GO GIVE YOUR POWER STONES TO MY NEW STORY, IF YOU CAN. "A BLADEMASTER IN WESTEROS."
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Davos of Flea Bottom
Smuggling was not as complicated a matter as one would think. In King's Landing, an honest smuggler needed, above all else, to know how to deal with the dishonest.
So when Davos' turn came at the line, and the duo of cloaks stationed by the Mud Gate called him to a halt, he pulled on the reins of the grizzled mule and meekly obeyed.
They came around to circle the wagon the way dogs circled something they'd found in the mud, not quite certain of it yet.
It was sweltering, the sun beating down like a smith's hammer, and even in the half-shade of the gate the heat pressed down heavy enough to make breathing feel like work. Sweat ran down Davos' back beneath his rough-spun shirt.
As usual, the iron cudgels came out. The taller of the two cloaks, a man with a pockmarked face and yellowing teeth, poked through the goods in the back without much care. Nothing but Stormlander wool, the bolts tied with twine, and a few caskets of ale that sloshed when he prodded them.
Davos watched them from beneath the brim of his hat and said nothing. There was nothing to find. Not back there, anyway.
When nothing of obvious interest and nothing that could be easily taxed was found, the grumbling started.
"Bit light for a trader coming all the way from the Stormlands," Pockmark said, leaning on his cudgel. His partner, shorter and thicker through the middle, circled to the other side of the wagon.
"Times is hard, m'lord," Davos said, putting a tremor in his voice. Not too much, just enough to sound like a man afraid of authority but trying to hide it. "The village pooled what we could spare. Hoping to get a good price here in the king's city."
"King's city costs coin to enter," the shorter one said. He had a nasal voice that grated. "Can't just let every dirt farmer waltz through without paying his due."
Davos nodded quickly, already reaching into the pouch at his belt. "Of course, of course, m'lord. I understand. King's men got to earn their bread same as the rest of us, don't they?" Reaching inside his coat, his fingers found the silver stag there and he quickly pressed it into Pockmark's palm. "For your trouble, m'lords."
The coin disappeared into the watchman's fist. He looked down at it for a moment, then back at Davos. His expression soured further, if that was possible.
"A whole silver? That all you got?" Pockmark's tone carried the weight of threat beneath the question. A subtle demand for extra coin. That was fine. That was his part in this whole ordeal, the tax on top of the bribe.
But Davos could not give it. A poor farmer come to trade his village's goods in the city could not have much coin on him, not if he wanted to maintain the fiction. So he grumbled back, letting some steel enter his voice.
"Now wait, I'm a king's man as well, m'lords, coming to the king's city to trade in peace like all other honest folk," he said, straightening slightly on the wagon seat. "The Father judges us all fair, m'lords, high and low alike. I got a family to feed back home, and the coin I make here's got to stretch for the winter. My cousin's house got took out by a mudslide when the last storm swept through—killed his two boys and his wife. I'm carryin' for his family now too."
Beside him, young Balon played his part perfectly. The boy's eyes had gone wide, his hands gripping the wagon seat like he was afraid the gold cloaks might drag them both off to a cell. A farm boy swallowed whole by the size of the city. He played it well enough to make a mummer jealous.
Pockmark's jaw worked. His eyes flicked to the line of wagons and carts backed up behind them, people getting restless in the heat. A woman shouted something about the delay. A donkey brayed.
The watchman couldn't excuse the holdup much longer. Not without having to actually pull Davos and his wagon aside and do a proper, thorough investigation into a poor farmer and his wool. That would mean doing real work, and questions from the captain, and hours in the sun when they could be back in the guardhouse drinking and dicing.
Finally, Pockmark made the sensible decision, as Davos had known he would, and waved them through with a disgusted gesture. "Move along then. Get your shit out of my sight."
"The Father bless you, m'lords," Davos said, already flicking the reins.
The mule plodded forward, pulling the wagon through the gate and into King's Landing proper. The noise hit them immediately—the roar of thousands of voices, the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, the cry of gulls wheeling overhead. They emerged into Fishmonger's Square, where the stink of the day's catch mingled with smoke from cooking fires and the general reek of too many people pressed into too small a space.
When they were well clear of the gate and into the flow of traffic, Balon straightened up on his seat. The fear melted off his face, replaced by a grin.
"It's always easy with you, uncle Davos."
Davos smiled at the boy. Called him uncle though they shared no blood, just the bond of repeated work and mutual trust. "Wish that was true, lad, but I've spent more time in a dungeon cell than you've been alive. Ain't always easy, I can tell ya that."
What it was, was a matter of timing and temperature. He'd worked it out over years of failures and close calls and one stretch in the Black Cells that he didn't like to think about. The best time to bring goods through the Mud Gate was noon on a day so hot the air above the cobblestones bent and wavered.
A gold cloak broiling inside his mail by midday was irritable enough to demand his coin and too wrung out to do anything more. Earlier in the morning, men had energy and ambition. Later in the day, they had suspicion and spite.
That narrow window around noon, when misery outweighed everything else… that was the window you used. None of that midnight, moonlit wall-climbing the bards liked to sing about.
Having Balon helped too, for now. The boy was the youngest son of the bargemaster across the Blackwater, which was where Davos berthed his small vessel, coming into the city as just another trader off a river barge.
It was a good setup. It wouldn't last, because nothing lasted, because the Gold Cloaks were slow but they weren't entirely stupid, and one day someone would recognize the boat or the boy or the particular mule, and he'd need something new. But that was a problem for another noon on another sweltering day.
For now, he drove his special wagon down River Row, past the endless fish stalls where women gutted the day's catch and tossed the offal into the street for the rats. Past the warehouses with their heavy doors and suspicious eyes. Past the alesinks where sailors drank away their pay before they'd even properly made port.
The wagon jolted over the uneven cobblestones, the mule's hooves clicking steady. Davos kept his eyes moving, watching for trouble out of habit. A fight breaking out between two drunks. A cutpurse working the crowd. Anything that might draw the watch and complicate his day.
Nothing. Just the usual chaos of the city.
He pulled into the stables behind the Kraken's Shackle, a small inn that catered to sailors and traders. The stable boy, a gap-toothed child who never spoke, took the mule's bridle without being asked.
Ruffling Balon's haird, Davos tossed a couple of copper stars to him and the gap-toothed boy. "Watch the wagon now, eh."
"Aye, uncle," Balon said, already settling in to wait and watch.
Not just the wool and the ale. Tucked inside a hidden compartment built into the wagon's body were rolls of Myrish silk and tightly packed bags of spice, both purchased from Salladhor Saan at a fair price for goods that had almost certainly not been fairly come by.
Davos tried not to think about the other end of it too long. He was a smuggler, not a pirate. That was the line he drew, and he meant it, and he knew it was a somewhat convenient line to draw. His only crime was getting around the king's taxes on Essosi goods. He had not killed anyone to get the silk and the spice. He had simply bought them from a man who might have.
But now more than ever was not the time to grow a conscience. Not the time to think that, somewhere out there, a merchant ship might be floating lower in the water than it ought to, or sat at the bottom of some stretch of the Narrow Sea. Not the time to think on how many sailors might have gone down with it, and how many boys would grow up without their father's lost at sea, and how many other Davos of Fleabottom he was helping to create by feeding this beast of a business.
No, no time for that. Not when Marya was heavy with their first child.
Gods, they weren't even married yet. The house in the lane behind Eel Alley, an improvement on the shack in Flea Bottom—though he was the first to admit that wasn't saying much—was not the kind of place you raised children you meant to be better than yourself. Davos wanted better. He wanted proper trades for them and letters from the Septons and boots that fit. That cost coin, and coin required work, and the work he had was the work he had.
He ducked into the Kraken's Shackle. Inside the inn, the common room was quiet. A few older men sat near the cold hearth with their pipes, the smoke hanging thick in the air. Closer, a table of sailors on shore leave were working through their headaches with more ale, the surest cure a seaman man ever devised.
Davos moved toward the bar and found the man he was looking for behind the counter, wiping down mugs with a stained rag.
"Alton." Davos nodded. "Got something for you at the stables just now."
The innkeeper's face split into a wide grin, the thin mustache above his lip twitching with it. "Well well. The always reliable Davos of Flea Bottom delivers again." He leaned on the counter. "No trouble at sea, I take it?"
Some said the man was a Velaryon bastard of a bastard, which Alton himself never confirmed, even if he had the silver hair for it. Worn long and tied back, still thick despite his age. He had been handling smuggled goods into King's Landing since before Davos was old enough to run errands for the men who did it.
Davos shrugged. "No more than usual."
"Good, that's good." A cup of ale appeared on the counter in front of Davos, full to the brim, foam spilling over the side. Alton winked at him. "Didn't expect any less from the finest smuggler this side of the Narrow Sea."
"Luckiest, more like," Davos said, taking a swig. The ale was cool and bitter, cutting through the dust in his throat. "And the payment?"
"Left it with that girl of yours, didn't I?" The grin widened.
Alton had a habit of delivering payment to wives and lovers, finding it amusing in a way that the smugglers and pirates he dealt with apparently did not. He just hadn't figured out yet that Davos didn't mind it at all. Marya was sharper with coin than he'd ever be.
"She's getting big, ain't she?" Alton continued, leaning on the bar. "It'll be a big lad she'll give you."
"Aye." The pride came up before he could help it, warm in his chest. "Gods willing she won't get any smaller 'till the time's right."
He took one last pull at the cup and pushed it across the counter, not even half-drunk yet. Marya didn't like it when he came home smelling of ale. Said it reminded her of her father, and not in a good way.
"I'll come back for the wagon tomorrow," he said, turning to go.
"Oh, that reminds me." Alton's voice caught him at the edge of the bar. Davos turned. "That cousin of yours was in, asking after you. Said he'd been looking around for you the better part of a week."
Davos went still. "Who?"
"Brown hair, tall fella." Alton tilted his head. "Only had the one arm to him."
He didn't have a cousin. He didn't have any living family except Marya. "Did you say anything to him?"
Alton looked mildly offended. "You know how I work, Davos lad. I ain't say nothing." He paused, his expression shifting to something more serious. "But he seemed to know about you plenty. Named Marya and all. Even knew she was pregnant."
A cold stone settled at the bottom of Davos' stomach the way an anchor hits the seabed. For a moment he struggled to draw breath, his chest suddenly tight. The noise of the common room faded to a dull roar in his ears.
He didn't even remember leaving the Kraken's Shackle.
Just stumbled down River Row in a daze, his feet moving without thought. Skirted the bottom of Visenya's Hill where the streets grew narrower and darker. Turned into Eel Alley, where the buildings leaned so close together you could barely see the sky.
Found the door to his tenement behind a small alehouse. The smell of sour beer and piss hung thick.
He took the stairs three at a time, his heart thundering inside his chest, ears ringing. One hand already going to the dagger he kept strapped to his belt—nothing fancy, just good steel with a worn handle—and he was pounding at the door to his and Marya's room.
His love answered even as she giggled at something someone behind her had said. Davos had taken her into his arms before she could speak, only managing a surprised gasp, and then he was putting himself between her and the three men he found by his table.
"You're a hard man to find, Davos of Flea Bottom," the one sitting down said.
The other two stood behind him like guards. Hands loose at their sides but ready. In all, the three looked like ordinary men at first glance. Wearing simple clothes and traveling cloaks that wouldn't look out of place in the streets of King's Landing. Brown and gray, nothing rich, nothing that would draw the eye.
But Davos had been around long enough to notice how their shirts were tighter at the chest. Heard the tiny clink of chainmail as the men shifted when he entered, metal rings sliding against each other beneath the fabric.
These were no ordinary men. Worse, they did not look like cloaks either.
"And who might you be, then?" Davos' hand tightened on the dagger hilt. His voice came out rough, anger rising hot beneath his ribs. "Coming into another man's house, frightening his woman? A woman with child at that."
"Davos, wait," Marya said beside him. Her hand touched his arm, gentle but firm. "It's not been like that at all."
Davos' eyes shifted to Marya quickly, taking in her face. No fear there. No bruises or signs of rough treatment. Just something like embarrassment, maybe, and concern for what he might do.
His gaze flickered back to the man who'd spoken.
The man stood from his seat, the cloak shifting as he rose, and the empty sleeve became visible, pinned up neatly just below the right elbow.
"Listen to your woman, Davos," the one-armed man said. There was nothing threatening in his voice, which was almost worse, because men who meant harm usually wanted you to know it. Quiet men with empty sleeves who came to your home and waited politely for a week were a different category of problem entirely. "We have been coming here at this time for a few days now, waiting for you. I can assure you of our conduct, and you may ask her yourself once we leave."
"Leave?" The word came out sharper than Davos intended.
The man nodded. "Of course. We came only to offer you something. You and yours will not come to harm whether you take it or leave it. I give you my word on that."
Davos swallowed. His mouth felt dry. "And what do men like you want with a man like me?"
"Your talent." The one-armed man looked him in the eyes. "We are men like you, Davos of Flea Bottom. Men with no names, no wealth, no family to speak of. Only we serve a lord. A good lord. A just lord." He paused. "And he has come to know of your skills as a sailor. A sailor, Davos, not a smuggler. He has need of a man who can read water and weather and put a ship where it needs to be without making a fuss about it. Honest work. Clean work. And for a man who meets his lord's expectations, a better life for yourself and your family."
He gestured vaguely toward Marya's swollen belly. "For all of them. Think about it."
Then they were moving. The two guards went first, checking the hallway. The one-armed man followed, pausing only at the threshold.
"We'll be back on the morrow for your answer," he said. "Same time as today."
Then they were gone. Boots echoing down the stairs. The door to the street opening and closing.
Davos stood there in the sudden quiet, still holding Marya, his mind racing. An offer. Good work. Honest work. A better life. He looked down at the bump in his love's belly and drew her tighter against him.
Too good to be true, mayhaps. But he wanted to believe it.
Gods help him, he wanted to believe it.
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