Chapter Text
Summerhall was not built for winter revels. Neither was it built for easy patrols, with so many columns to hide behind and more than three doors in every chamber but the innermost, great halls for a warm breeze to whistle through, trees to rustle into showering pollen and loose sticky leaves, windows best served by being open. When Dunk first returned Aegon here to rejoin his family, more than forty years ago, it had been a proper summer, and the halls were never silent, buzzing with dragonflies and the drip of gathering mist and echoing with the footsteps of men at arms trying to cover more ground and mind their Targaryen charges around corners. (And, in Dunk’s case, to nearly brain himself on every door’s lintel.) But Dunk supposed that if they had all endured winter in worse places, the Targaryens would come here anyway, and their guards must endure.
So on this winter night, those columns had sputtering braziers at their bases, and the trees had been bare for so long their icicles had icicles, and Dunk’s king was as cranky as he ever had been up at the Wall.
Aegon hunched over his desk and under a heap of robes and furs and quilts that left only his head and hands bare. Said hands, speckled and thin as the pages they turned, tapped agitatedly on every surface like the twitchy legs of centipedes, or like musicians bothered for a note. Dunk smiled to recall their extended stay at Winterfell almost half a century ago (seven Hells!), when his king was a spindly bald boy built entirely of ends and elbows, itching at woolen blankets and scraping the crust from his nose and eyes over and over. His nostrils were as chapped and ruddy now as then. How little changes in half a century, and how much. The king traced the vellum, line, tap tap tap, line, tap, line, corner, glide. One hand broke the pattern, and grasped for the nearby goblet: Dunk knew before it reached Aegon’s lips that the thing was empty, and his smile indented even as the king’s pout deepened.
Aegon rolled his eyes and replaced the goblet on the desk with a minimum of sulkiness. He asked, tapping the bejeweled base and golden stem now instead of the paper, “Dunk, what is the hour?”
“Her Grace’s maids are long gone. And you sent the cupbearer off as well, an hour or more ago. When the wine ran out,” Dunk said. It wasn’t a precise answer, but Dunk couldn’t see the timekeeper from this side of the room, and either way he aimed more to make the king smile too.
He did not quite get what he wanted: exasperated, Aegon pitched back, leaning over the crest of his chair. Some of the heaped blankets slid off his shoulders and all of them opened; startled and cold, Aegon flailed to catch them and clasp them shut around his dressing gown. He stayed in the chair. Most of the blankets did not. His resultant grimace almost immediately shifted instead into chattering teeth, and the sort of sardonic laugh that resounded more inward than out. But it was a laugh, and that was better than before.
Chuckling, Dunk came away from the door, cold armor creaking with each step. “If that’s not a signal to go and lie down, I don’t know what is. Come on now.”
Aegon rolled his eyes in the other direction this time, angling his head to Dunk with a weary and wry little smirk. His hair, ever-pale but now spackled with pure white among the silver, tumbled out of the blankets, first one lock, then another, clinging to the furs with audible prickles of static. “You’ve missed signals before.”
“And will again, but this one’s plain as your nose. Even kings must rest.”
“Morbid.”
“Not what I meant. Do I have to carry you?”
“Don’t you dare,” Aegon commanded fondly. “From all the way over here, I can see my breath beading on your plate.” But sensibly he rose, entirely under his own power. He paused once to twist cracks out of his spine, twice each way, then scooped up the topmost fallen furs and draped them around his shoulders. By the time Dunk reached his side the king was straightened and set. All that remained was to mark and close the book. Which meant Aegon’s hand poked out of the furs again, and strummed the edges of the page, eyes following touch. And subsequently, Dunk’s eyes following his.
Though Dunk did eventually learn to read and write, and made some attempts at poetry for apologies and gifts (mostly apologies), he never learned Valyrian beyond the insults Aegon’s family occasionally shouted during arguments. As such, this book wasn’t only beyond him; it was beyond all but the most dedicated maesters and, he supposed, Targaryens. The glyphs on the pages before him were arcane and whorling, more brushstroke than penstroke. Brushstroke in truth, more like. Tongues of flame angled in a high wind. It would be like the old Valyrians to model their writing on the things they revered, Dunk thought. And Aegon has always shone brightest at a fireside.
But if Aegon stood here much longer, he would sit, and then they would be back where they started. So Dunk pinched his gauntleted fingertips around the marking ribbon and pointedly drew it into the book’s crevasse. The incidental touch of the white steel to Aegon’s fidgeting knuckle shocked him: the cold, too, was a signal too plain to miss, and Aegon startled and flinched back. But thereafter Aegon himself finished the job, shutting the book and burrowing his hand back under his makeshift shawl.
With a sigh and a shake of his head, Aegon Targaryen, Fifth of his Name, King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, swaddled himself in furs and skulked toward his bedchamber. Dunk followed.
The walk was not long, and thankfully did not require going outdoors, but the short guardhall was colder than the chamber, the wall sconces putting off more light than heat. Perhaps that was why Aegon bunched the furs up tighter around his cheeks and picked up the pace, not as fast as he used to scurry as a child, but quick enough that after the first few steps Dunk did not bother shortening his stride, and there was no time to say anything else before they reached the foreroom. Ser Bertrem Redwyne perked up from his post beside the door, first inclining to Aegon and then saluting Dunk. Dunk signaled that Bertrem could retire for the night, which he did with another salute, and they paid him the appropriate amount of heed as they crossed through.
In the lowlight within – the little room had no hearth of its own – the page on night shift slept fitfully in a chair, bundled up as thoroughly as Aegon and shivering nonetheless. It was far more appropriate for a boy of ten. Dunk snickered under his breath; a misty curl of the same wound up the sconcelit sweep of Aegon’s jaw.
Dunk whispered, “I can’t even tell which of them it is under all that.”
Aegon could. “Cregan,” he said. “That is unmistakably Blackwood hair.” As tenderly as he would with any of his own children or grandchildren, the king reached out to pat his great-nephew’s fuzzy head and wake him up as gently as possible.
The boy sniffled and snorted, but to his credit only took three blinks to recognize who was touching him. “Your Grace,” he said, woozy but a little loud. Belatedly, he remembered to bow, though since he was still mostly seated and swaddled in at least four blankets it could just be struggling. “Did I mess up?”
“Only by sleeping in the chair,” Aegon teased, gesturing with his hand to keep their voices down. “There’s a perfectly good pallet right over there.”
When these chambers had been King Maekar’s, he’d posted two guards in the foreroom, sleeping in shifts whenever he rested within: Aegon had not continued the practice, joking that Dunk took up plenty of space on his own. Nevertheless the pallet remained, under a Dornish wall hanging woven into a sunrise with only the last stars shining in the highest corners.
“Her Grace said to leave it for the Lord Commander,” little Cregan said, pouting with admirable dedication. “She said if I didn’t he’s going to stand up all night. Ser.”
“Probably,” Dunk admitted. And he barely fit on that thing. “But I’m here now, and you’re sleeping, and I’m not. By order of your king, up you go.” He scooped up the child, blankets and all, and deposited him on the pallet. “No sense in both of us having creaky knees come morning.”
The child, half-asleep to begin with, grumbled hardly at all as Dunk set him down and rearranged the blankets. When Dunk stepped back, Aegon was already at his side, adding one of the furs to the pile and tucking it in around the boy’s feet. He muttered, “If he’s anything like Betha, those will be blocks of ice before morning.”
Dunk, who had heard many a complaint through the years about Queen Betha’s feet (the only thing cold about her in Aegon’s bed, reputedly), grinned and chided in a whisper, “Then you’d better get in there and warm her up.”
Aegon elbowed him. Less a few furs, said elbow made contact with Dunk’s armor with only royal robes for protection. The cold probably bothered Aegon more than the pain, but he swallowed a yelp so as not to wake the page, and settled for wrinkling his nose at Dunk with indelible petulance. Among all the other wrinkles on his face that Aegon refused to hide with a beard, that pout was the only one to make him look younger.
“They’re usually so difficult at that age,” Dunk taunted, raising one eyebrow.
“You would know,” Aegon said.
“I would.” And with a sidelong nod at the sleeping page, Dunk took up his post beside the bedchamber door.
Shaking his head at some glancing thought, Aegon gathered up the remaining furs and blankets, but rather than wrap them all around himself, he draped one pelt across the back of the chair beside Dunk and raised a knowing eyebrow. His gaze was wistful, and though it was angled at Dunk, the king’s eyes seemed to be drawn even farther away than Dunk’s height.
Touched, Dunk met those eyes and tried to prompt a smile.
It nearly worked, though the quirk of the king’s lips was soft and fleeting. Aegon stood aside and opened the door. The warmth of hearth and canopy and slumbering wife washed over his face, and he stood still a moment as if to take it all in. But, stalled there, he asked, “Dunk?”
“Your Grace?”
The king’s eyes drifted shut, pale lashes like dandelion fluff catching the light. “Are you staying up because you can’t sleep, or because you don’t want to?”
“I might ask you the same thing,” Dunk said, low. “But no, neither. I’m staying up so you can sleep. And I will too, tomorrow.”
Aegon nodded, a deep breath causing the wrapped furs to swell up toward his tilted chin. “Are you asking?”
“Asking what?”
“The same thing,” Aegon said, with a little lilt of mischief.
There. Success! Dunk’s smile warmed and stretched. “No, because if I do, you’ll stay up to answer.”
A laugh that was more breath than sound beaded in the cold. The king tossed his head, smiling back in truth (if wistfully), and went into his bedchamber, leaving Dunk to shut the door behind him. Which Dunk of course did, briefly basking in the relative warmth and looking over the hearthlit chamber with warmer pride. From the velvet-draped bed to the array of stone dragon eggs to the roaring fireplace, it seemed a far more fitting lair for his king than a heap of mismatched blankets and a desk full of vexations.
And Dunk stood vigil for the remainder of the night, watching the candles fade and the young page sleep. He felt no need to drape the fur over his pauldrons until very near dawn.
*
“Any news on the arrivals?” Dunk asked his assembled subordinates.
“If you mean the babe, no, Lord Commander,” Ser Jon answered, wiping crumbs off his jaw with his mailed forearm. “Her Grace is shaking like a leaf, but no pains yet.”
“I meant that too, but I was asking about Ser Ernyst and the Prince of Dragonflies,” Dunk chided.
Four of the Kingsguard were present at Summerhall: Dunk for the king, Ser Bertrem for the queen, Ser Mikael Dayne for Prince Jaehaerys and Princess Shaera, and Ser Jon the Diver for Prince Aerys and the heavily pregnant Princess Rhaella. According to yesterday afternoon’s raven, the Prince of Dragonflies and Lady Jenny had departed King’s Landing at last and would arrive within the fortnight, with Ser Ernyst Stone to escort them, but the birds did not fly in sleet and the letter was dated a sennight prior. If this family gathering extended to the end of the month, it was understood that Dunk would call Ser Harlan Grandison and the new-minted Ser Gerold Hightower here also, but Gerold’s training in the Red Keep was of greater import to Dunk, and Aegon insisted that at least one of their number remain at King’s Landing for now. Which seemed rather counter to the duties of the Kingsguard, what with nearly all the Targaryens convening here, but Dunk could see the wisdom in it. Considering how many Targaryens had to die for Aegon to ascend the throne at all, distributing the Kingsguard among all of his heirs and reminding King’s Landing who ruled it was indisputably prudent.
“Oh,” said Ser Jon. He chomped down the rest of this sweetroll, started another, then went on, “Another bird last night. They’re just off the Roseroad. At that inn they like, with the braided willows.”
“Three or four days, then,” Ser Mikael groused, shaving a lemon with his knife. A dyed-in-the-silkworm-feed Dornishman, he was easily as annoyed with the cold as the king, and drank boiling water with rind and honey whenever he could get his hands on some. As such, he pissed as lustily and frequently as he sang, but neither interfered with his duties. In fact, according to Prince Jaehaerys, Princess Shaera would often ask Mikael to sing outside their door. Which Mikael, being Dornish, assumed meant frequent attempts at creating more Targaryen heirs.
Which is also prudent, Dunk thought. Since the Prince of Dragonflies’s abdication, and poor Prince Daeron’s death, the once sprawling Targaryen tree was in want of new blooms. As far as nearly everyone in this family and on its edges was concerned, including Dunk, Princess Rhaella’s babe could not come soon enough.
Jon laughed heartily. “Unless they decide that they don’t want to come home and sleep in a guest’s room.”
“They never take the king’s room when they’re here,” Bertrem pointed out from the windowsill, staring out over the crystal-dappled trees and the lakeside, less frozen than yesterday. “Lady Jenny says Old King Maekar’s ghost is in there.”
“She’d know,” Jon said.
“He never met her,” Dunk mused.
“If he had, she’d never be chatelaine,” Mikael said, stirring the rind into his potion.
True enough, Dunk thought. While he himself was not the only commoner Aegon had elevated into his esteem, the king once had plans for his eldest son, Dunk’s own namesake, and Prince Duncan abdicating to wed a commoner was not among those plans. Dunk would not have put it past Aegon’s father to have been far more forceful in his rejection, and not offer the boy prince a choice at all. Which Aegon had, for good or ill. And Prince Duncan had chosen, for good or ill.
Dunk rather liked Lady Jenny, all told. If he’d had a daughter, he’d be proud of one who danced among ruins and charmed a king’s heir. But a part of him also wished that someone who shared his name would one day sit the Iron Throne. And he liked to think that the Prince of Dragonflies, so steely and protective, would have made a good king.
King Aegon the Fifth may have been a friend to the smallfolk, may have lived among them, catching their illnesses and eating their humble fare and sleeping under elm trees with Dunk – but the blood of Old Valyria wreathed his bones all the same.
The Kingsguards’ conversation had gone on while Dunk cogitated, and by the time he returned to it, Jon was back on the subject of Princess Rhaella. “And if the babe comes before the septon’s here to bless it, Prince Aerys is taking bets on what color the old man’s face turns.”
“What are the options?” Mikael asked.
“Red, white, or green.”
“Two stags on red.”
“Tell His Grace, not me.”
“Ask him,” Dunk corrected. “It may be a jest.”
A knock at the door and the piping shout of a page alerted the Kingsguard that the royals were, largely, done with their morning ablutions and the earliest of them were dressed, namely the Queen and Princess Shaera, and the family planned to convene in Aerys and Rhaella’s solar for breakfast as they had for the last several mornings. Bertrem left the window and then the room; Mikael downed the rest of his potion and chewed the rind, waving a hand in front of his mouth as his hot breath pooled on the back of his hand, and called for his squire to finish arming him. Jon, who was mostly armored but not fully in state, finished that last sweetroll and stretched on the way to the bust where he’d left his helm. Dunk instead went to the door to address the page. Little Cregan bounced just outside the doorjamb with morning energy, which he would surely have lacked if he’d slept in that chair.
“And the king?” Dunk asked.
“Still in the baths, Ser,” Cregan said.
“Still?” Since he sent Dunk upstairs an hour ago, he ought to be long done by now.
“He said he won’t get out until the fires are all up, Ser. And Queen Betha said he tossed all night and stole all the blankets.”
“Then we’ll let His Grace warm up,” Dunk laughed, patting the boy’s head and sending him off. Knowing Aegon, he intended to avoid that family breakfast for as long as possible, and there were worse places to do so than the baths.
*
The hot springs in Winterfell and up at the Wall never ran dry or froze over. Nor did those at any northern holdfast they stopped at half a century ago, though by the time they reached the Neck the waters were more tepid than hot, and covered in slippery green blooms. On Dunk and Aegon’s journeys over the continent entire, they had only found three such springs in the south: Dragonstone of course (if one had not existed there before the Targaryens arrived, they would have made one by all arts they possessed), one in Dorne, high up in the mountains, and one in a cave near New Barrel, which Raymun Fossoway was quite proud to have discovered himself while prospecting for his new keep. For the same reasons that Summerhall was not built for winter revels, it had no such hot spring, so after enduring one winter here seventy years ago Aegon’s mother had commissioned several Tyroshi engineers to fashion a contraption of pipes and ducts. Aegon had explained it to Dunk twice: river water, filtered through a fine mesh sieve, heated and risen, available so long as he scheduled it two hours in advance, with a minimum of bucket- and kettle-fetching. How the system worked with the surface of the river half-frozen, Dunk did not know, but had no need to.
The tub stood half Dunk’s height deep if you accounted for the extra two feet beneath the tile floor, and thus its walls were only a cubit high. It was large enough to fit half a dozen men and tiled in the Dornish fashion in a combination of Targaryen and Dayne colors. The mosaic of reds and purples and purest silver spread from the bath itself to the walls and black ceiling, less abstract as it spiraled farther and higher into summer constellations. Dozens of intricately inlaid dragons soared in a glorious and sparkling midnight sky, their silhouettes playing among falling stars, their fire-breath rendered in whorls of gold. The largest dragon, black as pitch with jagged spines and amethyst eyes, crossed before a silver crescent moon, seeming to enfold it in his mighty wings. His tail entwined with the greatest and brightest of those falling stars, keeping it in the heavens.
Small wonder that Aegon lingered here, rather than face another grey dawn.
The king sprawled against one wall of the tub, head angled back on folded towels, the water as high as his collarbones. He wore no crown: in fact, he wore nothing at all. His hair, soaking wet, fanned out past the edges of the makeshift pillow, the ends almost translucent. He cracked one eye at Dunk, then shut it again and groaned.
“You should be sleeping,” Aegon said.
“You should be guarded,” Dunk countered.
“I won’t drown,” Aegon said bluntly. When Dunk said naught more, the king opened his eyes, wider this time, then commanded, “Get in.”
Tempting, but even Dunk understood the complications. Dunk simply knocked on his armor. Aegon, in turn, shrugged, and pointed one imperious finger at the ledge nearest him.
Well, if the king insists. Dunk could, and had, protected his charge wearing less, in far less hospitable places. He glanced once more at the door, then unclasped his white cloak and hung it on the corner of an ironwork shelf full of fresh towels and plain linen robes. He crossed to Aegon’s side, uncoupling his baldric as well, and rested it and the sword against the edge of the tub as Aegon went to work.
With the tub inlaid two feet underground, Aegon stood only as high as Dunk’s waist, but his arms were far longer than they’d been as a child. Though it had been years since the last time, he drew off Dunk’s gauntlets with ease, then uncoupled the pins and straps on first his left arm up to the pauldron, then his right, setting each piece down in turn.
“You’re pickled, Your Grace,” Dunk said, eyeing Aegon’s pruned fingers.
“Hasn’t stopped me before,” Aegon said, his pout either concentration or defensiveness, likely both. Done with the arms, he tugged on the straps of Dunk’s cuirass, and had to stand on his toes to get at the alignment aiglets on Dunk’s gambeson beneath the chain but loosened them with ease. Dunk took down the carapace himself to keep it from dropping, and propped it in a little puddle next to the sword. The white enamel misted over, thin trails of condensation running off it like a map toward the joints and weak points. Dunk had never been comfortable in the ornate armor favored by lords and highborn knights, so the pristine simplicity of the Kingsguard White suited him fine, and he had not added devices or scrollwork even after he became Lord Commander. The suit of plate was the single most costly thing he’d ever possessed, and it was not art, but a perfect work of industry, and the palace smiths never let a scratch or dent linger for long. The armor was itself, and need be naught else. Like you, Aegon had told him once, and that warmed Dunk’s heart like the first breaths of summer.
As it had on countless nights, in countless holds and hedges, the simple and familiar motions and rhythm of a squire’s work seemed to steady Aegon. He didn’t even complain of the chill as the minutes stretched on, though that he still stood in the steaming bath might have more to do with that. He made no more prompts as he uncoupled the plate on Dunk’s right leg, then his left, from cuisse to sabaton. Dunk shucked his chain shirt himself – there was never hope of Aegon doing it for him, unless Dunk knelt – but Aegon wordlessly insisted on doing Dunk’s boots and padding.
One could not spend half a century being squired by the same man without picking up on how his moods changed the tempo or tenor of every hook and knot. He suspected the same was true for Aegon with regard to him. When Aegon was a boy, the shifts in his temper had been more pronounced, but that made their muted manifestation in the man easier for Dunk to spot: if the request itself hadn’t been an indication that the king was troubled beyond a sleepless night and inclement weather, the force with which he pried off Dunk’s left boot would be.
When Dunk was down to his undergarments, which needed to be washed anyway, he briefly stepped aside to sluice off so as not to dirty the tub. This copper bucket of scrubbing water would be considered cold elsewhere, elsewhen, and had been sitting out untouched for at least half an hour, but it was equal to the task and Dunk only felt the earliest whispers of cold cutting through the room’s aggressive steam. By the time Dunk was done cleaning, Aegon had sat back down and spread his arms on either side of the tub’s ledge, though he hadn’t rested his head again. Dunk wrung out his shirt, hose, and cod, and tossed them into the hamper – the royal laundresses had no trouble knowing which were made for him – and joined Aegon in the water, keeping his sword in reach.
The chill had not, and had never, bothered him as much as it did his king, but the heat of the tub was an immediate and welcome good, simple and unadulterated. Dunk’s joints, always a little sore these days, unwinched as soon as his ankles were immersed, and a charge raced up from his toes to the base of his spine like the leaves on a tree unfurling all at once. He sighed – it rattled – and had to brace himself on the ledge as everything above the waterline vociferously yearned to slip beneath it.
“Told you so,” Aegon said.
“You told me nothing but ‘get in’,” Dunk contested, but it was half-hearted, and still mostly a sigh. He braced his arms on the rim of the tub and sank, and resolutely did not wobble. He had to slump and let his knees breach the surface like islands to dip his head into the water, and his heel knocked against Aegon’s on the way down, but the steady heat surrounded him and filled his ears and everything in his head closed off for the space of one held breath. One long, lovely held breath.
When Dunk resurfaced, Aegon was smirking openly, half of his morning-stubbled face lifted as if the steam bore his lips and cheeks on a palanquin. Naked and wet, Aegon’s age shone on him without any compromise, every wrinkle and scar and patch of thinning silver hair; but his smile was a boy’s. A boy who knew far more than he’d let on, confident that the world would bend to him where his own skinny arms would break.
The warmth inside Dunk’s chest met and matched the heat of the water like clashing fronts creating a storm. He’d missed that boy.
“Your Grace is wise and generous,” Dunk said.
“Oh, shut up,” Aegon said, still grinning, and a breath-heavy laugh parted the steam before him.
They sat in companionable silence for a minute or two, and Dunk closed his eyes. Pops of ache and air wended out of his joints, particularly that left knee that had rankled him since the young heir of House Selmy knocked him off his horse. How long ago was that now? Six years? Seven? Summer. Long enough ago for the maesters to run through more lineaments trying to soothe it than Dunk could count. Aegon had knighted the bold boy with his own words and sword, since both Dunk and Prince Duncan were on their backs in the maesters’ tent at the time. A worthy knight and young hero, no doubt, but his family was loath to relinquish him to the Kingsguard. Perhaps they would if Dunk wrote them personally. But for that, a spot would have to be open, and all of Dunk’s cohort bar him and Harlan were still in their prime, and Harlan just barely out of it.
And yet Dunk could not possibly be old, because Aegon had just squired him. Never mind the white hair and creaky knees and his king pressuring him to rest.
Seven be merciful, Aegon broke through Dunk’s reverie with a soft, “Did you pass by the solar on the way down?”
Dunk reopened his eyes, and knew which solar his king meant: the one where Rhaella was sobbing so loudly that Dunk could hear it through the walls, and her mother and grandmother’s plaintive hopes and comfits did nothing to soothe her. It had been worse yesterday, when Aerys was awake as well. At least today the boy had slept in. “I did, but did not go in. Ser Jon and Ser Bertrem have it in hand.”
Aegon groaned. “No one has my progeny in hand, so much the pity.”
“You do,” Dunk offered.
“Like the reins of a caltropped horse,” Aegon said, his smile long since reforged into grit teeth. “Some days I don’t know which vexes me most, them, or the intransigent highborn blowhards I didn’t sire.”
“Neither,” Dunk said, prompting with an eyebrow. “It’s the weather.”
Aegon’s one laugh was mostly breath and steam, but at least it resounded at all. So did the hissed sigh as the king tipped his head back onto the folded towel again, and his outstretched hand splashed the surface of the water at Dunk’s chest, a gentle sort of have off with you.
With a snort, Dunk splashed back. “I’m right.”
“You are,” Aegon groused. “But the others are neck and neck for second.”
“Explains the caltrops.”
That earned Dunk another splash, but more importantly a brighter attempt at a kingly smile, though it did not quite reach Aegon’s eyes, their violet darkened by steam and shadow. The creases and sags in Aegon’s neck vibrated as he fidgeted, twisting more air out from his vertebrae before settling his head back down. He stared up at the tile stars. None fell from the ceiling. “What am I going to do about them?”
Them. Not the metaphorical caltrops, plainly. Dunk asked, “The children? The lords?”
Aegon exhaled harshly enough that his chest caved lower into the water, briefly pooling in the hollows of his collarbones. “I feel like the answer is the same.”
“I’m not so sure. Your children…” Dunk paused, letting his long years beside all five of them play out behind his eyes. “It’s already done, isn’t it? The High Septon won’t reinstate Prince Duncan, Rhaelle’s safe and settled with a fawn about to spout antlers, and Daeron is–”
“–gone,” Aegon finished for him.
The better he chooses the word, Duncan thought, and nodded. “And you’ve done well with Prince Jaehaerys, I think. He’s clever, and with Shaera to speak up when he’s not feeling his best, you’ll have two strong voices at court to keep the peace.”
“It’s not peace I want,” Aegon almost snapped, sitting up straighter before sloping into the tub. He shook his head, and sighed again, and went on, “I mean, I do. But what good is peace if the smallfolk still starve? A quarter of a century and I’m still pulling teeth to gain any ground. I can send them food, but I can’t make the wardens do the same after half a decade of frost. I can keep the petty lords from levying them, but only if the wardens are doing their duty, and most are not.”
“Most, not all,” Dunk reminded him. “Dorne is in your camp. And Lord Stark is trying, but has more ground to cover with less.”
“Yes, Edwyle is trying. And Rickard is helping. And they also supply most of what we send to the Wall, men and food and arms and–” The king cut himself off with a scoff that was nearly a growl, and his hand trembled as it clenched into a claw, then a fist, then dipped beneath the surface. He let out a stream of hushed Valyrian oaths, too fast for Dunk to follow, then shook his head with a flash of teeth. “I dream of ice,” he said quietly, each word a hissed curse. “You’re going to say it’s the weather.”
Dunk was. Instead, he said, “This winter will end.”
“But the next might not. Or the one after that, or after that. And this one’s gone on too long as it is.” Aegon’s shoulders set firm against the rim of the tub. “Twenty-six years, and nothing to show for it.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“Fine, nothing to show for it but a handful of squabbling children.”
“And grandchildren,” Dunk pointed out. “And a great-grandchild within the month.”
Aegon scoffed, but Dunk still knew he was breaking through.
Dunk went on, leaning across the tub to properly catch the king’s sullen eyes. “And more than that. Look at me, Your Grace. The lot of the likes of me is better now than it’s ever been. Two hedge knights and a bastard in the Kingsguard. More bastards on the small council and a lowborn Grand Maester, and what lords you’ve chosen to heed are third and fourth sons like yourself and the Hand. Your own son, the one you named for me, lifting a wife out of nothing and nowhere, running this castle when you’re not in it. Two more Blackfyre pretenders taken down–”
“And more to come, if the lords don’t come for me first,” Aegon cut in.
“They won’t.”
“They have.” Aegon’s brow knotted and eyes set, flashing with banked anger as he leaned in and up toward Dunk’s face. “The Peakes took my father, the crows my sister, the traitors my nephew, and I can’t prove the westermen were paying off those reprobates who killed my precious son but I know it in my bones. A hundred Houses would rather send their smallfolk to kill a prince than pay a penny more in tax to keep them alive. And you think this is better?”
“Yes,” Dunk said evenly. “Because it is. Before you, it wasn’t a hundred Houses, it was half the country, high and low. All of it, if you call the Blackfyres princes too.”
“I do not,” Aegon hissed.
“Then half it is, and by your hand down to a quarter. Less than that, even. It’s only the lords.”
“Only the lords,” Aegon repeated, drained and sour. “Only the lords, he says. The lords you know as well as I have a wealth of conceit and a paucity of honor. The lords who care more for their purses than their people.”
Yes, Dunk knew that as well as Aegon. Better, even, coming from nothing. But he also knew this man. “The lords who also have less than they think they ought,” he reminded Aegon, knowing his king had lived through the same. “Winter comes for us all, and droughts in summer, and rare is the man who’ll share his portion when nothing new grows.”
“Rare,” Aegon agreed, and looked pointedly at Dunk. “But not unheard of.”
“Not unheard of, no,” Dunk said. And while Aegon seemed to mean him, there were others. “But if all men were like you, we’d have no need of kings.”
“No,” said the king. A slow, wan smile crept out from his crow’s feet, setting the water to condense in his stubble like suspended tears. “Just hedge knights.”
It was not the first time Dunk’s king had confided in him like this, and far from the first frustration he’d expressed. But perhaps this room – incongruously warm while the world without froze, set in permanent stars while the sun rose beyond the walls, dragons frolicking in the painted heavens while none had flown in this world for a century, and a guttersnipe from Flea Bottom sat in the same bath as a king – was somehow out of time. Aegon’s trust felt momentous, as fresh as a wound and as eternal as a mountain, and for all Dunk’s great size he was too small to contain his awe.
This boy, this man, this king, had changed Dunk’s life. Had changed the meaning of stars.
Dunk lifted one hand out of the water, and offered it forward. Aegon only glanced down at his palm once before bringing up his own to join it, and clasped it ardently. Wrinkles and pruning and sunspots and calluses all, they held tight, hands and eyes.
And quietly as he had beneath an elm tree, a world ago, Aegon asked him: “If there were a way – if I could make the lords see things how you and I do, if I could convince them that there’s more outside their walls, to value and to fear – would you help me?”
“Always, Your Grace,” Dunk said, and nothing had ever been more true. “I don’t know if there’s a way – but if there is, you’ll find it.”
Aegon’s grip tautened, then trembled; Dunk took it as a signal, and pulsed his grasp once, then withdrew. They each leaned back against their own sides of the tub, and relaxed together to the plink of droplets and the hiss of flames, to the pop of air from tendons and old bones.
Eventually, Aegon propped his hands on the ledge and rose, slower than he might have as a lad but wholly under his own power. Dunk took his cue, and emerged as well. The lassitude and comfort of the water lingered as he stood, and he knew that the cold pillared halls would now feel pleasantly cool for at least an hour. He fetched Aegon’s towel and dressing gown, and found a linen robe for himself that was too small but at least maintained his dignity, though he would have to be careful climbing the stairs. If he folded his white cloak over his arm and kept it in front of his groin, that might serve. So he did, and cracked open the door to tell the awaiting page that the king was ready to be dressed and shaved, and also to please send for two squires to carry Dunk’s armor up to the Kingsguard quarters.
“Where you will be resting for the next four hours,” Aegon insisted, half-muffled by the towel as he dried his long silver hair. “You said it yourself, Bertrem and the others have it in hand.”
Aegon himself had countered that no one had his children in hand, but that was half an hour ago, and Dunk knew his work was done for the morning. So he conceded, “Yes. And you.”
*