Chapter 4: Daggers and Devotion
The scent of crushed mint and night-blooming jasmine did nothing to mask the salt on the wind, or the iron tang of the spears held by the gold-cloaked guards at the garden gate. The royal gardens were a cage of beauty, every hedge too perfectly trimmed, every rose blooming a defiant, bloody red. Alysanne walked the gravel path, the silken slippers her handmaid had forced onto her feet offering no protection from the bite of the stones. She could still taste the ghost of copper in her mouth, a phantom echo of Ser Arthur’s gauntlet.
She found him where she’d been told he might be. Not in the lavish apartments prepared for him, but here, in the shadow of a marble lion weathered by centuries of storms.
Garon Baratheon sat on a bench of cold black iron, his broad shoulders hunched. In his hands, a dagger caught the pale moonlight. The rhythmic scrape of steel on whetstone filled the quiet space between them, a metallic dirge. Shhhhik-shhhhik-shhhhik. He didn’t look up as she approached.
An empty wineskin lay on its side at his feet. Two others, similarly drained, were slumped against the bench leg like fallen soldiers.
“Contemplating the king’s peace?” she asked, her voice careful. She stopped a few paces away, just outside the range of a sudden lunge.
The scraping stopped. He lifted his head. His stormy eyes were glazed, the focus slow to find her. The fierce intensity was softened by drink, replaced by a sullen, wounded darkness. He looked younger, and somehow more dangerous.
“Contemplating edge geometry,” he slurred, holding up the blade. Moonlight slithered down its length. “A sharper point. A keener bevel. Useful things.”
“For the wedding feast?” she said, allowing a thin slice of irony into her tone. “I hear the capon can be particularly stubborn.”
A rough, humorless bark of laughter escaped him. “For whatever comes after.” He went back to his sharpening. Shhhhik-shhhhik. “Couldn’t sleep, my lady? Excited for the morrow?”
“Thrilled,” she deadpanned. She gestured to the lions guarding the path to the keep. “I was admiring the local wildlife. They look so… loyal.”
He finally stopped, setting the whetstone down with a deliberate click on the iron bench. He squinted at her. The left side of her face was a tapestry of faint violet and yellow where Ser Arthur’s blow had landed. His gaze lingered there, and for a second the drunken haze seemed to part, revealing something raw and angry beneath. He looked away quickly, as if scalded.
“You shouldn’t be out here,” he muttered, picking up the wineskin, finding it empty, and tossing it aside in disgust.
“Neither should you. Your father is turning the Tower of the Hand inside out looking for you. He fears you’ve jumped into the bay.”
“Considered it,” Garon grunted. He leaned back, tilting his head against the cold lion’s flank. “The water’s fucking cold, though. And I’d probably wash up right back here at the bloody dock. My luck.”
The silence that fell between them was different than in the tavern. This wasn’t charged with potential; it was thick with shared entrapment. The fountain nearby, a masterpiece of Valyrian stonework, was dry. Its carved heroes were frozen in eternally futile battle, caught mid-spray.
“I had a thought,” Alysanne said quietly, stepping closer. The gravel crunched under her feet. “A way out.”
He didn’t open his eyes. “Go on.”
“Pentos.” The word was barely a whisper. “A fast ship from the Snakewood. Sellsword companies always need nurses. I know some about herbs. I speak Valyrian, passably. I could… disappear.”
He was silent for so long she thought he’d passed out. Then his lips twisted into a bitter smile, his eyes still closed. “Changed your tune. No more lectures about duty and history?”
“History is written by the survivors,” she said, her voice hardening. “I’d prefer to be among them.”
Finally, he opened his eyes and looked at her. The drunken fog was still there, but a sharp, tactical clarity pierced through it. It was the look he must have worn on a battlefield, assessing terrain and enemy positions. “Pentos,” he repeated slowly. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, the dagger dangling loosely from his fingers. “Good plan. Solid. Or it was.”
“Was?”
“Did you happen to notice your new shadow?” He jerked his head toward the darker patch of garden near the gate. At first, Alysanne saw nothing. Then a shape detached itself from the deep shadow of a cypress tree: a tall, silent figure in a pale grey cloak, moonlight catching on the pommel of a greatsword. Ser Arthur Dayne. He stood immobile, a statue of watchfulness.
Her heart sank. “He’s with me every moment,” she said, the defiance leaching from her voice. “Since the throne room. I can’t piss without him standing outside the door.”
Garon gave another short, ugly laugh. “The Sword of the Morning. Personal guard to a Rose of Highgarden. How the songs will warble.” He spun the dagger, catching it by the blade. “Your ship would have to be very fast indeed. Faster than Dawn. And it’s not.” He threw the dagger. It sank, point-deep, into the soft earth between two rose bushes, quivering. “Pentoshi daydreams. That’s all they are now.”
The finality in his voice was a door slamming shut. Alysanne felt it in her bones. She wrapped her arms around herself, though the night was warm. “So we just… do it? Stand there tomorrow and say the words?”
“What’s the alternative?” He looked up at her, his face a mask of weary frustration. “I could take the black. Spend my life freezing my balls off on a wall, listening to crows tell tales of my glorious wedding day.” He shook his head, a heavy, final motion. “I won’t. I can’t. Storm’s End isn’t just stone. It’s… it’s my father. It’s the people who rely on that stone not to fucking fall down.” He ran a hand through his dark, unruly hair. “He knew that. The king. He didn’t just threaten me. He threatened the thing I’m supposed to be.”
It was the most she’d ever heard him say, and the most honest. There was no bravado in it, just a bleak, sobering truth. He was as much a prisoner as she was, bound by chains of duty he couldn’t bring himself to break.
She moved then, crossing the last few feet of gravel to sit beside him on the iron bench. It was cold through the thin silk of her dress. He stiffened but didn’t pull away. They sat in silence, side by side, watching the unmoving figure of the Kingsguard in the distance.
“What do we do?” she asked, not looking at him. The question was for the night, for the roses, for the dry fountain.
“We survive,” Garon said, his voice low and rough. “We get through tomorrow. And the day after. We play the parts. We wear the masks.” He glanced at her, his stormy eyes bleak. “And we wait.”
“For what?”
“For a crack in the wall. For a shift in the wind. For him to make a mistake.” He paused. “Rhaegar Targaryen is a careful man. But even careful men stumble. When he does, we need to be ready to push.”
It wasn’t hope. It was a colder, harder thing. A strategy. A long, silent war declared in a garden of stone lions and withered flowers. Alysanne found her hand had drifted to the faint, aching bruise on her cheek. She let it fall.
From across the garden, Ser Arthur’s voice cut through the still air, calm and inexorable. “My lady. It is late. You should retire.”
Garon let out a slow breath. “Go on,” he murmured, not looking at her. “Your shadow calls.”
She stood, the gravel shifting under her feet. She looked down at him, this proud, angry, trapped man who was to be her husband. “You should come in too. Face your father.”
He waved a dismissive hand, reaching for another, presumably empty, wineskin. “In a bit.”
There was nothing more to say. Alysanne turned and walked back along the path, her every step watched by the knight in the grey cloak. As she passed the fountain, she glanced at the frozen stone figures. Their battle, like hers, was suspended. Not over. Just waiting.
Garon watched her go until she and her white shadow disappeared into the torch-lit archway of the Holdfast. Then he leaned forward, pulled his dagger from the earth, and began to slowly, methodically, clean the dirt from its blade.