A Game of Thrones 4-Book Bundle

are fainter than others, that’s all. Well, men
cast their shadows across the future as well. One shadow or many. Melisandre sees them all.”
    â€œYou do not love the woman. I know that, Davos, I am not blind. My lords
mislike her too. Estermont thinks 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.”
    â€œServes how?” Davos asked, dreading the answer.
    â€œAs needed.” The king looked at him. “And you?”
    â€œI . . .” Davos licked his lips. “I am yours to command. What
would you have me do?”
    â€œNothing you have not done before. Only land a boat beneath

the castle, unseen, in the black of night. Can you do that?”
    â€œYes. 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?
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œSomeone 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?”
    â€œWhat
you
do. I’ll have no part of it.”
    â€œYour 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