My jaw clenched. His flippancy only made me angrier. If glares could kill, the man would've collapsed at my feet already.
As I watched the man turn away from me as if my words meant nothing, plucking a wine chalice along with a few more dates from a passing servant, I decided I was done. Screw skirting around it.
I wanted to convince him to let Oberyn help Ser Gerion the nice way. The way that didn't involve making enemies with a house far more powerful than my own. Now? Let any who want hear it from my own lips what was really happening.
"Killing the pirate who could save him is as good as killing him, Lord Yronwood," I growled out.
The man halted. He turned toward me slowly, his good humor vanishing like a plume in a storm. "What did you say, boy?" Ormond ground out. "You would call me a murderer? Watch your tongue. Your Lannister pet's fate is no doing of mine."
Rage surged hot and sharp like it was cutting up my insides.
"Do you deny killing the pirate, then?" I demanded. "His death bought the silence you needed. You sent ships to stop Prince Oberyn's return, didn't you? Just so happens one escaped your leash, turned pirate and slaver, and poisoned a knight of the realm."
Murmurs rippled through the alcove. Yronwood's face reddened the more I spoke, fury blazing in his eyes.
Before he opened his mouth, iron rang against marble. The sound rang like a gong across the hall. Startled as anyone else around me, I turned to look.
A tall man stood in the center of the room. I had seen large men before, knights, guards, farmhands built big by labor. The man standing there now was something else entirely. Even as he banged the pommel of an enormous longaxe against the floor, its haft thick as a man's wrist, he looked like a larger-than-life statue, towering over the cowering farmers that had moved to the other side.
His clothes were a queer sort, a heavy horsehair cape covering a studded leather tunic, all in dark colors. His hair, dark too, fell to his shoulders, while most of his face lay hidden by an iron halfhelm with a crest of sharpened spikes.
It took me a moment to make the connection. Areo Hotah, the man who came to Dorne from Norvos following Lady Mellario and who would one day become a close confidant and captain of Doran Martell's guard.
The sound of his longaxe smacking against the floor silenced the hall. That or his sheer size. Bloody hell, but I did not know the man was such a monster.
"Lord Ormond Yronwood," Prince Doran said calmly, "step forward."
Triumph flickered across Yronwood's face. Previous anger forgotten, he moved toward the dais in a strut. Ser Anders muttered under his breath as his father walked by, suddenly giddy. From the corner of my eyes, I saw guards moving quietly along the walls of the hall. They seemed to be in greater number than before.
I wasn't the only one who noticed. Jace appeared behind me. "My lord," he whispered, eyes flickering across the edges of the room, and I acknowledged him with a simple nod.
Taking a deep breath to calm myself, I settled by the side to watch whatever was happening. Like it or not, I was out of my depth here.
On the dais, Prince Doran faced the gathered nobles. "A pair of grave news has just reached me, my lords. First, that a man under arrest in the Spear Tower has died under Martell guard." He turned to Yronwood. "Have you heard of this, Lord Yronwood?"
Yronwood seemed surprised by the question. "The pirate?" he said. "Aye. I've heard."
"Word is you met with him."
He shrugged. "Briefly, aye."
"And did you speak?" Doran asked.
"No more than a word," he said, scoffing. "Too broken to say much. Just mumbling and begging. Miserable man."
"On that we agree," Prince Doran said. "It so happens that, soon after you met with him, he expired before he could produce the truth of the poison he used."
Yronwood bristled at the hinted implication. "Aye, so it seems. I hope this is not an accusation, Doran." He took a step forward, temper clearly flaring. "This is not what we spoke about earlier. We had a deal."
"Indeed, my lord," Doran continued, unfazed. "I, too, did not believe any of it connected to you. Despite, you might agree, the great coincidence of the man dying after you met him."
Crossing his arms, Ormond Yronwood grumbled with impatience, but murmurs ran along the hall among the nobles. I felt my heartbeat pick up. Did Prince Doran mean to expose him now?
"What of it?" the man said.
"It so happens, Lord Yronwood, that Maester Caleotte has brought me disturbing word of my mother's condition." The prince's face grew dark. "He tells me her illness is no illness at all. He says she has been poisoned. A most terrible poison that he can find no cure for, but poison nonetheless. And it occurred to me you were the last person she met before she fell ill abed."
The hall stilled. It seemed as if the air had been sucked out of the room. I froze along.
Lord Yronwood exploded. "This is outrageous," he said, growing red in the face. "Preposterous! I've never dealt in poison in my life. That is more your brother's competence than it was ever my own."
Prince Doran gave a slow nod, like he was speaking to a child. "So you say," he allowed. "Yet it makes me think that, the man who had the most to gain from your father's passing after the duel with Oberyn was you, my lord, and not my brother. Kinslayer, I name you."
Gasps rang around the room. I didn't know if it was because of the severity of the accusation or because, in a fit of maddening rage, Lord Ormond Yronwood drew the sword at his side and rushed toward the dais, screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Father, don't!" Ser Ander's called out.
It didn't stop what came next. Areo Hotah brought about his longaxe and swung it before Lord Yronwood could make it five steps closer to the prince. A head rolled across the marble. When it stopped, Ormond Yronwood's eyes stared up where it lay, wide and glassy.
I gaped, mind in a whirl with how it had come to this.
An aching scream burst from Ser Anders Yronwood's mouth. My eyes widened when he pulled out his sword. I almost wanted to reach out to stop him.
With tears streaming down his eyes, he charged at Areo Hotah.
He was disarmed in one move and brought to his knees in two. And when Hotah's longaxe hung above him, ready to relieve the head of the son after the father, Prince Doran stopped him.
He lifted his hand and Hotah lowered his axe. At the commotion, guards marched up from the flanks, grabbing Ser Anders—Lord Anders Yronwood, now—by the arms, hauling him to his feet.
Again, Doran acted. "No need to arrest him, Ser Lorran," he said to the guards' captain. "Ser Anders had no hand in this, I trust. He is loyal to House Martell. To Dorne. Are you not, Anders?"
The man looked dazed. Despite our less than ideal interactions, I couldn't help feeling sorry for him as he stood there, tear-streaken and hollow-eyed, his father dead in front of him. I didn't know what I would do myself, were our roles reversed.
"I… I, my prince," he managed between sobs. "This can't be true. It's not right. My father, he…"
Doran shook his head sadly. "But it is true, my friend. Your father is a proud man. An ambitious man." He seemed to speak more to the gathered nobles than to the new Lord of Yronwood. "It's no great wrong for a man to be ambitious, Anders. But when that ambition involves poisoning his own father and his princess, when it involves coveting his neighbor's lands, when it involves sending pirates to harass Dornish traders. Then that ambition has turned to treachery, would you not agree?"
"But… my father is no traitor," Ser Anders tried weakly. "He is loyal to House Martell, he's always been loyal."
"Your own loyalty to your father is moving, ser." Doran pursed his lips. "Truly, it is. But fathers don't always live up to their children's image of them."
He motioned to someone behind the dais. Swiftly, an attendant came at him with a stack of parchment papers in hand, then Prince Doran began to read the contents within. He read out agreements in which the Bloodroyal was asking for lands, lands which were strongly contested between Yronwood and other houses, for the sick princess to sign over to his house.
The river valley where the source of the Scourge lay to be officially taken from the Jordaynes of the Tor, fertile plains wrestled from the Fowlers of Skyreach, metal-rich mountains granted from the Wyls of Wyl. Along with a long list of many other concessions that enriched the Yronwoods at the expense of Dornish houses.
Signatures were shown, signet rings compared. The proof was strong, and the lords and ladies present did not take it lightly. There was shouting and screaming and finger-pointing. Insults were thrown at Ser Anders, knights lined up to spit at Ormond Yronwood's body.
I watched it all in a daze. Not knowing whether to step up and say something—anything, or simply leave whatever circus this had been behind and try to brave the Yronwood-infested road to the Water Gardens with a dying Gerion Lannister.
So it happened that I was not given the option.
Soon, Prince Doran called me up to approach the dais, and in front of the incensed Dornish nobles, bade me recite my own part in this strange tale. The pirate attack, the poisoning, finding out the man had died after Lord Yronwood's visit, and finally my brief confrontation with the Bloodroyal just now.
My words seemed just to confirm what the lords already thought. They nodded along, grumbled where grumbling seemed appropriate, cried out in protest at Yronwood's callousness toward Ser Gerion.
And all the while, as I spun my tale and Anders Yronwood glared at me with hate-filled eyes, Doran Martell watched the proceedings from above the dais, smiling faintly.
xxx
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