Chapter Text
Exile. It sounded permanent enough.
Yet one of the earliest lessons Dunk learned over the years is that nobles bent the very weft of words to suit their privileged whims. Exile landed that wastrel in paradise. Gods knew men with cleaner consciences suffered worse punishments. But when you’re a Targaryen prince, no dank gaol awaits you. Exile meant the Free City of Lys, renown for its sensuous pillow houses and vibrant pleasure gardens—both of these features boasting such decadent, exotic blossoms to rival the rest of Essos and outshine whatever meager delights Westeros offered.
When Aerion was sent away, Dunk never fathomed that the rogue might return in his lifetime. Yet here the prince’s father, uncle, and great uncle gathered in the Small Council chamber, discussing that very ploy.
What was intended to be an exile gradually turned into an escapade, or so Lord Bloodraven reported to Aerion’s aggrieved father, Prince Maekar. Dunk listened to the Hand with his fist clenched around his sword pommel. These few years away did nothing to sate the young prince’s vanity nor his hedonism. Between Aerion’s prodigious taste for whores and his recruitment into the Second Sons, rumor had it that he’d left enough bastards on the women of Essos to threaten another bastard rebellion in 20 years hence. That was all the dragon dynasty needed: another branch of Targaryen byblows clawing for the throne on multiple fronts.
Dunk knew his place. Knew to keep his bitter thoughts to himself. He was but an insignificant, though heavily armored fly on the Small Council wall. The princes didn’t keep him around for his sage musings on the running of the realm. Him, a lowborn hedge knight, a man whose feats either rendered him beloved by the Seven, or just entertaining enough to play the gods’ favorite jester. Instead he acted as Maekar’s personal bodyguard to witness the awkward exchange between the kingly brother and his prickly youngest sibling. All this palaver at the behest of their enigmatic one-eyed uncle.
“Aerion must return,” the King’s Hand spoke with unquestionable authority as if he were the King’s mouth and bollocks as well. “The lad is not beyond my sight, but he must be brought to heel before winter. Another Blackfyre plot foments and the smug prince is better use to us on this side of the Narrow Sea. Savage and conceited as he is, he’s another sword bound by blood and familial loyalty to House Targaryen. Another year carousing in Lys will chasten him no more than the previous ones.”
The past four years may not have been a stroll in the Kingswood on a summer day, but Dunk had breathed easier knowing the vicious terror that was Prince Aerion “Brightflame” Targaryen stood with the Narrow Sea spanning between his reprehensible self and his youngest brother Egg.
I am glad Egg is not here to hear this, Dunk thought to himself. His thoughts often turned to the boy— or rather the young man of almost ten and three years of age now—about how he got on in his studies and lessons. He’d left the lad at Summerhall as a respite from their constant travel all over the realm these past years. The wandering of Westeros taught Egg greater lessons in the past years than some royals learn in a lifetime, but the boy was still a prince. A prince with a father who wanted him home.
At first the lad had argued, had insisted on continuing their journeys as Dunk’s squire. Fierce dragon blood hot in his veins, Egg almost grew so churlish with his own father that Dunk feared Maekar might have the boy’s feet whipped for the insolence. It took some bribing, eventually Egg agreed to stay at Summerhall. His brother Aemon visited to attend to their eldest sibling Daeron. Though Egg marveled at his adventures with Dunk, he missed his siblings—even his sisters as confessed a total of one time. Dwelling at Summerhall with his brothers and sisters afforded the opportunity to grow his hair out once more as a years long summer came to a close. No one could deny how at night the air turned crisper with each month. Even the maesters in Old Town gave their warning: winter is coming.
If Maekar meant to summon his remaining wayward son home to roost, he had best do it before winter storms churned the sea passage with the Drowned Gods wrath.
At the end of the council table, Maekar visibly lamented the prospect of his second eldest son’s return. He kept whatever arguments he had steeled behind his dour frown. No one rebuked Bloodraven’s guidance. And so the father forfeited his already lost debate and glumly regarded his elder brother. “And how many Kingsguard do you intend to send to bring the brash idiot back, brother?”
King Aerys, without deigning to glance up from whatever thick tome spread open beneath his nose, chided in a response tailored to fit both an older brother and a king. “You sent the brash idiot away to Lys, brother. You can retrieve the brash idiot in the same manner. I’ll not spare a single Kingsguard to run your errand while I have these fiendish Blackfyre pretender bastards lurking in the realm.”
The brothers shared a few more terse words before Maekar stalked from the Small Council chamber without the King’s dismissal. As was Maekar’s usual way of leave-taking. He stood, his chair grating on the flags, and murmured something that might have been “I suppose I’ll see it fucking done” before striding out the door.
“You may have your leave, Ser Duncan,” King Aerys spoke into his book. “I’ll send a servant along with some Dornish black currant tarts. That’s what our mother always gave my baby brother whenever he fussed. Try to abide him until then.”
Dunk bowed to the liege lord of the realm and hastened to catch up with the Prince of Summerhall.
“Nigh three hundred leagues and almost four fucking years later and that boy still stirs nothing but trouble,” Maekar muttered to himself as Dunk fell in step behind him.
He followed the Targaryen prince through the halls of the Keep and as the headed towards the royal apartments. Dunk assumed the matter had been quit for another day, but the older prince abruptly halted and turned on his heel to address Dunk.
“You. Hedge knight. I’m sending you out of the hedges and across the sea. Go to Lys and fetch my unruly fool of a son from his revelries.” Prince Maekar commanded with the effortless entitlement of a man who rarely heard a challenge to his orders.
What followed wasn’t intended to challenge the authority of a man whose ancestors burned parts of the continent to cinders, but to merely point out that Dunk was the last person in the Seven Kingdoms and beyond who Aerion Brightflame was wont to find at his door to usher him home.
“Your Grace, know I don’t mean to question your…wisdom,” Dunk searched for an appropriate word which didn’t leave his nose too brown, “but the prince will not like it if I am to act as his escort.”
“Like it?” A vein in the older prince’s temple thrummed stark against his skin. “He doesn’t have to like it. I don’t give a fuck if you have to lock him in a travel chest and drag it on board. Lord Bloodraven wants Aerion home. And if that is to happen, I want him home before winter bites at my balls. You’ve proven capable at handling one of my sons, and now I’m ordering you to do the same with another. This time you have my permission to…what is it you threaten Aegon with…clout Aerion in the ear. Or worse. Just bring him home in one piece. And if that piece is black and blue and bloody then so be it.”
Before the week was out, Dunk found himself on a passenger ship bound for the Free City of Lys. He’d been on boats before, but watching the shores of Westeros shrink into nothing on the horizon filled him with a foreboding he couldn’t blame on sea sickness.
The passage took just under four days. Prince Maekar sent along a compliment of his own guards and had also reserved every berth and cabin on the boat despite not sending enough warm bodies to fill them. That’s how Dunk wound up with his own cabin—though cramped even for a man smaller than himself—at least it was quiet. The thick bulkhead hemming him in dampened the raucous activities of the crewmen moving about hither and thither. Given the close quarters of the ship, he was grateful for the privacy to quell the roiling sense of unease dogging him as they drew closer to Lys.
Even as the spires of the coastal city’s outer walls peeked into view, even as the retinue of guardsmen stood ready to follow his order alone, and even as his long, sea weary legs tramped down the gangplank, Dunk let the anxiety harden to a iron ball lodged at the bottom of his stomach. The last time he’d seen Prince Aerion was as the prince galloped away with Prince Baelor’s funerary escort back to King’s Landing, the valiant man’s ashes all that was left of him. And for what? So Dunk might keep a hand and his foot? Though Aerion shared as much blame, mayhap more. Dunk’s own rash response incited by the Brightflame’s cruelty, only for the prince to prove too craven to fight him in a duel. The rogue returned to King’s Landing with his fabled dragon’s tail tucked between his legs and left Dunk to carry the burden of how both of them got a good, just, honorable man slain before his time.
What if Aerion attempted to slay him outright upon sight? Regardless, his father tasked him with returning the errant prince, and Dunk would see it done if it killed him, or if he had to haul the malevolent stripling of a brat kicking and screaming to the harbor.
Fortunate for Dunk, his impending charge caroused not far from where the ship docked in the main port. Good. I’ll not have far to drag far ought it come to that, he thought and steeled himself for this meeting.
The Second Sons encampment of erstwhile nobles and wayward merchant’s sons intruded upon the eastern outer walls of the fortified city proper in an array of colorful tents and rude buildings. A roughhewn palisade ringed the encampment. Dunk spied the hewn tips of another palisade higher up towards the center. The camp town was divided into a lower and upper bailey where more tents and fortifications were constructed upon raised turf. He expected to have to barter or bully his way past the outer guard, at worst flashing the King’s mark of passage for access. But the gatemen both took one apprising look at his size from head to toe and let Dunk in without argument. They likely reckoned if were daft enough to start trouble in a company of bloodthirsty blackguards who chased danger for fun, he was either mad or had the kind of ambition the officers in the company sought. They even let the small contingent of Maekar’s guard through.
For its crudeness, the camp didn’t intimidate him. It smelled like any other camp of men-at-arms. Of horseshit and smoke. Neither did the burly warriors unnerve him in mismatched armor gathered around camp fires, their faces baked hard by the sun, eyeing him up as he wandered about asking after a Targaryen prince. After the first few mercenaries denied ever hearing the name Aerion Targaryen, he suspected he wasn’t going to get anywhere like this. How many of these noble father’s and families had similar retainers crawling through camp to wrangle their wayward sons and husbands from their adventures and back to the doldrums of proper society.
Dunk asked—no, ordered, he ordered them as their commander—that his guard detail remain behind and he continue to search the encampment alone. He approached a section lined with wooden tubs draped with scant tents of muslin which he assumed was an attempt at granting the bathers privacy.
One of the lasses hauling water trundled past him, a steaming pail slowing her stride.
“Do you need help with that?” Dunk offered with a gentle smile.
The young woman glanced up at him. She was likely no older than Dunk. The reddish brown strands coming out of her braid and wet apron divulged she’d likely been working most of the morning already. Small wonder she looked at the size of him and glared. “Nay. Don’t assume that because ye carry the water that I’ll wash ye for free! Look at the size of ye!”
Dunk held his hands up to ease her temper. “You misunderstand me, m’lady. I only wish to help lighten your burden. I’ve no need of a wash. What I do need is to ask if you know where I can find a certain nobleman.”
Only after he carried the pail and topped up the bathwater of a purple haired Tyroshi with an orange beard—and tattoos in places Dunk cringed at the thought of sticking a needle near—did he ask the bathmaid where he might find Prince Aerion Targaryen.
The unguarded scowl which twisted her face spoke before her mouth did. Aye, she knew the Targaryen prince alright.
“Him? What do ye want with that wretch?” she spoke harshly before she could bite the words back. She offered a chastened curtsey.“Forgive my discourtesy, ser.”
“Nought to forgive, good lady,” Dunk replied with shallow bow of his head. “Do you know where I might find his Grace?”
She chewed on her lip and looked about the camp. “Just before midday, is it? If he hasn’t returned to the city, he’ll be in the gold camp up yonder.” She pointed towards the upper bailey. “That gold and silver tent with the red pennants fluttering in the breeze. He’ll like be in there in his cups with the other highborn lieutenants and captains.”
Dunk dug out a stag and offered it to the girl. After she bit the coin to test its authenticity, she asked again. “What do ye want with him, ser? Ye don’t seem a kind of man to acquaint yerself with rascals like him.”
“I am not, but I’ve been sent by his house to bring him back to Westeros.”
“Good,” she nodded and picked up the empty pail, her steps lighter than before. She twirled and swung the pail while she walked backwards from Dunk, a relieved smirk breaking over her freckled cheeks. “I know the girls will be glad to see the back of him. Make haste, ser.”
He watched the girl go as she swung her pail to and fro, suddenly years younger.
Haste he failed to make. The entrance to gold camp proved to enforce more discerning conditions for entrance than the main gate he’d entered so easily in the lower bailey.
“New hirelings go to the tent near the training ring,” the guard directed before Dunk even had a chance to speak. “Back the way ye came.”
Not renown for the cleverness of his tongue, he resorted to unrolling the scroll, showing the sentries the letter with the King’s seal and explanation for why Dunk had traveled across the Narrow Sea. A particularly convincing reason to let him pass. Or so he assumed. However, he then got caught up in an increasingly vexing argument about the seal’s legitimacy, and who put it in his thick head that the seal of a foreign king meant fuck all in a mercenary camp.
The Essos sun broiled the top of his head. Weary from the sea voyage, sweltering through his tunic, and top it all off, he was starting to get hungry. All this augured an unfortunate outcome that saw him manacled with one or both guards’ blood on his fists if they forced him to keep on bickering.
From behind the guards, a man of middling height in leather armor stepped into view. His well-kept mustache and unruly dark eyebrows sprouted as the only hair on his head. The newcomer must have come to see who was raising all seven hells at the gate and seemed to have overheard enough.
“No use blustering at these fools. They can’t read,” the soldier explained and shoved between the wary pikemen to examine Dunk’s parchment. “King Aerys, eh? Have you come to parley with the Brightflame?”
Now this was a gamble. If he said the wrong thing, Dunk might as well walk out of the camp and hide in the bushes to ambush Aerion whenever he deigned to leave because this man would bar his entrance. The hedge knight noted the man’s age. Older. Old enough to have experience under his belt. His serious expression devoid of any impishness of a young man gallivanting into battle and likely no tolerance for such antics either. Dunk decided to offer the truth.
He met the man ’s unflinching stare to further convey his honesty. “I have come to bring Prince Aerion back to Westeros by order of his uncle, King Aerys, first of his name.”
The man nodded, apparently pleased at that, and turned back to pass through the entrance. “Let him in, lads.”
Once inside, all Dunk had to do was follow the smokey scents of roasting meats and maneuver about the trickle of men exiting the grand gold and silver tent, stumbling to find their feet after a morning of hard drinking. The flaps of the tent were tied open to reveal lines of trestle tables clotted with rugged men and a few pretty lasses like roses among nettle. The only man who might match Dunk in height and breadth hauled up another rundlet of some wine or ale to replace the previous one drunk dry by thirsty lords. The place smelled of smoke, leather, trampled rushes, sweat, perfume, and spilled beer.
“Ser Duncan the Tall,” a familiar voice crowed over the raucous drone of the crowd.
Somehow, Aerion had spied him before he caught sight of anyone with gold-silver hair. Of course he did. How could he not when Dunk easily towered over every sellsword and highborn save one man in the tent? Dunk the lunk, he scolded himself for failing to, at minimum, don his cloak hood to conceal his face since nothing served to conceal his height.
No use in cursing his dull wits now. He no longer had the advantage of stealth to observe the prince before approaching him. Dunk turned towards where the voice had called. Amid the purples and blues and greens of Tyroshi heads spattered in the crowd, his gaze rested on the only shock of silvered, golden hair to be found.
No longer cropped close to his scalp like a soldier, Aerion had let his hair grow in his exile. The curled ends of those silver-gold locks swayed just long enough to brush his shoulders. The eyes still held their gimlet, amethyst glow as they chiseled Dunk where he stood. Still that same straight nose and high cheeks which his shield and mailed fists had somehow spared during the trial of the seven. Pale lips pressed in an unamused, bloodless line. Dunk knew there behind those lips, the prince had to be missing the tooth Dunk knocked loose before they faced one another on the Ashford Meadow tourney field. Loath as he were to admit it, these years under the unyielding Essos sun failed to dampen nor harden the prince’s comely features.
Pretty like a girl, Dunk had thought when he first saw him all those years ago. Small wonder he’d kept his hair cut short at the time.
The pretty ones are the most temperamental.
Judging the glare that scoured over him from beneath the prince’s furrowed brow, exile also neglected to quench his temperament.
Dunk scanned the table’s, sizing up the men flanking Aerion with their fingers either around a tankard or groping the flesh of a pretty and likely well-paid female companion. The prince sat gripping the former, his slender fingers almost clenched white around the dented metal of the cup. He wore the Lys fashion of silks and satins. No austere black and congealed blood reds of his house either. The noble donned a silken tunic of vibrant yellow open at his throat to flaunt a gold chain dripping with tear drop rubies like so many drops of blood upon his pale chest. The left half of his body lay hidden beneath the drape of a half-shoulder cape embroidered in yellow, orange and blue metallic thread that likely shone as ripples of flame in the sunlight.
Delicate muscles rippled over Aerion’s face before he fortified his expression to an ivory mask.
“What do we ignoble nobles owe the pleasure of your visit, ser?” Aerion spoke loud enough for the tables around him to hear and lifted up his tankard for the ale wench to refill. “Have you saved all the damsels and righted all the wrongs in Westeros and now come to boast your honorable feats to us dishonorable blackguards?”
Wonderful. He meant to put on a show.
“Nothing like that, your Grace. I’ve come to seek an audience with you.”
“Then this place must serve as my reception chambers. Let us hear your petition, Ser Duncan.”
Some of the men about him chortled. Others looked down into their tankards as if to dive in and hide there.
“I insist we speak in private, your Grace,” Dunk answered in the right dose of subservience and obstinance.
The prince simply looked at him, reticent, unwilling to play his part to continue the conversation.
Even after these years, Aerion retained that eerie preternatural stillness where his stony expression alone reduced lesser men to fumbling to fill the silence. The only thing that moved about him was a stray lock of long silver-gold hair tumbling across one lilac eye and the winking glitter and gleam of a blood red teardrop ruby hanging off his pierced ear. Even his eyes, which might expose the mood of any other man, were shrouded and obscured by this stillness. Was he even breathing?
Dunk found himself consciously drawing a deep breath through his nose. He had practiced this in his head for most of the voyage. Different scenarios and reactions played out as the illusory Aerion took the news and demand of his return from exile. Dunk prepared for every situation he might fabricate as a story teller writing her characters lines. Yet only here, now, surrounded by sellswords and Aerion’s armed comrades, did Dunk realize how woefully shortsighted his rehearsals ran.
Right. He took another few breaths before deciding on the tack he’d take. “My Grace, your uncle, King Aerys, first of his name, has dispatched me to escort his honored nephew back to King’s Landing. He bids you return home.”
If Dunk had not met the prince before, he’d miss his genuine reaction Aerion stifled under the carefully sculpted mask of indifference. A welter of emotion tightened around the skin beneath his eyes and twinging corners of his mouth. These emotions he deciphered as flicking through shades of joy, outrage, relief, and indignance.
“And my esteemed uncle, the King of the Andals, the Rhoynar, and the First Men, the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm…sent you to fetch me.”
It wasn’t a question. And given as such, Dunk withheld an answer. He endured the prince’s violet gaze without a flinch or mite of hesitation.
Without another word, Aerion stood. He carried himself as a true noble does—his shoulders back, chin canted up, his jaw set as he laid a hand on the jeweled pommel jutting from where his sword sheathed in his tooled leather scabbard. The next moment might bring agreement or a skirmish which placed Dunk against a tavern full of wine-drunk highborn mercenaries.
It was up to whatever way the wind blew now.
The winds aided Ser Duncan the Tall that day.
Something relented in the Targaryen prince’s gaze. Heaving a world weary sigh reminiscent of his own princely father’s sullen demeanor, Aerion shrugged his silk-clad shoulders. “Then I shall heed my king’s orders.”
The men in Aerion’s retinue glimpsed up and gave some murmur of question, but no one persuaded the prince to stay. Dunk thought he may have witnessed a vestige of relief ease from the bearded faces of other castoff nobles seated around the table. The men bade the prince a safe journey and went back to their tankards and women without further comment.
If this bothered Aerion, he hid it. His leave taking amounted to tossing a few coins on the table and stalking past Dunk, through the crowd, and out of the tent into the open. The prince lingered there for Dunk to join him before striding away without announcing his heading.
Aerion spoke, not deigning to look at him. “I assume we are not swimming back to Westeros.”
“Course not, your Grace. There’s a passenger ship in the harbor ready to set out as soon as you’re ready.”
“A passenger ship?” He halted as if he’d just been stabbed. “The King did not send one of his vessels to bring me home? Next you’ll tell me I have no Kingsguard.”
Here we go. Dunk staunched the annoyance from his face for the oncoming tantrum. “The King reckoned it best to keep the naval vessels and his Kingsguard close at hand given the…strife…the Blackfyre insurgents are waging. So your father hired a protected passenger ship and a compliment of his own house guard.”
Aerion stared at him the way he had upon their first meeting after mistaking him for a stable boy, as if the weight of his gaze carried the alchemy to change Dunk’s answer to something he wanted to hear. To his credit, Dunk did not stumble over his words this time. The knight simply reiterated the conditions of their travel back. The corners of Aerion’s lips twinged back in a taut line, but he deserted further argument.
As they approached the gate out of the gold camp bailey, Dunk caught sight of the man who’d let him enter. He locked eyes with Dunk and nodded as though pleased at what he was seeing.
Paying more attention to Dunk than he assumed, Aerion noted the silent exchange. He shook his head with a huff of a rueful chuckle. “Ah. So that’s how you got in then. Figures.”
“Aye. I’d be still standing there arguing with the sentries until winter if it weren’t for him. Who is he, your Grace?”
Aerion regarded him as if he were as dumb as he felt in the moment. “You had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Lord Emeric Yronwood. Well, former lord. He lost his titles and lands after he swung a halberd at my father’s face during Redgrass Field. All that he wagered lost when his pretender liege Blackfyre had the dignity to die in a hail of arrows and save my uncles the trouble of tarnishing their steel with his bastard blood.”
“He fought against your house in the Blackfyre Rebellion?!”
“My, I didn’t think it was possible, ser, but have you grown duller these last years? I languish in exile, Daeron scries our futures in the bottom of his cups, and Aemon fucks off to Old Town to do something useful for once in his life, but then my father trusts his favored son to the protection and vigilance of a complete dullard,” Aerion spoke breezily despite the torrent of insults. “I hope for my dear, impudent brother’s sake that one day your brains catch up with your limbs.”
Dunk brushed off the long-winded quip. It was the first of many slights he’d be hearing about his lack of intelligence from the princeling in the days to come. He was smart expect that for certain above aught else. “Your guard awaits in lower bailey, your Grace. Shall I summon them to pack your possessions for the voyage?”
The princeling had collected little as mementos of his exile. A few books, two daggers, a coffer of shiny trinkets where he locked away his blood ruby necklace, some odd talismans which Dunk feared to ask their purpose, and more clothes than Dunk had ever owned during the course of his twenty plus year existence.
Now that Dunk had to follow his orders, the prince bade them wait until the following morning before heading towards the docks to embark. A suspicious whisper in Dunk’s head assumed Aerion meant to make a run for it in the night—that all his previous and suspiciously easy acceptance of his return had been a ruse.
It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Since when was Prince Aerion Targaryen linked to any attribute related to the the word easy. Dunk had posted guards outside the prince’s apartments in the Gilded Garden which featured Lys’s finest rooms. He went so far as to sleep against the main chamber door to prevent him from skulking past. Unless he intended to repel down the balcony, the prince was well hemmed in.
Dunk didn’t appreciate that fact when a kick to the side roused him just after dawn.
“Either move your arse or open your mouth. I need to piss.”
The unwarranted kick to ribs hadn’t broken nor bruised anything, but reaffirmed just how little Aerion had changed in his ways. Dunk climbed to his feet stretching the sleep from his muscles and the pain from his ribs.
Still beleaguered by drowsiness, Dunk’s irritation at the rough treatment showed plain as he scowled down at shorter man.
“Do not twist your face at me. Using your ungainly frame to imprison me was your cleverness, not mine.” Aerion stepped towards him, so close the toes of his boots almost touched Dunk’s. The proximity forced him to crane his neck back as purple eyes held Dunk’s sky blue gaze. The prince leaned in ever so slightly. “Believe me. I am your willing hostage, ser.”
The direct purple stare clung to him for more breaths than necessary. Aerion’s spicy scent of smoke and spice curled into Dunk’s nostrils this close and Dunk found his tongue too leaden to reply. Especially after he watched the tip of Aerion’s own pink tongue slide across the noble’s plump bottom lip in a captivatingly slow motion. The prince then pursed his lips, their shape landing somewhere between sneer and pout before he brushed past Dunk to use the jakes.
The exchange left Dunk standing there dumbly with his head fogged. What was that look? He recognized disdain when he saw it, but this was different. Whatever it was, the indiscernible expression was focused. Amplified.
Leave off it. Dunk had too much to do this morning to fret over the mercurial stares of a princeling who thought himself a dragon. He mentally braced himself for the day yet to come of handling the prince’s moods.
Aerion had the guards pack away the fanciful half cape of embroidered fire and today donned a orange and yellow tunic which had dragon wings emblazoned in blue thread on the back of it. A teardrop ruby still winked where it dangled from his earlobe, the gem sparkling whenever he brushed back long hair from his clean-shaven cheek. Black breeches and tooled red boots finished the ensemble. These were his casual clothes for the voyage home.
With a few chests composed mostly of his wardrobe and baubles loaded into a wain, Dunk saddled Aerion’s horse for the princeling without being asked to. The sleek palfrey was certainly no warhorse. Her white coat left neglected, the prince must have paid a Tyroshi to dye her silver mane and tail in hues of blue, yellow, and orange so it waved like flames when she ran. A shame. Dunk thought her a magnificent specimen as she was. Her undyed coloring reminded him of Sweetfoot and his heart ached at the memory. Was someone out there taking as good of care of her as Dunk had for those years?
The stable master at the Ashford Tourney had sold her while Dunk languished in the gaol for bloodying Aerion’s pretty face. Angry as he was when he learned this news, Dunk couldn’t fault him. Drawing the blood of the King’s grandson sealed a death sentence for most men. One hardly expected a dead man to return to buy his horse back.
The pale horse sensed his trepidation and stomped her front hoof against the dirt floor. He smiled then and tenderly rubbed her snout. “Aye, I was off wool gathering about a girl you remind me of. Don’t get jealous now. Let me make it up to you.”
He’d gone beyond saddling and buckling her tack and brushed the mare down with gentle, attentive strokes.
“Aren’t you a beauty,” he complimented as he brushed her mane. “Careful. You might make the four-legged lasses in King’s Landing jealous when they see you trotting up to Aegon’s Hill.”
“I knew you were lying to me when you denied being a stable boy,” the cool, familiar voice spoke behind him and Dunk nearly dropped the brush with a start.
How long had the princeling been standing there listening to him palaver like a fool? And why hadn’t he heard him? Dunk felt his ears go hot. He cleared his throat, ignoring the prince’s jape.
“Is she the only one you’re taking back?” Dunk’s inquired.
“Kindle is the only one worth taking back. The Sons can do what they wish with my destrier.” He leaned his shoulder against the jamb of the stable door, his arms crossed over his chest and scabbard dangled at his hip. “Now if you’re finished wooing my mount, let us depart for the ship.”
A few minutes later the prince reined up on the street where guards sat patiently in the wain awaiting his order to depart. Dunk made to climb up into the back of the wagon to claim the last empty seat, but Aerion stopped him.
“You brought no horse?” Aerion asked.
“I can ride in the wain.”
“Or you can walk beside me.”
“The wain suits me just fine, your Grace.”
“Your Grace is ordering you to walk beside him as his personal guard.”
The eyes of the other guardsmen about observed the exchange obliquely the corners of their eyes. Not that Dunk wasn’t in fine fettle to walk the streets of Lys for hours before tiring, but he recognized a shameless display of power when he saw it. Especially when he was at the receiving end of such ploy. He clamped his lips together to keep the brusque words he wanted to unleash captive.
“As you wish, your Grace.”
The frivolous order hadn’t disturbed Dunk all that much by the time they made it to the docks. Petty as it was, Aerion proved capable of worse cruelties. Like the one Dunk witnessed at the dock right before they boarded.
The girl couldn’t have been much older than Daella, Egg and Aerion’s sister. Even if she were near Dunk’s age, she still looked far too young to have a belly that large with child on her wisp of a frame.
“But what am I to do?!” She sobbed as tears tracked down her face from red-rimmed blue eyes. Her ringed fingers clung to the prince’s sleeves as Aerion regarded her as one would something smeared on the bottom of a shoe. “You said you’d marry me after the babe was born and you knew he’s a boy! I told you it’s yours! He will have silver hair like his father! You can’t just leave! I am ruined, Aerion!”
The girl wailed on and Aerion looked more irritated than contrite. Dockworkers and stevedores continued about the work watching the spectacle with intrigued curiosity.
“If it is a silver-haired healthy boy, then I will send for him. You will be rewarded for bearing my bastard. And to think all you had to do was spread your legs. But if you dare birth either a weakling or a girl, then it is certainly not mine. I’m sure some other man will take you, a wealthy merchant’s daughter. Another man with silver hair, though I doubt he will be as young as I.”
The vain princeling shrugged off the girl’s grip and mounted the gangway without so much as a look back.
The lass buried her face in her hands and swayed. Unable to even look at Aerion much less follow him, the tall hedge knight was fortunately there to catch her and steadied her with an arm around her swollen waist. This led to the girl clinging to Dunk’s cloak and sobbing for another five minutes as she cursed the Targaryens, Westeros, Valyria, and all men in general. Despite being a member of two of those categories, Dunk believed she had the right of it in this situation.
He led her back to the main dock where the now empty wain and driver were preparing to leave. Dunk gave the driver a silver and told him to take the girl home.
“For you and the child,” Dunk dropped 30 stags into the girl’s hand as though that were a suitable consolation. How many other women saddled with similar burdens had the prince abandoned by climbing aboard this ship? He made for the ship then, more disgusted with every step. Luckily he discovered the prince settled into his quarters already with wine and ordered no one to disturb him. Good. It allowed Dunk time to cool the hot coals of his anger lest they flare and he threw the reprehensible rogue into the bay to see how well dragons could swim.
The first full day at sea Aerion spent dicing with the guard and avoiding Dunk. Sometimes the prince leaned against the railing of the forecastle and stared at the sea for almost an hour with that uncanny stillness. What else was there to do confined on a ship? Egg had once told him the only books Aerion read were those he deemed “useful” and all others could burn for kindling in a winter’s night for all Aerion cared. The younger prince went on to elaborate that useful books entailed those on Valyrian history and magic, the Conquest, the annals of the Targaryen stewardship of Westeros, and whatever bit of scrawled lore he clawed up dealing with dragons.
Dunk stumbled upon him reading something of that sort while breaking his fast upon the second day. Neither man greeted one another. As he pondered it, it might be easier if Aerion ignored him the whole voyage. There was no service he’d need of Dunk that one of the other guards—his father’s personal guards—couldn’t be entrusted to perform.
The prince’s change in mood later the same day dashed that wishful thinking. Aerion now seemed to seek out Dunk to alleviate his boredom. The prince found Dunk in the compartment which served as a mess as the hedge knight fumbled at practicing his written letters on a wax tablet as Egg directed him to do in his spare time.
“The voyage heading to Lys went faster,” the prince complained as if the wind and water now conspired to inconvenience him. “You might’ve hired a wench or two to keep me entertained.”
“Apologies, your Grace. How shortsighted of me.” Dunk rubbed the stubble of his chin and scrawled away the atrocious capital B he’d just etched with the back of the stylus. “Have you tried sleeping through it? I heard tales of dragons sleeping for centuries.”
He meant it as a jape, but Aerion raised his brow in interest. “Wive’s tales. They’d likely starve after a year or two passed. Dragons have a voracious appetite. Aegon the Second’s dragon, Sunfyre, ate up to 30 sheep a day. Though some attributed that to Aegon’s own predilection to excess.”
Dunk was about to leave the conversation at that, but the prince kept going. “The hibernation feasibly relates to the eggs, not a grown dragon. Even when dragons were plentiful, their eggs might take years to hatch. If they took too long, such as a length of over a century, and the egg can turn to stone.”
“Has a dragon ever hatched from a stone egg?” Dunk asked before he realized how stupid it sounded after it left his mouth and entered his ears. He expected a volley of insults to his intelligence to come at any second now.”
To his surprise, Aerion high brow crinkled thoughtfully. “None that have been recorded. Eggs were dispatched to Essos to be enchanted and charmed by magister’s in spare hope of a hatchling. But the dragons will come again. I have only to ascend to my true form.” He waved his hand in vague gesture at his own body.
Dunk was really about to test the waters with his next question. “You truly believe you’ll turn into a dragon?”
“I know I will. Daeron saw it in one of his visions. He says he dreamed of me wreathed in green flames and laughing as the fire changed me.” The prince leaned closer to Dunk and spoke low as if he sought to keep the next words a conspiracy between them. “My thrice times great grandmother, Queen Rhaenyra, birthed a dragon. A girl, Princess Visenya. The princess was born covered in scales and growing a tail. While the Queen’s beloved dragonling didn’t survive the birth, it proves that there’s dragon blood running through our veins.”
“Wouldn’t that mean the Blackfyres also have dragon’s blood?”
The prince’s eyes narrowed. Dunk the lunk, you’ve done it now.
Aerion tilted his head to side, never breaking away from Dunk’s gaze. “No. They are baseborn. Their blood is tainted. They are not the true blood of the dragon. Even Lord Bloodraven acknowledges this.”
Dunk’s mind raced to craft some excuse to leave the prince’s presence before his foot crammed itself any deeper into his throat.
“If we are to discuss the Blackfyres, tell about the pretender at Whitewalls,” the prince bade, resting his cheek on this closed fist as leaned back upon the table. “I plan to pay the fiend a visit in the dungeons upon my return. What kind of man is he, this Daemon the Second?
Dunk proceeded to discuss his initial impressions of the pretender, from his fine horsemanship; his clever disguise; to his lackluster jousting which required his co-conspirators to convince his competitors to lose on purpose; to his effortless charm and loose mouth once the wine had soaked his tongue. He even noted the man’s odd, yet somewhat endearing fixation on Dunk—how he promised to make him a Kingsguard should he triumph and take the throne.
Why did he add that last part? Maybe Dunk found it foolishly flattering to speak aloud and Aerion’s vanity had overflowed in abundance to poison his own pride.
Yet Aerion’s gaze hardened when Dunk mentioned the pretender’s infatuation with him. “Is he handsome?”
That…was not something one usually mentioned when describing the qualities of an adversary. Dumbfound, he answered, “I suppose he is considered as such, your Grace.”
“More handsome than myself?”
Dunk’s mouth went dry of words. How was he to answer that? “I’m afraid I am no fit judge in such matters, your Grace.”
And if Dunk allowed himself to answer honestly, the answer was no, Daemon the second—or John the Fiddler as he styled himself at first—possessed no where near the magnitude of allure of the Targaryen prince sitting before him now. Mother’s mercy, the princeling suddenly tired of Dunk’s company and again retired to his cabin. Yet the thought continued to roll inside his thick skull like a stone trapped inside a boot. Surely not. It’s the sea air getting to you. That must’ve been why sailors were so prone to buggery.
By day three, Aerion seemed to find reason to linger in the backdrop of wherever Dunk went. Late morning the towering knight doffed his tunic and launched into practicing his sword and shield maneuvers on the main deck. His dander was up and he needed to burn some of it off. What agitation Dunk burned off crackled back with vengeance as he looked up to wipe the sweat from his eyes. Cool, purple eyes watched him from the upper deck. If he were any other man, he might have invited the prince to join him in a bout of sparing. But he recalled the last time they battled and the realm-wide consequences of that. How would he ever forget? He also didn’t trust his own restraint that once he got going, he might finish that brawl at the tourney and smash the prince’s pretty face in.
So Dunk shook his head, again blaming the sea air for his frayed wits before he resumed his drills. The next time he looked up at the main deck, the prince was gone.