Jon Connington sat in the stern where the spray could not reach and watched the oars bite and lift, bite and lift, as if the men could row them backward through time. The Trident's mouth was widening ahead, losing itself in marsh and brackish reeds. Beyond that lay the sea and whatever mercy the world still offered.
Next to him, Rhaegar was bundled tightly in scraps of sail, as if his warmth could be kept in. The prince's breastplate sat a foot away, the gemstones missing from the setting. Now the armor was hollow, only a cavity remained where a ruby dragon once roared proudly. Connington had spent half the night scrubbing it with sand until his hands bled.
He had done the same with the prince's hair. It had been matted with blood when they dragged him from the shallows. Jon combed it anyway, patient and careful, coaxing back a pearly luster that did not belong in mud and war.
He had always loved that hair. When they were squires, he had brushed it every morning without thinking twice. Once they earned their spurs, there were always septons and septas eager to notice hands lingering too long, eyes too soft, devotion too obvious.
Connington brushed his fingers along the prince's resting face. There were bruises along his throat where the current had worked him. Connington touched them with two fingers, then jerked his hand away as if he had been burned.
He glanced up.
Men were everywhere on the river. Not armies, not in any order. Little boats with frightened faces and bundled belongings, hugging the banks and keeping their eyes down. Refugees.
A few armed barges flew banners of Crownlands lords.
His own men kept their voices low. They had seen what he had seen: the dragon's fall, the rebels cheering like boys at a fair. No one said the word defeat, but it lay over the boat like fog.
Connington set his jaw until it ached. He did not allow the thought to settle.
A sailor crouched at the tiller. "Saltpans by nightfall," he said. "If the tide behaves."
Saltpans. Jon recalled a fishing town with a shallow harbor, sturdy little lighthouse, salt in the air, and enough mudflats to swallow an army's footprints. House Cox had stood with them against the treasonous Tully, so Connington thought the port was safe enough.
And there were stores there. Grain. Pitch. Rope. Oil. Salt to cure an army's worth of meat.
He hated himself for thinking of supplies with the prince at his side.
He hated himself more for needing them.
He had failed as a leader. His softness had come back to haunt him. He had been too gentle at the Stony Sept, and the town had sheltered a wounded rebellion. Too gentle with the smallfolk of the Riverlands, and now the royal host ran hungry and thin.
Randyll Tarly would have been hard enough. Tywin Lannister would have been ruthless enough.
But Rhaegar had trusted him.
Connington's hand closed on the edge of the sailcloth and stayed there. A gust of winter wind worried the fabric, and he imagined for one mad instant that Rhaegar might stir beneath it, annoyed at the draft.
He looked around to make sure no one watched. His men pretended not to see him. They had the tact to look anywhere else.
He leaned down.
His lips brushed the prince's mouth. Cold. No warmth at all. The contact lasted only a heartbeat, a stupid, desperate thing that did nothing but make Connington's eyes sting.
He sat back quickly. His face felt raw. A few tears slipped through the cracks of his composure, and he hated himself for it. He needed to be strong for the prince. Strong enough to drag his dynasty back from the brink.
When they rounded a bend, Connington saw another boat drifting near the bank, half-hidden among reeds. It looked empty at first. Then a figure rose from beneath a dark cloak like a shadow standing up. A red gemstone flashed at the throat. A woman's hair, copper-red, fell loose under the hood.
She lifted a hand in greeting, slow and deliberate.
One of Connington's men spat. "Red witch."
"Keep your mouth shut," Connington snapped, harsher than he meant. The man flinched. "The Red Faith fights with us."
The woman's boat slid out of the cove with a careful stroke of the oars. She did not row quickly, but there was a gracefulness to the motion.
Connington waited until she drew alongside, close enough that he could smell smoke on her clothes.
"Lord Connington," she said, voice soft as if they shared a secret. "You carry someone I have been seeking."
He did not answer. He kept his gaze on her hands. They were bare, pale, steady on the gunwale.
"And you carry grief," she continued. "It will drown you if you let it."
Connington's jaw tightened. "Who are you."
"A servant," she said, and her mouth curved. "Of a truth you do not yet understand. Of a god who has great plans for your prince."
Connington looked down at the sailcloth. Rain beaded on it and ran in little rivulets. For a heartbeat, his heart thudded hard enough to hurt.
"You've heard the whispers," she said. "The dragon fell. The rebels crow. The realm thinks the story is over."
"It is," one of Connington's men muttered. Connington shot him a look, and the man fell silent.
The woman's gaze did not flicker. "It is not. His song of Fire has yet to meet the Great Other's Ice"
Connington barked a short, humorless laugh. "If you've come to sell stories and songs, sadly I've no time for mummers."
Her eyes slid past him, to the shape wrapped in cloth. "It is not just stories I offer. It is power."
Connington's fingers dug into his palm. "Say what you mean."
She did not seem offended. "Your prince was promised," she said simply. "Not to sit a chair of blades. To face a darkness older than your kings and your quarrels. He cannot do that from the bottom of a river."
Connington's breath caught with hope. "Rhaegar is dead."
"His ribcage may be shattered," she corrected. "His song is not."
The words were absurd. And yet Connington's mind supplied images unbidden: Rhaegar's hands on a harp, his voice speaking of dawn, of duty, of destiny, of a line that must continue. Rhaegar's eyes when he spoke of three children as if the number mattered more than their mother. Rhaegar sharing his dreams of dragons returning to life.
If there is a god who plays with men, Connington thought, Rhaegar was always its favorite toy.
"Even if I believed you," Connington said, "what do you want."
"To help you do what you cannot do alone," she said. "To wake him."
The rain made a soft hiss on wood. Somewhere downriver a bell rang, distant, small, swallowed quickly by wind.
"How," Connington demanded.
"Fire," she said. "Blood. Sacrifice. No one life can equal that of the promised prince. But many can."
His stomach tightened. "We are not butchers."
Her gaze held him. "You are soldiers. You know what victory costs. You have already paid in tens of thousands. You will pay again if the realm needs it."
Connington swallowed. He heard his own voice in his head from months earlier, speaking to men in tents: Hold here. Die here. It is necessary. He had not believed himself a monster then. He had been proud.
"How many lives," he asked, and hated himself for asking.
She tipped her head toward the widening river. "Saltpans."
He stared at her. "The whole town?"
"Everyone in Saltpans must be used," she said, as if listing provisions. "Because it has walls to hold what must be held inside. Because there are people enough to feed the flames."
Connington's men shifted. One muttered a curse. Another crossed himself to the Seven.
Connington's thoughts went ugly and fast. Saltpans had a garrison, a few stout men-at-arms, and a harbor. It had fishers and traders and children. It also had pitch stores, oil for lamps, and warehouses full of timber and rope.
He imagined the gates shut. The docks sealed. No boats allowed out. A clean containment. A clean slaughter.
"No," he whispered with horror, and the word came out thin.
The woman's eyes softened, and it made Connington want to strike her. "You say no now," she murmured. "Because the world has not yet asked you the true question."
Connington gripped the edge of his seat until his knuckles went white. "And what question is that."
She leaned in, close enough that he could see the fine wet lashes clinging to her cheeks. "Do you want him back," she whispered, "more than you want to keep your hands clean."
Silence fell as if someone had thrown a blanket over the river. Even the oars seemed quieter.
Connington looked down again at the man he loved.
He saw Rhaegar's face in his mind, the prince who had clapped him on the shoulder when he captured Lyanna. Well done, Jon. I knew I could trust you.
Then the memory twisted. It became Rhaegar at the ford, riding into hammer range as if he had never once considered his own mortality.
Connington's chest hurt. He could not decide if he was angry at Rhaegar or at himself for still wanting him back.
He thought of fire, and the screams of men consumed by it.
He took a breath. "If I do this," he said, voice low, "and it fails—"
"It will not," she said at once.
Connington's lip curled. "That is not an answer."
"It is the only one you can afford," she replied, and there was steel in it now. "You do not have the luxury of failure. Neither does he."
Connington sat very still. The river slid past like time, indifferent, relentless.
He thought of the songs that would be sung if Rhaegar rose from death. He thought of the men who would rally. He thought of the rebels choking on their victory. He thought of the realm made orderly again, guided by the only man Connington had ever believed in.
The future had no room for mercy.
Connington opened his eyes. "What is your name."
"Melisandre," she said. "Of Asshai."
——————————————————
Saltpans smelled like fish and wet rope and the sharp, honest bite of salt on the wind. It should have felt like a safe haven from the war. Instead, Connington was haunted by the faces of the damned.
He brought his men in at the river gate under a pretense of refuge. The town's watch looked relieved to see dragon banners, then wary when they saw how few banners remained.
Connington spoke to the captain at the gate with a tired soldier's authority. "We need food and supplies," he said. "We need the harbor closed for the night. No boats. No one leaves. Rebels may be near."
The captain hesitated, eyes flicking to the ragged men behind Connington. "My lord, the folk will not like it."
Connington fixed him with a stare. "The folk will like rebels less. Shut it."
Orders went out. Chains went across the harbor. Men stationed at the docks with spears and crossbows. Sacks of salt and sand were piled up in front of the gates as barricades.
Connington did not look at the faces.
He carried Rhaegar's body through the streets under a cloak, but people saw anyway. They always saw. Whispers rippled like rats through walls.
A pale bird watched from a rooftop, white as bone against slate. Connington caught a glimpse of it, just once, and his stomach tightened.
He told himself he had imagined it.
Melisandre moved through Saltpans like a woman already at home. She spoke to no one. She only watched where pitch was stored, where timber sat dry, where the wind would carry flame.
When the sun bled out behind the harbor, she stopped in a square where a small sept stood, its doors shut, its windows glowing with candlelight.
"These false idols are a worthy addition to our offering," she declared.
Connington's mouth was dry. "Start," he said, and his voice did not shake.
Men lit torches, throwing them into warehouses as the party made its way to the docks.
Someone screamed behind them. Dogs began to bark, then howl.
Jon Connington set his prince inside the lighthouse and turned back to hand out orders.
He oversaw men of Griffin's Roost who turned people back from the waterfront at spearpoint. He watched a fisherman slam his fist against the barred wood of a gate until blood ran down his wrist. He watched a woman clutch a child and beg the guards for passage. She was denied.
He told himself he was doing this for the realm.
He told himself the realm would thank him.
He told himself Rhaegar would.
Melisandre began to pray, and the words were not the Seven's. They rolled and rose, strange and hungry, as if the air itself leaned in to listen.
Fire took the rooftops. It climbed fast, greedy on tarred shingles and dry beams. Smoke churned down streets, thick as wool. The town became a throat full of coughing.
Connington found himself moving toward where Rhaegar lay. He pushed into the room, shutting the lighthouse door on the worst of the noise.
It was dim inside, lit by one candle that shook with each distant collapse. Rhaegar lay on a table, the sailcloth removed from his battered body. His skin looked even paler in the firelight.
Connington stepped closer. His hands trembled. He clenched them into fists.
Outside, the screams rose and rose until they blurred into one sound. A chorus. An offering.
Melisandre's voice threaded through it all, steady as a drum.
Connington leaned in, close enough to feel the cold of Rhaegar's cheek. He could not stop himself. He whispered, "Come back."
Rhaegar did not answer.
For a long moment, nothing happened but the candle's frantic flutter and the sound of a town dying.
Then Rhaegar's chest jerked.
It was small. It could have been Connington's imagination. It could have been a shift in the table.
The Lord of Griffin's Roost froze in anticipation.
Rhaegar drew a breath like a man surfacing from deep water. His shimmering violet eyes snapped open, unfocused.
Connington's knees nearly gave out. A laugh strangled in his throat, half sob, half prayer. He reached out, not daring to touch at first, as if the prince might vanish again.
"My prince," he whispered. "It was worth it. It was all worth it."