Meanwhile, in Westeros . . .

"Let me get this straight," Stannis said incredulously. "My wife, the queen, threw an inkpot at Lady Praela because Lady Praela recommended that she drink an infusion of dill and fennel?"

"Yes, Your Grace," Ser Cortnay replied.

Stannis blinked. "In the name of the gods, why?" he demanded. "Does my wife have some abiding hatred of dill and fennel that I was unaware of?"

"Apparently, Your Grace," Ser Cortnay answered, "Lady Praela recommended it as a traditional Myrish cure. A specific against bloat, I believe, was how she put it."

"A specific against . . ." Stannis began to say incredulously, then stopped himself as he stared at his chief bodyguard in a mixture of disbelief and indignation. "Is this what passed for courtesy in Myr before the Conquest?" he asked finally. "Or did the magisters of Myr have astonishingly boorish tastes in humor? Either way, I'm inclined to believe that Robert did the world an even greater favor than he reckoned when he conquered the place."

"That I cannot speak to, Your Grace," Ser Cortnay said. "But I can say that if Ser Dannel Tanner had been a touch slower, that inkpot would have hit Lady Praela square in the face and done her substantial injury. As it is, Her Grace has commanded that Lady Praela be confined to her quarters on bread and water until she learns better manners."

"Does she rule within the Red Keep, or do I?" Stannis asked mildly. "Lady Praela shall continue to have her freedom of the Red Keep, but if she cannot be civil to my wife, then she has my leave to abjure her company until she can."

Ser Cortnay hesitated, then forged ahead; sometimes you just had to presume upon the privilege that long and faithful service gave you. "May I speak freely, Your Grace?"

Stannis gestured gracefully with an ink-stained hand; he had been writing some private correspondence when Ser Cortnay had entered his austerely furnished solar. "Always, Ser Cortnay."

"Lady Praela may have provoked this incident," Ser Cortnay said carefully, "but Her Grace is also at fault for rising to the bait. And not only in this matter. Her ladies-in-waiting have felt the sharp edge of her tongue so often that they have taken to drawing lots as to which of them will sit nearest her on any given day. The Stormguard knights assigned to her have been abused in language that a knight should not have to bear; five of them have requested that they be assigned different duties. Similar discontent is brewing among the staff as well, or so the steward and the linen-mistress tell me. Your Grace, for the sake of peace in your court, I must request that you take steps to reduce the queen's distemper."

"And what steps would you have me take, ser knight?" Stannis asked impatiently. "A pregnancy is not something that can be hurried; the babes will come when they will come, and not a day sooner. Another month, or maybe six sennights, Pycelle tells me, and we may expect their arrival imminently."

"May the gods be merciful and make that day come swiftly, Your Grace," Ser Cortnay said darkly. "Before Her Grace reduces another laundry maid to tears or makes another one of your knights consider taking the black. Ser Jacen Landser told me that at least at the Wall if a woman insulted him, he could give her the back of his hand and not have to swallow the insult like some petty underling; I talked him out of it and assigned him to gate duty, but it was a near thing."

Stannis fiddled with the end of the quill he had been writing with, then plucked it out of the inkpot and threw it down onto the letter he had been writing. "Damn it," he said mildly. "You're right, Ser Cortnay. I've let myself get tied up in the governance of the Kingdoms too much and I've been neglecting my Court to do it. And my Queen, as well." He shook his head wearily. "It's this juggling act I've had to do since Tyrosh, balancing the demands of the Faith against the patience of the nobles and the willingness of the smallfolk. I trust you've heard of the petition that the Merchant Guild of King's Landing has drawn up, asking me to relax the strictures against usury? I can see their point, opening the valve wider would allow the money to flow easier, but the Faith considers usury a sin. And since the Faith is currently paying a greater share of the Throne's revenues than the Merchant Guild is, I must give their opinion precedence, and risk being called a second Baelor the Befuddled." He scowled briefly. "In addition to which, the Merchant Guild counseled for peace after the Battle of Tyrosh, so I'm not inclined to give them much beyond the sele of the day."

Ser Cortnay bowed slightly in agreement. He knew that it would be a sore point for his king that he had not been able to take part in the Fall of Tyrosh. At least Ser Harry Flash had been able to represent the Iron Throne, and quite well by all accounts. And merchants, it was known, were men of little honor; there were some things, a knight knew, that could not simply be bought and sold. Honor, not least of them. Nor could a man be trusted who could wrap you in chains of debt as strong as any steel ever forged and the more insidious for existing solely on paper. "And with the Faith-tax coming in as smoothly as it has, we have no need to go to the merchants for either a tax or a loan," he supplied, "so we have no need to deal with men who loved their traffic with slavers more than their king's honor."

"That, too," Stannis agreed, rising from his chair and striding over to the window, where he stood with hands knotted behind his back. "Although we cannot wholly stand against them, either. If, by some ill fate, the High Septon turns against us, then we will need the merchants, and the smallfolk they can attract to our banner, to counteract him."

Ser Cortnay frowned. "Is there something I should know about between you and the High Septon?" he asked cautiously. "As Lord Commander of your Stormguard . . ."

"You have a right to know, yes," Stannis replied; it wasn't the first time Ser Cortnay had used that line. "The migration of these so-called 'Old Faithers' to Andalos is not just putting him out of temper, it's making him nervous. It's not simply that they call his very office heretical, but that they dare to do it without a single patron to support or shield them. If I hadn't convinced him that it was better to have them making trouble on the other side of the Narrow Sea than in the Kingdoms, he might have formally requested me to take drastic measures. And the news form the Vale isn't helping; the rogue preachers there grow more intemperate by the month. Denys Arryn is keeping a lid on the pot for now, but he has sent ravens to Jon warning that unless something is done to break the mold, then the pot will boil over sooner or later."

Ser Cortnay nodded so that Stannis could see it in his reflection in the window and then moved the conversation on to other matters. Dwelling on the Vale heretics would only darken his King's mood further, and he would be remiss in his duty if he allowed that to happen. Besides which, such matters properly fell under the remit of the relevant overlord unless they got so out of control as to merit the King's attention, and if the Arryns were ever forced to plead for royal assistance against their own people . . .

After a half hour of discussing the city's winter food stores and measures to be taken against extreme weather, the impromptu meeting closed with Stannis resolving to make more time for his wife, to which Ser Cortnay bowed gratefully. Queen Cersei had inherited her father's pride, but she respected her husband enough to bury it for his sake. And if worst came to worst, the only person in the Red Keep who could browbeat the Queen into behaving, by custom, law, and natural order, was the King. Ser Cortnay's only suggestion was that His Grace make more time for his children as well. Prince Lyonel and Princess Joanna were some of the few things that could reliably lift Stannis out of his periodic black moods, and it would be an ill thing if Stannis reverted to the sour young man who had been prepared to hold Storm's End until it starved out of unadulterated, not to say unreasoning, stubbornness.

It was his duty to protect his king's mind and heart as much as his body, after all.

XXX

Ser Sandor Clegane stepped away from the pell and saluted with his longsword, the same way he did before beginning his cutting drills, as his breath steamed in the chill air. It was a habit that Ser Rickon had instilled in him when he was a new squire, as an aid to concentration, and one that Sandor had kept after receiving the accolade. He had found some of Ser Rickon's ideas difficult to accept, especially when it came to the role of the Faith in a man's life, but his ideas of how to fight, and especially how to train, he had engraved on his heart.

And training was most of what there was to do now, with winter upon them. Ordinarily, Sandor spent the middle days of the sennight riding around his fief, either hunting or simply relearning the land he had hoped never to come back to, but half a foot of snow on the ground and the constant possibility of more put a damper on riding. Horses were surprisingly fragile creatures, health-wise, and Sandor wasn't rich enough that he could afford to risk losing a horse to cold or illness. If his people needed his help, then that was another matter entirely, but for the most part they didn't, so Sandor confined himself to Clegane Keep and his household men with him.

Not that he let that be an excuse for idleness. If he and the five men-at-arms who followed his banner couldn't ride abroad, they could still exercise at the pell, swagger swords with each other, wrestle, practice with spear and poleaxe, and race each other around the keep in armor. They had done the last two already, though, and Sandor had already held the ring against his household men and either sent them to the other pells to practice certain cuts and covers or, in the case of two of the squires, set them to practice drawing and sheathing their swords until they could do so smoothly without looking down at the scabbard. It was a surprisingly difficult skill to master, but a necessary one; if you took your eyes off an opponent, even one that was defeated, then he was liable to take advantage of your inattention to put his sword through your guts.

Sandor sheathed his longsword and walked into the keep from the training yard, pulling off his basinet with a sigh of relief as the weight lifted off his head and neck muscles. His valet, a quiet and unremarkable man named Carlus, and his steward, an unassuming but somehow solid older man named Samwell, were waiting for him inside the doors to the keep. "I see my lord acted upon his word as regarded Ser Thomas," Samwell observed as Carlus took Sandor's sword.

"I said I would, didn't I?" Sandor replied almost gruffly. Samwell was always properly respectful, but he had been the man that Lord Tywin had sent to put Fief Clegane in order after word of Gregor's death had reached the Rock, and the man had done so with an energy and rigor that the other servants still spoke of in hushed tones. There were times when Sandor couldn't help the feeling that Samwell saw him as a slightly dim latecomer to the world of running a fief, if a well-meaning and quick-learning latecomer. "He'll know to keep his hands to himself in the future, or to at least get an invitation first."

Samwell nodded. Thomas Cutler, one of the men-at-arms, had evidently taken a few unwanted liberties with one of the chambermaids a few days ago, and the linen-mistress had brought the girl's complaint to Samwell, who had brought it to Sandor. Sandor, knowing that the best way to get an idea into Cutler's head was to pound it in, had done just that when they had sparred with poleaxes, sending him staggering inside on the shoulder of his squire with a cracked head and a warning to remember the rules next time he went a-courting. "There is a message from Lord Algood in your solar, inviting you to a winter tourney," he went on as Sandor began to walk up the stairs to his quarters, falling in on Sandor's left side as Carlus trailed them unobtrusively.

"Tell him I can't come, on account of the season and the difficulty of travel," Sandor said as he pulled off his gauntlets and tucked them under his arm. "More polite than saying that I hate tourneys." He had been to one, shortly after taking possession of Fief Clegane, and wanted to ride for the hills before the first day was half-over. Someone must have told the mothers that the new Knight of Clegane was a fine catch for a landed knight's daughter, what with being a distinguished veteran of the Dornish wars and having the favor of Lord Lannister. If the Red Viper were still alive, Sandor would have told him to learn from the women who had sent their daughters after him; none of the ambushes he had survived in Dorne had been anywhere near as bad. Even scowling at them in a way that he knew made his facial scars especially grotesque hadn't helped; one brainless creature had actually giggled and asked him to do it again, as if he was some kind of performing bear.

Their fathers and brothers had been worse, if that was possible. The number of western knights who had served in Dorne could be counted on two hands, and Sandor was the only one who had stayed in Dorne longer than the king had. Which meant that, to the knights who had been forced to stay home on account of politics, he was the closest that they could get to experiencing the Red Viper Rebellion themselves. The badgering for anecdotes had been relentless, along with the claims that if only the men of the Westerlands had been there then the Red Viper would have been brought to bay on the banks of the Greenblood, if not sooner. It had taken all of Sandor's hard-won self-control to not sneer in their faces. They might be belted knights, and men whose pedigrees went back to time out of mind, but he doubted that any of them would have done well on a long patrol in the desert, where the consequences of failure had started at a quick death in battle and gotten worse from there. Sandor would have taken Ser Rickon over any five of his neighbors; at least Ser Rickon had known what he was doing.

"All well at Dog Tower, still?" he asked, off-handedly.

"Ser Garrick sent the usual smoke signal at noon," Samwell replied. "Nothing unusual to report."

Sandor nodded, concealing disappointment. With Clegane Keep at one end of the fief, the other end was secured by Dog Tower, a two-story watchtower that had a double-edged reputation among the fief's men-at-arms. Usually, being placed in command of Dog Tower was a mark of favor and a sign that you were being considered for advancement, on account of it being an effectively independent command. In winter, however, being placed in command of Dog Tower was considered a sign of disfavor, due to its poor heating and relative isolation from the rest of the fief. Which was why Ser Garrick Dacre was in command there; he was an old man, the only man-at-arms of the fief who remained from Gregor's days, and his weakness for and ineptitude at gambling had left him with hardly a handful of coppers to his name when Sandor had taken possession. Sandor hadn't been able to bring himself to throw Ser Garrick, who was old enough to be his father, onto the road, but he still had doubts about the man. Any man who could serve Gregor was not someone to wholly trust. Hence his posting to Dog Tower. If Ser Garrick could keep the small garrison in order for the length of the winter and stay away from the dice and the cards while he did, then he would stay. If he couldn't, then Sandor would dismiss him, and the old man would have to try and get a place with the Lannisport City Watch. As Ser Rickon had been fond of saying, sometimes you simply had to know when to let someone go.

As Sandor dismissed Samwell at the door of his solar, he couldn't help scowling after the man. Being the Knight of Clegane had its benefits, for one thing he had a roaring fire and a warm bed to look forward to, but being confined to the Keep and its environs like this was boring. The reason Sandor had asked after Dog Tower was the slight hope that Ser Garrick might report bandits or even a wolf pack or a lion taking livestock. Anything to break the tedium.

XXX

"Whereas the king has imposed upon his people new and unusual taxes intended to fuel a profitless enterprise of folly;

Whereas the king has abolished the ancient system of governance in neighboring kingdoms, establishing therein arbitrary governments subject to his will alone and imposing that will with such force as to render it an example and fit instrument to extend such arbitrary government throughout the remainder of the Realm;

Whereas the king has enlisted the help of a corrupt and tyrannical High Septon to enforce the aforesaid taxes and arbitrary governments, thus unjustly placing those persons who seek only to defend their rights and liberties in peril of their mortal lives and immortal souls;

Whereas this unnatural and unholy alliance is clearly meant to more perfectly impose an illegal despotism upon the Seven Kingdoms, of a sort designed to reduce the people of those Kingdoms to the status of slaves in bondage to the Iron Throne;

Whereas all our petitions for redress of these and other grievances have gone unanswered;

We who sign our names below hereby resolve, upon the honor of our Houses,

Firstly, that we shall refuse to pay any taxes to the king's government save those which we have been accustomed to pay since time immemorial, or to which we shall freely consent;

Secondly, that we shall refuse to submit to the authority of any government save for that to which we have been accustomed to submit since time immemorial, or to which we shall freely consent;

Thirdly, to petition that a General Council of the Faith of the Seven be called to redress such abuses as shall be discovered;

Fourthly, to call a Great Council of the Seven Kingdoms in order to redress the grievances named herein, along with such other grievances as the Council shall deem necessary and expedient."

Richard Norcross lowered the sheet of fine vellum upon which he and his fellows had written their Resolutions and looked around the table. "My lords," he said formally, "the laws of chivalry demand I ask you this; are you prepared to uphold these words with your fortunes and your bodies? For once we put our names to these Resolutions, there is no turning back. We will not be able to accept any peace short of victory."

"I am prepared," Fredrick Norridge said, his cheeks flushed with spirit as much as with the claret that had been passed around the table as the conspirators finalized their plans. "I say aye to these Resolutions."

"As do I," said Gaston Graves, who drew the ivory-hilted rondel dagger from his side and placed it on the table. "And I say also; damnation to this king, and all who stand with him!"

"I say aye, as well," Dayvid Pommingham said, "and pledge me and all mine to this cause."

Richard bowed. "Then I say aye as well, my comrades," he said formally, "in earnest of which, I call you all to witness that I am the first to sign my name to these Resolutions." He took the swan-feather quill from the inkpot at his right hand and signed his name with a dramatic flourish. As he stepped back Fredrick came forward and signed, then Gaston, and then Dayvid. After Dayvid signed his name, they each drew their daggers and crossed them over the parchment as Septon Ryman, who had been standing to one side, stepped forward and placed his claw-like hand over the blades.

"As you have sworn, so let yourselves be bound," he intoned. "Let none of you make any separate peace with your enemies, nor break faith with your comrades, nor fail to do all within your power to secure the victory. In the name of the Father, and of the Mother, and of the Warrior, and of the Maiden, and of the Smith, and of the Crone, and of the Stranger, so mote it be."

"So mote it be," the conspirators murmured as Richard felt a surge of triumph. They were only four, yes, but between them they had almost three hundred lances at their call, and many of their friends and neighbors who shared the same fears and grievances they did could be counted on to join their banners. All that was needed was for a spark to be struck, and the tinder that was the Upper Mander would burst into flame. And, Gods willing, once the weakness and falsehood of the Sour Stag was exposed, men of worth across Westeros would rally to them. And even if they didn't, the Gods would provide.

XXX

Lord Commander Qorgyle of the Night's Watch looked down at the slip of paper that Maester Aemon had put in his hands; it was the daily report from the patrol he had sent towards Eastwatch-by-the-Sea. Arrived Sable Hall this evening, stopping for the night. Will continue onwards tomorrow. Nothing unusual to report. Jarman Buckwell.

Qorgyle neatly folded the paper and tucked it into a pocket of his black cloak, thinking as he did so. Mallador Locke had also reported in from the patrol heading west to the Shadow Tower to say that nothing was amiss. Not only that, but the two patrols he had sent northward to scout the haunted forest had also sent their ravens back reporting that they had found nothing unusual and were on their way home. When winter had arrived so swiftly he had privately feared the worst, but it seemed that the White Walkers would not be coming this year. He tapped the hilt of his sword and spat aside to avert the omen, nonetheless, but if they were coming then they would have seen signs. Wildlings moving south in larger-than-usual numbers, uncommonly long blizzards, wild rumors out of Hardhome, anything. The lack of evidence might be suspicious in itself, but sometimes no news was the best news.

And aside from the onset of winter, the Watch was doing splendidly. Robert the Brief's venture across the Narrow Sea might have proven a drain on their already slender recruiting pool, but the Red Viper's rebellion had made up for it. There were many Dornishmen who had fought for the Red Viper and had either been captured or surrendered upon his death, and when these men had been given the choice between death, exile to Myr, or the Wall, many of them had chosen the Wall. They had not fought for the Red Viper's cause simply to bend the knee to a Baratheon, whatever side of the Narrow Sea he ruled on. Not since the Targaryens had landed, he thought, had so many Dornishmen taken the black; when the Targaryens had fought in Dorne, they had killed their captives out of hand, more often than not, either as reprisal killings or simply to try and sow terror. Whatever might be said of Stannis, he was at least more reasonable than Daeron the Young Dragon.

Qorgyle nodded to Maester Aemon, who bowed silently, and strode out of the rookery to make for his study. He would write to Lord Brandon and inform him that all seemed quiet Beyond-the-Wall, and since the White Walkers were nowhere to be seen that would almost certainly be true of mundane threats as well. Even the wildlings did not make war in winter if they could help it.