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“The fifth day, and you still haven’t tasted any wine, brother? You’re missing the best thing that’s ever come out of Dorne. Including the women.”
If there’s a thing that Stannis Baratheon wishes right now, is for his brother to at least keep his voice down. Not that there’s a chance – everyone heard that, and now most people sitting at the (huge) table at are staring him.
“I’m not thirsty,” he replies, trying to keep his tone as even as possible. It doesn’t work, since now he can see that most of his current company is obviously trying not to laugh. His brother doesn’t make pay the same courtesy, and Robert’s laughter is loud enough that if whoever was sitting at the nearby tables hadn’t noticed what was going on, they probably know now.
“Not thirsty? You haven’t drank anything since you sat down.”
“I don’t remember it being a crime.” He grinds his teeth as he says it, his already bad mood spiraling towards extremely bad. He had no idea that Robert had been even paying attention.
“Then one wonders why you don’t know how to appreciate the finer things,” Robert pretty much shouts, and Stannis wishes that Robert wasn’t his older brother and that he wasn’t king, because in that case, no one could have stopped him from leaving the room right this moment. The only person who doesn’t seem to enjoy this farce is Cersei Lannister – not that it makes Stannis any happier.
“I care naught for that,” Stannis hisses, realizing that his cheeks are flushing. He probably looks ridiculous right now. Why did he ever accept to attend?
“So you’ll let people think that you can’t even handle a cup or two? “
“I can handle some forsaken wine.” He doesn’t realize that he’s fallen right into his brother’s trap until after he speaks out loud, but the moment he does, he grinds his teeth harder.
“Then why don’t you show it to us?” Robert says between a laugh and another, and before Stannis knows, someone has put in front of him a rather large cup filled with Dornish red.
He sighs, wishing he could throw it in his brother’s face, but that wouldn’t be proper and if there’s one thing Stannis won’t do is ridiculing the king in front of half the court – no matter that Robert deserves it. That said, it’s not as if he’s never had wine in his life – he never liked it, or liked indulging in it, but that’s all moot, isn’t it?
He grabs the cup and drinks half of it at once, trying not to think about the number of people watching him. Then he places it carefully on the table before staring at the serving girl who had brought it to him first.
“Refill it,” he hisses, his tone clipped, his features schooled into not giving anything away. It doesn’t taste bad – after all, it’s good Dornish, not cheap wine brewed in some filthy tavern in Flea Bottom, and maybe two or three cups will be enough to make his brother feel accomplished. And then he’ll be left alone.
It’s a pity, he thinks, that Davos hasn’t arrived yet – Stannis had sent for him the moment he knew about his brother’s plans to celebrate their victory on Balon Greyjoy, and he had wanted someone with some sense to be around him. But the weather has been horrid and traveling has slowed down, so while he knows that Davos will come, it’ll probably be when this entire mummer’s farce is over.
He takes another good drink from his cup again while his brother screams that maybe he’s finally learning how to enjoy living. He declines answering, finishes the cup and asks for another refill, and then another, and after that one the serving girl doesn’t wait for his input before pouring more wine. It occurs to him that maybe he should have eaten something in between, he has hardly looked at all the food covering the table, and he knows that drinking that much on an empty stomach is a bad idea. But somehow it doesn’t seem too important. After three cups, he feels a bit warmer than usual, but he supposes it’s normal. It’s not… too bad. He can see everything clearly, his fingers are steady and the taste is pleasant. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t prove his brother wrong for another little while, and he takes another drink.
--
When Davos finally arrives at the Red Keep, he’s been hearing shouts and music even from the outside. He shows Stannis’s parchment to the guards outside the main gate – they won’t let him in otherwise, since they aren’t among the ones who know him already.
“Where can I find Lord Stannis?” he asks when they clear his way.
“Probably in the main hall,” one of the guards answers. “The king’s been celebrating for days now and it’ll go on for another couple at least. Who’d have known that I’d have had to thank the Ironborn for all the free scraps we’re all getting.”
Davos thanks him and walks inside the castle. He’s tempted to hurry up or run towards the hall, he’s already late enough, but for some reason he can’t help feeling humbled whenever he’s at court. The first time he set foot in that castle, he had stood still for maybe a minute before forcing himself to move forward. He can’t help it – it had happened the first time he walked inside Storm’s End after the siege was over, too, and that had seemed already too much. It always makes his head spin, thinking that he can set foot in here when he can’t even read the parchment that he gave the guard so that he could be let in. Sometimes he can barely believe it when people call him Ser in the first place. At least when it’s his former peers they don’t sound as if they’re wondering how the likes of him gained a knighthood, but that doesn’t change that he’ll never feel completely comfortable in a company made mostly of lords.
Of course, Stannis Baratheon is an exception. Davos’s fingers go to the small pouch of bones he keeps on his collarbone, and then he walks straight towards the main hall.
The first thing he thinks is that the king has indeed gone out of his way this time – the entire hall is covered in fine drapes that weren’t there the last time Davos was here, there are at least ten musicians scattered around so that they’re covering the entire room and there are at least eight tables set. For a moment, Davos thinks bitterly that half of the food in this room could have fed his family for months, before he was knighted, but he pushes that thought away. This isn’t the time or place for it.
He tries to locate his liege lord without much luck – too much noise and too many people. This until someone puts a hand on his arm.
“I suppose you must be looking for Stannis Baratheon, aren’t you?”
Davos turns on his right to find himself face to face with Oberyn Martell, who seems about to leave the feast. Davos doesn’t miss that there’s a quite beautiful girl on his right side, and an equally striking boy next to the girl, but it’s no mystery that Lord Martell likes the pleasures of the flesh. And he’s one of the few lords that Davos has ever talked to who has never gone out of his way to make him feel every inch the commoner that he was born.
“Yes, my lord. I’m afraid that I joined the festivities a bit later than I was supposed to.”
Lord Martell laughs, but it’s not mocking. “Ser, if that’s what you’re worried about, you can reassure yourself that there’ll be at least two other full days ahead. But I’m sure that it’s not your main priority. Your liege lord is at the last table on the left with His Grace, and if I were you I’d run and put a stop to the mummer’s farce going on over there.”
Then he’s gone along with the boy and the girl. Davos heads quickly for the table in question, stopping for a moment when a maid puts a cup of wine in his hands without even asking him whether he wants it or not.
When he gets there, he realizes what Lord Martell had meant. Because he has never seen his liege lord drinking something heavier than cider, and now his cheeks are flushed while he’s sipping from a cup of the same wine that was given to him. Davos takes a drink from his own cup and grimaces – it’s excellent wine, no doubt about that. Probably the finest he’s ever drunk. But it’s also the kind that goes to your head quickly enough if you aren’t used to it (and maybe even if you are). He can’t help a traitorous thought – this is going to end badly. .
He glances at the king, before anyone notices that he’s here and they’ll start paying attention to him. His Grace is encouraging his brother to learn to live a little, and Davos doesn’t miss that Ned Stark isn’t at his side. That isn’t exactly a surprise – the Greyjoy rebellion was mostly fought in the North when not on the islands themselves, and he had been the one taking Lord Greyjoy’s son hostage. Lord Stark is enough of a decent man that he wouldn’t leave a bannerman to bring the child to Winterfell so that he could come to King’s Landing in order to feast. To be entirely truthful, he doesn’t get the point of a week of feasts in the first place. Davos can’t help thinking that it was only a pretest. Defeating a house whose glory days have passed a long while ago isn’t a reason to waste the crown’s money on such a huge feast. But then again if Davos has learned something about his liege lord’s brother, is that if there’s an occasion to eat, drink and bed women, then he’s not going to pass on it. If Ned Stark was here, maybe this wouldn’t be happening – when he’s around, His Grace is never as loud and doesn’t drink as much. But he isn’t, and wishing for the contrary won’t change anything.
Also, now that he’s noticing it, there isn’t a free chair anywhere that he can see. For a moment he’s wary of walking up to the table and making his presence known – he still feels out of place as it is, he isn’t sure that a former commoner would be welcome to just walk up to the table and ask to sit – but then Stannis turns in his direction while handing his cup to a maid for a refill (gods, it’s so wrong to see it). He narrows his eyes for a moment, as if he can’t distinguish what he’s seeing and that’s when Davos knows for sure that things have gone too far already, because his liege lord has never needed to glance at someone twice to know who they were. Davos is a few feet from the table – on any given day, Stannis would have already recognized him.
And then Stannis stands up and slams his hand on the table hard enough that people from other tables turn to stare at him.
“Ser Davos, I wasn’t expecting you so soon. Give the man a chair!” Stannis almost shouts while his hand makes a motion for Davos to come closer. Davos swallows and follows the order, and he can’t help thinking that the only times he’s heard Stannis’s voice sounding that loud, it was during a battle.
The moment he gets to the table, and clearly this had to be the one time where Stannis is seated at the head (he usually prefers not to), some maid brings a chair over and heads for an empty spot between a couple of lords a bit farther down the table.
“Where are you going? Bring it here, not – not wherever you think there’s some space.” Stannis’s voice falters for a second, but Davos chooses to ignore it. As he chooses to ignore that half the table is staring at them.
“My lord,” he starts, “I don’t think it’s proper that I sit –”
“Ser, close your mouth and take your seat. Here.”
Then Stannis moves his chair a bit on the left, and the maid can’t get it wrong now – she puts the chair in the empty space next to Stannis and Davos can’t do anything other than sit down.
The moment he looks at his side and meets the eyes of a number of lords sitting at his right he can’t help feeling completely out of place – everyone is staring at him as if they would really appreciate it if he stood up and left right now. Also, he has just noticed that the king has conveniently started paying attention to the other side of the table.
Davos doesn’t drink the rest of his wine only because he can’t afford to be tipsy.
“You were late.”
Stannis’s voice startles Davos from his moment of self-pity, and he doesn’t like the tone of it. It’s not that he seems disappointed; he sounds as if Davos arriving late had somehow made his life miserable, and Davos can’t begin to wrap his head around it.
“My apologies,” Davos says, trying to keep the worry from his voice. “The weather has been unpredictable.”
Stannis scowls before taking another rather large drink from his cup. That’s when the maid comes back and places a full plate in front of Davos, and that’s when he notices that the food on his liege lord’s plate is mostly untouched.
He wonders if there’s a way to get the both of them out of this room before something that will be regretted in the morning happens, but he can’t see any for the moment, and so he reaches for his plate. He hasn’t eaten in hours.
“Tell me if it’s good,” Stannis says the moment Davos takes the plate. He’s slurring – slightly, sure, but Davos doesn’t like it at all.
“You haven’t had any yet, my lord?” Davos asks then. Stannis shakes his head with more force than required.
“I was – wasn’t hungry.”
Davos doesn’t say anything, merely nods as he takes a spoon in his left hand and starts eating. It’s excellent stew. He wouldn’t be surprised if the spices came from the Free Cities. He glances at his left again – other than the same lords looking at him with disdain before digging into their food, there’s nothing else to notice.
“So? How is it?” Stannis presses when Davos has swallowed.
“Quite good,” he settles on. Stannis looks at him, then at his own plate, and then he picks it up and thankfully, thankfully starts eating from it instead of reaching for his (refilled) cup. He obviously deems it good enough since he doesn’t push the plate away after the first spoonful, and when he isn’t looking Davos pushes a cup of water in his direction, but the attempt goes unnoticed.
“That’s… acceptable,” Stannis says when he’s halfway done. His fingers are shaking and someone at his right is chuckling – exactly what Davos had been dreading.
“Those onions of yours tasted better though,” Stannis declares before pushing the plate away and reaching for the wine cup.
Someone not far laughs out loud and Davos isn’t sure that he should be here at all. He should leave, but it’d probably be an even worse idea than staying put. His head is starting to hurt. Maybe he should say that and use it as an excuse, but that’s just not an option. He can see people talking in hushed tones while glancing at him, and of course they’d talk – he’s also sitting where Stannis’s wife should be, if she were here at all. Davos doesn’t know why she hasn’t come, but this isn’t the time to inquire about it.
And then he turns back to Stannis, figuring that he has to answer somehow, and – gods. He’s smiling. For a moment Davos can’t find anything to say. He has seen Stannis smile sometimes, but it always was a small thing, lips barely curled up, mostly happening after receiving good news during a war or a battle. Not that Stannis Baratheon has many reasons to smile often, Davos had understood that early on. But now Davos can see teeth, and it’s not a forced smile at all, and while Stannis’s eyes are bloodshot and his cheeks are flushed and he’s holding his cup so loosely that wine spills on the table, there’s no denying that it’s… a good look on him. Davos thinks he’d be delighted to see it happening on a regular basis. And then he thinks that it’s really unfair that the reason it is happening at all is too much good wine.
“My lord –” he starts, and then Stannis starts laughing. Davos doesn’t even know how to describe it – it’s not carefree, or amused, but it’s loud. And it sounds… bitter, somehow?
“You shouldn’t have to,” Stannis mutters, sounding almost out of breath. He had put the cup back on the table moments before; he makes a motion with his hand that results in his wrist hitting the cup and the remnant of the wine spilling over the tablecloth, deep red on pristine white.
“I beg your pardon?”
“All this non – nonsense,” Stannis keeps on, and he’s not going out of his way to keep his tone down. “Ser, my lord, what bloody nonsense.”
Someone gasps – and with good reason. Stannis isn’t famous for swearing liberally. And Davos really needs to find an excuse to somehow get the both of them out of this room.
“And you know why – why it’s nonsense?”
“I don’t,” Davos answers a couple of seconds later, realizing that Stannis had expected him to answer.
“Titles mean… nothing. You’re – you’re the main reason why no one – no one starved to death at Storm’s End, and now I hear – I hear laughter because you’re… sitting exactly where you’re meant to. As if I’d only do it because of wine.”
Stannis laughs again at that, and Davos hears people murmuring. He glances quickly at the table again – there’s laughter happening on the opposite side as well. But it’s because of something the king has just said, and the king is ignoring their side still.
“My lord, I don’t think –” Davos says, and then Stannis stands up and grabs his arm, forcing him to do the same. He might be drunk and he’s not exactly steady on his feet, but he’s still strong enough that his grip hurts.
“Splendid idea,” he says then. “We should go. I never wanted to be here in the first bloody place.”
Then his hand relinquishes his grip on Davos’s arm and he heads for the door, and while he’s swaying slightly, he doesn’t look in danger of falling, so Davos stays a step behind him and follows him out. He doesn’t glance at the table – he doesn’t need to know what reaction this outburst has just caused.
Also, being away from the room is enough to make him feel better already – it was too hot and too crowded and too noisy. When they’re far enough he catches up to Stannis, not at all surprised when he grips his arm again.
“Davos?” he slurs.
“My lord?”
“I think – no, I want some fresh air. But – where –”
“On our left,” Davos says, heading for a small hallway that he knows should bring out to the gardens without too much hassle or passing in front of too many guards. The least witnesses the better.
It doesn’t take much to finally get out into the open, and gods if Davos isn’t glad he isn’t in that room. He hadn’t realized how stale the air inside had been until this point.
“Much better. I hate feasts.” He says it so dryly that for a moment Davos could pretend that they’re both sober.
“I know, my lord. If it consoles you, I’m not that fond of them either.”
Stannis laughs again, but this time it doesn’t sound somehow wrong.
“Might be one of the reasons you’re the only – the only tolerable person in this castle right now.”
Davos can’t help chuckling at that. Fine, he shouldn’t let it get to his head. But he recognizes a compliment for what it is, and while tolerable isn’t exactly the best of words, Stannis isn’t having a problem with him being the one person around right now. He isn’t sure that many other lords would trust a former commoner the way Stannis trusts him.
(And Davos isn’t sure that he’d have accepted to lose pieces of his fingers if it had been any other lord’s decision.)
“Why, my lord, thank you. I’m flattered.”
Stannis shakes his head, attempts to walk forward, but then he stops abruptly and Davos thinks he knows what this means.
“Davos?” he asks, his voice suddenly thin. Davos has never heard him sound like this, not even during the assault.
“My lord –”
“I feel – this isn’t right, this isn’t –”
Davos corrects his earlier assumption. This is exactly what he thought it would be. He’s quick to drop to his knees and hold Stannis’s head up while he throws up on the half-dead bush in front of him. He had figured it would come to it – that much wine combined with almost no food, it was bound to happen.
He hopes that Stannis doesn’t remember any of this in the morning and he holds his head up.
For the next minute, the only sound he hears is Stannis’s heavy breathing.
“My lord?” he asks. “Is – is it over?”
Stannis gives him a curt nod, still breathing heavily. Davos searches for a piece of spare cloth he keeps in his pocket and hands it over, not assuming that he can do anything with it himself. There’s smuggling onions in a castle under assault and there’s this – he isn’t sure of where the boundaries lie.
Stannis grabs it with shaking fingers and cleans his mouth before spitting into the ground.
“Tastes foul,” he mutters, and now he sounds merely tired. “And my head hurts.”
Davos can believe that, also considering where they came from. “We should go to your quarters,” he says, keeping his voice low. No need to raise it. Stannis looks at him – he’s blinking a lot more than he normally would, obviously trying to focus his stare. Davos doesn’t think he’s succeeding.
“We – we should? I don’t – where are we even?”
“The gardens. Can you stand, my lord?”
Stannis grunts and pulls himself up to his feet, still swaying. Davos grabs his arm, putting it around his own shoulders. He isn’t surprised when Stannis leans on him almost completely – he looks as if he’s finding it hard to stand up, let alone to walk straight. Davos tries to remember if they can get to Stannis’s quarters without having to pass near the main hall again, but he doesn’t know the Red Keep well enough to come up with another option. He sighs, walking back towards the castle and the main hallway. Someone’s playing The Rains of Castamere loud enough that Davos can distinguish the words even if the singer is in the hall and they’re far enough from it.
“I hate that song.”
Davos startles at that – it’s been at least five minutes since they left the garden and Stannis hasn’t said a thing until now. Davos had figured he was this close to passing out.
“Well, His Grace is related –”
“As if I don’t know that.” Davos almost flinches at how bitter Stannis’s tone is. “I almost – almost starve to death so that he wins the war, and I get bloody Dragonstone. Tywin Lannister gets – gets one of his dogs to kill two children and a sickly woman, and his daughter becomes queen and he gets songs played at feasts. Now, tell me how – how any of –”
“My lord, the walls have ears.” Davos hadn’t wanted to interrupt, and the gods know that he had no right to do it, but they’re still in the hallway, and they’re in the Red Keep, and while Davos knows perfectly why Stannis resents his brother, he has rarely heard him say the reasons out loud. Especially when at court – talking ill of the king here and now is bound to have catastrophic consequences if anyone hears them.
But still, as he keeps on walking he lowers his voice enough that no one except Stannis could hear him. “But you’re right. There’s no fairness in that.”
Stannis doesn’t answer him and Davos doesn’t elaborate – they shouldn’t talk about such matters in the open. He runs into a maid while they’re at the bottom of a staircase that he thinks should bring them directly to the first floor and to Stannis’s room; he asks her to bring some water upstairs as quickly as possible. It takes them ten minutes to finally climb up to the first floor – Stannis’s balance doesn’t get any better and Davos has to slow down so that neither of them falls. When he finally opens the door to Stannis’s room he’s relieved to see a pitcher full of water on the desk in the corner.
He kicks the door shut and only lets go of Stannis’s arm when he’s sitting on the bed, and then he goes to the pitcher, grabs the first cup he sees around and fills it with water.
“My lord, you should drink this. It’s going to help some.” He sits on the bed as well and hands the cup over. Stannis takes it, his fingers still trembling slightly, and he takes a small sip from it before placing it on the bed.
Then he turns towards Davos, his eyes still red-rimmed and his cheeks still unnaturally flushing.
“Y’shouldn’t call me like that.”
“I – I beg your pardon?”
Stannis takes another drink from the cup. “Said it before. Titles are useless. They mean naught. What a bloody hassle. Y’should use my name.” Davos can’t help noticing that he’s slurring a lot more than before, and when he puts the empty cup of water on the bed again he looks like sadness embodied.
“I – I don’t think –” Davos starts, but Stannis shakes his head slowly, his fingers curling in the bed sheets.
“No one means it anyway. Gods, my head hurts. ‘M never doing it again. And for what – should’ve never started. Not as if Robert’s going to remember it tomorrow, I’d bet. Least you got here – told you, you’re better than ev’ryone else down there and they still won’t get it, and I hate being here, why did I even go? It’s all bloody pretenses. Or hypocrisy. Pr’bably both. And I meant what I said ‘bout the onions before.”
Davos doesn’t have time to come up with an answer at that, because a moment after says it, there are fingers grabbing his wrist, and while it’s not a loose grip, it’s not strong enough that he couldn’t get free of it in a few moments.
He hadn’t realized that he was this close to Stannis until he raises his head and finds that there are only a few inches of space between them.
“You shouldn’t look so surprised. Best food I ever tasted.”
“My lord –”
“Please don’t. You can go back to it tomorrow, just don’t now.”
The gods know that Davos shouldn’t do it. But lords don’t say please to their formerly lowborn bannermen, and – well. From what he sees, the wine has merely made Stannis a lot more talkative than he usually is, and until now… well, he hasn’t heard anything he wouldn’t have expected. For some reason it’s something Stannis wants but that he’d never ask if he was sober. And – well. It costs him nothing except manners, and manners are all pretenses after all. He knows that well enough, too.
“All right. Stannis. Am I allowed to be somewhat doubtful about that?”
“Doesn’t change the truth,” Stannis replies, and there’s something soft in the way he looks at Davos, and for a moment Davos thinks that Stannis might move closer and then there wouldn’t be any space between them anymore. His eyes are right on Davos’s mouth and Davos can’t begin to think about how disastrous would the consequences be if it actually happened. What he doesn’t know for sure is whether he’d put a stop to it, and that’s not a thought he should have, because he shouldn’t even be considering it in the first place. He doesn’t even have an excuse – he’s the sober one, it’d be even worse if he didn’t say no.
But then Stannis looks down, shaking his head a couple of times. “I hate this,” he whispers, more to himself than to anyone else, and Davos can’t help hoping that he doesn’t remember this in the morning. More for Stannis’s own sake than anything else – Davos isn’t sure that he’d look back at this experience with fondness. He’s also sure that when he’s saying that he hates this, he doesn’t only mean having drunk too much.
“You should sleep,” Davos says, trying to keep his voice even. “It’ll be less horrid in the morning.”
Stannis doesn’t object to it. His hand leaves Davos’s wrist and he leans down to take off his boots. It’s the most he manages before leaning back down on the bed without even attempting to get under the covers. He’s asleep in a matter of minutes, thankfully on his side. Davos doesn’t attempt to change the situation, but he isn’t too sure about leaving, and it would probably be advisable to be here in the morning.
Well, he has slept in places a lot less comfortable than the chairs in this room.
--
He wakes up when the sun rises, and Stannis is still sleeping. His back hurts, but he hasn’t slept in a proper bed in days and he hasn’t slept on one during most of the Greyjoy rebellion, so he figures it was bound to happen. He has no idea of where he was supposed to stay last night, he never was given the same room from time to time, and so asks the maid to bring a couple of new pitchers of water. He uses the one left from yesterday to wash his face and hands, and he groans loudly when he straightens his back.
At that he hears rustling from the bed, and when he turns towards it he sees bloodshot blue eyes looking up at him for a moment before Stannis closes them again and turns his face into the pillow.
“My lord? How are you feeling?” Davos asks.
“Water,” Stannis croaks, sounding immensely upset. Davos takes one of the new pitchers and refills the cup. Davos knows better than offering any kind of help and waits until Stannis is sitting upright before handing it over.
“What time is it?” he asks when he’s done, sounding slightly less hoarse.
“Early in the morning. I doubt that anyone else is awake.”
“Yesterday most people went to sleep at this hour.” Stannis doesn’t sound impressed at all, not that Davos would have thought otherwise. “Gods, if someone comes by and asks me if I wish to attend the feast tonight, you’re answering them and you’re telling them that I’m not.”
“Of course. Does that mean that I’m supposed to sleep in this hallway?” Davos asks, a bit surprised. Most times, he has stayed in more modest quarters.
“Wait, weren’t you shown your rooms?”
“Well, no. I went straight to the feast when I arrived yesterday evening.”
“The feast – oh.” For a moment Davos is afraid that Stannis might throw up again – his face goes pale, his teeth grind, and Davos knows that he remembers what happened last night.
“My lord, you – you shouldn’t be worrying.” He figures that it’s better if he says it now rather than waiting.
Stannis shakes his head before bringing a couple of fingers up to his temple, starting to draw circles, the tips pressing into the skin hard enough that his knuckles turn white. “The way I behaved was inexcusable. I embarrassed you and myself in front of that entire table, I should be worrying.”
“My lord, excuse me if this is out of place, but as long as I’m concerned, I don’t care about what… the entire table might think of me.”
“You – you don’t?”
Davos shrugs, sitting back down on his chair. “I’m sure they already thought nothing good of me, and I don’t expect them to change their mind. Why should that be an issue? It’s the way it goes.”
“That still wasn’t proper. I shouldn’t have fallen for it.”
“Fallen?”
“I only started drinking because of my brother. I wouldn’t have touched wine otherwise. And the things I said in the hallway – I should give you a lordship for having kept my mouth closed.”
“I merely thought that you wouldn’t have thanked me in the morning if I didn’t do it.”
“You thought well. I can’t believe I did it at all.”
Davos shrugs in sympathy, standing up again and heading for the pitcher – he’s starting to be thirsty himself. He’s also hungry, to think about it – he never managed to finish his plate of food. When he sets his cup down, he sees Stannis motioning for him to sit on the bed again and he does, putting himself at a safe distance.
“Regardless of what you think about yesterday, I should still apologize. Not only it was inexcusable, but the way I debased myself was absolutely without excuse.”
“My lord, you don’t need to apologize to me. Everyone will keep on looking at me the same way, and no one will be stupid enough to bring anything up with you. Not to your face, at least.”
“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Stannis agrees, and he doesn’t sound as self-deprecating as before. “But this mummer’s farce is over for me, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Then I’m glad to know that it won’t even start for me.”
“Nonsense. You should go this evening if you wish.”
“I don’t really care for it. Though I will admit that I was considering going back to the kitchen and see if there are some leftovers.”
“I didn’t even let you finish your dinner,” Stannis groans.
“And you had even less food than I did. I can go downstairs now and see if I can find some and bring it up here.”
Stannis shakes his head and stands up instead. “It was because of my own foolishness, I’ll get my own food. And you’re my bannerman, not my maid – you won’t bring anything up here.”
Davos follows Stannis out of the room, not bothering to point out that he could have asked a maid to bring them some food without needing to leave at all. If Stannis himself hasn’t done it, it means that he’s going downstairs himself because he has reasons for it, and Davos won’t be the one questioning them.
The main hall isn’t entirely empty when they reach it. The tables are still there and will be until the feast is over, and there’s a good number of servants cleaning the floor, changing plates and cutlery and rearranging the drapes. There’s still food on the tables though, mostly sweets or fruit – nothing that would become rotten if left uneaten for more than half an hour. After surveying the state of the room in not exactly hidden disgust, Stannis grabs a chair and sits at one table that is most definitely not the one they were at the evening before. He looks at what choice of food the table has to offer before shrugging and reaching for a honeycake. He eats it as if it’s some kind of chore, but Davos knows that he must be hungry. No one wouldn’t be after drinking that much and eating that little. Davos takes a chair as well and reaches for one honeycake himself. It’s quite good, and when he’s done he helps himself to a second and a third, not minding the servants glancing curiously at the both of them. Not that they’d say anything.
Stannis grabs his second honeycake when Davos is beginning to nibble at his fourth (he probably should try to find something of more substance, but he doubts that there’s any meat left, and he’s hungry, so the cakes will have to do for now).
“I haven’t changed my mind,” he says abruptly before taking a bite. He’s still eating as if he’s doing it out of duty. Davos wonders if he’s even paying attention to the taste.
“About what, my lord?”
“About your onions and salt fish.”
Stannis doesn’t explain further, but Davos remembers that part of the evening only too well. He should say that almost starving to death would change perspectives. Anything would have tasted heavenly to someone who hadn’t had real food in a long while.
But then again, maybe he should just accept it for what it is. He might feel humbled and out of place during huge feasts or in company of highborn lords who will never know that the onions they laugh about might save their life at one point. And the king has never exchanged a word with him and never will even if he has done it plenty of times with all the other Baratheon bannermen, but he’s proud of how he came to be here, and he’s glad that he’s in Stannis’s service. And he doesn’t need or want recognition from anyone else.
“I suppose I should have brought some with me then.”
“I suppose the next time there is a feast here and I ask you to come, you will know what to do.”
“Very well, my lord. I know that now.”
Stannis gives him a curt nod and he pours himself a cup of water before nibbling at his honeycake again, and Davos doesn’t miss the barest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Davos decides that this entire affair hasn’t ended as badly as it could have. He tries to silence a part of him that wonders why was Stannis so set on Davos calling him by his name and not a title (and that wonders if there will be another occasion for Davos to forego the rules), and for now he figures that there could be worse things than polishing the leftovers while the pale morning sunlight slowly fills the room. And since that hint of a smile doesn’t disappear from Stannis’s mouth even while he complains about the honeycakes being too sweet, Davos figures that maybe Stannis is thinking the same.
End.