#mercurygraypresents

Ashford may not be a very rich holding but we're a fair crossroads and a good market town. People will come to see the tourney who might not else. And there will be lords here with whom they will wish to speak - Lord Tyrell, and others. And your lord father will try to speak with them, too, on matters great and small.

I know it is your birthday on the face of it, Gwinnet my love, but it is so much more than that.

"I hope it is Valarr who comes,” Gwin had said with sudden decision. “He is the oldest and the handsomest. And that he will wear my colors and dance with me."

"I don't know anything about his being handsome, Gwin," Meri said, picking up the spare quill that Gwin's dancing had forced to flutter off the table and exchanging a glance with Yhon, who was still copying furiously, "but I do know he is married already. To Kiera of Tyrosh." A foreign match, because his father wants friends in many places. Baelor's youngest is unmarried yet, and would be a better age for you, but princes are not for daughters with market towns, despite what any of the songs suggest.   "We shall just have to wait and see."

"Daeron, then.” Gwin was quick to change course. “He is the eldest of Maekar's sons, and they say that he is handsome, too.  Can we learn a new dance, to welcome them? And can I have a new dress?"

"We shall have to see about the new dress,” Meri said, already thinking if there was something of her mother’s that might be cut down to suit. “The tourney will cost your father a fair bit of money, and hosting princes is not cheap. The stands have to be rebuilt and then they will have servants to feed and horses to house and -"

"You're making it sound like an accounting lesson," Gwin complained.

Because it is an accounting lesson, Meri wanted to say, and one all women must learn, for if your husband is not wise with his coppers and stags there will be nothing with which to keep you. And gods be good, you and your brothers do not know that as well as your mother and I did.

"Oh, I do hope now it is Daeron. Then his father will come too, and fall in love with you."

She would have laughed, if she knew it would have upset her niece. Merilinde Crane is hardly a prize for princes, Gwinnet, even for second marriages and second wives. Hardly a prize for anyone at all. "But then if he did that he would take me away to Summerhall and I would not be able to spend time with you, Gwin. No, I shall be better served staying here. Besides," she said, with a gentle smile, trying to put a shine on things like the poets did, "He had a wife, and he loved her very well. He will not like to replace her."

What a difference a year made! Princes they had now, and plenty of them - Valarr and Daeron both, though no one could say where the latter had got to, and Aerion besides, and their fathers, too, though tall grim men with great names were of little interest to Gwin, who thought only of pretty faces and pretty stories.

A woman grown, however, might like a touch of grimness - and she could feel at least one prince’s gaze following her as she went.

It was just like a prince to cast an eye with an attitude of complete possession, and Maekar Targaryen had it in spades. She’d felt it earlier at dinner while he was grumbling in his chair, up at the high table with his brother and the rest. Other men might look with disdain at a hall like Ashford, knowing of a better-appointed place, or else envy thinking of a lesser one, but neither of those could quite describe him. His only attitude was that of power - a king’s son who knows exactly what he is, and what he means to do with it. Power - and boredom. It didn’t take a great mind to see that, either - the Anvil of the Redgrass was bored to death.

And why shouldn’t he be, attending on a birthday tourney in a market town for a girl just turning thirteen? Easy enough for a man to sit disdainfully in his chair and nurse his wine and wonder what other entertainments might be on offer after the feast and the jousting were done.

His brother was different - courtly where Maekar was cold. Baelor had given Gwin a compliment on her dress at dinner, and asked the sorts of light questions one asks thirteen year old girls at parties, who her favorite queen was and the name of her horse and who she liked to win the tournament. Strange, given that he had no daughters of his own. Patience incarnate, that one. His brother had two daughters and no one would have been any the wiser. 

Well. Meri didn’t mind impatient men - or bored ones. 

His blood would doubtless be up after the opening tilts - he’d watched the jousting with a keen eye, leaning forward in his chair to cheer, shouting his support for Leo Tyrell’s masterful sweep and roaring at the way some of the others had been unhorsed. Every fiber of his being seemed to be singing the same song - a wish that it was him riding and enjoying the joy of the crowd. Easy enough to brush his shoulder in the box in the heat of the goodbyes  and ask a quiet question before they walked back to the castle. Perchance your grace is in need of company later? The spark in his eye said what it needed. Easy enough to wait in the shadows while the castle went to bed, and knock on the door, quickly pulled open and just as quickly closed again with her on the other side, fairly pinned to the door while he kissed her.

She knew very well now why his nickname was the Anvil. 

It was very late now, after they’d had their sport - the candles had burned down in their holders and the fire needed another log. She tried not to wince as she removed herself from bed to move closer to the fire, kneeling down naked to add another log and stir the coals. (He had not been a delicate lover, by any means, but she’d expected that. Not as bad as some - there would be no bruises in the morning.) Meri rose and looked back to see that he was watching her with half- hidden interest. “Does your grace like what he sees?” she asked lightly. I know full well I am no Dyanna Dayne, nor ever like to be in your eyes. I may not be Meri the maid any longer either but I haven't lost my figure yet.

“Well enough,” he admitted, sounding for all the world like he begrudged himself the pleasure. And you're welcome to keep looking, Prince.

"More wine?" There was a flagon on a table near the fire, left earlier by the servants in case the lord was thirsty. He made a dismissive gesture that she took to be assent, and she filled two beakers and brought it back to him in bed, taking a seat with her feet back towards the pillow so that he might continue watching her, if he wished, and she watch him. 

The white hair that was the hallmark of his house made Maekar look older than he was, but here naked in bed there was more truth to him - tall and powerfully built, there was very little of middle-age about him apart from his scars, the hard-won sign of a life lived often on the battlefield. This was not a man who had let himself spend too long in any seat but on his horse. Men sometimes liked to talk about scars, and the battles that went with them so that they could be adored and fussed over. She got the sense that Maekar got enough fussing and flattery elsewhere.  And here, again, was that perfect command - the way he was sprawled here, legs wide and cock soft, surveying.

She’d heard it said that the blood of the dragon did not feel cold the way that other men did, and maybe that was true - she could feel a touch of chill in the night air prickling at her own skin, and the prince did not seem to notice at all.

“So do you fuck every one of your goodbrother's guests, or just the royal ones?”

Only those I liked the look of. Ashford Fair comes every year and all manner of men come with it. Eagles and fish and flayed men and lions, but never a dragon. “Only the handsome ones, your grace. And I wanted to see what a thundercloud like you could do in bed.” 

He barked a laugh at that. "You're very pretty with your compliments. I'm not sure that I like it."

“I spent my girlhood at Highgarden, your grace. Courtesy and compliment are in our blood.” A pretty childhood, attending Leo Longthorn’s girls. My manners are just as fine as theirs, even if my clothes aren’t quite as good.

“Then how the fuck did you end up in this miserable backwater?

"My sister married and I didn't." I won’t bore a prince with details. It's a common enough story. Second daughters of second sons of secondrate houses hardly merit the attention of the men who can make them wives. There was money for Alysanne’s dowry and none for mine.

He made a noise that might have been agreement. "And now you're stuck here in charge of her brats?" 

That’s quite a word, for a man with six children. She might have had her moments, but Meri would never call Gwin or her brothers brats - brats were badly behaved and her niece and nephews weren’t that, at least not always. Androw and Robert were as good as grown, and brat was a word for girls who were unwanted and unloved and she hoped to the old gods and the new that Gwin never felt that for a moment. High spirited, sometimes, but what girl of twelve wasn’t? She would have worried if that wasn’t the case.

"I am considerably cheaper than a second marriage. Spinster sisters make good housekeepers -  Kevan has his house run and Gwin looked after and none of the bother of a wife to please. Not that he could get one now, you understand." 

Another grunt of assent. “I understand this tourney is costing him quite.”

“Quite.  Especially now that we have the Crown Prince, his son, and what feels like half the succession sleeping in our best beds.”  And draining our cellar, she wanted to add. “Whatever did my niece do to deserve such a showing? Ashfords are not Tyrells or Tullys.”

He made a show of looking down at the mattress. “Is this really one of your best beds? Gods, woman.”

“If your grace doesn’t like it, he is welcome to mine, the mattress is straw rather than goosefeathers and the sheets are not nearly as nice.”

He met her eye and realized she was still looking for the answer to her question. For a moment, his face was almost childlike in his evasion, a boy caught with a ball and a broken glass.  “My brother likes a joust. The promise of the field was too tempting to refuse.”

“And your grace?” Why has the King sent two sons when one would have sufficed? 

“Is a…a father not allowed to cheer for his sons?”

“Of course, your grace.” And I’d believe that if I thought you were cheering. “It is a shame we will not see Prince Daeron. My niece was quite looking forward to meeting him.” 

“Yes, well…spring rains and …all that.” He did not sound like he believed it. “The Kingsguard will resume their search on the morrow and Aerion will joust in his absence.” Maekar looked like he would be grateful for a change in topics.   “You know boys - what one has done the others must do also. He’s anxious to make a name for himself.”

She nodded. “I shall look forward to seeing it.” Of all the princes of the realm, that was one she could have done without. Dragons she might not have known, but boys she did, and Aerion Targaryen had a cruelty about him. He’d hardly spoken at dinner except to chastise a maid, and played with his knife like he’d planned on gutting something. 

She knew her time was up - the fire was burning lower now and she’d already asked too much. “It is a shame his lord father is not riding," she said lightly. “He’s a very solid seat with a lance.”

He knew exactly what she meant by that and grinned for it. “There you go with those pretty compliments again,” he said, quickly drawing his legs underneath him so he might lunge to her side of the bed and cup her chin, thumb dragging down her lip. “Do you need another taste of it, woman?”

How easy he was to please. Dragons and men are the same in the dark. “Only if your grace wishes.”

His smile was silver and springtime and fire through tall grass, a sudden burst of sun on wings and clouds. “His grace wishes very much.”

--

By way of an introduction, I gave myself a little challenge with writing this fic to start a character without a slow burn involved - and I'm really pleased with how Meri turned out! Hopefully you like her as much as I do.

It struck me during a recent rewatch and re-read that we never see or hear from Lady Ashford in either the show or the novella, which I'm sure is intentional. But Gwin is very well turned out, and it just broke my heart a little bit that this little thirteen year old didn't have anyone helping her out while her father and brothers run around having all the fun at this tourney and everyone else is sort of ruining her birthday party, so I thought an aunt (a little more world-wise than some) might be a fun character to add in. I tried to do some sort of justice to the larger political milieu behind the tourney, but I'm sure I missed something.

The castle solar seemed almost cozy, now that they were all assembled here. Meri couldn't remember a time when the room had been so full - a table at the side for the rest of the luncheon, with the servants coming and going to fill it again, and Kevan and Plummer, conversing in a corner about gods knew what (money, probably, or the state of the larder, though Plummer was likely to come to her for that compliant) and Robert at the fireside, warming his hands. There were extra chairs about for the Prince, whenever he would join them, and whoever else was like to help themselves to hospitality. There would be no sport this afternoon, but the business of the realm could hardly stop for rain. 

Or perhaps it would. Who could tell, after what they'd seen? 

"Do you know where your brother is?" Meri asked Robert as he began setting up a cyvasse board near the fire.

"Likely still down at the tents. He said Ser Manfred invited him for wine and cakes."

Wine and women, more likely. Androw was nineteen and of just that age and disposition where girls were likely to let him be foolish, especially after the good showing he'd had this morning. He would need another talking-to, soon, preferably by his father, about why bastards were a bad business and he would do well to mind where he was sticking his lance. Perhaps with the Hammer and Anvil sitting at their table the idea of the problems of bastard Blackfyres would fix in better. (Not that the succession of Ashford Castle was anything like the succession of the Seven Kingdoms, but still. Androw was more likely to heed a story if it had a battle in it.) 

"D'you want me to go fetch him?" Robert asked, and Meri thought, for a moment, that there was something hopeful in the asking. A chance for me to forget where they are so he can have a little sport with his brother, no doubt. After the show this morning, no one would remember Robert had been unhorsed the day before and he could drink with the rest without fear of mockery.

"No, leave him be," Meri decided aloud. "I'd rather it were the Tyrells, but he's not likely to get another chance to sup with the Lord of Blackhaven any time soon."  She looked around the room again. "Where's Gwin?"

Robert's expression fell a little. "In her room, I think." He added, as an afterthought, "She was very cut up about the horse." 

Of course. "Will you see that fire gets built up?" Meri said. "I'd like it to be warm in here, for when Prince Maekar and the Kingsguard return." 

"Do you think they'll come back today?" 

"I think they are not likely to love riding in this rain," Meri said, glancing out the window again into the steely gray of the afternoon. "They can only search so much when they cannot see the road." 

She left Robert with the fire and went upstairs, grateful that they had gotten out of the rain quickly. Her shoes were only somewhat damp, and her stockings, too - nothing a little spell at the fire could not fix. A familiar voice came unbid to her mind, imperious and warm - Get out of your garters and dry me off, woman. I'd rather you were wet elsewhere.

Would she let him, if she saw him now? She was not quite sure.

Upstairs, she was pleased to find the door to Gwin's room closed but unlocked, the curtains of the bed drawn tightly shut. "Gwinnet, my love, are you in here?"

A huge sniffle came from inside the bed curtains, and Meri's heart sank, knowing what she would find there as she drew the curtains back. This morning there had been a happy, smiling girl who had been so excited to see so many good and gallant knights jousting in her honor. This afternoon there would be none such. Gwin was lying in a little ball in the middle of the covers, crouched around a pillow, her hair spilled every which way and her dress an absolute mess. All the careful work that had been put into her hair this morning had already been ruined, crushed by Meri's hands trying to get her not to look at a dying animal, but now her eyes were red from crying and she was a little girl again, and not a woman grown.

"I told you he was mean, Aunt Meri. I didn't like him. He's not the way a prince is supposed to be."

"You did, my love," Meri confirmed with as much grace as she could muster, sitting down carefully on the mattress so she would not catch any of Gwin’s hair. "But it is not for us to say what princes should or should not be. At least not out loud."  That's what gets us rebellions, and I cannot let you start one of those today, or I fear Aerion Targaryen will want your head. "We must dry our eyes now. We still have guests downstairs and they must be attended to."

A large sniffle. "Is he there?"

"No, my love, he is not,” Meri confirmed. “At least not yet. But perhaps he will be, and we will need to be very brave. And very quiet," she added quickly, as an afterthought, having a sudden memory of a kicked dog and shouted words and a broken vase.

"Quiet! Aunt Meri, he - "

"You remember all the stories I used to tell you about Highgarden?" She cut in before Gwin could finish the thought, louder and firmer, the voice she used when there would be no chance for questions. A defiant scowl and then a nod. "There was one girl there who was - well, she was not very kind, and I would have told her so at every chance I got, but she would only have turned it against me that I was complaining - even if all of it was true," she added, when she saw Gwin's anger rising up again. Or she could have had me birched. She never minded doing that. The daughters of lords paramount can do that to their subjects, especially to girls who have no land and no armies for their fathers to use. Princes can do it too - and worse.

 "So your mother and I used to play a game where at night, in bed, under the covers, I would whisper to her all the mean and nasty things I wanted to do to that girl and when it happened that I wanted to say them out loud, I would look at her, or squeeze her hand, and she would know what I was thinking, and I would not have to say it, and no one would know but us. The Maiden would hear us, she would say, and the Mother, and they would look out for us. Will you do it with me now?"

Gwin sat up and sniffled, trying to find her strength again. "I hope someone ...s-s-sticks him with a lance and ...and s-s-stoves his face in and rips out his eyes an-and... tears his stupid white hair out and drags him through the mud."

Gods, but there's violence in girl-children when you let them. Meri gave a short nod and held out her hand, and Gwin closed her eyes and squeezed with all her might, a pact or promise she did not mean to break. I hope his father can be made to see sense, Meri added, for her own sake. That there will be some judgement yet. Mother, make it so.

Gwin opened her eyes, and sniffled again. She seemed stronger now - a little less tear-stained. "Are we ready now?" Meri asked, and Gwin nodded, fortified a little by the righteousness of her anger. "Good. Then we will dry our eyes and fix our dress and go back downstairs."

Her niece nodded, sliding off the bed and going to stand in front of the great silver mirror on the wall so that she might tug and twitch her dress so it fell back into place to hang as it should have. The velvet was crushed a little, and Meri set to brushing it back out so that it would lay the way that it should. They would need to fix her hair, and do something about those flyaways, though there was nothing to be done to save this morning's flowers. "What happened?" Gwin asked, catching a hold of her aunt's glance. "To the girl who was mean?"

Meri stopped brushing for a moment. What happens to all girls whose fathers are rich. She married a man he chose and was unhappy for it, and now she is a Peake and Lady of Starpike and a mother five times over. And she is hardly welcome at her own father's house after her husband betrayed the king and fought with the Blackfyres. 

It is some kind of justice, perhaps. But some would say it is better to be married to a betrayer than not married at all.

"She grew up," Meri said simply, taking one last look at her work and giving the velvet at Gwin's shoulder's one last pinch. "And now we might say that we have princes at our table and she has none at hers."

That seemed to placate Gwin, who submitted to having her hair brushed and her circlet put back in and one last brush of her dress before she was going back downstairs with delicate little steps instead of thundering down the stairs like she usually would, back to her father and brother and whoever else might have joined them in the solar.

Their timing, it seemed, was excellent, for no sooner had they come back downstairs than more people appeared in the hallway outside and Kevan had plucked himself away from the table of food to greet them.

"Prince Valarr!" 

Valarr was, it seemed, his father's son through and through -  he was the very picture of princely courtesy standing in the candlelight, the dark of his tunic setting off the bright streak of Targaryen white in his hair to great effect. There was nothing coltish or awkward about the Crown Prince's firstborn, though he was, Meri thought, the same age as Robert, or perhaps a year his elder. And his understated tunic served yet another purpose - to set off the embroidered orange pennant he now wore pinned on his breast, as well as the stunning beauty of the young woman next to him to great effect. "Lord Ashford, I thought we might beg a little of your hospitality here while it rains." 

"Beg nothing, sir, you are our prince and guest and one of our champions,” Kevan said expansively. “The door is always open to you."

"You have not met my lady wife, I think.” Valarr made a gesture to the girl on his arm. “She arrived late and came straight to my tent." 

"Blessings on you and your house, Lord Ashford." Lady Kiera's voice was soft and lovely, with all the silk of the Free Cities in it, and she looked quite the picture standing beside her husband with her dusky skin and pink hair in free curls and a great collar of garnets at her throat. Her dress was all soft folds and drape, more of Tyrosh than King's Landing, and in a shade of red that tended more to rose, the flowers of the city rather than the fire of her husband's house. Lovelier than springtime, and impossible to overlook.

Meri could remember at least one angry speech by her goodbrother about princes making foreign marriages, but Kevan, at least, seemed to have remembered all of his manners today. "Lady Kiera."

"If we might have a seat by the fire," Valarr said, his arm firmly protective of his wife, "She feels the cold most keenly."

Evidently this was a common complaint, for Kiera looked at him with impatience for a joke he’d made one too many times. "We do get rain in Tyrosh, my love. A whole season of it."

"Please, your ladyship," Robert said, standing up quickly so he might offer his seat and nearly stumbling over the cyvasse board. "Just here."

"And a blanket, perhaps?" Meri offered, coming over before anyone could say otherwise or Robert get another chance to be a cow-eyed admirer while her husband was standing right there. The princess did look grateful, letting Valarr go fill her a cup of wine and Kevan keep him at the table going on about this and that and where the wine was from. "How far along, my lady?" Meri asked quietly, while she helped the woman arrange the folds of wool around her knees. Kiera looked up in surprise. "A woman sees," she offered with a smile. You wouldn't be the first wife with a concerned husband telling tales about feeling the cold.

"Not very," Keira offered, smiling a little. "But we are hoping to tell his father soon. Please do not - " Valarr was coming back, and Meri nodded with understanding, glad to be in on the secret. "Do you play cyvasse, Lady Gwin?" Kiera asked, catching the eye of the youngest Ashford.

Gwin looked surprised at being included in the conversation with so many grown-ups about, and she swiped at her eyes again, perhaps trying to wipe up the last of her tears before she spoke to an actual princess. "My brothers say I am not very good," she offered, looking around at Robert, who looked mortified that he was being thus maligned to a lady.

"Valarr says I am not any good either," Kiera said generously. "We will be good partners then."

Gwin came to join her by the fireside and pulled the other chair closer to the board, helping her to set the pieces up while Kiera explained how she had learned the game in the house of her father the Archon, and Gwin offered that she thought her pink hair and pink dress were very, very pretty.

Valarr looked on with a pleased expression on his face for a moment before turning back to his hosts. "Is my father about?"

"We have not seen him since we returned to the castle, your grace," Meri offered. "He is probably still in Lord Ashford's study - I think there was a raven that needed answering and would not wait."

The prince nodded, and made a seat for himself next to his wife and the cyvasse game, tucking her blanket in again and getting an elbow in the arm for his effort. Something of a love match, then, Meri thought to herself, watching their playfulness with a glad eye. Well, but his parents wed for love, too, I think. A rarity in the royal house. And there was something gratifying, too, in having Gwin see that - a marriage with love in it. I hope we can find you a match like that, Gwinnet. I promised your mother you would never lack love.

It was as cozy an afternoon as one could have wished for, given the circumstances. Valarr and Kiera were charming guests and pleasant to pass the time with, even if the prince kept trying to give his wife advice on the game that she boldly ignored. The two girls were perhaps halfway through their second game when Baelor finally appeared, causing the whole room to try and stand at the same time, to various effects.

“Please, sit.” The Crown Prince seemed a little more grave than usual, but perhaps that was only against the warmth of the rest of the room.

Valarr looked concerned. “Was there word from -”

“Yes,” Baelor said, laying a hand on his son’s shoulder. “We can discuss that later. I also sent word to Dragonstone that you’d done very well. We could hardly have your mother thinking the worst.”

Valarr did not seem to think much of this - but what man of seven and ten does? “Mothers will worry, your grace,” Meri assured him. “Someone will have sent a raven about the jousts and it would be better if she hears your version from you.” There was enough nobility in the stands today that half of King’s Landing would have heard about all of this by the week’s end, and half the keeps in the Seven Kingdoms besides. And nothing traveled faster than gossip. There would be a dozen versions of the joust by the end of the month - that Aerion meant to kill him, that Hardyng had insulted his honor, that the Targaryen’s lance had been aflame with wildfire as he charged. None of them will be true, but we will hear them all regardless.

“Has there been …any news from the field?” Valarr asked, as lightly as he could.

The question had been on everyone’s mind, behind smiles and laughter - what was to be done about the the last bout between Aerion and Humphrey Hardyng. Baelor nodded, and sighed. “I sent my own maester to attend to Hardyng,” he reported. “He's just come and been. The man’s leg is broken in three places - he'll walk, Yormwell thinks, with rest and good care, but his tourney days are well over."

“A bad business,” Kevan muttered again, for what seemed like the tenth time since.

Baelor nodded, his mouth in a firm line. “If we wish to continue tomorrow there is still the matter of declaring the winner.”

“Well, surely that is Prince Aerion,” Kevan said, something of a shrug in his voice, always one to take the easiest route. “He did unhorse him.”

“Is that fair?” Robert spoke up from behind his sister’s shoulder, watching from near the cyvasse board. Baelor turned his gaze towards his host's son, and Robert backed down a little, cowed by the prince's unwavering, piercing gaze. "I..I..I have not been in many tourneys, your grace, but I do not think that killing a horse makes one a champion. It was a boy's mistake - his lance was too low.”

Or a boy's mischief. Meri had seen how he'd faced the stands and saluted his uncle. His father is said to moderate him - that was what Yhon had said. Of course he would have made note that Maekar was not there.

Baelor took a breath and considered the fire in the hearth. He was turning over his ring again. “I was reminded just the other day of a joust at Storm's End some years ago - another birthday, as it happens. Damon Lannister rode against Luther Baratheon for the final tilt. They were both fine riders and after seven lances neither would yield. Just as the horn sounded for the eighth and they began their approach, a child ran from the stands after a toy, right into Lord Damon's line. He swerved his horse and missed the child, but lost his seat and lance, and no one assembled could agree on who should be declared the winner.  In the end, it was Stella Baratheon and her ladies who decided he should not be punished for trying to spare a life. They noted that with seven lances broken the gods had already been honored. They split the winner's crown in half and called the match a draw.” He looked up from the flames and caught Meri’s eye. “Lady Merilinde, you lived at Highgarden for a time -  you’re well familiar with the sport. I would be grateful for your opinion, madam. The box sees things differently than the field.”

Meri felt the room’s eyes on her - Robert in wonderment that a woman should be consulted, Valarr in clear-eyed recognition of something he must have seen quite often between his parents. Meri looked at the cyvasse board, and then, without thinking, at Robert and Gwin. How many arguments had she decided for them - how many times said what was fair or right or just?  “I think my nephew is right, your grace. By the letter of the law the prince has won, but to reward him by letting him ride with the rest seems unjust. And the crowd will not like it. They...they will want to see some weight on the scale. If it were two boys in a practice tiltyard who had done this thing, one would be asked to apologize to the other, and make amends for the damage.”

“But it is not,” Baelor said, with a hard edge in his voice. “Not two boys and not the practice yard. Still. There is the matter of justice.”

“If he had lost the bout, your grace, Hardyng would have Aerion's arms and horse. Perhaps that is a way to split a crown?”

“Indeed. I'll have Aerion surrender a horse, to replace the one lost. Does that seem fair, Master Ashford?” Baelor turned his gaze, once more, to Robert, who swallowed and nodded.

“Exceeding fair, your grace.”

"Must he wear my favor, your grace?" Gwin had spoken up finally from the fireside.

Baelor looked over at the young girl, fairly hiding in the deep arms of the chair, and at his son, sitting across the table with the orange on his tunic. Oh, please do not say it so, your Grace, Meri begged silently. He is not due that honor - not when he has upset her like this.

The prince's eyes moved from Gwin to Meri, and she allowed herself the smallest shake of her head. You look to me to tell you what your wife would say again, your grace?  She was a girl once, too, and free with purple ribbons; but she’d agree with me in this. Baelor’s face softened a little. "No," he said, his voice gentle as he turned back to Gwin. "I think not. There will be only four champions tomorrow."

“He will not like that, Father.” Valarr’s voice was full of caution.

“It is not for him to like it,” Baelor said, his voice stronger in this. “But it should be for him to understand. Princes owe their subjects many such. It is a lesson he should know well by now.  I’ll speak with my brother, when he returns.”

“Speak to my father about what, uncle?”

The room turned again, and Meri wished, for a moment, that she were closer to Gwin, able to somehow shield her from what waited in the hall. Aerion was standing in the doorway, red velvet tunic resplendent in the firelight over a coat of maille. Does he think he will find some battle here, that he comes armored? But he’d worn the same, she remembered, when he’d arrived the other day fresh from the Kingsroad, which was as peaceable a place as anywhere in the realm at the moment. He seems the sort who would find a fight anywhere he rode - or make one, if he could not find it.  “Nephew.” Baelor’s voice was calm, but cold. “How good of you to join us.”

Aerion stepped further into the room, looking around at the assembled party with a smile that seemed almost snake-like. “I was down in my tent enjoying my spoils when I realized no one had come to congratulate me, and the real party must be up here. And here you all are. Cousin. Lady Kiera… Lady Gwin.” He took a few more steps towards the cyvasse board, and Meri watched as Gwin set her jaw a little, her hand grabbing at the edge of her skirt.  “I believe that as the victor I’m owed one of your favors. I should be very glad to wear your orange on the morrow. Not many could say they’d had two princes riding at their nameday - it’s a very special honor indeed.”

“Yes, nephew, about that,” Baelor cut in, before Gwin could speak. “I have come to a decision about your joust.”

Aerion turned to look disparagingly at his uncle. “What’s to be decided? I won, Hardyng lost. “

It was Baelor’s turn to look disparaging - disdainful, even, an expression Meri did not think he wore very often. “That is a rather loose interpretation of events.” 

His nephew scoffed. “What, is this about the riot? Surely I cannot be blamed for the actions of the fucking crowd.”

“But you can be blamed for the killing of a horse,” Baelor said, his voice like ice. “It was your mistake, ser, that led to Ser Humphrey’s injury. Unless,” he raised his voice ever so slightly as Aerion opened his mouth, “you mean to tell me, nephew, that you meant to kill the beast.That would hardly be fitting conduct for a knight, or a man of your station - a grandson of the king.”

Aerion looked around the room - at Kevan standing off near the food, at Robert, standing by the fire with his hand on his sister’s shoulder, at Gwin staring blank-faced at him and Kiera doing much the same, and finally at his cousin, who had not, perhaps, won any great upset of his own but who had at least unhorsed all his challengers without resorting to something as low as cheating. 

But they did not get to press the matter further, or hear what Aerion had to say on the subject, for outside in the courtyard below there was a sound of many gathered hooves, and a familiar voice, obviously looking around in the dark, shouting for a stableman. 

“Seven fucking hells, where the fuck is everyone? Feel like I’ve swum the fucking Narrow Sea."

There was a sound of doors being drawn back, and apologies from the servants below, and then the squelching, sodden sound of wet boots on the stairs, as Maekar Targareyn appeared the the framed doorway, cloak and boots drenched with rain, carefully stripping his gloves from his hands and followed close behind by another figure in a black cloak, about the same height as Maekar, who seemed to be stumbling to follow.

“Ah, here you all are. We found him in an inn a day’s ride south of here. Soused, as usual, but I think we’ve dried him out in all the ways that matter.”  He turned to the figure next to him in the black cloak and slapped his arm with his riding gloves.  “Have you nothing to say to our host, boy?” 

The cloak lifted a little, revealing a flash of blond hair and red-rimmed eyes. “I beg your pardon for the delay, my lord Ashford. I was waylaid a little.”

Kevan’s manners accounted for only so many possibilities - he could hardly say anything other than “Of course, my prince.”

“And Aegon?” Baelor asked lightly.

“A longer story,” Maekar said, clearly meaning to share it when there were not so many ears about. “How was the joust?”

“Yes, well, there is a …matter of …some delicacy we needs must discuss, brother. Concerning the joust.”

A small child, spindly legged, with a shaved pate and a servant’s robe and an impatient way of sitting, his eyes flickering around the room as though trying to take it all in, still also plainly furious.

Once they'd gotten inside the castle, Maekar, clearly deaf to the boy's entreaties and struggling to hear himself think, had seized the child by the arms, hauled him up to look him square in the eye and ordered him, with a growled invocation, to stay silent, stay here, and be gracious to the lady or Maekar would know why. Not an easy man to have as a father, obviously.

Aegon, for his part, looked positively mutinous and ready to bolt at the first chance he got, and it was only Meri's quick intercession that perhaps the boy should wait in his father's chamber that saved them from having to sit in the hall and listen to the shouting from the study.

The boy hadn't spoken at all since they'd come inside the room and Maekar had shut the door, effectively locking them both inside. I'm sure that's not quite what he had in mind when he said to stay silent, but it does do the job, Meri thought to herself with a small smile. How many times had Androw done thus, when he’d been told to be quiet and then asked for his side of the story while Gwin sat wailing with a plainly broken toy?

And there were sides here - that much was grossly apparent, even for someone who was only getting drips and starts from the shouted version from two furious boys in the hall. Aerion had left the castle after being chastised by his uncle for today’s joust and gone to enjoy the camp. (Someone else was to handle the horse, for Hardyng. Prince’s sons were above apologies, or anything that looked like them.) There were some puppeteers from Dorne making a jape of a dragon, the beast baited into a corner, something no dragon would ever do, and mocked by the knight and then cruelly killed. While he had been putting to rights this tremendous slight to royal honor, he had been cruelly attacked from out of nowhere by this giant of a hedge knight, punched and kicked and given quite a knocking, and it was only meet that the knight should answer for it.

Aegon had been telling a different tale - the Knight had a mirror shield, clearly the story of Serwyn, from the age of Heroes, a story nearly every child in the Reach could tell from memory. Everyone knew that the dragon died in that one, and Serwyn had gone on to serve in the Kingsguard and save a Targaryen princess. Why should that be a slight to royal honor if the story was the same each time? 

Perhaps they do not tell the same tales in King’s Landing as often, Meri thought to herself. Or perhaps a prince only sees what he wishes to see when his honor has already taken a beating once that day, and his helm a rock from an angry crowd.

What was less clear was how Aegon had come to be in the crowd in the first place, dressed as a servant and with some clear care for the giant of a hedge knight who had injured Aerion. It was he, it seemed, who had summoned the hedge knight when Aerion had started to tear the tent apart and attack the puppeteers, another extremely strange turn for a story that already had too many of them. Daeron was, perhaps, to offer his statement to this, but what that would be Meri had no idea. They had not spoken earlier of his lost brother.

Meri considered the child staring at the fire, still silent after a good half of a hour, and decided to start with something simple. "Should your grace like something to eat? I can have something brought up."

"No, thank you.” Aegon’s manners were impeccable, his back straight and his tone clipped. “I'm not hungry."

Meri held back a smile. "I'm not sure I ever knew a ten year old boy who wasn't hungry. Are you sure?"

Aegon had only just drawn a breath to clearly answer in the negative when at that very moment his stomach gave the most tremendous growl, and he lost a little of his furious dignity and glanced at her like he was afraid of being found out for only being human. (There was a shade of his father’s unsure meekness in his face, slouching a little in his chair.) "...If it's not...too much bother."

I never knew a princeling who worried about being a bother, either. "No bother at all," she assured him warmly. 

The boy let her go to the door and call for one of the maids to go down to the kitchen, watching her with careful dark eyes. "Are you Lady Ashford?" 

"No, your grace. Lady Ashford was my sister - Gwinfred is my niece. You may call me Lady Merilinde. Or Lady Meri, if that's too much to remember."

"Merilinde." He pronounced the name carefully, as though he were trying to make sure he got the sound just right. "Uncle says we must use trueborn names when we speak to our subjects. Out of respect. Short names are only for family." He paused. "If you're not an Ashford, what family are you from?"

"Crane, your grace." 

He nodded, seemingly studying a map in his head - the one back on the wall in his schoolroom, no doubt. Princes had things like that in their rooms. "House Crane sits at Red Lake. Where Silverwing lived."

"That's right, your grace." Trust a Targaryen to remember the bit with the dragon. "There are still burned ruins near that lake. Somewhere on the island men say there's a great skull, but I'm not sure I believe it. Men would bring back bones, if they could find them."

He nodded at that. “They called it Red Lake because that’s where Brandon the Bloody slew all the forest folk and turned the water red.” She smiled, and nodded. "Can you fly?" The sudden interest took her by surprise again. "Daeron had a book about all the sons and daughters of Garth Greenhand, and it said that Rose of Red Lake could turn herself into a crane. The book said all the women of House Crane could do it too."

"Your grace knows a good deal of our history," Meri said, not a little impressed. (Perhaps, again, that was the influence of Uncle - Prince Baelor seemed like the type to know his histories.) "But there hasn't been a true skinchanger in my house for hundreds of years. We're excellent dancers, and sing better than most, but alas, no flying." But when I was a girl I used to dream of it. Being a bird seemed better than being a girl.

"I wish I could fly,” Aegon said sadly. “That way I could get away from my family.” He glanced up at her with woeful eyes. “Has everyone been very angry with me, for being gone?”

Meri nodded. “I'm afraid so.” 

Aegon sat with this for a moment. “Do you know what they're going to do to Ser Duncan?”

The hedge knight. She knew the name now, if she hadn't before - it had been shouted a deal down in the hall when the two boys had come in snarling like tomcats. "I'm not entirely sure, your grace. Your father is speaking now with Prince Aerion, and then also probably Prince Daeron, and I expect when that is done he will...want to speak with you."

“It’s not his fault.” 

It’s not me you need to convince, but you may as well practice for your father. “Not his fault about the puppet show, or the kidnapping?” Meri asked carefully.

Oh, there was a sore spot - Aegon’s eyes blazed. “He didn’t kidnap me - Daeron made that up because he’s a cow-” The boy suddenly remembered his audience and swallowed the word ‘coward’ before the rest of it could make an appearance. “Because he’s afraid of what father would say if he admitted he lost me.”

“Fathers do generally have a right to be angry about lost sons,” Meri pointed out mildly. “Particularly when they are lost by their elder brothers. I have an older sister and she was birched once for losing me.”

“But I was the one who left!” Aegon said desperately. “I wanted to come to the tourney, ever so much. I liked the letter your herald sent, with the pictures - I hung it up in my room. I’ve only ever been to two tourneys and I’d never been a squire. And then Daeron said he didn’t want to go and we were going to hide until it was over, and I didn’t want to hide, and then Ser Duncan stopped at the inn and -”

“And so you were going to squire for Ser Duncan, is that it?”

Aegon nodded. “He didn’t know I was a prince. I didn’t tell him. You can’t tell we’re princes, without our hair. Or our dragons.”

 That, perhaps, was fair enough - but Meri wasn’t going to let him get out of it that easily. “I think you can tell, your grace. A prince is usually very courteous, and kind, and thinks about others.” She thought of something else. “Your uncle does not have the Targaryen white hair or a dragon, and he is known for a prince everywhere he goes.”

Her logic was sound, and Aegon stewed in that for a moment. “That’s the sort of thing my mother would say,” he said sadly. “Are you somebody’s mother? You seem to be very good at it.”

The idea prickled at her. I have already been a mother without being a wife, my lord. I have no wish to be a wife without a marriage. “No, your grace, but I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I miss my mother,” Aegon said sadly. “Father was nicer when she was alive. Now he’s…angry all the time.”

Meri could not argue with that. “He has many things to worry about, your grace. I think he is only angry because he loves you very much, and does not want anything bad to happen to you." 

“Telling tales again, is he?” Maekar had appeared at the door, and Meri wondered, for a moment, how long he had been standing there, how much he had heard. "Why's there no food in here? Hungry enough to eat a fucking horse."

"I said I wasn't hungry," the boy said defensively. "She did offer."

"I'll have something brought from the kitchens, your grace. And more wine."

"And find him some better clothes," Maekar added, imperiously. "My son's not a fucking stableboy. And none of your gods-damned orange, either. He's a Targaryen," he sneered, looking down at his son with his shaved head and equally angry eyes. "However much he wants to forget it."

Meri inclined her head, expression neutral. See there - now the softness is gone. Silly to think it would have stayed. "Of course, your grace. I'm sure we've something that will suit in black." 

She took her leave and firmly closed the door behind her, resting against it a moment to gather her thoughts before taking a long, deep breath and going to Robert and Androw's room at the end of the hall.

There was less of the usual young men's disarray in here tonight - Androw had been spending most of his time in camp for the last several days and Robert with him, and it looked like the maids had actually been able to get in here and tidy away the half-eaten food, and dirty clothes, and straighten up the bed linen. A tapestry on the wall showed John the Oak at the first tourney ever held in Westeros, a group of ladies watching from a gallery and peasants from a rail below as the knight rode against another, lance long and pointed and still sprouting spring leaves, a gift from his father the Greenhand. It was a pretty picture - John's cloak was long and made of oak leaves, a cluster of acorns and leaves around his head where there should have been a helmet. That was the nature of art - to leave out the things that would have been good and humble and kept a knight safe. Perhaps the sons of Garth Greenhand needed no helmets, she remembered explaining once to Robert, furious that he could not attend his riding lesson wearing only a bedragged circle of leaves, but the sons of Kevan Ashford needed to keep their eyes and their brains inside their heads.

Once she might have come into this room and found a jumble of toy lances and wooden swords on the carpet, but those days were long gone, and now there was a stand in the corner (empty now) for Androw's armor, and a second for Robert's (still in the armory, it seemed, perhaps being cleaned or repaired.) No longer boys who needed to dream about besting John the Oak - they had the real thing now, right down in their yard.

But she had not come here for memories - she'd come for clothes, and the large chest in the corner lined with fragrant cedar from the mountains. Androw's might have already been made over, but there was still a chance that there was something of Robert's in here that might fit. She dragged over the lampstand so she might see, and opened the heavy lid so that the smell of the wood might rush out for a moment before setting in to work. There would be layers here - the topmost of Androw and Robert's best-day tunics, some of which were out even now, and then other things that had perhaps been outgrown and packed away in the hope that one day they might be of use to another Ashford boy - one of their sons, if the gods were good. If she continued delving, she might find some of their father's clothes down in the depths, carefully folded away for the same purpose by women who were now long gone, saved so that if the cloth were good it could be used again. 

"What are you doing?"

The voice was so sudden and soft after so long in the quiet that Meri nearly banged her head on the chest. "Oh, Gwin. Seven save me. You gave me such a fright."

Her niece looked apologetic for the interruption. "Father said we’re not to dine downstairs this evening."

"I suspect that will be the case, yes." I don't think I could say for certain how any of today will go - I seem to have been wrong about a great many things so far.

"Are they all here now?" Gwin asked, a note of fear in her voice. "All of Daeron’s brothers?"

"All except Aemon," Meri confirmed grimly. "And he is in Oldtown. I suspect if he also manages to appear his father will have a stroke."

Gwin did not laugh at the joke. "Why are you looking in Robert’s things?" She asked again.

Meri glanced at the chest and the pile of clothes she'd already sorted through and sighed. "Prince Aegon has arrived without his baggage and any suitable clothes. I’m looking to see if something of Robert’s could be belted to fit. But a prince of the realm can hardly appear in-” She picked up another tunic and sighed. “…patched-over Ashford orange. So it must be black. And he’s such a tiny thing."

"They’re saying he was kidnapped by a robber knight," Gwin said, lingering at her aunt's shoulder and picking at the decoration on one of the discarded tunics. "The same one who attacked Aerion."

"I think they may not have the full story, Gwinifred," Meri observed, wondering who they were so she could advise against sharing gossip. Gwin hardly needed to know what she'd heard from Aegon himself, about running away because he wanted to come to a tourney. "We shall have to wait and hear everyone’s part - as is only fair."

"I saw him, yesterday," Gwin offered. “The knight. Here in the castle.” Meri sat back from the chest to listen. "He came to speak to Plummer and the princes about his master so he could appear in the lists. I talked to him. He seemed …simple,” she added, gracelessly. “But not a robber.” She looked down at her shoes and then again at her aunt. "Are they going to punish him?”

"Most certainly," Meri said with a sigh. "Attacking a prince of the realm must come at a cost, whatever the cause might have been." Or however much he might have deserved to be attacked. Warrior knows how many reasons there are for him to have his face smashed in, but he is still a prince, and a king's grandson, and that must be answered.

"The servants were saying that Aerion broke a girl's finger, and that was why the knight hurt him. Doesn't the oath they swear say that they're to protect the innocent?"

Oh, my sweet girl. I do not think it is knighthood that will be on trial today. "What is innocence to one may not be to another," Meri said frankly, diving back into the layers of clothes and hoping that either she found something soon or Maekar's patience was not totally exhausted by the time she did. There are many words like that - Justice. Fairness. Honor. Love.

"I'd give him my favor before I gave one to Aerion," Gwin said, suddenly. "He did all the things I wanted to do to him. Maybe the Mother sent him after I prayed."

But Meri was not listening, at least not well, for she'd finally found a black tunic, and pulling it out had released a slight smell of incense and sage, a faint reminder of the last time it had been worn - smells for the dead. Meri caught herself before she made a noise, a whole tide of feelings rising up in her throat. How small Robert had been then! One forgot, with the passing of time. That would have been about the age that Aegon was now, or maybe a little younger - how he'd filled out since then! She remembered how they'd felt, clinging to her skirts - eight year old Robert on one side and three year old Gwin on the other, begging to be held, and Androw, who was ten and trying his hardest not to cry because he was grown and too old for such things, holding the taper they would use to light the candles in the Sept under the Mother's watchful smile. 

Was that you, Alysanne? Did you send the hedge knight, so you could right the wrong he did to your daughter?

But her sister did not answer - not from the wind, nor the smell of incense, nor the stitches on the front of the tunic. There was only silence.

“Aunt Meri, can we go to the sept later?”

Meri tore herself away from looking at the tunic and hoped she was not wearing too many of her feelings on her face. “I’m sorry, Gwinnet - I’m quite tired, and I still need to bring this to the prince. Do you think you could go by yourself?” She tried to smile. “I think you hardly need me to help light your candles any more, don’t you?”

Gwin nodded, a little disappointed, but she bore it well - straightening up and taking a deep breath and nodding with a determined little set to her jaw, and going back out the way she’d come, and Meri felt a pang of guilt again. She’s done too much growing up today, and now I’ve gone and asked her to do more. But there was nothing for it - what was said could not be unsaid.

The door to Maekar’s room was still closed when she returned - she knocked, and hearing silence, entered. There was a full spread of food set before the fire, though neither Maekar nor Aegon seemed to have touched much of it. Father and son had retreated to opposite sides of the room, and between them now, standing at the fireside, was Baelor. Have I been gone so long? Meri wondered to herself.

All three of them had looked up when the door opened, and she felt a weight in the watchful eyes of the two elder Targaryens that she had not felt earlier in the day - as though she was trespassing where she ought not to have been. She made her curtsey and rose. “A black tunic, your grace. It should fit Prince Aegon, with a belt. I saw one among your own things when I came to look for Prince Daeron.”

Maekar rose from his seat and crossed the room to take the garment from her and let it unfold in his hands, passing it before the firelight a moment. His nose crinkled. “What is that smell?”

“Old incense,” Baelor said quietly, turning his ring over in his hand again. “Worn last for a funeral, I imagine.”

He looked at Meri for confirmation, his eyes filled now with a kindness she did not feel like she deserved, and she felt herself freeze, the grief suddenly in her throat again. “My sister’s, your grace.” By rights it’s she who should be here welcoming you – she would have done a better job. I only warm her chair.

She must have paused too long at that, or looked too sad, for Aegon himself crossed the room and took the garment from his father’s hands and peered up at her with a warm smile. “Thank you, Lady Merilinde. I will be very pleased to wear it.” He paused for a moment, and then added, “I am sorry my father has forgotten his manners.” 

Maekar’s response was immediate. “What are you playing at, boy?”

“You said I should be courteous,” Aegon said, just a little bit of accusation in his tone that would have made Meri laugh if she thought she were capable of doing so without also crying. “And Uncle says that being gracious is the mark of a good prince, and a good guest.”

Behind his brother, Baelor’s face was a picture, his smile held just in check by the hand he’d moved in front of his face to hide it while Maekar fumed, caught out by his son and his own instructions. When he turned back to Meri, the fire of his anger had been banked just a little, and when he spoke, she could see again the same iron-backed resolve that he’d shown earlier when he’d spoken of wanting her, the same tightness in his jaw and his hands. “Thank you, Lady Meri. This will suit.” 

Confident that good manners had been restored and restitution made, Baelor spoke from over near the fire. “Lady Merilinde, you are aware there is now a guest in your goodbrother’s dungeon owing to my nephew’s…efforts. I fear we shall need to speak with him this evening, too. And I fear he has also been deprived his dinner.”

The softness of the moment before had passed. “Are we now in the buisness of feeding traitors? The man attacked my son!”

“He is not yet condemned, brother,” Baelor reminded, a dangerous note of impatience in his voice. “We may show some graciousness to prisoners, too. Aegon will bring it, after he has changed,” he said, with a glance at his nephew. He looked back at Meri. “I’ve already informed Lord Ashford that we shall require the solar for the rest of the evening - can you see that it is prepared - as if to hear petitions?”

“Of course, your grace.”

“And I shall need Lord Tyrell summoned,” Baelor said. “He will need to sit with us in judgement, as Lord Paramount.” Meri nodded, wondering where she would find Yhon at this hour, and whether the man’s careful preparations of earlier had given way to the general custom of the evening in regards to his wine. Baelor looked again at the food laid out on the table and sighed. “I fear we have been very poor guests, Lady Merilinde. It looks like it was to have been a lovely feast.”

Meri could only nod, and showed herself out. 

Yhon was found, and brought to the solar for his instructions, the tables were moved and the chairs prepared, the fire tended to again so that it was bright and high as ever, and Meri was just thinking about whether or not to move the banners when she felt the world swim for a moment, and found herself catching the edge of the table to steady herself.

“My lady, have you eaten?” the maid, Talla, asked anxiously. 

Meri thought for a moment and realized that the answer was no - in all the confusion, she’d hardly had anything to eat since luncheon, though she’d been plenty busy making sure that everyone else was fed. “No,” she admitted. “I have not. Whatever’s nearest - I…do not have any opinions on the matter.”

Talla nodded and came back quickly with a plate of odds and ends - hard cheese and brown bread, and a bit of ham that she knew had been served to the lords at luncheon. This is the servant’s dinner, Meri thought to herself, but her stomach made no complaint, and she went slowly through the whole plate until there was nothing left except crumbs and a bit of gristle from the ham. But what am I, really, but a servant in fine clothes?

She felt her strength starting to return - a little less of the lightheadedness of earlier, and passed the plate back to Talla, who’d been waiting at her shoulder like a little anxious bird. “The table will need to be swept,” she said, as an aside, looking down at the new fan of crumbs near where she’d been sitting. “I fear I was not very neat today.”

“But you’re always neat, my lady,” Talla said suddenly. “Eat like a bird, you do - all those little bites. Alyce says that’s the mark of a lady, how she eats. I tried it once and couldn’t get more than halfway afore I gave up.” She realized she was speaking too long and too frankly to her employer. “Beggin’ your pardon, my lady.”

Meri looked down at her hand, remembering a welt there, and the look in old Lady Leonette’s eyes as she glared across the table. You’re not a peasant, girl! Stop shoveling it in. A lady should be moderate and neat. “Yes, well,” she said, trying to raise a smile, closing her hand into a soft fist, like that might be able to make the memory stop. “It took a lot of practice.”

Another maid appeared at the door. “Lord Tyrell’s nearly at the door, my lady. I thought you’d want to greet him.”

Meri remembered Lady Leonette’s scowl - a perfect copy of her son’s, down to the last curve and dimple. Doubtless I’ll see that scowl again in a moment - I’d wager anything on it. “Yes,” she said aloud in agreement, steeling herself. “I think I had better.”

Leo Tyrell was indeed scowling as he entered the castle solar - and well he should. A day’s tourney interrupted, a disturbance to the public peace, and now his princes given an imperfect picture of the Reach? Small wonder the man had no cause to smile. The day had gone from bad to worse. Somehow he seemed taller than she remembered - a broad-shouldered wall of a man with close cropped hair and beard going to gray, calmly pulling off his gloves and letting the servant take his emerald green cloak with its golden rose clasps. The finest jouster of the age, the lord paramount of the Reach, the Longthorn. Enough pretty titles to make a garland - or a chain of state. Nor did he seem particularly happy with the greeting he was being given - or the person giving it. "Lady Merilinde."

Meri swept her best curtsey, skirts skimming the floor. "Lord Tyrell. Our apologies for the lateness of the hour. Have you eaten? We have dinner ready, though we’ve… not been able to enjoy it as we ought,” she said, with a mild smile as though this were the least inconvenience in the world and not a matter of having nearly fallen over twenty minutes before. “I can have something brought for you - a cup of wine?"

"The business of the realm's hardly going to wait on wine," Tyrell said shortly, glancing around the room and tucking his gloves into the belt at his waist.

"Of course, my lord. Should you like to sit down?" Meri gestured to the table, chairbacks to the fire and faces to the door.

"I'd prefer to stand. Damon Lannister might need his cushions plumped but I certainly don't." He looked, finally, directly at Meri, the up and down assessing gaze of a horsebreeder looking for ready flesh, somewhat unimpressed with what was on offer. "Been rather busy today, haven't you?" he asked, dismissive. "I saw you up in the box with the Prince, making yourself useful."

Meri felt her skin crawl at the insinuation riding in useful. "Being useful is the duty of all good subjects, my lord."

"Mmm.” Leo’s tone said what he thought of that answer. “Plenty of ways to do it, too - warm a prince to see your side."

Meri swallowed and tried very hard not to look like that lance had hit, though it came square in her chest. She suddenly felt seventeen again, a girl standing in front of her Lord Paramount in shame. You reached for a flower that wasn't yours to pluck, girl. His lordship's son, for you? Rickon Crane was practically a hedge knight - his daughter's not going to marry his lord's secondborn. A passing fancy's all you're good for - or a leg over when it's cold.

"My son asked to come with - cheer on his father,” Leo went on. "Told him it was better he stayed at home. Hardly needed any distractions." 

Did you really think I would tempt him out of his marriage? It's been nearly twenty years since you packed me out of Highgarden and away to my sister in disgrace. Everyone was told it was because Alysanne was frail, after the first babe, but people knew. I know what I am now - and what I've always been. I don't need you to tell me. "How is Lord Edwyn?" Meri asked, the name burning a little in her throat. Don't let him see you bleed.

"Well enough,” Tyrell said. “Briony’s given him another son."

Meri forced herself to smile. "That’s four now, I think, my lord. How pleased you must be."

Leo nodded, pursed his lips. "They're good stock, House Rowan. Not a bad branch yet from that tree."

She had one blade, and one blade only - she needed to stick true. Baelor was at the far end of the hall, now, coming behind Lord Tyrell's shoulder, unseen and unannounced. "And do you hear at all from Melany, my lord? How does she fare at Starpike?"

Leo Tyrell's face came over with a sudden cloud, and he drew up every inch of his not inconsiderable frame to glare at her. "Lady Peake's letters are not opened at Highgarden, Lady Merilinde. I know my duty to the crown as well as any man and I do not treat with traitors. A man has some lapses in judgement - allowing Lord Gorman's suit was one of mine."

Baelor chose, at this moment, to clear his throat, and Tyrell turned and, with the long practice of a courtier, sank onto one knee. "Your grace, forgive me for not seeing you."

"Arise, Lord Tyrell," Baelor said, all gracious smiles again, as though he had heard nothing. "I would rather have your strong arm than your bended knee."

Leo rose, gathering his dignity about him like a suit of armor. "A bad business this, your grace. A shame it had to happen here. The riff raff they get at some of these would shame John the Oak. And someone said he meant to ride tomorrow! I'm surprised at Lord Ashford's man even allowing a craven like that to enter."

"It was I who vouched for him, Lord Tyrell," Baelor shared with a rueful smile, and watched as Leo's face fell. "As you say, we all have our… lapses in judgement."

There’s no way he didn’t hear that, Meri thought silently, and somehow it gave her something like hope. “Perhaps you’ll allow me to fill you in as to the details?” Baelor went on, and gestured again to the table so that the two of them might sit down. “And if we might have some more of those cakes, from earlier, Lady Merilinde, if you’d be so kind?”

Egg, who had been listening to some of the others as they regaled the table with past feats of strength, came back to him as the ale came around and he rushed to get his master one of the horn cups everyone was using. “Ser, your hand!”

Dunk looked down and saw, much to his surprise, that one of his hands was red and raw - not on the palm, where the skin was already callused from sword and buckler, but on the back, where he'd wrapped the rope to give it better purchase. Had it looked like that the whole time, and he’d not noticed? Looking at it now, it finally began to burn.

"You must let me see to that, ser." Dunk turned in surprise and nearly elbowed the person who'd said it - a woman with dark hair in parti-color gold and black, her skirt kirtled over her belt in the way a servingwoman might wear it so the hem was not so much in the mud.   

He did as he was told, though he still wasn’t sure how he felt about how she must see to it,  staying in his place while the woman left and came back with a clever looking little chest, setting it down close to him so that she could unlock the lid and have a glance through its contents, rows and rows of glass bottles and linen packets, each one rustling with dried herbs. "You were here the other night," she said, just to make conversation as she pulled out this and that, and a mortar to mix them in, still standing while she ground the herbs into a coarse powder and added a bit of water to make a paste. "For the dancing."

"You remember me?" Dunk asked, a little amazed at having been remembered by anyone, leastways a lord's servant.

"It would be hard not to," the woman said with a little smile, and Dunk remembered Lyonel’s comment about tall men getting punched. "Lord Lyonel likes a dance - and you gave as good as you got last night." She tipped the paste out of the mortar onto a clean cloth and spread it about a bit before gesturing for his hand. He held it out and she turned it over so that she could tie the poultice on, the herbs cooling and pleasant on the surface of the burn. 

"Are you a maester?" he asked, amazed by how quick it was working. He had never seen a maester at work up close - Ser Arlan had, when he'd been in house service, but their work did not come cheaply. Nor did the chain they wear, lad, Ser Arlan had said once. Hard won, they are. Never look down on a man who's learned his craft, whatever it may be. 

"They don't make girls maesters!" Egg's annoyance with yet another thing Dunk did not know was little hidden, and smarted more a little. Dunk would have threatened him a clout on the ear for it, but he did not want to do it in front of her. 

“Mind your tongue,” he said strongly instead. “Knights ought to be courteous to ladies.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Ser Arlan talk to a lady, but it seemed the right thing to say, and then he added, on a breath of sudden inspiration, “D’you think Prince Baelor goes about shouting at maids like that?”

She smiled a little at that while Egg frowned, looking for all the world like he had something he was going to say and was (for once) holding his tongue. “I beg your pardon, mistress,” he managed, looking very sorry indeed.

Fortunately for him, she did not seem to mind. "Your young friend has the right of it, Ser. A little wiser than the wise, but no maester. The knights come for the joust, and I come with for the patching up that must happen after." 

Dunk hadn’t really had time to think about that, in all his comings and goings - that at the end of every tilt there was both a winner and a loser. It must put itself at peril for the benefit of others. That was what the whores had said. He felt his blood run a little colder. 

"Thank you for helping my master," Egg said, gallantly, and Dunk silently kicked himself that he hadn't at least said that. (He also wasn’t sure how he felt about being anyone’s master - he couldn’t remember a time Ser Arlan had used the word.) "My name is Egg."

"I am very pleased to meet you, Egg," the woman said with a smile. "My name is Jocasta."

That’s a houseborn name, Dunk thought to himself. That was the word Sir Donnel had used this morning, he thought, houseborn, and he hadn’t been sure then what the Kingsguard had meant, exactly, but he thought he knew now.  No one in Flea Bottom had a name like that. He wanted to ask how long she'd been in service, but he had no time - Lyonel had made his way over with his own flagon, brandishing it hither and yon without a care in the world for spilling. 

"Cousin!” He clapped the woman merrily on the shoulder. (Dunk could see, in the moment, that Egg's eyes were wide as saucers. He could not imagine what his own face was doing - his mouth was suddenly dry.) “I see you have met my giant!" 

"And your giant has met me," Jocasta said tartly, her annoyance mixed with an equal measure of fondness, making no move at all to get up or greet him. “If you had better manners you’d let me know his name.”

The Baratheon stared for a moment. “S-s-ser Duncan,” Dunk supplied, before Lyonel could admit to having forgotten it. (It was understandable - he had been rather drunk the other night.)  “The T-tall.”

Friends without names were evidently a commonplace occurrence here; Jocasta did not bat an eye. "You should take better care of your friends, ser, Ser Duncan’s hands are fairly ripped to shreds."

Are we friends? It was the first Dunk was hearing that. A problem for another time. "Ah, well, you can see him right, can't you?” Lyonel asked, unconcerned as ever. “Easy as punch. She has the Mother's own touch, this one,” he assured both Dunk and Egg, both still frozen in panic. “None better in the Seven Kingdoms! Wouldn't travel with anyone else! And she dances near as good as me," he added with a grin.

"Have you something I should see to, my lord?" she asked, lightly, beginning to pack her box back up. "You were at the same work as Ser Duncan, I am given to believe."

"What? Oh, only my tunic," Lyonel said blithely, gesturing to a slightly torn cuff, which must have gotten caught between him and something else. "I'll change it before I go to dine with Longthorn." 

"Give it here, and I'll see to it now," she said, making a small gesture, and without thinking Lyonel had shucked off the tunic and disappeared off to another part of his tent, presumably to find a clean one.

The idea of an entirely different tunic, especially one in such a lovely fabric as what Ser Lyonel was wearing, was as wild to Dunk as the sun rising in the west. Ser Arlan had taught him to mend his own clothes, and he could sew as good a line as any seamster in town, but his back was bare while he did it.  Egg was still staring in subdued and silent horror. 

But all of this seemed perfectly fine to Jocasta, too. "He will do the worst things to these," she said offhandedly, picking up the tunic and inspecting the tear. "Still, better I do it now than in three days when it's been cast aside and done in by the dogs."

She reached back into her box and came away with a needlecase and thread, smoothing the sleeve out on her lap so that she could begin surveying what it would take to fix it. Dunk watched patiently and then asked the question that had been bothering him as delicately as he could. "Are you ...really Lord Lyonel's cousin?" Have I been a fool again and taken the wrong woman for a serving wench?

Beside him he could almost hear Egg groaning, but Jocasta did not seem to mind, for she only smiled again, patient and a little sad. "That is his word for it. We shared a wetnurse, as babies, and a nursery after, but …my name is Storm."

The way she said it let it sink into his mind - That's a bastard's name, he remembered silently, for Baratheons. Looking closer - really looking - he saw that she could have truly been a cousin, on the wrong side of the blanket, or maybe even Lyonel’s half- sister - they had the same eyes, though hers did not look quite as merry as his, and her hair, too, looked to be much the same, dark and curling. She looked up from the cuff and seemed, finally, to notice his distress. "My mother did the same work I do,” she explained, “or as good as, and was well looked after, and so have I been. Lord Lyonel cares little for formalities - and his friends follow. When it suits them,” she added, a little softer. “He is a fast friend to have - he does care for things, and people, in his own way - though I’m sure it does not look like it, some days." She gestured with the tunic. “So, are you to join the lists, on the morrow, Ser Duncan? Or shall you enjoy the day from the stands?”

Dunk nodded silently at the first, though the thought now gave him some distraction. There seemed to be a great many things in between now and then - armor to buy and his tunic to be mended and his lance to consider, and the shield with its new device to be fetched from Tanselle. And, now, too, the thought of the little case with its vials and glasses and the calm cool hands of a healer, to say nothing of three or four squires and footmen like Lord Lyonel’s. There was such a lot he did not have. Only Egg, who was scarcely tall enough to carry his sword.

“You should leave that on until supper,” she said, nodding towards his hand. “Should be right as rain for your gloves and lance tomorrow.”

“Thanks again,” he said, raising it just a little and feeling the poultice shift against his skin.

“Have your squire come find me if you have need - for the hand or aught else. I’ll be in his pavilion, or else nearby. They all know me.” She nodded to the group coming around with the food. “Jeyne! Arthor! Another horn of ale for Ser Duncan and his squire here. They’ve done good work today for his lordship and have as much right to be here as you.” Two younger servants near the door nodded quickly and brought over some of the food. “Gods go with you tomorrow,” she said with a smile, rising from her seat, needle and thread back in her case and the tunic in her other hand. “I’m sure even giants can use a bit of luck.”

Egg waited until she was gone to stop sitting on his hands and finally answer Dunk’s look of horror from before “How was I to know?” he asked, almost explosively. “They’re all wearing black and gold!”

“That’s why we should be kind to everyone,” Dunk said, as sagely as he could, thinking of Tanselle’s smile when he’d given her the compliment about her puppets, and Jocasta’s hands grinding her herbs. “You never know who they could be.” 

--

There was a young woman now with the maitre'd, and Marion sat up straighter in her chair. She looked just like him - hard to mistake the color of her eyes, and the height. And there was something, too, about the way she commanded the room. She would have been trouble, if she'd come to Europe, Marion thought to herself, tucking the smile away for another time. Her father's daughter, through and through.

She rose as the waiter brought the young woman over, hand resting on her pocketbook next to her napkin. There should have been two, but - beggars and chosers. "Thank you for meeting me, Helen. I took the liberty of ordering tea - it...it should be here, soon. It's very nice to finally meet you."

The younger woman looked her over like she'd been expecting something different - a cat fight, perhaps? "Are we going to be civilized about this?"

"I thought we could try," Marion said, all too aware of the barely hidden contempt in Helen's tone. "Is ....Clare not coming?"

"My sister's not ready to admit her parents are divorcing, Miss Brennan, let alone meet her father's mistress," Helen said cuttingly. "She's at home bawling her eyes out and thinking it's her fault. You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands."

They sat, Helen tucking herself into her chair with the kind of resolve that looked odd on a woman of just twenty. Marion could remember a lot of pinched faces like that, after bad mission days - girls in her command who knew that the only thing for it was to soldier on, without complaint.

A server brought the tea, pouring two cups and leaving the teapot and a plate of small cakes and tea slices, the little silver tongs perched like a little bird on the side. Marion picked up the tongs, but Helen made a short gesture, and Marion contented herself with putting one of the petit-fours on her own plate. For a moment neither spoke.

"It was very kind of you to come today."

"I'm not kind. And I'm not doing this for you - or him. I'm doing it for Clare."

"So she didn't have to come?"

Helen nodded. "You weren't at all what I pictured. When Mom had said he'd had an affair. I thought you'd be younger. That's usually how it goes, isn't it - a younger, prettier woman?" She sniffed. "But you haven't changed a bit. You look exactly the same as the photograph."

"Which photograph was that?" Marion asked, delicately, thinking of more than a few moments which, in hindsight, should not have been committed to a camera.

"Group photo, from the war. Station staff. You're sitting next to him in the front row. He had it up in his den, after he got home." She thought about this for a moment. "You know, I admired you, for a little while. Looking at that photo. He'd say "That's Captain Marion Brennan, Helen. One of the smartest women in the outfit. One of our Intelligence officers. Ran that office neat as a pin." And the way he said it, you just - you wanted him to say something like that about you." There was a quiver of betrayal in her words, and Marion got a certain sense that she was angry with her younger self. What, Helen, for not knowing? How could you? That photo was taken long before - well, but it doesn't matter. "Not smart enough to stay away from him, though, were you?" she added, bitterly. "How'd it start, then? Late night in the file room feeling lonely? Or were you always looking to bag a man with rank?"

"Nothing like that at all."

"Well?"

"We'd just lost three hundred men and the whole world felt like it was in a nosedive." Marion stared at the proud, angry woman across the table and watched as her eyes widened in horror. Yes, it really was that awful, Helen. Three hundred men, and the floor had fallen out of the world. "I'm not...proud of that, Helen. I wish I could sit here and say it was as tawdry as you wanted it to be, that there were...birds and flowers and pretty words and lace. The simple fact is that your father was in charge of the welfare and well-being of three thousand air crewmen, and to do that and do it well, he needed something solid. That night neither of us knew where the ground was. For several months we were a solid place for each other." She looked down at her teacup, the still untouched little mound of the petit-four. "Did he ever...tell you, about what the war was like?"

Helen's hackles seemed to go right up. "He knew we didn't need to know. He wanted to protect us."

"And he was right to do that," Marion affirmed. "He carried a lot of heavy things - his decisions, the boys who died because he told them to fly to a place and drop a bomb. And they were boys, Helen - not much older than you and Clare. He knew that intimately. They were his sons, each and every one of them, and he worried about them so much it made him ill. There were days he would forget to eat. There were days he would forget to sleep. And the only way I could get him to do anything, some days, was to remind him that he would not be of any use to any of them if he were also dead."

Helen was quiet for a moment. "He said that. To Mom. That you were the only reason he came home alive." A pause. "She threw a vase at him for it."

"I made sure he saw a doctor, before his condition got worse," Marion acknowledged, going as carefully as she could. "I ...saw things he did not let anyone else see - because we were intimate and he could not hide them from me. So yes - that is true - but not, perhaps, the way your mother heard it," she added, almost wryly. "I reminded him daily that he had people waiting for him at home."

"Did it help?" Helen's lip trembled, and her voice, for the first time this whole conversation, sounded small.

Marion considered this - the wounded animal look in Helen's eyes, hiding behind the anger she was wearing to make her seem larger. She nodded. "It did, I think."

For the first time since they’d sat down, the silence did not seem immediately hostile, and Marion let that be for a moment while Helen took a tiny sip of her tea. Her cup rattled against the saucer.

"Helen, I'm not here to tell you what to think. You have good reasons to dislike me, and I respect those. But if you hate me because you think I have...stolen your father's love, I can only say that he has never once stopped loving you, or Clare. And I hope he never does - it is one of the things I admire about him - the love he has for his daughters. You do not for one moment have to like me, but I would ask that you try to give him a second chance. He asked for this meeting because he wants us to be friends. I think you and I both know it is rather soon for that. But it will mean the world to him knowing that you came and gave me the chance."

Helen nodded.

“Now, are you sure you won’t have some cake? It’s quite good here.”

Helen looked glumly at the table, almost overwhelmed by all of it, and then gave a very small nod, holding up her plate in a sign of silent surrender, not trusting herself to speak. Marion nodded and picked up the tongs, expertly maneuvering a piece onto the younger woman’s plate and watching, pleased, as Helen took a few bites and swallowed with something that could have almost been a smile. 

The waiter circled back, making his rounds through the room. “Anything else for you ladies? Another round of cake?”

“Thank you, no. I think we’re nearly done,” Marion said strongly, covering for Helen’s half-drunk cup and her own nearly full one. “But I would love if you could put some of this in a box. Someone wasn’t able to join us today and I’d hate for her to miss out on a treat.”

The waiter nodded, taking away the plate and Marion contented herself with the tea in her cup, lukewarm now after sitting for so long. 

The cakes returned in a white pasteboard box, tastefully tied with pink string. “Is this meant to be a bribe?” Helen asked, still a little viperish, considering the box like it might have contained a bomb.

“It’s meant to be whatever you like,” Marion said equitably. “You’re the one taking it home.”

Helen sniffed, but she still took the box, rising from the table with her purse in one hand and the box in the other. Some of the old defensiveness was back in her shoulders, but that was to be expected - there were too many new variables here, too many things that had not been as she had planned them to be. 

“It was very nice to meet you,” she said, finally, and set the box down for a moment, her hand held out with definitive straightness. Marion held out her own to meet it, and they shook for a brief moment before Helen picked up the box and made straight for the door.

It only took a few knocks before the door opened. She was wearing slacks and a button-down shirt, her hair tied back behind a scarf. "I ...brought a bottle of wine," Bucky offered, gesturing with it. "Man at the store said it went well with chicken, but I...I guess I should have asked what you were serving." He felt too tall and out of place. "It smells great."

"I ordered Chinese food," she said, matter-of-factly. "I'm...not very much of a cook. Colonel Harding said you liked it."

"Colonel Harding could have said just about anything and he'd be right," Bucky joked. "My mother used to say I just liked to eat." He smiled and looked down again at his shoes, chuckling a little. "We could keep doing this on the front mat but the neighbors might talk."

She remembered her manners and opened the door wider to let him in, taking the bottle of wine and spiriting it away to the kitchen, coming back for his coat so she could hang it on the hall tree. It was a tidy, sparse space, very much like her office - a built in bookshelf in the corner held a few solid shelves of engineering textbooks, while a drafting desk in the corner stood covered with drawings, an architect's lamp just waiting to illuminate her next project. No frills, or cutesy curtains - a plant by the window looked more dead than alive. The couch was a small one, flanked by two overstuffed chairs and a low coffee table on which the complete contents of his personnel file seemed to be sunning themselves. There was a room at the end of a short hallway with the door shut. Well, that answers that, Bucky thought to himself. Not even a look in at the bedroom.

She steered him in the direction of the dining nook and the small fleet of takeout boxes, handing him a plate and gesturing that he could help himself.

"So, where do you want to start?" she asked, going back into the kitchen for something and coming back with the wine, now opened, and two glasses, presenting him one and sitting down across from him at the other end of the table. The food stretched between them like a defensive fortification.

"Beginning seems like a good spot," Bucky offered, opening a few lids and poking at contents with a spoon before digging in and beginning to fill his plate. "We'll need a story - about how we met."

"I thought we might keep that simple - your first day at training. It's mostly true."

"Easiest lies to tell are the ones that are almost the truth," he agreed. "I saw you across the parking lot at Langley and couldn't take my eyes off you."

She scoffed. "And I played hard to get," she put in, like she was trying to salvage a little bit of her dignity.

"Makes sense," Bucky filled in, trying to match her tone. "Why shouldn't you? Plenty of good looking guys in that bunch," he added, helping himself to fried rice. "And you grew up around pilots. You know what we're like."

"That I do."

She was still giving him the cold shoulder and that wasn't going to get them anywhere. "Listen, we've got to meet more than half-way here," Bucky said, setting down his plate so he could look her in the eye. "We've got to sell it - to believe it. Those cameras are going to turn on and they're going to want everything. Hopes and dreams. The stuff you'd talk about in the backseat of a car late at night."

"Bold of you to assume we've been in the backseat of a car late at night."

"Everyone else will," Bucky said strongly. "Two beautiful people in love, when you look like you and I look like me? They'll expect it. We've definitely been in the backseat of my car late at night. More than once." Enthusiastically.

"Is our winning the space race dependent on the housewives of America being convinced we've had sex?"

Yeah, kind of, a little. It's telling them I'm already spoken for and they can't hope to compete. That I'm a steady, reliable guy who wants a family. "Listen, I know why I'm here. Why'd you say yes, if I'm so hard to like?"

"Blackmail." Her voice was flat and grim. "There's no more room on the project for a woman unless I help you out." She sighed, disgusted. "I've helped design half the capsule but I can't fly it. I can't even be a nameless engineer. But I can be a wife, apparently - your wife, even. The famous, handsome war hero." She scoffed and looked down at her plate. "It's always been easy for you - you read books about flying as a kid, and applied to flight school and went overseas and no one ever told you no, and that made you brave and maybe just a little reckless, and you got commended for it, promoted, even."

"But no one writes books about a female pilot, unless she's Amelia Earhart. No one told me I could do any of that, growing up. I got told no a lot, and that made me stubborn as hell, and they don't give anything to stubborn women except suggestions to smile more. And you're right. I didn't want anything to do with this until someone pointed out that we'd be on the cover of every magazine in America. So if everyone in the checkout line at Shop and Save is going to read all about me and my so-called perfect life and moon over my perfect husband, and tell their friends that they want to be me, then I'm going to tell them what I really am and that they can do it, too. That's why I'm doing this, Major Egan. To tell the women of America that they can. And while I'm doing it, I'll lie through my teeth telling them a man will love them for it, too. Or maybe that's too difficult to believe."

It was the rawest and realest he'd ever seen her - no false smile, no pleasant expression, nothing there to make him or anyone else feel better. Just Cordelia Callaway, speaking her truth - and joker that he was, he didn't know how he could match it.

"Gale Cleven would tell you I never did like anything easy," Bucky offered, after a few moments of silence. "Might even say I... like stubborn women, too." He tried to pause, take the conversation back. "So no. It won't be difficult to believe. You played hard to get. You know what pilots are like - and even after you turned down half the base I still couldn't take my eyes off of you. Couldn't get enough of a woman that flies."

Cord studied him for a minute, trying to decide what to say next. "Why did she leave you?"

Well, that hurt, but if they were being honest... "Didn't like knowing I might not come home," Bucky admitted. "Why'd he leave you?" There's a man who hurt you bad somewhere in there, and if we're going to do this, I need to know.

She chuckled. "Didn't want a wife who might be better than him."

Bucky felt like he knew the feeling. "Well, the only thing that would be better than an astronaut is being a lady astronaut," he said frankly. "How's that for telling them they can? Some magazine somewhere would love that - first couple in space." He leaned over the food and looked her dead in the eye. "We can make this work, Callaway. I know we can. And everyone can get what they want here. But we have to be on the same side."

She took a breath and stared at her plate, seeming to thaw a little, her shoulders coming down a fraction. Bucky didn't speak, too afraid to break the moment or her train of thought, and realized he'd give anything to know what she was thinking. "So where was our first date?" she said, finally. He stared while she reached for the duck sauce. "I did the first meeting - it's your turn. Where'd you take me? After you wore me down with your considerable charm."

"The bar just off base," Bucky said, without hesitating again. "I'm not very original. You wore a plaid dress and a cardigan."

"That was very boring of me." "You didn't trust me very much. Didn't want to give me the wrong idea."