Rickard

It's wet. Rain is beating itself against all of the windows of the Red Keep. It had come out of nowhere, the sudden shift in whether, and is unseasonable. Or at least that is what Grand Maester Pycelle has being assuring the court for the past week, but even so, his nerves are put on end by it.

In his bones, he can feel something is about to happen. From toes and temple, he can feel the chill in his bone, and it is far more than the cold. In the book of the Crone, we are assured that sudden shakings in the weather are meant to be shown as a sign of warning: to sailors and to travellers and to fishermen. But the book of the Maid also tells us that sudden rain is a sign for future mothers to take heart, as well as a sign of good harvests to come.

He steps into the royal sept behind the crescendo of a crack of thunder, his face lighting up in the burst of light. His skin is pale, but his face is darkened by the kind of beard only a man of six-and-ten can grow, and short black hair, like bristles on his head.

Shaking off the rain from his cloak, he walks forward into the holy space and goes straight toward the shrines, looking around in apprehension. He hates this Sept. It's bleak and quiet and empty, and at all the times of day for it to be empty, now it should not be. Evening prayers are sacred. They are what binds the world together. They are what releases us of what keeps us awake at night and what keep the morning pleasant and happy and warm. Perhaps therefore the reason this Castle is so forsaken. Or at least this is what he would like to think, but he knows that the Gods abandoned this place long ago.

Removing his cloak, he sets it on the floor in front of a shrine: it's the Father Above, set to pass his judgment. Around his neck, he has a number of amulets and holy medals. He takes the one bearing the Father and clutches it close to his face as he says his usual prayers: forgiveness for today's sins; to judge fairly those who have done him wrong; and to ensure that his family remains protected from those who would wrong them. Finally, he takes one of the few candles which have been lit by the Septon which attends the shrines, and lights fresh candles for each of his prayers.

After the Father, he shifts around to the statue of the Mother, who is smiling ready to offer love and protection on the virtuous. He takes another medal and sets about his prayers again: that his loved ones are safeguarded through tomorrow's troubles; that the weak are kept from harm; that he may remain worthy of those who love him. Again, lighting a candle for each prayer his says. He does this for each God, offering his prayers and clutching an amulet of the idol in question and lighting a candle for each prayer he says. Only the Stranger is left alone, to whom he stares harshly at, his blue eyes piercing into the hooded figure, before saying a single prayer for it to stay away.

Done: he retrieves his cloak and makes for the door, but stops seeing someone else entering the Sept. Some instinct seizes his body, and a hand ghosts across his hip for his sword but clasps nothing but his own fist. Through the bleakness, he can see the figure smiling, and eases his guard, bowing.

"Princess? Have you come to say your prayers?" He asks, as she approaches.

She nods, shaking off her own cloak of orange silk. "Forgive me, my Prince, but no. I am come here to deliver a message."

"Oh." He says flatly, suppressing his grin. "And here I thought that you had followed me here for something more interesting."

A loud laugh, but then she quiets herself with her fingers across her lips, looking at him like he's some oddity from across the Narrow Sea. "You think I need to follow you to know where you'd be? I can read you like a book, Sweet Rickard, I thought you knew that."

His turn to laugh. "Princess, you wound me. I at least hope that other members of the court do not find me so transparent."

A pause.

In it, he notices that they've advanced on one another, which surprises him. He's close enough to see the widening of her pupils: black, narrow and shining, like a predator. She moves to speak again, but he cuts her off.

"The message, Princess."

Her eyes draw half closed, and sharpen like daggers. "Must you call me 'Princess', Rickard? When we have been friends for so long? Am I no more than a Princess to you?"

"It is your title," he points out, amiable enough, as if it might diffuse her. "And of course, you are not just a Princess to me, Arianne. It's just…"

"What?" The air sparks around them.

He sighs. "We are not free to do as we wish. To choose what we do. I am not a ploughboy, and you are not a baker's daughter. You are the woman who must rule the South; rule all of Dorne, one day."

She snorts, says something about her inheritance being a lie that is only so because no one acknowledges it, trying to cut into him, but he presses on. "And I am bound to serve and do my duty by my father and brother." My mother and sister, my family and the Crown." These are the rules of the life they were born into, and if they do not understand the rules of it then they must learn or forfeit.

"You speak as if I want to trade cloaks. As if I'm asking for pledges and witnesses and contracts."

"What then? A haystack on warm nights?"

"Why not? Neither you nor I are strangers to the idea."

"Seven Above, woman!" He shouts, because he knows too well how serious she is about this. "You think we would get away with it? When we are found out, my mother shall have us both thrown out of this castle on our noses. Your father shall have the smallfolk cart you off to the whorehouse, and I'll be sent by mine own father to the Night's Watch and have my manhood sliced off!" He is pacing round the Sept, the heels of his boots clacking on the marble floor, as she just stares at him wandering the room exacerbated.

"You and I both know that would never happen, because the day your mother lets any harm come to one of her children is the day it snows in Dorne."

His fist strikes at a wall. "You don't know her, Arianne. Them. My family. They would kill you!"

"Ha!" She laughs. She dares to laugh over this. Body of Baelor, how can she be laughing, he thinks. "They wouldn't dare."

"Don't be stupid!" He snaps. "Think of your own aunt!"

Ah, now he's done it. She realises the sense he is talking, but it stabs at her heart and he can see it written all over her face. "Forgive me, Arianne." And he goes to her, wraps his arms round her and, gods forgive him, she lets out a sob.

His voice shakes as he speaks. "I know why you want this so badly, Arianne, and if it were in my power I would give what you want. Not only us, but your heirdom. I'd give you Dorne back. And make sure that you lived the rest of your life happily, but I can't… I just… can't."

He pulls away from her, only slightly, to speak more professional words. "If I were your… no…" he reassembles his phrasing, "if I were to advise you, I'd say go find a different husband. One from the South. A Tarly, maybe. Lord Randyll has two sons as I recall."

She sniffs, and can see strait through him. "Go and find Willas Tyrell, you mean."

"Willas is my friend. If there is any man in Westeros who can get you what you want, it is him."

As if he's going to whip her, Arianne turns her back on him. "Willas Tyrell will never wed me."

Her dress has almost no back to it. He can see the smoothness of her skin, without blemish or scar, dark and taut like a bowstring. He sighs, "Let's not act like children, Arianne, please."

"I'm not. It's the truth! He would never marry me, not with you in the picture."

"What do you mean?"

Again, she laughs. To mock him this time. "I'm saying that he looks after your interests better than you do."

A shrug. "He's my friend."

"And wants what is best for you?"

"I suppose…"

"Then why deny yourself this!? What he would want for you? It seems like madness."

"Mother's Mercy, we're just going to keep going in circles, aren't we?"

"No," she insists, adamant. Marching forward as though she were meaning to slap him, he even goes as far as to grab each of her arms and pin them to her side. Yet she loses no determination. "You are blinded by fear. Fear and a self-imposed set of rules that aren't worth a coin to anyone else. What more to your life is there, Rick? Will you condemn yourself to be the tail to your families' comet?"

"First circles, now bloody metaphors. Gods give me strength, Arianne, this isn't about me. Or you. It's about doing what you're born into, what your last name is, who's blood you have flowing through your veins. It's…" And then he stops.

All he is doing now is repeating himself, for his own benefit and not her own. Instead he says, "It's late. And you haven't delivered your message yet." She gives him a look, a frown and he knows that she is just going to carry on the argument. "We'll carry on this later. An event of your choosing, again."

There is a shimmer in her eyes, like she's just heard the most wonderful news. "Dinner. Tonight."

"No, not tonight I have other plans for tonight. Tomorrow or the day after, fine. Just not tonight."

"You up to something?"

He grins, "What would come of me if I told you all my secrets? You'd have nothing to keep you from getting bored, I imagine."

There's a sharpness in her eyes, and her grin that makes him shudder. "Don't flatter yourself." Sweet Mother, we're flirting! "Very well, tomorrow night for dinner in my chambers."

"Good."

She's turning to leave, so he feels forced to prompt her about the message. "Oh, your mother wishes to see you."

"Oh?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

A shrug. "Your meeting with the Small Council on the morrow? Your meeting with your Lannister uncle yesterday?"

"Ah," He's learnt to distinguish his uncle from one another by the way people describe them. She means Ser Kevan Lannister, his granduncle, sent to the capital by the old lion, Lord Tywin, to petition the King and to report on the status of the Lannisters in King's Landing. There's no point asking how she knows about these meetings, so instead, "And how did she come to send you?"

Arianne evades his question, as is her nature, and urges him go and see his mother instead of standing there bartering with her over the information. He's wise enough to take the advice and pardons himself and thanks the Princess for delivering her message. He's walking out, but stops at the door. Part of him knows that he should keep walking without looking back, but his feet stop him, and his eyes turn to follow her…

His mother is waiting for him in her audience chamber. She sits on a dais, surrounded by her ladies in waiting, sewing or pretending to. Myrcella, his sister, is here too, is the first to clap eyes on him. Smiling she runs to him, squealing as grabbed her by the waist and spun her round till she was doubling over with dizziness and laughter. Setting his sister back on her feet, he approaches his mother, smiling back at her.

Extending a hand for her son, Rickard climbs the dais and takes it, kisses her fingers and then her cheek, before taking a standing position before the platform, with Myrcella hanging off his arm. He tries to look his most innocent and humble, stood before her, but Myrcella makes it difficult, as does the fact that in spite the dais, he is still taller than his mother by an inch.

Queen Cersei smiles at her second son, but her lips remain tight and a menacing look glimmers in her gold speckled eyes. "Rickard," she acknowledges him with. And he humbly bows his head in return, murmuring, "Your Grace".

With a snap of her fingers, the Queen's ladies begin to file out of the room. All but Myrcella, who looks adamant to stay, but Cersei dismisses by saying, "Myrcella, sweetling, wait outside. You will see your brother after I have spoken with him."

She looks up at him, and tugs on his arm, as if calling him to arms for her. But he just grins and winks at her, before she turns in a huff to stalk out of the chamber, the guards closing the doors behind her.

"Tyrek said you wanted to see me."

"Did he?" Eyes narrowed, hands clenched on the arms of her chair, poised like a lion set to lunge straight at him.

"Yes," he shifts the weight of his feet to rock back and forth on his heels and toes. His Mother is always hunting a new skirmish with someone in their family, those who displease her most of all are her favourites. Her second son is called for often.

"It was Lancel I sent to bring you."

He shrugs. "And?"

She bristles like a startled hedgehog. Cersei Lannister is forever prickly, with those who do her curtsy, those who don't, with those who love her, and those who despise her. "And he was meant to bring you back himself."

"Well, there's cousin Lancel for you. His arse and elbow are one in the same to him."

An eyebrow is raised, disapproving. "Your cousin Lancel does his duties well. Which is…"

"Which is more than can be said for me, yes, Mother, so on and so. Is there a reason you sent for me? I've better things to do than be belittled by you."

"Oh?" she stands, snarling. "Because you spend your time so productively, don't you?"

Clenching a fist, he barks, "That is hardly my fault."

"Then whose fault, is it? No one forces you to go galivanting across the city at night, getting drunk and filling your days with frivolity…"

"And do you know why, Mother? Because I've nothing else to do with my life. I've begged and begged you and Father and Jon Arryn to give me a job – something to do – but every time I find something, it is mysteriously shut down or given to someone else. And why might that be, Mother? Hmm?"

She shuffles her feet, looks away from him, and to the floor, shaking her head. "I will not have this conversation."

"Then what conversation will we have instead, Your Grace?" His courtesy is like a slap to her face. It shakes her awake, and then she is back to her bristling quarrelling self again.

"Your Uncle Kevan spoke with you this morning, did he not? What was it you discussed?"

"What? A Great Uncle, showing concern for his Great Nephew?" He smiles. "What malice could there be in that?"

"Do you think me so naïve?"

"No, but I'm beginning to wonder if you're so paranoid." He stares at her. Biting at the corner of her lip, hands clenching her sleeves so tightly that her nails are poking through the fabric. He sighs, "He was delivering a message from my Grandfather."

Her eyes light up darting all across his form, as if Kevan had written the words across his tunic's front. "Message? What message?"

"I don't believe that's your business."

She's on her feet now. Ready to lunge. "But…"

"But nothing. What was said is between myself, Uncle Kevan and Grandfather."

He's drifted into range and striking distance. "I have a right to know."

"You have a mouth that won't stop."

Once more, he's done it. His Mother's arm darts out, reaching far and wide, like the Mother Above. It sends him head first through his memory, back and back through the years, to when he was so small and fragile, before he knew Arianne or Willas Tyrell or Tyrek or Lancel. Before Mycrella had been brought into creation, pink and squalling. When his entire world had been his Mother and him and Joffrey and the walls of his nursery. It's the only memory of his Father from before he was ten and twelve. Of his Mother screaming and clawing, and of his Father shouting, and of he and his brother's weeping.

Perhaps it's this memory which pulls his instinct away from him, strip away his impulses to strike back. Which humble him, and bring him to his knees before her feet.

"Forgive me," he whispers.

"What?"

Forgive me. He wants to say, forgive me and my cruelty. Forgive my bitterness and envy. Forgive my greed and weakness. Forgive me for being the son who is so like Robert Baratheon. And pray the Gods release me of these faults.

Her hand drops to his head and he stiffens. Her fingers trail along the back of his head, bowed to her to hide his face and shame, to the back of his neck where she grabs at the string of one of his medals and pulls. He dips his head further, allowing her to relive him of the holy token, and he glimpses which one she has taken and why it stood out to her mesmerised gaze so much. Through silence between them, he knows that she is turning it through her hands.

"You kept it?"

"Of course," His voice is cracked whisper

"After so long."

"Always."

She rests her hand back on his head for a moment, before it slips away once more, and she leaves the room with him alone.

Alone, and weeping.

The two figures came out of the blackness of night, shrouded in cloaks of dark velvet, hoods up around their faces to hide them. One was taller than the other by a good few inches and, despite the cloak hiding his body, was notably stockier as well. The other, shorter one had longer legs that could have outpaced the other, but kept alongside and in step with the taller, boots ringing off the cobble street floor.

From out of the eerie night mist, creeping in from the river and sea, little light could be gathered, the stars and moon blotted out by the clouds. They heard noises. Someone screaming a few streets away. Drunks singing. The Septons singing their prayers from Baelor's Great Sept. And even further away, from the river, splashing faint and erratic.

"You hear it?" Said the Short One.

"The Splashing? Aye." Replied the Taller. Had there been a light, you would have seen his teeth flashing in a grin. "And the Black Oak."

The other sniggered as well. "Gods, Rick, the whole bloody city hears that bloody pub." A sigh and more splashing. "What you suppose they're doing?"

"Mayhap they're drowning someone." Rickard answered.

"Not the boatmen, Dick," Laughed the Smaller, "I mean Thoros and the others."

"Don't call me Dick, Tyrek." Growled Rickard, before answering: "Drinking. Or counting their coppers. Depending on how much they made. Last I heard they were complaining that they were poor. That the roads have been without travellers to rob. More like than not, they've been looking for easy money."

Tyrek shrugged. "You heard about that party of Septons from Oldtown? They were held at sword point for half a day by a group of highwaymen."

"Mother's mercy! They'll be drunk as lords!"

They laughed loudly, the noise of it carrying far through the fog. And someone must have heard them, as splashing feet came toward them and a voice shouting: "Halt!" Each of them froze and ruffled their cloaks, the hilt of a sword peering out from beneath Rickard's and the glint of a knife from Tyrek's sleeve.

A pair of men of the City Watch appeared from the darkness, one with a spear thrust out at them and commanding, "Show your face!" and the other with an axe and torch, demanding their names.

This had not been the first time this had happened to them on one of their night walks. Calmly, they lowered their hoods and eased their weapons out of direct sight. Rickard took a step forward offering an outstretched hand that held two pieces of silver.

"You don't need our names. Understand? Now take this picture of my cousin and forget you saw us, will you?"

At first, they looked confused, as he expected them to, but once they saw the silver stags gleaming in the torch light their faces turned to grins. Each man took a coin, and held his tongue before walking back down the street from which Tyrek and Dick had come from.

Tyrek did that smile that made him look as confused as the two goldcloaks had done. "'A picture of my cousin?' That didn't look like a portrait of me."

"No, it didn't. Because I didn't mean you." Grinned Rickard, offering a third piece of silver. Tyrek took it and saw the silver stag that had been stamped onto the coin, before turning it over to see the image of Aerys Targaryen the Second of His Name, the Mad King, once King of the Andals, the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.

"Baelor's bastard! These were a find, Dick. Where d'you get them?"

"Dunno," Shrugged the taller one, running a hand through the shaggy black hair of his beard as he did so. "Came from the treasury with the rest of my allowance."

"I'm surprised it hasn't been called in." Noted Tyrek, twirling the coin between his fingers.

"Silver's still silver, Ty. Doesn't matter whose face is stamped on it. Come on, we're late enough as it stands."

Tyrek conceded the point, pocketed his cousin's money and went about their way, their hoods redrawn about their ears, to avoid risk of being spotted by someone more than a clueless guard. They each knew the risk being taken, by them each walking around King's Landing at night and so late. But they'd done it before and knew what to do and what not to do. Besides, the risk they run nowadays in King's Landing is not half so much as when they did it at Casterly Rock. Lord Tywin might well have skinned them alive had he caught his wards in such places. But he never did, catch them at least.

They stopped outside of a large wood building, with a thatch rook and a front that was well lit from the windows and the by the torches nailed to brackets that hung from the front, spilling the light of their fires out onto the street. Hanging by a post above the door was a painted sign that said The Wolf's Den and a black dog's head plastered onto the wood beneath the writing. Dick and Tyrek approached the door and knocked, as they listened to the sound of music and shouting and laughter that could be heard from outside the open window.

After the shuffling and unbolting of locks, the door was opened by the tavern's landlady: a portly, woman with fattened red cheeks with strands of grey hair coming loose from her white cap.

"Ah! Sers! You've come at last!" She clucks, ushering them inside, peeling their cloaks from their backs, the gloves from their fingers and pushing them inside to the roaring laughter and drunken howling. "Come in! Come in! Their lords have been at the ale a good few hours now. How they have shrieked for you both. Wanted to barrel up to the Castle and steal yous away. But I tells them no. The young masters shall be 'ere before long, and they didn't like that a bit."

"I can imagine." Tyrek snorted, fishing inside his pocket for the silver rarity. "More beer, my lady. As soon as it pleases."

The Old Woman curtsies and veers off to find the serving boys, while the two let them self into the main room of inn to be showered by a thunderous roar of drunken whooping, cheers, clapping and stamping.

Above them all the drunks crowding the rooms, one stood out more than all the rest, stood on top of a table in the centre was a fat, balding man in red and brown robes. He's the first to notice them and roars.

"GODS DAMN! Stand by the doors! What whoresons are these?" Grey hair and fat, the leap from the table to stand right before them does not seem to faze the anyone in the room. "One Prince Rickard, of the blood of Baratheon before us," he thunders, slapping Rickard's bearded cheek – and by the Seven it stings – before pulling on the whiskers as though he were sixteen months not sixteen years, "And one of those one thousand and one cousins of Lord Tywin Lannister. Lock the doors. All of faint heart, leave immediately! And may the Lord of Light preserve us!"

The Prince laughed. "There's more than one God, Thoros. And they abandoned you long ago."

Clutching at his chest, the fat man backed away, howling mockingly, "You hear! You hear! What shall become of Westeros when this one is King?"

As he said this, the drunks roared and began to stamp once more, but one rose above them and began to quiet them, to stop both Thoros or the two new comers from retorting to one another's teasing.

"Peace, you bastards! Are we here to talk, or to drink?!"

Another roar goes up and they are consumed by half a hundred drunks, singing, and shouting, but someone pulls on his collar and drags him out them orgy of strong drink and laughing, into a room with the door shut over, which muffles all the sound on the other side to a minutia of what it was before.

He sighs, "You know I was rather looking forward to getting drunk tonight?"

"Forgive me, my Prince," says his saviour, "but I thought it best given tomorrow."

"True." He sighs, "true enough." And he walks to a chair by the fire, shakes off his boots and props his feet on a stool. Then he waves at the seat opposite him and gesture through his yawn, 'Come and sit, my lord.'

Beric Dondarrion is Lord of Blackhaven and as handsome as the Prince's own Uncle, Ser Jaime, with red hair and as tall as the King Robert, who was once his liege lord, before the Rebellion which landed his Father the Iron Throne.

"How do you imagine tomorrow shall go then, my lord?"

The question, though it must have been expected still catches the Lightening Lord off guard. "Difficult to say, my prince," he says, unsure and thinking hard, "Our demands are just, all of Westeros shall acknowledge that."

He shrugs, "Acknowledge, yes. But that means nothing, if we don't have backing. Has the charter returned?"

"Yes, my prince."

The Lord of Blackhaven offers the roll parchment which he takes. "I can think of one or two more names that we may add by tomorrow. Your own seal is affixed?"

"Good," Rickard smiles, but then scratches his chin. "You know some may interpret this as treason."

"The very people we move against, ser." Offers Dondarrion, determined. "We are too numerous to be ignored, and too powerful to be crushed."

"The supporters of the Targaryens said the same thing, I imagine." And how many of their names are on this sheet of paper, I wonder. "Still, our movement is unknown to most."

"Most? Not all?" The Lightening Lord rises, concerned. "My Prince, who else knows? All that we sent the charter to signed. You think we have been betrayed?"

"No, nothing so sinister or deliberate. My Grandfather knows, and my Great Uncle Kevan."

"What? How?"

"My Father may have the Crown, and Jon Arryn may be the Hand of the King, but the true power behind Westeros comes from Casterly Rock."

"I see." Lord Beric's voice is dashed with shaken confidence. "And do we have the Old Lion's backing?"

Another shrug. "We have his sympathy, but not his support. At least not openly. He fears that I'm acting to rashly, to aggressive, though applauds our groups initiative. He would advise continued diplomacy and lobbying, things I've yet to prove myself in, in his eyes."

Lord Beric snorts in surprise. "You were his ward for 6 years?"

"Still, there is only so much you can teach a boy. Plus, I was three and ten when I left his charge and the Rock for Storm's End. I haven't seen him in all that time. That great old man, powerful and wise and…" He trails off. Yet out the corner of his eye can see the puzzled look on Dondarrion's face. "I'll hear no word said against Tywin Lannister, Beric. Not one. He maybe the Great Lion to most, or the Traitor to King Aerys, but not me. To me he's… grandfather."

He shakes his head, and tips it back sighing. "Get the old woman to throw a blanket over me. I'll sleep here tonight. I want to dream of being one and ten. Of feeding the gulls, and throwing myself from cliffs into the Sunset Sea. Yes."

Let me sleep. Let me dream.