A Clash of Kings

the flaming heart ill-chosen and begs to fight beneath the crowned stag as of old. Ser Guyard says a woman should not be my standard-bearer. Others whisper that she has no place in my war councils, that I ought to send her back to Asshai, that it is sinful to keep her in my tent of a night. Aye, they whisper… while she serves.”

“Serves how?” Davos asked, dreading the answer.

“As needed.” The king looked at him. “And you?”

“I…” Davos licked his lips. “I am yours to command. What would you have me do?”

“Nothing you have not done before. Only land a boat beneath the castle, unseen, in the black of night. Can you do that?”

“Yes. Tonight?”

The king gave a curt nod. “You will need a small boat. Not Black Betha. No one must know what you do.”

Davos wanted to protest. He was a knight now, no longer a smuggler, and he had never been an assassin. Yet when he opened his mouth, the words would not come. This was Stannis, his just lord, to whom he owed all he was. And he had his sons to consider as well. Gods be good, what has she done to him?

“You are quiet,” Stannis observed.

And should remain so, Davos told himself, yet instead he said, “My liege, you must have the castle, I see that now, but surely there are other ways. Cleaner ways. Let Ser Cortnay keep the bastard boy and he may well yield.”

“I must have the boy, Davos. Must. Melisandre has seen that in the flames as well.”

Davos groped for some other answer. “Storm’s End holds no knight who can match Ser Guyard or Lord Caron, or any of a hundred others sworn to your service. This single combat… could it be that Ser Cortnay seeks for a way to yield with honor? Even if it means his own life?”

A troubled look crossed the king’s face like a passing cloud. “More like he plans some treachery. There will be no combat of champions. Ser Cortnay was dead before he ever threw that glove. The flames do not lie, Davos.”

Yet they require me to make them true, he thought. It had been a long time since Davos Seaworth felt so sad.

And so it was that he found himself once more crossing Shipbreaker Bay in the dark of night, steering a tiny boat with a black sail. The sky was the same, and the sea. The same salt smell was in the air, and the water chuckling against the hull was just as he remembered it. A thousand flickering campfires burned around the castle, as the fires of the Tyrells and Redwynes had sixteen years before. But all the rest was different.

The last time it was life I brought to Storm’s End, shaped to look like onions. This time it is death, in the shape of Melisandre of Asshai. Sixteen years ago, the sails had cracked and snapped with every shift of wind, until he’d pulled them down and gone on with muffled oars. Even so, his heart had been in his gullet. The men on the Redwyne galleys had grown lax after so long, however, and they had slipped through the cordon smooth as black satin. This time, the only ships in sight belonged to Stannis, and the only danger would come from watchers on the castle walls. Even so, Davos was taut as a bowstring.

Melisandre huddled upon a thwart, lost in the folds of a dark red cloak that covered her from head to heels, her face a paleness beneath the cowl. Davos loved the water. He slept best when he had a deck rocking beneath him, and the sighing of the wind in his rigging was a sweeter sound to him than any a singer could make with his harp strings. Even the sea brought him no comfort tonight, though. “I can smell the fear on you, ser knight,” the red woman said softly.

“Someone once told me the night is dark and full of terrors. And tonight I am no knight. Tonight I am Davos the smuggler again. Would that you were an onion.”

She laughed. “Is it me you fear? Or what we do?”

“What you do. I’ll have no part of it.”

“Your hand raised the sail. Your hand holds the tiller.”

Silent, Davos tended to his course. The shore was a snarl of rocks, so he was taking them well out across the bay. He would wait for the tide to turn before coming about. Storm’s End dwindled behind them, but the red woman seemed unconcerned. “Are you a good man, Davos Seaworth?” she asked.

Would a good man be doing this? “I am a man,” he said. “I am kind to my wife, but I have known other women. I have tried to be a father to my sons, to help make them a place in this world. Aye, I’ve broken laws, but I never felt evil until tonight. I would say my parts are mixed, m’lady. Good and bad.”

“A grey man,” she said. “Neither white nor black, but partaking of both. Is that what you are, Ser Davos?”

“What if I am? It seems to me that most men are grey.”

“If half of an onion is black with rot, it is a rotten onion. A man is good, or he is evil.”

The fires behind them had melted into one vague glow against the black sky, and the land was almost out of sight. It was time to come about. “Watch your head, my lady.” He pushed on the tiller, and the small boat threw up a curl of black water as she turned. Melisandre leaned under the swinging yard, one hand on the gunwale, calm as ever. Wood creaked, canvas cracked, and water splashed, so loudly a man might swear the castle was sure to hear. Davos knew better. The endless crash of wave on rock was the only sound that ever penetrated the massive seaward walls of Storm’s End, and that but faintly.

A rippling wake spread out behind as they swung back toward the shore. “You speak of men and onions,” Davos said to Melisandre. “What of women? Is it not the same for them? Are you good or evil, my lady?”

That made her chuckle. “Oh, good. I am a knight of sorts myself, sweet ser. A champion of light and life.”

“Yet you mean to kill a man tonight,” he said. “As you killed Maester Cressen.”

“Your maester poisoned himself. He meant to poison me, but I was protected by a greater power and he was not.”

“And Renly Baratheon? Who was it who killed him?”

Her head turned. Beneath the shadow of the cowl, her eyes burned like pale red candle flames. “Not I.”

“Liar.” Davos was certain now.

Melisandre laughed again. “You are lost in darkness and confusion, Ser Davos.”

“And a good thing.” Davos gestured at the distant lights flickering along the walls of Storm’s End. “Feel how cold the wind is? The guards will huddle close to those torches. A little warmth, a little light, they’re a comfort on a night like this. Yet that will blind them, so they will not see us pass.” I hope. “The god of darkness protects us now, my lady. Even you.”

The flames of her eyes seemed to burn a little brighter at that. “Speak not that name, ser. Lest you draw his black eye upon us. He protects no man, I promise you. He is the enemy of all that lives. It is the torches that hide us, you have said so yourself. Fire. The bright gift of the Lord of Light.”

“Have it your way.”

“His way, rather.”

The wind was shifting, Davos could feel it, see it in the way the black canvas rippled. He reached for the halyards. “Help me bring in the sail. I’ll row us the rest of the way.”

Together they tied off the sail as the boat rocked beneath them. As Davos unshipped the oars and slid them into the choppy black water, he said, “Who rowed you to Renly?”

“There was no need,” she said. “He was unprotected. But here… this Storm’s End is an old place. There are spells woven into the stones. Dark walls that no shadow can pass — ancient, forgotten, yet still in place.”

“Shadow?” Davos felt his flesh prickling. “A shadow is a thing of darkness.”

“You are more ignorant than a child, ser knight. There are no shadows in the dark. Shadows are the servants of light, the children of fire. The brightest flame casts the darkest shadows.”

Frowning, Davos hushed her then. They were coming close to shore once more, and voices carried across the water. He rowed, the faint sound of his oars lost in the rhythm of the waves. The seaward side of Storm’s End perched upon a pale white cliff, the chalky stone sloping up steeply to half again the height of the massive curtain wall. A mouth yawned in the cliff, and it was that Davos steered for, as he had sixteen years before. The tunnel