Nerd In the North: 4-14

The corridors of Dragonstone had never known a great deal of warmth, but tonight the stone seemed to withhold even the slightest touch of comfort. Damp settled in Davos’s bones the way salt crusted a deck, stubborn and familiar. The once-smuggler kept his hands tucked behind his back as he walked, thumb worrying the stump of his knuckle through the glove.

Old habit. Old wound.

The many rugs lining the halls muffled his steps just enough to make every sound from his worn boots feel louder in the silence.

He passed two guards who didn’t meet his eye. Good armor, clean tabards. Stiff backs, but their shoulders gave it away—tense like lads fresh aboard. They nodded, just enough to be seen.

Davos nodded back quietly.

Torchlight stretched itself thin across the black walls, flames dancing like they were trying to warm the place and failing. Nothing new. Dragonstone had never been warm. It wasn’t built for comfort. It was built to endure. Stannis’s sort of place, no matter how much his lord would strongly deny such an idea.

Seven days, and barely a word between them. 

Not since the last council. Not since the raven from King’s Landing. Davos had seen Stannis quiet before—brooding in his way, sharp-eyed, jaw set like stone. But this was different. Not silence from anger. 

Silence like a line had snapped below the water and no one’d noticed ‘til the mast tilted wrong.

He caught sight of a serving girl ahead. Young, freckled, limping slightly like she'd turned her ankle. The girl's beady brown eyes flicked up once, and dropped quick, the servants in Dragonstone well aware of the capricious nature of its Lady and the strict stance of its Lord. “M’lord,” she muttered, barely louder than the wind.

He almost let the girl pass with a kind word, Davos never one to forget his origins, but it was the red. Small bit of cloth that only served to still his tongue.

Tucked near her sleeve, neat and deliberate, the scrap seemingly forgotten or even unnoticed by the wearer, yet showing all whose eyes were drawn to the splash of color truly where her loyalties lied and her faith rested.

Davos slowed his step to watch the lass as she disappeared down the stairwell. He’d seen too many little signs like that lately. Scraps of crimson where they didn’t belong. Whisper-prayers in corners, that foreign rhythm the Red Lady of Essos often hummed to herself in the company of the Lady Selyse, accompanied by the smell of smoke when there was no fire lit.

It was a leak on its own, her presence was on this land, threatening the boat that was Dragonstone.

As he continued his step, he found a boy near the kitchens, younger than his own Devan was now, the lad too thin for the livery he wore.

"Tell me, lad, have you seen the Lord Stannis?" Eyes wide as he turned around, the lad jumped like he'd been caught nicking bread, stammered out something about the sept. With only a bow, he bolted like he was glad to be rid of the message.

Stannis. In the sept.

Davos didn’t quicken his pace, but he felt the shift in his stride. 

Stannis didn’t pray. 

Never had and he’d known the lord since the rebellion, the man one to keep silent when others mentioned the gods and no one brave or stupid enough to call him on it. When Robert raised his cups to the Warrior, Stannis stood with hands behind his back, eyes fixed ahead. He didn’t kneel. He didn’t bless. His gods were duty and justice, and they’d never asked for offerings.

So when Davos reached the sept doors and found them open, that was the first wrong thing.

Stone groaned beneath his boots as he stepped inside. Dark wood statues loomed in the torchlight, thick-limbed and strange, like they'd been carved by men who’d never seen gods but guessed. Paint cracked at the corners, flaked near the eyes. The Mother looked tired. The Smith had no hammer.

But it was the light that stopped him.

Gold. Not candlelight. Not fire. It didn’t flicker. 

It glowed.

At the center of it—Lord Stannis.

He stood like a mast in storm, sword arm drawn, blade through Melisandre’s chest. Her eyes were wide. Lips parted with a clear question on her lips as she moved them in confusion, but no sound came. Her feet remained firmly on the ground, knees not even trembling, as if she had yet to realize the steel in her chest had drawn her life to a quick and unseen end.

Davos couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

Stannis didn’t flinch. Didn’t waver. He stepped forward, sword pulling through her, and with one slow, sure cut, took off her head.

The sound was dull. Like anchor chain slipping from a deck. Final.

The Red Woman’s body hit the stone hard. Her head rolled twice and stopped. Blood pooled fast, darker than any sea.

And then he saw it.

Behind her. Where the statue of the Father should’ve been.

It wasn’t carved.

It breathed.

No... no, wood was wood, still and solid. Flesh was flesh, pliant and moving.

The figure... seemed to be neither at all, yet it maintained the traits of both at the same time, a thought that chilled Davos to the core.

Tall, robed in gold, light pouring off it like heat off tar, though Davos felt none. Its face moved. Its eyes watched. Not judging. Just seeing. Like it knew him. Like it always had.

He couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think enough to try.

His stag lord bent at the waist, quiet as always, moving with dignity and grace that kept Davos in rapture and lifted the head by her hair.

Her beauty... her beauty was nowhere to be seen, and what was left had Davos stare, eyes even wider in nothing but shock.

The head didn’t look like Melisandre. Not anymore. Not even the faintest likeness to the odd foreign beauty that walked the halls of Dragonstone preaching of the Lord of Light.

The skin'd gone slack, pale as chalk, with spots like rot under the surface, and unseeing eyes cloudy, milk-white and blind. The skin sagged all over the dead woman's face like wet sailcloth left too long in the sun. She’d once looked young—Davos remembered that well enough, remembered the way men’s eyes turned her way when she passed, the lust clear in nearly every gaze that landed on her and she knew very well what they wished, bosom nearly full on display and full lips perpetually in a smile that almost seemed to invite attention.

Now her mouth hung loose, lips pulled back from blackened gums, and the gleam had gone from her hair, once-red now a dull dingy ugly gray without even the full dignity of white. Her face was folded in on itself, the bones drawn sharp beneath a crumbling hide. She looked like death with its skin peeled back.

Not just dead, but undone.

Davos didn’t move. The man stood where he’d stopped, boots heavy on stone, like if he shifted his weight the whole room might come down.

And Stannis stared and looked straight through him, and the sword—still dripping—hung low in his hand like it knew it wasn’t done yet. The blood made a soft sound on the stone.

Davos's mouth opened once, closed. He tried again, tried to speak, jaw working without words, and when the breath finally came, it was rough and near choked. "M—m'lord—"

“My grace.”

The voice was iron as the correction came sharp, like always, but it rang deeper now. Like something behind it had started humming.

Davos blinked, throat dry."Beggin' pardon?"

Stannis stepped forward, the glow from the thing behind him painting his shoulders gold, casting shadows like armor as he tossed the head of the dead red lady to the floor to meet her wrinkled corpse. "My brother no longer holds the throne. His body may remain but his soul has returned to where all men must. The Father has shown me the truth. His vision. His will. I am king, not in claim only, but in truth. Seven Kingdoms, by right and by judgment."

Davos looked down. Just for a breath. Just to stop his knees from locking. The glow was still there, pouring out from the statue behind Stannis—seeping through the air like heat off a forge as the image of the Father no longer seemed to breathe with life, returning to the wood it was carved from.

Yet Davos knew.

Those eyes still saw.

He averted his eyes from the judgment of one of his gods, and cast them to the floor at Melisandre. What was left of her. The beauty had been nothing but a mask and his Lord had torn it off with her death. The body lay still, skirts soaked, red bleeding darker. She’d lied. Or something worse.

"What in the… what happened here, m'grace? What is this?"

Stannis' eyes remained firmly on him, that golden light fading from behind him and seeming to leech into his eyes the longer his lord went without blinking. "She lied."

He said it like it meant less than nothing.

"She served shadows. Cloaked in flame, but hollow within. She spoke of glory, of destiny, of fire. But none of it was true. It was not R'hllor that chose me. It was not the fire that showed me the path. It was justice. The Seven. The Father."

Davos's lips pressed tight. His eyes flicked again to the head, to the curl of fingers stiff with death. "But she'd—she said—you were her king. Said the fires—"

"The fires lie." Stannis's voice didn’t rise. Instead, it pressed down like weight, heavy, powerful, unyielding. "They burn, and men see what they wish to see. She saw shadows. The Father showed me light."

He took another step, the sword catching the gold again, casting lines across his face. "The truth is plain to me now. She would've led us into madness. She would have bled our men, myself, and the realm to quench the eternal thirst of the demon she served as herald. I will not suffer that."

Davos stared at the sword, the light on it catching his eyes. It shimmered still, not like steel, not like any metal he’d known—and he’d known more than a few in his smuggling days. “She said you were chosen,” he muttered. “Said her god saw it. Said the flames—”

“She saw what she wanted to see,” Stannis cut in, voice growing colder again. “And I let her speak her honeyed words into the ears of my wife, and I myself began to listen. Because I needed to believe something. Someone. But the light needed no fire to be seen. It stood in the dark and waited.”

"Aye," Davos murmured, voice low, cautious. "But the Seven, m'grace? You've never—never knelt, not once."

Stannis turned the blade in his hand, slow and even. The blood on it continued to slip from the steel "I knelt to duty. To law. The Seven are no different. The Father saw me, measured me, and did not turn me away for my lapse in faith since I was a boy."

Stannis nodded his head, as if agreeing with his own words. "Above all else, I have always followed justice.” The word came like stone hitting stone. Stannis turned slightly, nodding toward the now-still figure. “And what is The Father but Justice itself? The Father speaks. The realm rots. I am his sword."

He raised the sword slightly, the steel now perfectly unmarred as if it had never met flesh. "I did not bow,” Stannis said simply. “He bestowed upon me my birthright. That is all.”

Davos’s knees didn’t shake, but it was close. He looked at the thing behind Stannis. Looked long enough for his stomach to twist. He didn’t understand it. Didn’t want to understand it. But it was there.

The silence that followed stretched too long. Davos wanted to say something—anything—but the words wouldn’t come right. He looked down again at Melisandre’s body, the robes torn, dark with blood, and still felt no peace from it. No triumph. Only the hollow ache that came when a storm passed and left your ship afloat, but the sails torn clean through.

“And what d’you want of me?” he asked.

Stannis stepped closer. His voice dropped, but the words didn’t lose weight. His eyes lifted again, fixed like nails in Davos’ skull. "The sword I carry now is his to give. His to guide. I do not ask for belief. I do not need it. Only that you see. You’ve stood with me before, Davos. When no others would. Will you do so again?”

Davos stared at the floor, eyes trailing up from the corpse to the blood and then the sword before they landed on the blessed form of his lord. The Onion Knight shifted, rough hands curling into fists slow. His breath came slow, deliberate, as his thoughts went to his wife, to his boys, to the tips of his fingers sitting in the pouch on his waist.

"I'm nothing but a man, your grace. A simple smuggler lucky enough to meet a fair, just lord. I'd be nothing more without you and your service."

Stannis said nothing. Just waited.

Without waiting a moment longer, Davos dropped to one knee.

“Aye, I’ll stand with ye,” he said. “I always have and I don't see that changin'. I only pray the light don’t burn more than it heals.”

Stannis's chin dipped once, slowly, as if passing a judgement more than a simple acknowledgmen.

“Rise, Ser Davos Seaworth.”

Davos did as he commanded, his old bones moving slowly as he stood to his full height.

“And pray all you wish, Ser Davos,” Stannis said, turning. “But pray for them. Not for me. I will see this done.”