Jaime?

  He lounged on the grand barge of the Merling Queen, surrounded by beautiful women of every stripe. It was every boy's dream, and yet his heart was heavy and his thoughts troubled and fractious.

  The bedamned peacock ruled in King's Landing now, with Margaery Tyrell as his queen. His sister might have escaped the noose he had thought to lay around her neck, but how long could the Rock hold out against all the forces arrayed against them? Their only respite was the continued chaos in the Vale serving as a distraction, and, amusingly, Stannis Baratheon.

  The Lord of Dragonstone had taken his younger brother's usurpation poorly by all accounts. Not that he was any more likely to love them, but he had robbed Renly of one of the three great fleets of Westeros.

  The ironborn were likely to do as they always have, and the gods only knew what the Dornish were—

  "If this is to be your last day in Braavos," the Black Pearl husked in his ear, "then I would have you spend it with me and not in your head."

  "Men are often so lost," the Moonshadow opined, her white silken gown seeming the same blue as the queer torchlight that filled the room.

  "No doubt he worries for his sister," the Nightingale followed, the fourth and final courtesan there. Her eyes like liquid gold watched him. Her hair was as black as night, and her lips as red as fresh-spilled blood turned up into a smile. "Though perhaps the nature of those worries may not be brotherly alone, hmm?"

  Jaime forced a practiced smirk to his lips. At least his Low Valyrian had become something passable. "Renly will tell any lie to justify his newfound crown, my lady. Soon I will have somehow sent the storm that took Robert Baratheon."

  "It is the spectacle of it that draws the eye and ear," the Merling Queen said in a sigh, a dainty hand covering her own smile as her red hair tumbled past her shoulders. "A slayer of kings and lover of the queen, his twin in truth. It has the makings of a song."

  "Don't mind them," the Black Pearl husked into his ear again, her nails toying with his golden hairs. The mockery of a tunic she had insisted on made him look like a fool in a brothel. "They're unrepentant gossips, every one."

  His cup was swiftly refilled by one of the Mermaids lingering around the room, all of them young maidens with long hair bedecked in nets and seashells.

  "You would know," the Moonshadow seemed to tease, and they tittered like a flock of songbirds.

  He remembered what her nipples looked like beneath that white gown, not a blemish in sight. It proved a more pleasant thought than what awaited him across the narrow sea.

  "Many will call it a pity that the Seven Kingdoms seem determined to follow the Free Cities into war," the Nightingale spoke again. "The Sealord had hoped for their support against Volantis."

  "And now he has struck a bargain with the Myrmen," the Black Pearl followed.

  It had been the talk of the Secret City this past week. Myr would join Braavos in exchange for some parts of the Pentoshi hinterlands and all of the Disputed Lands. Also an exception to the First Law for the next fourty-four years.

  Too steep a price after Braavos had already humbled Tyrosh, some whispered.

  The Merling Queen tapped her painted nails against her impearled cup. "It has not much dulled the threat of Volantis. They have already entreated Slaver's Bay."

  It began to sound more like a meeting of the small council than the ribald affair he expected, so much so that his thoughts curled inward again.

  A true knight would never serve under a father as cruel as his own, but he had not heard so much as a whisper of Varys. More than that, he much misliked the thought of abandoning Aunt Genna and the rest of his family to Renly's tender mercies. A crown on Joffrey's brow meant nothing to him. Perhaps if he were to—

  "Come, ser knight." The Black Pearl stood over him now with a perfect smile upon her lips painted gold, the same as her cloth-of-gold gown. "Let us retire one last night before your folly takes you away from me."

  Jaime saw no reason to refuse her, and soon they had returned to her own barge.

  It was well into the night when her passions had cooled, draping herself over him as the moonlight danced across her sleeping beauty. It was such a sight that it had almost convinced him to remain in Braavos. There was honor in waging a war against slavers. The old gods and the new agreed on that much.

  His own slumber took longer to arrive, and the nightmares hadn't spared him even one night. This time it was Princess Rhaenys standing at his bedside, her small shift bloody from more wounds than he could count.

  "You were the only one of the Kingsguard that played with me, Ser Jaime," she whispered in her childlike voice. "Don't you remember? Why did you abandon me?"

  The Mad King would have made an end of us all, he wanted to say, but the words were a hollow comfort. The truth that ate away at him was that he had not even thought of her or her mother, only thinking of his sword stained red.

  He could not say that he thought his lord father incapable of such butchery either, for even if he hadn't yet seen what he would do to Tyrion for the great crime of loving a lowborn girl, he had heard the Rains of Castamere a thousand times and one.

  Princess Elia herself greeted him next, standing over her daughter, her head and thighs a bloody ruin. He could not even bear to look at her.

  He heard her rasping gurgles as he waited and waited to wake.

  Soon it felt as if his mother had pressed him to her bosom again, but he knew his mother was as much gone as those he failed in every way. Instead it was Bellegere, her nimble fingers combing his hair. "Men are such great fools," she whispered.

  "It was only a nightmare," he muttered into his pillowy prison.

  She snorted softly for his words. "Perhaps we are the fools for ever believing you."

  Jaime escaped after a time, tired and defeated. It was just his luck to ruin their last night together.

  He felt her drape herself across his shoulder, her black curls tickling his skin. "Will you not at least tell me before you go, Jaime?"

  It wasn't often his name passed her lips. He gave a terrible sigh. "I suppose what befell Princess Elia Martell and her children has reached even Braavos?"

  "You blame yourself for not saving them from such a fate as they were handed," she whispered into his ear.

  "How could I not? I sat a throne that wasn't mine until honorable Eddard Stark came to judge me with his cold northern eyes. And he was right to. I might have given my king a red smile, but I was still a knight."

  Her arms circled around his neck, though not a word had left her lips. Perhaps that was for the best.

  Eventually she moved to stand above him, drawing his eyes to hers. "I only hope that you will one day be able to forgive yourself, ser knight."

  He thought it unlikely, though he dared not voice his doubts. "Then I would have to return and marry you, my lady."

  Those words amused her greatly. "I would make as poor a wife as you make a knight."

  He gave a weak smirk. "Then you understand why."

  Something mischievous shined in her dark eyes before she claimed his lips one last time and sent him on his way. His heart did not like it, but it was not the first time he had ignored it.

  At the Happy Port he found his niece but not his brother.

  "They are arguing still," she voiced as she stared at him.

  "Ah." He had not pried too deeply into their affairs, his guilt still hanging over him here as well. And seeing his niece, it only sharpened.

  "What is my grandfather like?" he heard her ask suddenly. "They both hate him, but they have never told me why."

  Jaime wanted to be anywhere else as he chewed over her words. "They have their reasons."

  Lanna gave him a pout for it. "That is why I am asking you, uncle."

  He tugged at the collar of his doublet nervously. "He is cruel, and is unlikely to change. Anything to not seem like his own father."

  "That seems sad," she mentioned after a quiet moment, her fingers tugging on her golden locks. "Yna has said the meanest men are those already hurting. That their misery seeks company."

  "Perhaps she is right," he commented.

  "She also says she wants to bed you," she said as a matter of fact. For a moment her mismatched eyes reminded him of Tyrion.

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  And where was his bedamned brother? He did not know how to speak to his niece any more than his own daughter.

  "I am flattered," he finally got out, though he sounded more like a mouse than a lion.

  "She pricked me with a needle for telling her she isn't like to steal your attentions from the Black Pearl, but then she only has one eye and fancies herself a maegi."

  Now she almost reminded him of Cersei. "That—"

  "Jaime," Tyrion called from the stairs, having finally deigned to rescue him. "I expected you here an hour late, if at all."

  He vaulted down to his bemused daughter. "Lanna," he whispered.

  "Father." She saw all of it as a game still, but then she was still a girl that had only counted three-and-ten namedays.

  "I swear that you will one day see Casterly Rock with your own eyes. You are as much a Lannister as any of them."

  Jaime left to wait outside as they said their farewells. It was another dreary grey day in Braavos, though at least it wasn't also drenching him in rain.

  He spied a deep melancholy about Tyrion as he left the Happy Port, though his brother swiftly put on something more serene.

  Scratching at a cheek as they made across the canal to Ragman's Harbor, he decided on a question. "I suppose you've figured out a way to get us past Stannis and Renly?"

  "Have you no faith in me, Jaime?"

  It wasn't long until he saw what those words meant. A swan ship. That was Tyrion's plan. He had seen a few of them in King's Landing and more in Braavos.

  "As long as they have the wind at their backs, there is no ship quicker or more agile. Nor will the Baratheon brothers much want to upset the Summer Islanders."

  It was somehow both sleek and hulking, standing higher than most ships dared to. "What have they asked for?"

  "Our weight in gold," his brother answered with a grin. "A pittance for the Lord of Casterly Rock."

  Jaime laughed. "It might be the first time he is happy for your being a dwarf."

  Aunt Genna met them on the deck in a gown of quartered red velvet and cloth-of-gold sleeves, Strongboar at her back. "Come along, nephews. The weather here has not grown on me a whit."

  That much he could agree with her on, for it was counted as good fortune in Braavos to see the sun more than once every moon.

  It was everything else that he would miss…

  The Slave?

  He manned the oars. It had become his life, and the only way to stay away the lash of a whip or the bite of a blade.

  His head still ached, though it was a whining thing now, not the tearing pain that made it hard to breathe. He was only laughed at when he had asked for wine to dull it. He was a slave, strong of arm, and so he rowed from dawn 'til dusk until even his strength faltered.

  His fellow slaves knew him either as Boar or the Westerosi. They had tried to hear his story, but he hadn't a story to tell. He was a slave, strong of arm, and he manned the oars.

  He remembered only fragments of a life before he manned the oars. A tower of iron. A woman carved from gold. A man with rubies for a heart.

  None of it made any sense to him.

  He had learned the language of his masters, a few words to spare himself the lash at first, but more as time went on. There was nothing else to occupy his mind but the oars.

  One day he overheard his masters speaking, the short, misshapen one that held the whip, and the other, a man almost as tall as him, a shiny purple beard sprouting from his thin cheeks, thick with oils, and rings on all his fingers. A dandy.

  "We will be lucky to make it through the Stepstones in one piece with those Myrish whoresons aiding the Braavosi patrols."

  "That's unfortunate, Captain."

  The dandy sneered for it. "You needn't tell me it's unfortunate, you lackwit. You should thank the gods that I still hold some fondness for your mother's memory." Faintly purple eyes raked across them. Valyrian eyes. "How many of these wretches are even worth the expense of being brought to market? A score? Less?"

  He spat on the floor as he continued.

  "We make for the Disputed Lands. I see no point to brave the Stepstones. If the Braavosi or Myrmen don't find us, that whoreson Saan will." The dandy turned his back on them, his cape a thing of purple satin and sable. "Double the watches. That will separate the chaff."

  "You heard the captain, you yellow-spotted whoresons!" The whip cracked against the wood. "Row! Row as if your life depended on it!"

  He spied the fire of mutiny in the eyes of his fellow slaves, but also the weary acceptance of men already defeated. Their odds of overwhelming men armed and armored in steel were worse than shite.

  Yet something in him didn't care a whit. As his aching head calmed, a fury returned to him. Something prideful that remembered every strike of the lash and every speck of spit on his skin.

  They gathered that night in the bowels of the galley, the rats their constant companions and sometimes meals. He heard the arguments spoken for and against it as he pawed at his black nest of a beard.

  He tired of it all quickly.

  The ones who knew they would die before they ever reached land argued to try, while the ones hale and hearty begged the leash like they were hounds.

  He smashed his palm down upon the wood. "We fight."

  He stared down the cravens until they relented.

  They armed themselves with what they could find. A shit bucket. A broken handle. He took none of it for himself, hoping it would give the others courage.

  Their watches began before the sun had even risen, but they did not expend their strength longer than it took for the guard to get complacent. He knew he would have to lead by example.

  When the time had come, the misshapen slavedriver could only let out a squeak before he was upon him, grasping his sweaty head with both hands. With a great yell he twisted it the wrong way around, avenging every indignity.

  "Fight!" he shouted as he threw himself at another. This one tried to spear him through the heart with his thin sword, but he laughed, his blood roaring in his ears. It was a piss-poor attempt.

  He punched the cunt in his cunt jaw, feeling the bone splinter and crack under his knuckles, a few bloody teeth falling from his mouth as he screamed. He swiftly shut the cunt up with his own sword, the stench that greeted him familiar.

  "FIGHT!" he shouted again, his voice carrying through the chaos.

  He heard the others scream it also as they ran at what slavers still stood between them and the stairs. One of their sorry number pounded desperately on the heavy wood of the door rather than fight, his supposed compatriots having locked it behind them as they fled.

  He broke his soft head against it and opened another's guts with his new sword. A fine weapon, but it might as well have been a feather. A weapon for a dandy.

  A few of their number had died as he looked around, but more slavers, and they were armed with steel now.

  "Can you taste freedom, boys? It tastes like slaver blood." He laughed like a loon, and they joined him like a pack of starving wolves.

  They gave him some room when he shouted for it, and with some momentum and a dangerous creak he smashed his shoulder into the door. Then again. And again.

  "BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR!"

  On the seventh time, the bedamned door finally gave out. Soon they poured out onto the deck and into the rains.

  A crossbow twanged and struck one of his boys in the eye, the first slaver that would die by his hand. His sword cut into his groin and went halfway to his ribs. Another cunt tried to take him from behind, but he laughed again under the downpour as he took his cunt head from his shoulders.

  He didn't need to think. He just moved. And slavers died.

  He hacked three more of their number apart before he reached the purple cunt with a smile, gripping his neck like a bird's. "The crabs will eat well tonight."

  "W-Wait…" the dandy croaked and wheezed. "Ransom… Tyr… osh."

  He laughed in his face. "Damn your ransom."

  Opening his guts slowly, he threw him overboard, relishing the shrill screams.

  Turning, he drank in the stench of blood and guts as the last of the slavers were butchered. This was where he was meant to be. This was right.

  "BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR! BOAR!"

  He laughed at the sky as thunder cracked.