One was a nightmare of the otherworld, a great dark walking thing that prowled shaded streets in the night and wrought wonder and terror beyond the dread of thought, and yet at the same time a lost boy banished from his land and hoping hopelessly of home. The other was a dream of the world of men, his feet rooted on the hills, his hand holding a sword high and valiant, a helmed warrior who championed the defence of men, and yet was himself not one of them but rather a great artifice of bronze and stone.

One was six and a half feet high; the other, four-hundred. Both of them faced to the west, whence a wall of wind blew to meet them.

For hundreds of years the Titan had guarded his city. Now a foe came to conquer it. Stannis Baratheon stood facing a statue nearly a million times his size. It was alone of its kind in the world; no-one else had built anything like it. Its legs and hips were made of dark stone, carved by the Braavosi from a great stone archway that had formed without man's hand in some aeon long past. Joined to it by giant beams and sheets of metal, its upper body was more of the make of man, wrought of smelted bronze. It bristled with stonethrowers, scorpions and murder holes beyond counting, all prepared to rain death down below, and its hollow shape was home to countless Braavosi volunteer-soldiers in their barracks, armouries and watchtowers.

It was mayhaps the mightiest fortification built by the hand of man. A whole battle-fleet would be hard-pressed to attack it.

Yet all that they could do was scream against the storm.

Far above the heads of the city, a huge hot wind blew from the west. Gentle it was, at first, and cool; but minutes passed and it grew cruel indeed, for more and more of the turbulence from below rose high upward and spent its rage here.

All the power of the thunderstorm had been brought here and condensed into a single front of wind that hurled itself against the Titan. The air had grown so hot it was like fire, scalding, scorching as it came, and scouring the bronze with its unfathomable fury.

Storms were not meant to be so focused. They were not meant to be contorted and constrained. But Stannis Baratheon did not care what he was meant for. By shackles of blood and suffering, he had become the very power he had unleashed on this earth. Every breath of wind on water, every tickle of a person or a building in the air, he felt as if on his own body; when the air crashed hard against the Titan, he felt the impact hit. He was the storm that he had made, and by his implacable will the storm-winds surged ever-onward.

The man in black stood on one side of the lagoon. The Titan of Braavos stood on the other. And at last, battered by power unrelenting beyond all reason, it was the wonder of the world that failed first.

Groaning under the onslaught of the storm, the great beams and metal sheets that bound the huge hollow body to its stone foundation gave way, one by one. The bronze torso snapped off. It teetered. And finally, with terrible inevitability, shoved on by a surge of the storm that screamed its triumph to the skies, the two-hundred-foot-tall torso of the Titan fell back-first into the Braavosi lagoon.

When the Titan's torso hit the water, west of the city, there was a splash like none that had been seen in living memory. The calm crystal waters convulsed. Much of the lagoon was hurled up in gigantic waves that left swathes of the seafloor briefly visible. The raging waters swept away stonework like wind blowing through autumn leaves as they thrashed back and forth like a tortured child. Some ships were physically flung up off the surface of the water, hung in the air for an infinite moment, and then—if not smashed by other waves in the meantime—they had to face the descent; their crews wailed in terror as they crashed down to their deaths on the unforgiving water. Elsewhere, further from the impact, ships met the kinder fate of being knocked over by the enormous ripples that rushed through the lagoon after the Titan fell.

Slowly, the high howl of the storm faded to a long, low, drawn-out exhalation.

In the besieged Free City of Braavos, a vision out of nightmare was left behind. Across Braavos, houses had had walls or ceilings knocked in by flying rubble, leaving them as wrecks. The air rang with the wails of the wounded and the dying. In neighbourhoods in the west of the city, nearer to the Titan's fall, it was worse. There, blocks of brick and stone littered the earth, devoid of any shape that might indicate where roads used to be and where buildings used to be. To be at water was death. Nigh every boat in the lagoon, from mighty warships to little dinghies, was no longer afloat.

In the camp of the besieging sellsword host, whose tents tonight had been set safely far from the water, the captains and commanders of the free companies barked their orders. Men donned their armour and rafts were prepared for when the waters were calm enough. Braavos had had a Sealord, a High Captain, a temple of Faceless Men, a Titan and a fleet. Now none of those stood in the way of the invaders.

And all alone in the cold night stood the man behind the madness, clutching the corpse of a murdered child, tears and raindrops pouring down his face and king's blood pouring down his fingers, weeping for the boy whose neck he had broken and for the home he now knew in his heart that he would never see again. Too strong a force prevented him from defying Robert's decree and making war upon his brother. He felt sure he could vanquish any other; but he could not destroy himself, and he could not escape his knowledge of what he had done, however far he flew.