Episode 11: The Curse of Harrenhal
12.1 INT: TAVERN, PENTOS – DAY
STEFFON BARATHEON stoops his head and steps from the sweltering heat of the bustling dockyards and into the chilled dank of the tumbledown tavern. He bids the pair of Baratheon guard at his back to wait at the entrance, and presses forward into the gloom. The barkeep affords him the briefest of once-overs, the curiosity of STEFFON’s wearing a heavy cloak at the height of summer barely registering the notice of a man accustomed to all manner of flotsam and jetsam finding its way to his dockside door. From the shadowy recesses of his hood, STEFFON nods in greeting.
STEFFON
I’m looking for man named Aynor.
The barkeep considers a moment, then jerks his head towards a hallway leading deeper into the darkness. Glancing warily back towards his escort, STEFFON forges ahead, directing his steps towards a narrow shaft of light at the hallway’s end.
He emerges into a small and spartan backroom, the air so thick and muggy STEFFON immediately feels the prickle of perspiration along his hairline. Against the back wall sit two men, one large and one little, arranged either side of a table bearing a single candle. The smaller of the two gestures towards the empty chair set between them.
SILVER TONGUE
My lord. You must be tired from your travels. Take a load off, why don’t you?
STEFFON hesitates, checking over each shoulder to confirm the shadowed corners bear no surprises, then sits.
STEFFON
An interesting turn of phrase. Your grasp of the common tongue is most impressive.
SILVER TONGUE
I have a longstanding appreciation for the idiomatic in all languages, my lord, and your country has a great many to, how do you say, “tickle the fancy.”
STEFFON glances at the larger man watching their exchange without expression.
STEFFON
And your companion here? Does he share in your appreciation?
SILVER TONGUE
Alas, Aynor’s talents lie elsewhere. I will serve as his interpreter, if it please my lord.
STEFFON
I think we can dispense with the formalities, don’t you?
SILVER TONGUE
Just so.
Winking, he taps the side of his nose with his forefinger.
SILVER TONGUE [CONT’D]
Discretion is the “name of this game”, my friend.
STEFFON cranes his neck to check the open doorway, then leans in closer and speaks little louder than a whisper.
STEFFON
I trust that everything is arranged?
SILVER TONGUE
Three-hundred men, armoured and equipped, with ships enough to sail them.
STEFFON
They have all been well blooded?
SILVER TONGUE
Soldiers are like soup, my friend, battle like the seasoning: Captain Aynor’s men are flavoured just right: not too much, not too little.
There is, however, the small matter of our recompense.
STEFFON
Your gold is ready and waiting aboard my ship. Tell me where you would take delivery, and my guard will see it done.
SILVER TONGUE
You are most gracious, friend, but on this occasion I was speaking plain: our recompense, it is too small a matter.
STEFFON
We agreed your price months ago.
SILVER TONGUE
Just so. But since then we are thinking this price is too low. The “risk is greater than the reward”, yes? It is no easy thing, to take arms against a king.
STEFFON
I thought you said your men were seasoned just right. If they are not up to the task…
SILVER TONGUE
The “doing” is not the issue, but rather the “done”. Once our contract is fulfilled, Aynor and his men will need to disappear for a time, to “lay low” is the phrasing, I believe. This will be costing much coin, so too the new contracts we will be missing.
STEFFON
Yours is not the only company in Essos.
SILVER TONGUE
The Golden Company have more men, it is true, and the Second Sonds have the greater reputation. This is why people take notice of their movements; word of their dealings travels like “shit down Aegon’s High Hill”. And I am thinking this is exactly the reason you came to us.
STEFFON holds the man’s eye for a long moment; the man smiles back benignly. Sighing, STEFFON gestures his readiness for the dagger’s thrust.
SILVER TONGUE
Double.
STEFFON
I don’t have that kind of coin here.
SILVER TONGUE
Very well. Half now, half when the contract is fulfilled.
STEFFON
That’s awfully trusting for a sellsword.
SILVER TONGUE
We have every confidence you are an honourable man. And if you should prove us mistaken, well…
AYNOR
Ours are the fury.
The smaller man rolls his eyes, shaking his head in exasperation.
SILVER TONGUE
“Is”, Aynor. Ours “is” the fury.
[TO STEFFON]
We practiced that for two hours, would you believe.
Waving off his disappointment, he leans back in his chair and resummons his accommodating smile.
SILVER TONGUE
No matter. I think you understand our point…my lord.
STEFFON
I am thinking I do. Double it is.
STEFFON stands, tugging his hood tighter about his face.
STEFFON [CONT’D]
Now if you’ll excuse me, I promised my wife we would visit the spice markets before we sailed.
INTRO.
12.2 EXT: HARRENHAL – MORNING
RHAEGAR and LYANNA emerge together from the treeline and onto the campgrounds, leading the prince’s mount through the thin layer of mist settled like a canopy over the frosted grass that crunches crisp and dewy beneath their boots.
LYANNA
If this is what passes for a Southern Spring I can’t imagine my disappointment come the summer.
RHAEGAR
This is no kind of Spring as I recall it. Could it be we were lost in those woods even longer than it seemed?
LYANNA surveys the scene before them anxiously, taking note of the several servants hurrying hither and yon to ready their master’s fires.
LYANNA
I had better get back before my father and brothers wake up and realise I’m gone.
RHAEGAR
May I escort you back to your tent, my lady?
LYANNA
I hardly think that’s wise, do you?
RHAEGAR
Wiser than leaving you alone. The Freys are no small family, nor are they like to forget their humiliation anytime soon.
LYANNA appears ready to argue the case, but nods instead and permits RHAEGAR to accompany her along the tent rows.
CUT TO:
Coming within sight of the Stark banners flying atop their tent, LYANNA halts her progress and turns to RHAEGAR.
LYANNA
I think I can make it safe enough from here.
RHAEGAR nods reluctantly. They stand close, the awkwardness of their impending separation as palpable as the morning miasma.
RHAEGAR
When will I see you again?
LYANNA smiles, chewing without thought at her bottom lip.
LYANNA
I wonder perhaps –
BRANDON [INTERRUPTING]
Lyanna.
They turn to discover BRANDON standing at a short remove, and take a subtle step away from one another.
LYANNA
Bran. What are you doing up?
BRANDON shrugs with an unconvincing nonchalance.
BRANDON
The same thing every man does when he wakes.
LYANNA looks past BRANDON to the direction from which he must have walked, her eyes narrowing in circumspection when she spies the banners of the Tully tent.
BRANDON
What about you?
RHAEGAR opens his mouth to offer an explanation, but LYANNA has no less practice than the prince at providing plausible excuse for her not-infrequent absconding.
LYANNA
The grounds here are so beautiful, I thought I’d take a walk and watch the sun rise.
It’s BRANDON’s turn to narrow his eyes, studying his sister’s face with the familiar suspicion of elder brothers. Finally, he looks to RHAEGAR, his expression assuming a coldness commensurate with the daybreak chill that plumes their breathe before them.
LYANNA
Prince Rhaegar found me wandering the campground. I must have got turned around somewhere and lost our tent. He was just walking me back, in case I lost my way again.
BRANDON
How thoughtful of him.
His voice thick with sarcasm, BRANDON looks to LYANNA, pointedly ignoring the disapproving frown his tone elicits.
BRANDON [CONT’D]
I always imagined princes preferred to keep to their beds through these early hours.
RHAEGAR
I found my sleep unusually disturbed last night. Perhaps my nerves were too fraught at the prospect of facing such a formidable challenger in our tilt this afternoon.
RHAEGAR smiles with self-effacing warmth, but BRANDON’s manner gives no sign of thawing.
BRANDON
Aye, that must be it.
RHAEGAR’s smile withers as BRANDON holds his eye for an uncomfortably long moment. Though addressing his sister, he holds his gaze on the prince.
BRANDON [CONT’D]
I think we can make it the rest of way by ourselves, don’t you?
LYANNA takes a step down the line and bows to RHAEGAR.
LYANNA [CONT’D]
Your Grace, thank you again for showing me the way.
RHAEGAR
Think nothing of it, my lady. Until we meet again.
Nodding his head to RHAEGAR as he passes, BRANDON takes LYANNA by the arm and the Stark siblings remove themselves towards their tent. RHAEGAR watches them go, a gratified grin curling the corners of his lips at the flitting glance LYANNA passes over her shoulder as she departs.
12.3 EXT: ON THE ROAD TO DUSKENDALE – MORNING
Several hours north of Rosby, the royal train files at a canter past a single-storey stone tavern. A brood of wide-eyed young children stand upon a crumbling wall to watch the ranks of Targaryen household guard arrayed in boiled leather and high-polished half-helms trudge along behind two-dozen mounted knights. At the procession’s head, the king of the Seven Kingdoms sits high and proud atop his snow-white destrier, a pair of squires bearing twin Targaryen standards riding at his rear. Riding abreast between the cavalry and infantry, JONOTHOR encourages JAIME to wave to the locals, and the children cheer gleefully when the young knight complies. JONOTHOR nods in greeting as GEROLD rides past on his return from harrying the tail.
JAIME
Lord Commander.
GEROLD grants JAIME an ice-cold glance, but does not return the greeting. JAIME watches him despondently as he continues on up the line.
JAIME
He’s still angry with me.
JONOTHOR
You struck his prince. Did you really expect any different?
JAIME
You seem to have accepted it for the accident it was.
JONOTHOR
I have a long-standing principal against holding grudges. Holding a grudge requires a great deal of effort, and dashingly-handsome and lethal with a blade as I may be, I am first and foremost an avowedly lazy man.
They ride on in silence for a moment, JAIME clearly deliberating on some weighty resolution in his mind.
JAIME
Ser Jonothor…in the yard, what did you mean when you said my Lannister was showing?
Again, JONOTHOR smiles to himself.
JONOTHOR
My father always told me never to ask a question to which I was not prepared to hear an honest answer. You never know when you’ll come across a man that doesn’t give a shit what your family name may be and has no interest in burnishing the truth on your account.
JAIME
I am certainly more prepared than I was before I arrived at court. Please, speak plainly, sir.
JONOTHOR
Very well.
JONOTHOR takes a deep breath of brisk spring air into his lungs, seeming to revel in the opportunity to speak with a freedom in which he can only indulge far away from the interested ears that eavesdrop in every corner of the Red Keep.
JONOTHOR [CONT’D]
Your father has a great military mind. His boldness unified a fractured realm, and his stable hand prevented its unravelling. He has a preternatural talent for the politics of court. He stands foremost among his generation as the architect of the peaceful and prosperous country we have all enjoyed these past twenty years.
JAIME
That’s very flattering, Ser Jonothor. I’m sure my father –
JONOTHOR
But he is also a man that decided at twenty years of age to live the rest of his life in opposition to the failures of his father. Every thought, every decision, every action he has ever taken since coming of age has been in service to the singular ambition of elevating House Lannister from the parlous depths to which it had descended under your grandfather’s rule.
In time that ambition curdled, as resolutions borne of spite invariably do, and rotted your father from the inside out. It made him overproud, it made him cold, and conniving, and loyal to nothing and no one but that gaping chasm at his core that forever demands greater glory without any sign of ever being fully satisfied. It made him, in short, a cunt of the highest order.
JONOTHOR turns to meet JAIME’s eye.
JONOTHOR [CONT’D]
But you are none of those things, Jaime. Not yet, anyway. It’s down to you to decide if you mean to go on in that fashion, or if you prefer to spend your life chasing your father’s tail like he did his own, and like you did in the yard the other day.
JAIME absorbs this monologue silently. Though in recent months he may have been forced to tussle with more heady notions than any time previous in his young life, he remains ill-adept at processing such information with any alacrity. JONOTHR watches as his face contorts into the same expression of torturous thought that so frustrated Lord Tywin while teaching JAIME his letters.
JAIME
But…wasn’t my father’s ambition the very reason he was able to accomplish all he has? Why must ambition always be a bad thing?
JONOTHOR
Because, lad…
JONOTHOR casts his eyes up the line to the two riders at its head, though whether his attention is focused on the king or the Lord Commander riding at his side it is impossible to say.
JONOTHOR [CONT’D]
There is nothing more dangerous in this world than a powerful man with something to prove.
CUT TO:
GEROLD
Your Grace, I beg of you, it is not too late to turn around.
AERYS
Nonsense. Every lord in every castle needs to know that the throne’s authority is absolute, and any challenge shall be met with a robust response from their king.
GEROLD
And yet conceding to Lord Denys’ insistence upon meeting with you in person can only embolden others to greater presumption, Your Grace. If you were to return to the capitol and permit me to treat with Lord Denys in your stead -
AERYS [INTERRUPTING]
And give my enemies cause to name me craven? No, Lord Commander, the days of a weak and over-cautious hand on the tiller of my realm are over and done, and Duskendale is the means by which I will make that plain.
GEROLD [STILL CALM, BUT A LITTLE QUICKER/PRESSING HARDER]
Then send ahead a raven and command Lord Denys to meet us beneath his walls at very least, Your Grace. Once we pass through his gates, I will no longer be able to guarantee your safety.
AERYS
Steady your nerve, Lord Commander. You cannot truly believe a man like Denys Darklyn would dare take arms against the crown?
GEROLD
I would not presume to understand the mind of a man like Denys Darklyn, Your Grace. Old and feeble as he is, he must know he will not survive to see another Spring. He has no family, no heirs…when he dies, he will take his house and his name into the ground beside him. He is a man with nothing to lose, and a man like that can never truly be anticipated.
AERYS
How fortunate then that I possessed the foresight to muster these two-hundred men riding at our rear.
GEROLD
Which will count for nothing once we are inside the city walls, Your Grace. Twenty men that know their surroundings and use them effectively are more than equal to two-hundred that don’t. The people of Duskendale know every cobblestone, storm drain, and alleyway of their town, and there are considerably more than twenty living within the shadow of the Dun Fort that owe their lives to Lord Denys and his winter stores.
AERYS
Darklyn is their lord, but I am their king. The peasantry will not forsake their fealty for the sake of a few extra coppers on the price of sturgeon.
GEROLD
You Grace, I beg of you…this is not the first time you have turned a deaf ear to my counsel, and I cannot –
AERYS
Counsel? Is that what that you name it? By my recollection it had more the sound of an order.
GEROLD
Respectfully, Your Grace, as Commander of your father’s forces I had every right to decide against Lord Tywin’s assault upon Bloodstone –
AERYS [SNAPPING]
My assault! Mine!
Surprised at his own ferocity, AERYS glances back to calm the anxious expressions of the squires riding closest behind he and GEROLD.
AERYS
That entire attack was of my devising! Tywin was only ever acting as my proxy so I need not make open opposition to my father, and everyone would remember that if I hadn’t been naïve enough to let Tywin convince me to stay behind and keep the great lords occupied while he stole all the glory of leading the attack himself!
GEROLD holds up his hands in weary mollification as though calming a spooked mule.
GEROLD
Nobody is discounting your part in our victory, Your Grace.
[THIS NEXT IS DELIBERATELY PROVOCATIVE – GEROLD KNOWS IT WAS REALLY SELMY THAT KILLED MAELYS – SO NEEDS A LITTLE WEIGHT/GRAVITY TO IT]
After all, it was you that dealt the fatal blow to Maelys Blackfyre, was it not?
AERYS glowers at GEROLD through narrowed eyes in an effort to discern any hint of insinuation. GEROLD only returns his gaze, holding the king’s eye with characteristic inscrutability. After a long moment, AERYS waves a dismissive hand.
AERYS
Your reservations have been noted, Lord Commander. I shall hear no more on the matter.
Nodding gravely, GEROLD speaks through gritted teeth.
GEROLD
As you command, Your Grace. If you will excise me, I would attend to our preparations.
AERYS returns the nod, and GEROLD turns his mount back down the line.
CUT TO:
JAIME
You say I mustn’t live my life according to my father’s designs, Ser Jonothor. But did I not defy those designs when I sided with the king and refused to return to the Rock? What is that if not choosing my own path?
JONOTHOR side-eyes JAIME, hoping against hope the young knight is speaking in jest rather than remaining aloof to the point the Kingsguard has been making.
JONOTHOR
Did you ever hear the one about the horse that hated turning left? He preferred turning right so much he would insist on doing it thrice.
JAIME
I’m not sure I follow…
JONOTHOR chuckles at JAIME’s unintentionally allusive choice of words.
JONOTHOR
As I said, young ser: that is your decision to make.
JAIME lapses into a thoughtful silence. JONOTHOR studies him surreptitiously, looking away only to receive the arriving GEROLD.
GEROLD
Ser Jaime. Make your way to the baggage train and seek out Ser Cotter. He will provide you a spare set of my whites. Put them on and join His Grace at the head of the train.
A stupefied JAIME looks to JONOTHOR, but DARRY only shrugs.
JAIME
I…Lord Commander I don’t…isn’t that rather…
GEROLD
An insult to the cloak? An affront to our sacred brotherhood? Under ordinary circumstances indeed it would, but this is not those.
Lord Darklyn has not left the Dun Fort since the last Blackfyre Rebellion. He wouldn’t know Ser Oswell from a scullion’s scrub-brush, and if we must persist in this madness then I want our host to believe we have as many Kingsguard among our number as possible.
Again, JAIME turns to JONOTHOR, but DARRY only cocks a thumb over his shoulder.
JONOTHOR
You heard the Lord Commander.
Confronted with JONOTHOR’s raised brow of expectation and GEROLD’s granite implacability, JAIME has no option but to bow his agreement and move to depart.
JONOTHOR [CONT’D]
Oh, and Ser Jaime?
JAIME
Ser?
JONOTHOR
If you ever so much as glance at my prince with furrowed brow again, I shall personally shove an apple in your mouth and serve him your head on a platter like a pretty golden pig. Now off you pop, there’s a good lad.
12.4 INT: GREAT HALL, HARRENHAL - DAY
In the Hall of a Hundred Hearths, lords great and small wait in a snaking line that stretches the length of the cavernous chamber to pay their formal respects to their host. Sitting on a raised platform at its head waits WALTER WHENT, his lady wife SHELLA and daughter SARA seated to his right. In the place of honour to his left, TYWIN nods respectfully in his role as representative of the crown.
WALTER
Lord Stark, how wonderful to see you!
RICKARD
It’s been too long, my Lord.
WALTER
What has it been?
With the subtlety of a drunken aurochs, WALTER turns his head towards TYWIN.
WALTER [CONT’D]
Ten years at least, I’d say.
RICKARD
Not since Lady Minisa’s funeral, I believe.
WALTER
Gods, to think my sister has been gone so long as that.
WALTER cranes his neck down the line of waiting guests.
WALTER [CONT’D]
And my brother-by-law, where is he? I had hoped we might spend some time reminiscing together, but with one thing and another we’ve barely exchanged more than passing word all tourney.
Again, WALTER looks to TYWIN with a self-satisfied smile, the lord of Harrenhal evidently pleased with his pantomime.
RICKARD
I’m afraid Hoster is feeling a little laboured this morning; I expect he’ll show his face before too long.
WALTER
Suffering from the dragon that scorched him no doubt, the old sot!
WALTER slaps RICKARD on the shoulder with laddish good-humour, then quickly retracts his hand and assumes the more formal air of a dutiful host.
WALTER
You remember my wife, Shella.
RICKARD
Of course. My lady.
RICKARD bows his head in greeting.
WALTER
And this shy little thing by her side is the light of my life. Sara, come here child.
SARA shuffles bashfully to WALTER’s summons, only raising her eyes to snatch an admiring glance in BRANDON’s direction.
WALTER
Lord Stark and I first met when we were little older than you are now, sweetling.
SARA
It’s an honour to meet you, my lord. My father has always spoken of you with great fondness.
RICKARD
Your father flatters me, my lady, though your reputation as one of the realm’s foremost beauties most certainly does not. Allow me to introduce my son and heir. Brandon?
BRANDON steps forward and bows to WALTER.
BRANDON
It’s an honour to finally put a face to the name, Lord Whent. Like the lady Sara, I too have heard many stories of your adventures together in the war. My lady…
He takes SARA’s hand and kisses it softly, drawing an immediate blush to the young girl’s cheeks.
WALTER
I see the boy inherited his father’s charms, aye Rickard?
RICKARD
Though fortunately his mother’s looks, thank the Gods.
WALTER
Your father was quite the rogue in his youth, you know.
BRANDON looks at RICKARD with a smirk, enjoying his evident discomfort at the turn the conversation has taken.
BRANDON
I didn’t, actually.
WALTER
Is that a fact? Well then, allow me to share a tale or two from the old days. I recall one evening in particular, soon after our arrival upon the Stepstones, that Rickard and Quellon Greyjoy stole a barrel of honey and pair of new-born pigs from the royal stores and –
RICKARD [INTERRUPTING]
Apologies, Walter, but I think it best I save myself some coming embarrassment and absent myself from this telling.
He turns to TYWIN, the king’s surrogate silently watching his and WALTER’s interplay with cool yet evident interest.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
I hoped I might speak with Lord Tywin for a moment, if I may?
Taken off-guard, WALTER turns to TYWIN with up-raised eyebrows. TYWIN considers for a moment, then rises.
TYWIN
Of course. I’ve no doubt Lord Whent would have no objections to our making use of his salon?
WALTER
Err..none at all, my Lord Hand. I shall have the servants prepare a fire for your comfort.
TYWIN
No need, Lord Walter. I’m sure neither of us fear anything from the cold, aye Lord Stark?
12.5 INT: HARRENHALL – DAY
Entering the plushily furnished parlour a step ahead of TYWIN, RICKARD sits himself beside the fireplace, the stones still coated with a lining of old ash from the long winter months. Rather than join him, TYWIN moves instead to the drinks cabinet and raises a decanter for RICKARD’s inspection.
TYWIN
Can I offer you a refreshment, Lord Stark?
RICKARD
No, thank you.
TYWIN pauses with the decanter hovering over his own glass. He sets it aside, his glass unfilled, and takes a seat at WALTER’s writing desk. He waits for RICKARD’s reaction, and after a moment’s hesitation the Lord of Winterfell rises from the fireplace and takes the seat across from TYWIN. On the desk between them rests an ornate board of ivory and ebony chequer, a curious assortment of finely-crafted totems arranged in formation at either end.
TYWIN
“Cyvasse”, they call it. A game of Volantine invention, I’m given to understand.
RICKARD
I’m not familiar.
TYWIN
Apparently it’s all the rage down in Dorne. Prince Doran must have mentioned it, no?
RICKARD
Doran and I have hardly spoken a decade or more, though I do mean to seek him out before we all head for home tomorrow.
RICKARD inspects the tallest piece among his ranks: a man dressed in plated armour, a tall and pointed crown encircling its head.
TYWIN
Prince Rhaegar brought it back from his most recent sojourn to the Free Cities, made a gift of it to Lord Whent upon his arrival here at Harrenhal.
RICKARD
I never knew Walter and the Prince were so close.
TYWIN
Prince Rhaegar keeps all sort of company.
RICKARD
I don’t have much patience for games, I must confess. I’ve just never had the knack.
TYWIN
Oh I doubt that very much.
They consider one another in silence for a long moment, each waiting for the other’s opening gambit.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
Was there something in particular I can do for you, Lord Stark?
RICKARD
There is, though I first wanted to offer my condolences on the passing of Lord Steffon. I know the two of you were great friends for many years.
TYWIN
And mine to you. Truth be told, Steffon and I had drifted apart since his departure from the capitol. I’d hazard to say that you’ve likely had more dealings with him than I have these past few years.
RICKARD
Still, the passage of time can only do so much to erode the bonds of friendship we forge in our youth. On more than one occasion Steffon expressed to me his nostalgia for the days before our respective duties drove us all in such disparate directions
TYWIN
Oh?
RICKARD
There was a great deal to be said for our respective kingdoms being bonded in common cause as we once were. I’m not certain the Seven Kingdom’s wouldn’t be far the better today if there still existed a similar sense of…alliance.
TYWIN
We are all allied beneath the king’s rule, are we not?
RICKARD
Of course, though I’m not sure the same could be said of Steffon. As I was given to understand, in fact, it was that very separation you spoke of that brought him to the contrary conclusion. Yours and the kings.
TYWIN
His Grace and I remain on the surest of terms, Lord Stark.
RICKARD
Apologies, my lord, but you mistake my meaning. My fault, no doubt; we Northerns have never been known as the most articulate of men. I was speaking to the separation between Steffon and the two of you, yourself and the king.
TYWIN
I see. And you believe this “separation” of ours resolved Steffon’s mind to what ends, exactly?
RICKARD
To the ends of greater unity between our respective houses. It was Steffon’s suggestion that he and I enter into a marriage pact, betrothing his son Robert to my daughter Lyanna.
RICKARD watches TYWIN’s reaction to his blunt admission closely, but the king’s hand betrays none at all.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
You don’t seem surprised at this news, my lord.
TYWIN
Surprised only that neither you nor Steffon made any disclosure of this betrothal to the Small Council. As I’ve no doubt you were aware, Lord Stark, it is customary on the occasion of betrothals between the great houses for one or other lord to first petition the king for his approval.
RICKARD
And for that I must apologise on Steffon’s behalf. We had made plans to visit King’s Landing together to present our petition in person before Steffon and the Lady Cassana departed on their tour of the Free Cities. The Gods, it seems, did not take kindly to our presumption.
TYWIN
So you are making the announcement now, to me? I must advise you, Lord Stark, my surrogacy of His Grace’s royal prerogatives here at Harrenhal extends only so far as master of ceremonies.
RICKARD
Oh, I’ve no doubt Robert and I will work together on fashioning a more formal declaration to satisfy the Small Council. But this tourney has brought so many houses together in one place, I thought it best to make it commonly known that Lyanna is already promised. Gods only know how many marriage pacts will be proposed over the course of this tourney…Or have been proposed already.
(pause)
It seems we have both been remiss in our adherence to royal protocol.
It is TYWIN’s turn now to inspect the other man’s expression, and RICKARD’s to betray no hint as to his thinking.
TYWIN
Lord Tully has shared with you the content of our conversation.
RICKARD
There is very little Hoster and I don’t share with one another. Except, that is, our opinion on your preference for announcing Jaime and Lysa’s betrothal before the tourney’s end.
TYWIN
You counselled him against his delay?
RICKARD
I did, though only so long as might afford you and I an opportunity to agree upon a betrothal of our own. Your daughter Cersei is still unpromised, unless I’m very much mistaken?
TYWIN
You are not. Cersei has received a great many suitors, but none to mine liking as yet.
You are suggesting I wed Cersei to…
RICKARD
To Eddard. Ned, as we more usually call him.
TYWIN
Ned. Your second son.
TYWIN and RICKARD hold one another’s eye, both waiting for the other to acknowledge the unspoken question, neither willing to speak the unacknowledged answer. Finally, TYWIN nods to the playing piece still in RICKARD’s grasp.
TYWIN
It’s curious to hear you say you have no knack for games, Lord Stark, and yet without prompting your hand was drawn to the most important piece on the board.
RICKARD
Is that right?
TYWIN
The rest of the pieces are important in their own right, of course, and essential to manoeuvring oneself into the most advantageous position possible. Ultimately though…
TYWIN holds out his hand.
TYWIN [CONT’D]
Whomever takes control of the king, takes the game.
Ignoring TYWIN’s proffered palm, RICKARD replaces the king among the ranks at his end of the board.
RICKARD
It seems to me, Lord Tywin, that I am not the first man to learn that lesson from you.
Curling his fingers into a fist, TYWIN retracts his hand.
TYWIN
And it seems to me, Lord Rickard, that Steffon learned it well.
12.6 EXT: ROAD TO HARRENHAL – DAY
RHAELLA and ELIA trot their horses at the head of a small contingent of Martell household guard. Reigning up atop a modest rise, they look out over the grounds of Harrenhal, the ruin of the great fortress hunched and humbled beyond the busy encampment erected within its shadow.
RHAELLA
This castle was completed the same year Aegon and his sisters first landed their dragons and inaugurated the Targaryen dynasty. Now look at it: a miserable ruin.
Drawing no reply from ELIA, the queen looks the younger woman over with maternal concern as she draws her cloak tighter about her throat, the princess’ breath misting in the brisk afternoon air. RHAELLA turns to inspect the carriage following at their rear, the windows fogged from the children and their governess wrapped up warm within. She returns her attention to the camp, pointing out the yellow and red canvas of the Martell tent, a pair of banners bearing the speared sun cracking in the wind.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
Look, your brothers’ tent.
ELIA nods, but offers no comment.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
I’m sure Doran will be delighted to see you. Oberyn too, I expect. I hear the Red Viper never misses a tilt.
Surrendering her efforts to the princess’ sullen silence, RHAELLA instead searches below for her own standard.
12.7 INT: STARK TENT – DAY
Approaching his tent, RICKARD discovers WALYS lingering upon the threshold.
RICKARD
Not now, Walys. I need some time alone to think.
WALYS
Of course, my lord, only you have a visitor –
Before WALYS can finish his thought, RICKARD has already waved him away and hurried past into the tent.
RICKARD
Jon!
JON ARRYN, Lord of the Eyrie and Warden of the West, sits in the room’s largest and most comfortable chair, his splinted leg raised aloft to rest upon a cushion-covered stool.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
What are you doing here?
JON
First rule of conquest, young Rickard: when the war is won, it’s boots on the ground that decide who shall share in the spoils. I had no intention of watching from Riverrun as Rhaegar takes his throne on the morrow.
RICKARD
But, your leg…
JON
The journey was a long and painful one, I cannot lie. I had hoped to arrive in time for our conclave with the prince, but I could not bring myself to move the horses at anything more than a trot: every time the carriage struck a rock or dropped into a divot I felt the bones of my leg rattling as though they were like to shatter.
JON gestures to the chair across the brazier from his own.
JON [CONT’D]
Now, enough about me; sit yourself down and tell me why you look even more exhausted than I feel…
12.8 INT: KING’S LANDING SHOP – DAY
S.E: smashing.
LEONARD
Oi! What in the Seven Hells do you think you’re playing at!
ILYN
Come on lads, put your backs into it!
Spurred on to fresh extremities of destruction, the band of soiled Gold Cloaks sweep entire shelves of pottery to shatter on the packed-dirt floor. The stoop-backed shopkeep gawps in spluttering fury, his efforts at interceding roughly dissuaded by the high-spirited mob.
LEONARD
You’re bloody well paying for those!
ILYN
Ladies and gents, I do apologise but it looks like Leonard here is closed for business for the day. If you would kindly but promptly get the fuck out…
With mock gentility, ILYN ushers from the shop the few browsers yet to scatter and slams the door behind them.
LEONARD
Have you lost your mind, Payne?! I can hardly pay your backhander if I’ve got nothing left to sell, can I?!
ILYN
I see you haven’t heard: Ilyn Payne is under new ownership. Just like your little shop here.
ILYN reaches into his leathers and brandishes a roll of parchment for LEONARD’s inspection. Peering with weak and milky eyes, LEONARD reads its contents.
LEONARD
…”By order of Her Grace, Queen Rhaella of House Targaryen, the production of all pottery and earthenware shall henceforth be overseen and exclusively operated by…” [TRAILS OFF]
So, you’re the Magister’s dog now, are you? Well I’ll tell you the same thing I told his Pentoshi goon: I’m not interested in joining his poxy collective. I work for myself, just like my old man did, and his old man before him.
S.E: smashing.
Will you please stop that!
ILYN holds up a hand and his men reluctantly halt their fun. He lays an arm around LEONARD’s shoulders.
ILYN
Listen Leonard, me old mucker: things are changing around here, don’t you see? There’s a tide coming, a big old bastard it is…and men like you and me don’t got a say in the matter. All we’ve got is a choice: are we gonna stand in its way, and drown…
ILYN reaches up with his free hand and nudges a tall enamelled urn from its table.
S.E: smash.
ILYN
Or are we gonna ride that tide as far as it’ll take us? Me, I’ve made my choice, and let me tell you, Leonard, just between the two of us: it’s the best decision I ever made.
So what do you say?
ILYN turns them both about to survey the wreckage of LEONARD’s livelihood and the half-dozen soiled Gold Cloaks waiting like coiled springs with wares in hand.
ILYN [CONT’D]
Are you ready to start making your little pots and plates for the fat man…
ILYN reaches to his waist. In the silence of the shop, there can be no mistaking the sound of steel sliding over leather.
ILYN [CONT’D]
Or are things about to get really fucking wet in here?
12.9 INT: STARK TENT – DAY
JON
I can’t say I’m familiar with this “Cyvasse” you speak of, but to receive a compliment from the master strategist Tywin Lannister…you must be feeling very pleased with yourself.
RICKARD
I got the sense as soon as I mentioned Robert and Lyanna’s betrothal that I wasn’t telling him anything of which he wasn’t already well aware.
JON
And when did you know for certain?
RICKARD
When I offered him Ned for Cersei, and he barely blinked before accepting.
JON
A man like Tywin Lannister trading away his daughter to a second son…
RICKARD
A daughter that according to Rhaegar was summoned to the capitol for the sole purpose of deposing Elia Martell from the prince’s marriage bed.
JON
That’s quite the price to pay for a little certainty, Rickard.
RICKARD
The betrothal? It will mean nothing come the morrow; if Tywin tries to force the issue, it will come down to his word against mine that any such thing was ever even discussed. The same holds true for Jaime and Lysa, of course. I only hope Hoster can forgive me.
JON
Forgive you for what?
RICKARD
You and I disappointed him once before, and now I have no recourse but to do it again. I think he wanted to believe Tywin’s marriage proposal was made in earnest…
JON
And why exactly are you so confident that it wasn’t?
RICKARD
It only was a bluff, a method of discerning the truth to whatever suspicions he had regarding the marriage pacts between our houses. Tywin’s proposal to Hoster meant no more than did mine own to Tywin.
JON sighs and shakes his head in censure.
JON
I really can’t leave you boys unsupervised for a moment, can I?
RICKARD
But you just said -
JON [INTERRUPTING]
I said you must be feeling pleased with yourself, not that you have any good reason to be.
Perhaps we might revisit the sequence of events as you have just explained them. Please do correct me if I am anywhere mistaken.
RICKARD
Very well.
JON
Hoster offered his daughter Lysa to Tywin.
RICKARD
Several years ago, yes.
JON
But retained his advocacy of closer alliance with House Lannister nonetheless, to the point of pressing the issue of Tywin’s inclusion among our number with Prince Rhaegar.
RICKARD
As I said.
JON
This being the night before he meets in private with Tywin, and somehow emerges with the very same proposal that Tywin rejected previously.
RICKARD
That’s right.
JON
Subsequently – and at Hoster’s urging, I might point out – you convene your own meeting with Tywin.
RICKARD
Only to establish how much he knew of our intentions.
JON
Which you accomplished by calling Tywin’s “bluff”, as you called it, and making your own proposal, which in effect achieves precisely the ends for which Hoster was long since advocating.
So…explain to me again why Hoster would be in any way dissatisfied with this outcome?
RICKARD frowns; his mouth opens but his mind has yet to catch up as it turns over and about the implications of JON’s retelling.
RICKARD
No, you’re mistaken. You’re seeing conspiracy where none exists but our own. You’ve been listening to Walys spin his webs -
JON
I have not, though if he counselled you to interrogate Hoster’s motives more closely, then you certainly should have.
RICKARD
I will not believe it. Hoster doesn’t have it in him to be so conniving.
JON
No? How many years has he kept his secret now? How many lies must he have told over the years to hide his shame from the ones he loves most? By that measure, Hoster is not only capable of such dissemblance, but positively practiced.
I understand it may be hard to admit, my boy, but it seems to me you have been outplayed.
RICKARD
But this would mean…
JON
That while Tywin Lannister most definitely does know about our plans to crown Prince Rhaegar king…
RICKARD
He has no intention of doing anything about it.
JON
Word reached us on the road about Tywin’s acrimonious departure from King’s Landing. It appears his separation from Aerys was even more grievous than the succession of fishwives and scandal-mongers along the River Road had elaborated upon from one telling to the next.
RICKARD
A separation is one thing, Jon, but the permanent break of conspiring to overthrow his king quite another. Tywin is still Aerys’ Hand; that is no small thing to throw away, not least for the ends of allying himself to a conspiracy that pointedly excluded him.
JON
Neither of which Tywin has done. You said yourself: until his children’s marriage pacts are made public, it is his word against yours that they were ever even discussed. As long as they remain a secret, he can sit safely back with one foot in either camp and watch to see how the next few days play out. If we should somehow fail, he can disavow any and all knowledge of our intentions and align with Aerys against whatever remains of our confederacy. If we succeed…
RICKARD
He can press his claim over Ned and Lysa and secure for House Lannister a place among the new order that will govern the Seven Kingdom’s under Rhaegar’s rule.
JON
A claim that our old friend Hoster will be only too eager to confirm, of course.
RICKARD
I suppose that answers the question of how Tywin came to know.
JON
Hoster? I doubt that very much. He has merely played the field as he found it; conniving he may be, but Hoster is not a brave man. He would never take the risk of exposing us to Tywin outright.
RICKARD
Then who?
JON raises his eyebrows at RICKARD’s question. Inferring his meaning, RICKARD groans with exasperation.
RICKARD
I thought we’d settled this.
JON
It was a mistake to banish Armond Connington.
RICKARD
You know my reasons, Jon. You know what he said. When it comes to my daughter’s honour -
JON
And I respect those reasons, Rickard, truly I do. But you were a fool to think Armond would take his expulsion in his stride and slink meekly back to Griffin’s Roost. You denied him his share in the spoils soon to come, cast him out from our prince’s brave new world. Is it any wonder he would try and seek his vengeance? Is it any surprise he would connive to secure compensation for himself by telling tales to Tywin? We both know the man’s nature…
JON waits for RICKARD to interject, then pre-empts him the moment he begins.
JON
Which is why I knew his silence could be bought…and why I agreed to pay his price.
JON
I wrote to him at the Roost and promised that if he held his tongue on yours and the prince’s approach, I would see to it that the next vacancy in the Kingsguard be filled by his son Jon.
RICKARD
Without Rhaegar’s leave? That’s quite the presumption, Jon, writing debts in the prince’s name.
JON
A debt that needn’t be paid before I am in a position to effectuate its settlement. Once Rhaegar names me Hand of the King, it will be my duty and my pleasure to advise His Grace on all such matters of the realm.
The muscle beneath RICKARD’s right eye twitches involuntarily, but this is his only tell. He considers JON for a long moment, the words he exchanged with Prince Rhaegar the previous evening balanced on the edge of his lips. He swallows them, and shifts his weight and the subject both.
RICKARD
And how would you advise I proceed with Tywin? What would you have me do?
JON
There is only one thing you can do: you make Tywin’s decision for him. The moment the last tilt is won this afternoon, stand up before every high lord in the Seven Kingdoms and announce these marriage pacts.
RICKARD
And hand Ned over to the Lannisters? You can’t be serious?
JON
You fit the saddle, Rickard, not I. If you mean to keep the horse from bolting, you have no choice but to ride it. The whole realm will be gathered for the closing games: publicly tether Tywin’s fortunes to our own and you make certain he cannot intervene against us on the king’s behalf, lest by doing so he damn himself by association. Fractious as their friendship is of late, that association alone will serve Aerys as proof enough of Tywin’s treachery.
RICKARD
I can’t do that, Jon. For Steffon’s sake every bit as much as my own. He went to his grave vowing to deliver this country from Tywin Lannister’s hands.
JON
And perhaps in the next world he enjoys the luxury of holding to that vow still. But in this world, my boy, our desires and our duty are all too rarely one and the same. You know what is at stake here, and you know too that bitterness over an oath forsaken is the very least we have to fear from dead men.
RICKARD
You don’t believe in any of that.
JON
No, but you do, and so long as our ends are one and same, it makes no matter how disparate our motives.
RICKARD sighs and sits back in his chair. He runs a hand across his face, shaking his head ruefully.
RICKARD
How do you do it, Jon? How do you read the board so clearly? Tell me, please, because after half a year of this cloak and dagger horseshit I’m almost feeling nostalgic for the simplicity of the battlefield. At least when a man is charging at you with an axe in his hand you’ve little need to second-guess his intentions.
JON
The secret, dear lad, is not to play the board, but to play the man sitting across from you.
RICKARD
How do you mean?
JON
You’ve never been down to Dorne, have you? I’ve only had the pleasure once, regrettably, back in the days of my father’s rule when I was at liberty to make my leisurely tour about the realm. A fascinating place, almost a different country unto itself in many regards. But one memory above all has stayed with me all these years, and that was the day we visited the Water Gardens. Rickard, when I tell you they took my breath away…a truly quite astonishing achievement, absolutely singular among the Seven Kingdoms. Geometrically perfect. Long pebble paths like spokes on a wheel set in perfect symmetry about axes [ak-seez] of great stone bowls bubbling with crystal-clear water, tiny ceramic tiles of half-a-hundred colours patterned all about their base in whorls and spirals like a peacock’s tail feathers set aflame, the liminal spaces between the paths seeded with lawns of manicured grass green as jade and lush as smoothen silk…
The care and cultivation necessary to summon such intricate order from the heat and dust of the desert, to impose line and rule upon the natural world’s determination toward the wild and disobedient…it was really rather humbling to witness.
But then, when I looked a little closer, there became evident to the eye a blemish upon the canvas, a fault in the fresh-casted steel: trails of trampled brown grass cutting across the corners, furrows in the soil where a thousand pairs of feet had trodden the same shortcut between one point and another in quicker order than the pre-ordained pathways would allow. The collective artistry and ambition of expert architects and landscapers undone by the idleness and impatience of the men and women going about their busy lives in the middle this masterpiece…and why? Not from malice, or spite, or because they failed to properly appreciate the garden’s beauty…but because best laid plans will always lose out to the expedience of the moment, and because grand design will always place second behind the nature of man to seek out easiest advantage.
Wincing at the pain in his splintered leg, JON stands and retrieves his crutches from the back of his chair, shifting his weight with a grateful sigh.
JON [CONT’D]
Take some time to think on all I have said. But don’t take too much of it: I can hear the sounds of hooves growing closer with every passing minute.
12.10 INT: HARRENHAL STABLES – DAY
S.E: horse neigh, padding.
In the stables of Harrenhal, NED finds his big brother stripped to the waist, his lean and wiry torso slick with a layer of sweat as he fastidiously brushes down his destrier ahead of the afternoon’s tilt.
NED
Isn’t that Elbert’s job?
BRANDON
I gave him the morning off to recover from last night’s lash. I can’t have my squire tossing up his breakfast in my moment of victory.
BRANDON pauses in his labours to snatch up a jug of water and chug half its contents. As he drinks, NED inspects the blue-green bruise bloomed over BRANDON’s left shoulder and spread down over his pectoral.
NED
That’s quite the badge of honour Ser Barristan dealt you.
BRANDON
I’m not topless just for the heat, you know. Women will tell you they hate violence, but the gods know they love to see a man wearing its rewards.
As though in evidence of his proclamation, a passing serving girl makes a point of catching BRANDON’s eye on her way past the broad stable door. BRANDON flashes her a knowing grin, and she hurries away with a coquettish giggle.
BRANDON reaches up a hand to the fresh scar just beneath NED’s hairline, his little brother flinching at the touch.
BRANDON
Elbert tells me you’ve have been in the wars yourself.
NED
A skirmish at best, though bad enough to nearly cost Jon his leg.
BRANDON
Elbert says you cut down a Stone Crow.
NED
Is there anything Elbert didn’t tell you, I wonder?
BRANDON
Aye, he didn’t tell me you’d be so bloody sensitive about it. I’d have thought you’d be standing ten foot tall; it’s a great occasion, killing your first man.
NED
There was nothing great about it, I promise you. One swing of my sword and the thing was done. Quick and easy as plucking a nettle from the dirt.
BRANDON watches his brother closely, unsettled at the fatalistic tenor to his words. He collects his brush, assuming an unconvincing air of nonchalance as though merely passing comment on the weather.
BRANDON
I wouldn’t know.
NED looks at BRANDON with a rueful smirk.
NED
Aye, that’ll be right.
When BRANDON makes no reply, NED realises the earnestness of his big brother’s admission. He shakes his head.
NED [CONT’D]
But you said…you told us years ago, that night you rode for the Rills –
BRANDON [CONT’D]
I know what I said. Could be I…embellished the details a little.
NED
Embellished? You said you cut that hedge knight clean in half!
BRANDON
Aye, well…maybe that was the detail I embellished. Truth is, me and the Lads did get into it with a couple of broken men –
NED
Broken men?! So he wasn’t even a knight?
BRANDON cringes when several heads poke above adjacent stalls at the sound of NED’s incredulity.
BRANDON
Keep your voice down, will you?! Who’s to say if he was a knight or not? The six-inch dirk he stabbed into Elbert’s thigh was sharp enough to make no difference, I’d say.
NED
What did you do?
BRANDON
I stabbed him back! A good deep one too, right in the gut, so there’s every chance I wasn’t lying when I told you I killed him, but we had to get out that tavern too quick to wait around and see.
NED shakes his head once more, looking BRANDON over as though seeing him anew.
BRANDON [CONT’D]
You almost look disappointed, little brother.
NED
Surprised is all. It makes me wonder what else you might have “embellished” down the years. You’re not going to Catelyn’s bed a maiden, are you?
BRANDON smirks. He collects a second brush from beside the first and thrusts it into NED’s hands.
BRANDON
Here. Make yourself useful for once why don’t you? There’s a stool over there if you need help reaching his withers.
12.11 INT: ROYAL TENT – DAY
Stepping through the canvas into the broad interior of the royal tent, RHAEGAR stops short as though struck.
RHAEGAR
Mother! What are you doing here? Where are the children?
RHAELLA
They’re safe, they’re here with Elia. We’re all safe, my love.
RHAEGAR
Then why are you here? You made no mention of your coming in the letter you sent ahead of my arrival.
RHAELLA
With Prince Lewyn sent away to Dorne, I could no longer ensure our protection in the capitol. When the time comes –
RHAEGAR [INTERRUPTING]
When the time comes, I wanted my family safe inside the Red Keep, with Lewyn in residence to smooth our entry through the gates. If the household guard should learn of our march -
RHAELLA [INTERRUPTING]
They’ll do what? Greet their crown prince’s return with naked steel? Even if they did refuse your command to lay down their swords, you and your lords have more than men enough to cut your way into the castle.
RHAEGAR
I told you, I will have no bloodshed, especially from those sworn to our family’s service.
RHAELLA
There will be no blood, sweet boy, only crowds of adoring smallfolk lining the streets for your great and glorious procession. And now, when you ride victorious up the High Hill towards your throne, little Aegon can sit upon your lap so the people can see the line of succession is strong.
Just picture it, Rhaegar: in a few short hours you will begin your reign as king of the Seven Kingdoms. Your son will become the heir apparent; your daughter will be free to marry whomever she wishes, commanded by naught but the demands of her heart. Elia will be your Queen, keeping your confidences and filling your court with laughter and love and, in time perhaps, once she has recovered all her strength…
Recognising the flinch of pain that creases the corners of her son’s eyes, RHAELLA frowns in concern.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
Did I say something wrong?
RHAEGAR sits in his chair, overcome with a sudden melancholy.
RHAEGAR
No, nothing wrong…it’s certainly a pretty picture you paint, and I would consider myself more than blessed were only a tenth of it proven true, but…Elia is not a well woman, mother.
RHAELLA
I know well enough how hard these past months have been, Rhaegar, and you are a better husband than most for worrying so, but I promise you the worst is behind her. You should have seen her on the road, bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked in the warm sun of Spring.
RHAEGAR summons a half-smile, hardly sufficient to fool a mother’s read. RHAELLA moves to his side, sitting herself on the arm of his chair and wrapping her arm about his shoulder in reassurance.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
I promise you, my love: I will see to it that before too long the high-spirited, hot-headed young girl you married is returned to you just as she was before.
RHAELLA lays her cheek atop RHAEGAR’s head, idly stroking his long silver hair, her voice as soft and soothing as the slow pattern of her caresses.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
And, if need be, I can serve in her place until she feels ready to assume all her new duties. If the new king won’t mind an old dowager queen fussing about his throne room, that is.
RHAEGAR
Queen mother.
Like a lap-cat lulled by the sound of its own purring, RHAELLA only murmurs dozily in reply.
RHAELLA
Hmm?
RHAEGAR
You said “dowager queen”, but you meant “queen mother.”
RHAELLA comes crashing back with violent whiplash into the moment. She stands, her face suddenly pale as gathering alarm at her mistake drives the contended flush from her face, the composed and commanding matriarch suddenly stripped of her self-certain raiment. RHAEGAR rises to his feet, and RHAELLA moves quickly to pre-empt his onrushing rage.
RHAELLA
Rhaegar, listen to me, I -
RHAEGAR [INTERRUPTING]
What have you done?
RHAELLA
You have to understand what it’s been like all these years, Rhaegar, you have to –
RHAEGAR [INTERRUPTING]
Tell me!
RHAELLA
Your father isn’t leaving Duskendale alive. I have given Lord Darklyn orders to execute him before the day is through.
RHAEGAR
No, no, no, no –
RHAEGAR begins to pace, his balled fists pressed to his temples. RHAELLA reaches for her son but RHAEGAR swats away her outstretched arms and recoils in horror as though their touch might confer some hideous disease. From a distance that seems wider than the Mander, he looks her over as though seeing her anew, his glare settling on her imploring, desperate face.
RHAEGAR
We talked about this! We agreed on this! We agreed he would remain in Duskendale’s dungeons until I was crowned and sitting on the Iron Throne. By then it would be too late for him to -
RHAELLA [INTERRUPTING]
It will never be too late! Whether you release him the day after your coronation or the day before Aegon’s fiftieth nameday, the moment he’s free he will name you usurper, raise an army, and plunge this country into a second civil war.
RHAEGAR
An army from where? Every great house but Lannister and Tyrell are sworn to me.
RHAELLA
So you imagined what? Aerys will just forgive you stealing his crown and meekly see out his days ambling about the cliffs of Dragonstone?
RHAEGAR
I am under no illusion he will forgive me, and I expect I’ll never hear him call me his son ever again, but in time –
RHAELLA [INTERRUPTING]
Why must Targaryen men be so stubborn in their naivety? Your father was foolish enough to believe he could take the Small Council from Tywin without consequence, as though the old lion would simply roll over and accept his humbling. Now you’re making the same mistake with your father.
RHAEGAR
He will have no choice in the matter.
RHAELLA
He’s a Targaryen and a king: he will always have a choice. He will cast you out from the line of succession and name Viserys his heir, and then it won’t be just our lives that become forfeit: as long as Aegon and Rhaenys still live then Viserys’ claim will be open to challenge. Is your father’s life more precious to you than theirs?
RHAEGAR
He would never harm his own grandchildren. My father isn’t a monster.
RHAELLA summons a sad, humourless smile.
RHAELLA
When I was Rhaenys’ age, like most little girls I believed in monsters. Then I got a little older and learned from my mother that monsters weren’t real. Then I got older still, and learned from your father that they were.
RHAEGAR
And now you have made me yours. “Kingslayer”, they’ll name me. “Kinslayer”. The Prince that sent his own father to the executioner’s block.
RHAELLA
Aerys brought this upon himself. Don’t you dare blame anybody but him. If you only knew even half of -
RHAEGAR
And who do you think the people are going to blame?! I need the people to trust me, mother, I need them to love me, because one day I’m going to need them to follow my charge into the jaws of death itself. How can I ever hope to turn an entire country into an army if every man and woman living believes their king has his own father’s blood upon his hands?
RHAELLA
Nobody is going to blame you for this, Rhaegar. And as much as you may desire it right at this moment, they won’t blame me either. They’ll blame Tywin Lannister, because that’s where all the tracks lead. Tracks you and I will invite the people to follow.
The enmity between Aerys and his old friend Tywin has become the stuff of legend, as commonly known among the people as the words to the Mother’s Prayer. You’ve heard for yourself the slanders Tywin has been spinning about the city: the dutiful and diligent Hand, undermined at every turn by his absent king, his addled king…and now your father has provided the proof of these calumnies by stripping his faithful servant of the Small Council, by seducing away his son and heir…who would ever doubt Tywin believed himself possessed of reason enough to seek your father’s overthrow?
RHAEGAR
Whatever else he may have done in his time, Tywin had no hand in any of this.
RHAELLA
I am no conjurer, Rhaegar. I cannot spin a yarn without any wool, and if Tywin had not spent the last twenty years digging your father’s grave we would have no hole in which to bury them both.
With your father gone, House Lannister is the only power strong enough to oppose your rule, but only because of Tywin. That callow peacock and smirking whore he’ll leave behind will pose no threat. Charge him alongside Darklyn for colluding to murder your father, and your band of lords cease to be your confederates in a coup, and become instead a coronation procession marching to secure the integrity of the throne against Tywin’s treasons.
RHAEGAR
If I do that, my hand will be forced: I will have no option but to execute Tywin and Darklyn both, or be seen as toothless as my father.
RHAELLA
When you drive an opponent to his knees, you do not throw down your sword and help him back to his feet. You take his head and make an end of it.
RHAEGAR stands aghast, blinking in appalled wonder at the stranger standing before him.
RHAEGAR
All this time, everything we’ve done…I thought you believed in me. I thought you believed in what I had to be.
RHAELLA
Listen to me, Rhaegar: you are my son, my firstborn son, and I would walk through wildfire to keep you from harm. Every day since I first held you in my arms, I’ve lived my life for you. I lie for you, I scheme for you, I sit with your wife when you train in the yard and I play with your children when you lose yourself in the library. When you disappear for months at a time to go Gods only know where, it’s me that’s there to pick up the pieces you leave behind. And I do it all gladly, and without complaint, because you and your brother are my whole reason for being. I love you more than I ever thought was possible.
Do you remember the story you told Rhaenys that morning I found you in the children’s room, the same story I would read to you when you were her age?
RHAEGAR
What does that have to do anything –
RHAELLA
Serwyn of the Mirror Shield. The fabled knight who hid himself behind a shield polished to such a sheen that the great dragon Urrax was bewitched by the sight of his own reflection.
RHAEGAR
Of course I remember.
RHAELLA
Don’t you see? You, my beautiful prince, you are my mirror shield. Ever since you came of age, Aerys has looked at you in hopes of seeing himself reflected back, and that was enough to keep him from devouring me.
But then you grew older, and became the man you are today. And when he looked at you he saw everything he’s not, he saw something so much better, so much more worthy of the name Targaryen…and that repulsed him. His own reflection had betrayed him…and I knew the time had come to strike, before the dragon saw me crouched behind my shield, sword in hand…
RHAEGAR
So it’s you that’s the hero here, is that the lesson I’m to take from this? And what does that make me? Just a tool, a mere instrument in pursuit of your own ambitions?
RHAELLA
Why do you say “ambition” as though it were something shameful? Ambition made your father the hero of Bloodstone, made Tywin Lannister the most powerful man in Westeros…ambition brought you to where you are now.
RHAEGAR
That’s not true. I never wanted any of this. I have no ambition for the Iron Throne.
RHAELLA
Stop it, Rhaegar! Just stop it! Stop lying to yourself, stop hiding behind this absurd prophecy of yours! You want to be king, you always have, even before Aemon filled your head with his fantasies, and you’ll pay whatever price you need to claim your crown. You’re just too damned honourable to admit it.
RHAEGAR
Now who looks at me and sees their own face reflected back…No, mother. I’m not like you, no more than I am father.
I knew the price would be high, it’s true, but I could make my peace because I knew I would be the only one to pay it. I will not condemn my own father to cover the costs that belong to me, and me alone.
12.12 INT: STARK TENT – DAY
RICKARD sits outside the Stark family tent, watching as RODRIK CASSELL heats a kettle over a firepit, Winterfell’s Master at Arms stroking his greying. Whatever daydreams occupied his mind are suddenly dispelled at the sight of his lord rising quickly to his feet.
RICKARD
Your Grace.
RODRIK looks over his shoulder to find RHAEGAR approaching at an amble. He looks back to RICKARD, but finds his expression transformed from his reflexive reaction only a moment ago, the previous animation now displaced by a far more characteristic impassivity.
RHAEGAR
Apologies for calling unannounced, Lord Stark. I only wanted to offer young Brandon my best wishes for our tilt this afternoon.
RICKARD
How very gracious, my prince. Will you stay for a cup of warmed wine to stave off this curious chill?
RHAEGAR
I’d be most gratified, thank you my lord.
Both men simply stand and look at one another for a moment, as though waiting for audience applause to draw their scene to a close. Intrigued by this unexpected interaction, yet ever mindful of his duties, RODRIK takes a step towards the kettle. RICKARD raises a hand and waves him off.
RICKARD
It’s all right, Rodrik, I’ll see to the wine myself. You can leave us.
RODRIK nods, bows to the prince, and departs. Glancing back over his shoulder, his bushy, untamed brow knits together at the sight of RHAEGAR following RICKARD into the Stark tent, the boiling kettle already forgotten.
CUT TO:
RICKARD
You shouldn’t have come here. Questions will be asked.
RHAEGAR
We need to call it off.
RICKARD
Your Grace?
RICKARD blinks, uncomprehending.
RHAEGAR
Lord Darklyn has betrayed us. He means to take my father’s head.
RICKARD
Those were not his instructions, as you well know. I was always clear that Aerys was not to be harmed, only held until you were safely installed upon the throne.
RHAEGAR
There is still time to forestall this treachery, but it must come from your hand. Darklyn has dealt only with you; he will act only at your instruction.
RICKARD
Rhaegar –
RHAEGAR
You must write to him at once, command him to set his intentions aside and allow my father to return safely to King’s Landing.
RICKARD
No.
Now it is RHAEGAR’s turn to stare stupefied, unable to properly process what he has just heard.
RHAEGAR
What did you say?
RICKARD
I said no. I will do no such thing.
RHAEGAR
Have you forgotten to whom you’re speaking, Lord Stark?
RICKARD
I know very well, Your Grace. It’s you that seems to have forgotten.
RHAEGAR
You swore no harm would come to him. You gave me your word.
RICKARD
Aye, that I did, but I don’t recall you being overly concerned for the vows I broke when I when I joined your conspiracy against the crown, so don’t insult you and I both by appealing to my honour when it serves you now.
RHAEGAR
There can be no coup without your king, and I will not step over my father’s corpse to claim my crown.
RICKARD
Yes, you will. Or you would not be the man I believe you to be.
RHAEGAR
Have you taken leave of your senses, Stark? Do you really think you can force this upon me? That you can march me through the throne room like –
RICKARD
Like a father dragging his reluctant daughter to the altar? I think we both know the answer to that, Your Grace.
I am sorry for your father, Rhaegar, truly I am. But this is bigger than any one man.
He takes a step towards RHAEGAR, his palms up in the supplicants pose as he appeals to the prince’s reason.
RICKARD [CONT’D]
Old Jaehaerys grew complacent, beset as he was by the grasping lords all around him. That complacency permitted war to land on our shores, a war my generation was left settle. For years now, Aerys has been indulging in that same complacency, allowing this country to become fat and idle on Tywin Lannister’s teat. But I refuse to let history repeat itself: I will not bequeath the next war to my children the way my father did the last. This country needs a king that knows what’s coming, that understands what needs to be done to afford us even the slimmest hope when it finally arrives. We need a warrior king; it could not matter less whether or not he is a happy king.
RHAEGAR
You are backing me into a corner here, Lord Stark.
RICKARD
I’m not backing you into anywhere, Your Grace. Denys Darklyn is.
RHAEGAR
Not if I can get a message to him first. If you will not do as I ask, then I will write the letter myself.
RICKARD
And sign it how? You can’t reveal yourself without revealing all of us, and what consequences then?
RHAEGAR
I don’t give a damn what consequences then!
RICKARD
And what about the people of the Seven Kingdoms? Do you give a damn about them? Because even if you should escape your father’s wroth, my friends and I won’t be so fortunate, and I can promise you Rhaegar that these are not the kind of men to submit meekly to the executioner’s axe. It will mean war. A country divided against itself. And what happens then when the Long Night comes and we’re too busy fighting amongst ourselves? Every man, woman, and child become meat for the army of the dead. Would you give a damn then? Would the Prince that was Promised give a damn, do you think? Or would he do what every other entitled shit to ever wear a crown would do and chose his own desires over the duty he owes to the people he was sworn to protect?
RHAEGAR
You will write that letter. You will save my father’s life.
RICKARD
I will not. And there’s nothing you can say and nothing you can do to compel me to the contrary.
RHAEGAR bores twin holes into RICKARD’s stoic, unyielding expression. Rather than blanche before the storm of simmering fury crackling across the indigo skies of the prince’s glare, the Northman stares steadily back, his own eyes cold and hard as permafrost.
RHAEGAR
Damn you, Rickard Stark.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the Lord of Winterfell nods, though whether in grim acceptance of the RHAEGAR’s curse or in answer to some internal resolution it is impossible to discern.
RICKARD
Damn me, exile me, execute me if you must. But being a leader of men sometimes means making the hard decisions others are unwilling to make for themselves.
Whether you want it or not, I will make you a king.
12.13 INT: ROOKERY, HARRENHAL – DAY
Without breaking his stride to render a cursory knock upon the door, RHAEGAR passes at pace into the maester’s rookery. Finding it’s administrator absent, he hurries over to the writing desk pressed against the far wall and pulls a slip of parchment from a great glass jar. Taking up a quill, he scribbles out his message:
RHAEGAR
“If this thing is not yet done, do not. I will see that you are well compensated for your troubles.”
RHAEGAR considers a moment, then crumples the parchment and retrieves another from the jar.
RHAEGAR
“If this thing is done already, release the king at once. I will see that you are well protected.”
He hesitates, the quill hovering just about the parchment. At last, he scribbles a brief signature: “T, P, T, W, P”.
Turning to the wall of wood-and-wire cages, RHAEGAR works his way along the rows, reading the names inscribed into the wooden frame of each cage as passes.
RHAEGAR
Saltpans…Maidenpool…Rook’s Rest…Duskendale!
He opens the cage door, flinching away from the storm of flapping wings his intrusion elicits. Wrapping his hand about the largest raven among the unkindness, he draws it from the cage and struggles against the bird’s protest to affix the rolled parchment about its leg. With the scroll in place, RHAEGAR steps to the open window overlooking the Tower of Dread and the mews beyond.
RHAEGAR
Fly fast, my little friend.
12.14 EXT: OFF THE COAST OF DUSKENDALE – DAY
A quarter-league off the coast, the royal blockade sits anchored across the breadth of Duskendale’s harbour. From the bow of his command ship at its centre, LUCERYS VELARYON takes a deep lungful of sea air and looks pensively up and down the line, the captain of every ship stationed likewise to watch the eerie stillness of the town like an audience waiting for the curtains to rise and performers to appear. LUCERYS surveys the chalk-white cliffs to the north, follows their decline to the twin drum towers of the Dun Fort and from there along the seaward length of the castle’s square keep to the city gates and the ordered ranks of the royal forces, looking at this distance like toy soldiers arranged before a child’s dollhouse.
CUT TO:
GEROLD
Hold half our men here. I want these gates to remain open, whatever the cost.
CAPTAIN
As you say, Lord Commander.
GEROLD
Captain.
The CAPTAIN stops in his tracks.
GEROLD [CONT’D]
Whatever the cost. Do you understand me?
The captain nods his assent, and repairs to the ranks to relay GEROLD’s orders. Dressed now in gleaming white, his blonde locks disguised beneath a plumed half-helm, JAIME tilts back his head to count the full compliment of Darklyn guards marshalling the ramparts, crossbows at the ready.
JAIME
Is that wise, Lord Commander? Would we not be better served moving our full force within the walls?
GEROLD draws JAIME’s attention to the sidestreets branching off the main thoroughfare that lies ahead, the mouth of each entry blockaded with horsecarts and tall stacks of barrels and crates.
GEROLD
One way in, one way out. If things go south, I want to be certain we have a straight shot to the open road.
Forced to march three-abreast, the hundred men of the Targaryen host form up behind GEROLD, JAIME, and JONOTHOR and at AERYS’ nod press on across the market square.
Entering the central avenue, the royal party advances towards the Dun Fort rising sheer and foreboding at the its terminus. The smallfolk of Duskendale watch intently from the doorways and overhanging balconies that line either side of the street, following the party’s progress with silent hostility. At the procession’s head, AERYS smiles and nods to his people with haughty patronage, undeterred by the stony stares he receives in return. Confirming GEROLD’s assessment, JAIME takes note of each sidestreet they pass and the makeshift barricades preventing their access.
JONOTHOR
“Moo”, said the cattle.
JAIME nods in grim agreement.
JONOTHOR
We’re being herded.
12. 15 EXT: CAMPGROUNDS, HARRENHAL – DAY
Nodding in greeting at the overawed smallfolk astonished to find the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms walking abroad unattended and unguarded, RHAELLA walks with stately grace towards the tourney grounds.
CERSEI
Rhaella.
The Queen halts her progress. Sighing deeply, she plasters a smile upon her face and turns.
RHAELLA
Cersei, my darling!
CERSEI
Don’t call me that.
CERSEI strides the dozen paces separating the pair.
CERSEI [CONT’D]
How could you, Rhaella? How could you betray me like that? I thought you were my friend.
RHAELLA tilts her head in sympathy as though observing an uncomprehending toddler.
RHAELLA
Oh, Cersei…lie to everyone else if you must, but lie to yourself and you are lost forever. We both know you didn’t come to my door looking for a friend.
CERSEI
Whatever else I may have been to you, I was always the child of Joanna Lannister, the woman you claimed to love.
RHAELLA
And what of my child? The child you came to the capitol to seduce away from his ailing wife, from his two young children...
CERSEI
I only did what my father commanded me to do.
RHAELLA
Yes. Because you love your father. Just as I loved your mother. And look what that love cost us both…
They hold one another’s eye for what seems an age. At last, RHAELLA breathes a sigh of weary finality.
RHAELLA [CONT’D]
Given that this will likely be the last time you and I ever speak with one another, allow me to leave you with one last lesson.
CERSEI
I don’t want anything from you anymore, least of all your lessons.
RHAELLA
But I shall give it all the same, because it’s a lesson I learned from your mother. Passing on what is yours by rights seems to me the very least I can do.
The more people you love, the weaker you are. If you mean to survive in this world, Cersei, you must love no one but your children.
Take care, sweet girl.
S.E: receding footsteps.
12.16 EXT: DUN FORT SQUARE – DAY
AERYS is the first to pass beyond the avenue and enter the broad open space that takes its name from the castle that casts its shadow across the cobbled square. Drawing up at the foot of the Dun Fort’s steps, AERYS and his escort find LORD DENYS DARKLYN waiting to receive them. Flanked on his left by a coterie of servants and his right by a single guard attired in mail and boiled leather, DARKLYN makes the most perfunctory of bows.
DARKLYN
Your Grace. Welcome to Duskendale.
Never a man to overlook a slight, AERYS registers that DARKLYN has made no move to descend the steps and greet his king. When he speaks, he raises his voice as though to underscore this oversight.
AERYS
A warm reception indeed, Lord Darklyn.
DARKLYN
The people of Duskendale are always proud to host the crown, Your Grace.
JONOTHOR’s gaze flits to the people in question, half-a-hundred men and women gathered behind some invisible ropeline at the squares northern-most side as though attending a tourney, their expression uniformly austere.
DARKLYN
Apologies, but I do not see Lord Tywin among your party. I trust naught ill has befallen our dear King’s Hand?
AERYS
Lord Tywin is at Harrenhal. Which is where I would be were it not for your presumptions, Lord Darklyn.
The tenor of his manner changing entirely, DARKLYN disregards AERYS’ barb and switches his attention to beam earnestly at GEROLD.
DARKLYN
Lord Commander. It’s an honour to stand in your company once again, ser. It gladdens an old man’s heart to see you looking so well.
Uncomfortable at AERYS’s deathstare, GEROLD ducks his head in greeting.
GEROLD [NOT HOSTILE, JUST FORMAL]
You flatter me, my lord. I only regret we could not meet under more hospitable circumstances.
DARKLYN
I have always remembered you as a plain and honest speaker, ser. I see my memory at least still serves me well.
GEROLD
If I may, my lord: it has been a long ride from the capital. I wonder if we might trouble you for some small refreshment.
DARKLYN smiles knowingly.
DARKLYN
You must forgive me, ser. We are ill-practiced at receiving guests into our city.
DARKLYN beckons a pair of servants, one carrying a serving tray of cheeses and the other a platter of cups. The servants deliver their wares but AERYS waves the offerings away.
GEROLD [ENCOURAGING, AS THOUGH REMINDING HIM OF PROPER COURTESY]
Your Grace…
AERYS
I have no thirst, and I never did much care for cheese.
DARKLYN
My honoured guests, be welcome within my walls and please help yourself to wine from my cellars and cheese from my table. I extend to you my hospitality and protection, in the light of the Seven.
Levelling his study upon AERYS, DARKLYN watches with a half-smile as AERYS realises the wisdom behind GEROLD’s urging and is forced to humble himself by accepting his error and grudgingly nibble at a heel of cheese. GEROLD, JAIME, and JONOTHOR follow suit. When their host speaks, he addresses GEROLD but holds AERYS’ baleful glare.
DARKLYN
I expect you spoke against coming here today, ser.
GEROLD opens his mouth to speak, but AERYS pre-empts him.
AERYS
I go where I will, Lord Darklyn, and I do what I care to, howsoever the Lord Commander may petition to the contrary.
DARKLYN’s smile withers and he meets GEROLD’s eye with something akin to sympathy.
DARKLYN
As was ever the case, Your Grace.
A thundercloud passes over AERYS’ face at the allusion, the king sensing some unspoken accord at his expense between DARKLYN and GEROLD.
AERYS
I did not come here to bandy innuendo, Lord Darklyn. Let us proceed, shall we?
AERYS places a foot on the bottom step but DARKLYN holds out a hand in demurral.
DARKLYN
Forgive me, Your Grace, but I regret I cannot accommodate so large a host within the Dun Fort. As you can see, my home is modest by the standards of many houses, and even the great hall is not sufficiently apportioned to the…what, six score men you have deemed necessary to travel with today.
AERYS hesitates, and DARKLYN holds up his hands in mollification.
DARKLYN
As you will no doubt have taken note, my household guard have taken to the walls. The only sword within the Dun Fort sits there on Aynor’s hip, and I give you my word that there it shall remain.
DARKLYN gestures to the lone guard standing at his elbow. At first glance, the man could be taken for a Dornishman, were it not for the pointed blue beard and curled orange moustache that mark him as Pentoshi.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
That makes three swords to one by my count. You would not find a gambling house in all of Essos that would offer better odds than those.
AERYS looks to GEROLD, the Lord Commander shaking his head subtly, but DARKLYN’s pointed insinuation towards AERYS’ less-than-sturdy sense of security has provoked the king’s pride and he nods in agreement with his host.
AERYS
What manner of guest would I be to impose upon such a humble dwelling. More of a holdfast than a fort, wouldn’t you say, my lord?
But DARKLYN has already turned to depart, his attendants following close behind. Scowling at GEROLD, AERYS leads his Kingsguard, sworn and makeshift, up the stairs and into the Dun Fort.
12. 17 EXT: TOURNEY GROUND, HARRENHAL – DAY
The tourney is packed beyond capacity, the highborn packed into stalls abuzz with anticipation, the mass of smallfolk on the far side of the tilts pushing and jostling for a clearer view. In the shadow of the wooden bleachers, RHAEGAR sits ready atop his mount, his young squire standing by with helmet and shield, a pair of wooden lances spiked into the frosted ground.
BRANDON
Your Grace.
RHAEGAR starts as though woken from a dream to find BRANDON has trotted alongside. It takes a moment for his to register the greeting.
RHAEGAR
Lord Stark.
CUT TO:
In the foremost row of the stalls, RICKARD, JON, NED and ROBERT shuffle down to make room for the arriving LYANNA. She nods in greeting to HOSTER as she shuffles past to seat herself between CATELYN and her father.
RICKARD
Where’ve you been, girl? You almost missed your brother’s tilt.
She glances up and down the row quizzically.
LYANNA
Where’s Benjen? I thought he’d be front and centre for this.
RICKARD
Young Elbert made a little too much of Lord Whent’s hospitality at supper last night, apparently. Benjen is standing in as Brandon’s squire.
CUT TO:
Dragging BRANDON’s lance determinedly behind him, BENJEN huffs and puffs to his brother’s side. BRANDON reaches down and plucks his helmet from BENJEN’s head, ruffling the boy’s hair affectionately, but the youngest Stark is too overawed by the sight of RHAEGAR to pay BRANDON any mind. For his part, RHAEGAR appears oblivious to events around him, his gaze fixed upon the castle.
BRANDON
Something on your mind, Your Grace? You seem a little distracted.
RHAEGAR glances at BRANDON but only for an instant, immediately returning his attention towards Harrenhal.
RHAEGAR
Nothing that need concern you, Lord Stark.
CUT TO:
So fixed is the crowd’s attention on the games forthcoming, none among its number notice ELIA mounting the steps of the stalls, the baby AEGON on her hip and a wide-eyed RHAENYS clutching her free hand, a pair of Martell guard close at her heel. She stops to search the packed benches for a means of passage to the royal box, but finding none she hesitates, hovering uncertain in the aisle.
CATELYN
Lyanna, look! Isn’t that…
LYANNA follows the excited CATELYN’s finger in ELIA’s direction.
CATELYN [CONT’D]
Gods, she’s even more beautiful than they say. Don’t you think?
LYANNA’s can muster no reply, her face pale and her expression wounded at the sight of Princess ELIA and her children.
CUT TO:
BRANDON
Ser Rodrik tells me you came by our tent earlier to wish me luck in the tilts. I told him how strange that was, given that you’d already done so when I found you with my sister this morning.
RHAEGAR
Lord Stark, whatever you may have inferred to the contrary, I assure you mine and your sister’s encounter was entirely innocent.
BRANDON
Oh, I have no doubt on that score. On Lyanna’s part, at least.
You’re only lucky it was me that came across you. Had it been my father…well, let’s just say he has a history of drastic action when it comes to defending his daughter’s honour.
BRANDON turns his attention to the field, missing the determined set to RHAEGAR’S jaw.
RHAEGAR
Let us hope so.
S.E: approaching footsteps.
STEWARD [OUT OF BREATH]
Your Grace.
The steward bends double, gasping for air, his forehead beaded with sweat.
RHAEGAR
Tell me.
STEWARD
I came straight from the rookery, Your Grace. No raven has arrived for you.
RHAEGAR receives his answer like a condemned man hearing the hammer drive the final nail into the gallows. He looks resignedly towards the tourney ground, seeking out first RICKARD and then LYANNA seated beside him. His jaw sets, hard and bitter.
CUT TO:
S.E: crier’s trumpet.
CRYER
Brandon Stark, son of Rickard Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North.
Donning his helmet, BRANDON beckons BENJEN to follow, and gives his horse his heels.
BRANDON
Whatever troubles you, Your Grace, best put it from your mind. No good dwelling on one disappointment when you have another soon coming.
Receiving BRANDON’s impertinence without reaction, RHAEGAR watches as BRANDON rides out onto the field, waving to the crowd with a confident smile.
CRYER
Rhaegar of House Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone, eldest son and heir to His Grace King Aerys, second of his name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
RHAEGAR makes no move to answer the crier’s call. MYLES raises a hand towards his horses’ reins.
MYLES
Your Grace.
RHAEGAR looks down at his squire, his face strangely calm and without expression, as though MYLES were an uninspired tapestry about which he cannot summon the slightest interest.
MYLES [CONT’D]
Your Grace, shall I –
MYLES takes a step forward as though to lead RHAEGAR’s mount but the prince suddenly spurs the horse to action and trots onto the field.
CUT TO:
Watching Rhaegar ride onto the field with a gambler’s eye, ROBERT nudges NED in the ribs.
ROBERT
Maegor’s teats, I’ve seen painted whores not half so gaudy as that. Damn fine jouster, though. What do you say, Ned? Twenty gold dragons on the Dragon Prince?
NED
Too rich for my blood.
ROBERT
Rickard?
The Lord of Winterfell pays ROBERT no mind, both he and JON turned to study TYWIN seated in the royal box. ROBERT leans across RICKARD and pulls at LYANNA’s sleeve.
ROBERT [CONT’D]
Can I tempt you at ten? Your big brother’s surely worth that much, at least.
No less distracted than her father, LYANNA swats ROBERT away, chewing at her bottom lip as she follows RHAEGAR’s progress.
ROBERT
Come on, it’s just a bit of fun. My money is our money soon enough, anyway.
Drawing no response, ROBERT scowls and settles muttering back into his seat.
ROBERT
Bloody miserable lot I’m marrying into.
12. 18 INT: GREAT HALL, DUN FORT – DAY
In the great hall of the Dun Fort, AERYS and DARKLYN seat facing one another at either end of an oaken table, which together with the occupants’ chairs amounts to the only furniture remaining in the heigh-ceilinged, stone-walled space. GEROLD, JONOTHOR, and JAIME stand behind their king’s seat, the unknown Pentoshi behind DARKLYN’s.
DARKLYN
I trust your journey was not too arduous?
AERYS
Not at all. Though I intend to make the return trip before sundown, so perhaps we could dispense with the pleasantries.
DARKLYN.
Of course, let us speak plainly. You know my conditions for negotiation.
AERYS
And I have met them. Here I am, in Duskendale. Your family may pass down through the generations tales of the day you summoned the dragon.
As AERYS and DARKLYN speak, GEROLD performs a survey of the hall: he turns his head to look back at the door through which they entered, confirming for himself that it remains open and unguarded. He makes note of its twin set into the far opposing wall through which a servant entered, delivered a jug of wine to table, and departed, closing the door behind him.
DARKLYN
It must make a nice change, seeing the world beyond your Red Keep.
AERYS
When you’re king the world comes to you. Typically.
DARKLYN
I suppose there’s nothing to see that you can’t learn second-hand from your Small Council. Though Lord Tywin has the country running so smoothly I imagine you hardly even need attend council meetings these days.
AERYS speaks through gritted teeth.
AERYS
Tywin is a most competent servant.
Undertaking his own survey, JONOTHOR performs a double-take and checks his attention back to the banners mounted on the wall a dozen paces to their left: six banners in total, three the yellow, black, and red of House Darklyn, and, in deference to their royal guest, three the black and red of House Targaryen, the banners of the two houses repeating in alternating pattern. Passing these over on his first inspection, JONOTHOR’s eye is drawn now to the irregular placement of the left-most banner. Though easy to overlook from a distance, there exists a noticeably larger gap between this Targaryen banner and the Darklyn banner to its right, closer to five feet in width rather than the three that separates each of the others from its closest neighbour.
DARKLYN
In all honesty, I was almost sorry circumstances necessitated my insisting upon negotiating with you rather than your Hand. Tywin is not a man I recall with any great affection, but when it comes to business one cannot deny he distinguishes himself as a man quite apart from his peers. Direct and dogged, for sure, but meticulous to a fault and never without sound reason. A man that understands the noble pragmatism of compromise.
DARKLYN pauses, inclining his head as though struck by a sudden realisation.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
That’s not why you agreed to come here, is it? To prove you can resolve the problems of the realm without Tywin’s help?
AERYS
Careful, Darklyn.
DARKLYN
Prove it to whom, I wonder? Not me, certainly; you’d never given me or my town a single second’s thought until I sent your tax collector away with an empty purse. Tywin, then? Yourself, perhaps? Is that the truth of it, Aerys?
JAIME
It is customary to address a king as “Your Grace.”
So intense is the focus DARKLYN redirects towards JAIME, the young pretender cannot stop himself brushing at the underside of his helm to assure himself no hair has fallen loose.
DARKLYN
As it is customary for children to be seen, but not heard, ser.
Unnerved, JAIME looks to JONOTHOR for support but finds the Kingsguard’s attention distracted. Something about that banner niggles at the fringes of his understanding…he shrugs, deciding his mind is catching only on the two foot of Targaryen banner trailing on the floor, an obvious and deliberate slight on Darklyn’s behalf.
AERYS
Are you trying to provoke me to anger, Darklyn?
DARKLYN
I invite you to a peaceful negotiation and you arrive at my gates at the head of a small army. Now you have the gall to speak to me of provocation?
AERYS
Unnerved, are we? I’d have thought a man that’s just realised quite how far beyond his depth he’s strayed might think twice of speaking in so emboldened a manner.
DARKLYN
I am only respecting your wish that we speak plainly. Man to man, as it were.
AERYS
I am not a man. I am a dragon and a king.
DARKLYN
Indeed, you are no man; one need only look to your elbow to see the truth of that.
AERYS turns his head up to glare at GEROLD, but the Lord Commander invokes the convenient commandment of his brotherhood and feigns deafness to DARKLYN’s comparison.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
But you have neither the strength of a dragon nor the authority of a king. If I had need of either, I would look to your son for the first and your Hand for the second. You’re making a good show of things for the moment, but if even half the rumours I hear of your critical faculties are true, the only use I could ever find for you would be as mottled fool to gibber nonsense and take pratfalls for the entertainment of children.
GEROLD
His Grace’s indulgence is not infinite, my Lord. I would strenuously suggest you reconsider your current course.
AYNOR
Not speak, white cloak. Listen, not speak.
GEROLD narrows his eyes at DARKLYN’s mailed protector.
GEROLD
Interesting accent you’ve got there, friend. How is it a Pentoshi sellsword came to Duskendale, I wonder…
DARKLYN
I would admonish you both to remember your place.
AERYS
And I would not presume to instruct others in matters to which I am myself so vulnerable to correction.
DARKLYN
Did you ever have any intention of negotiating my charter here today?
AERYS
The king’s taxes are not a request, they are a command.
DARKLYN
Your son made clear that-
AERYS(INTERRUPTING)
Prince Rhaegar is still naïve in the hard realities of rule, and still too young and idealistic to realise compromise will always be interpreted by smaller men as a sign of weakness. When a man believes his king’s commands are open to negotiation, it won’t be long before his arrogance and ambition lead him to believe the same of his king’s rule.
DARKLYN
“I would not presume to instruct others in matters to which I am myself so vulnerable to correction.” It is your arrogance that has brought us to our present impasse, not mine.
Your arrogance in demanding tribute from a city in which you never even set foot. Your arrogance in believing yourself capable of governing without Tywin Lannister holding your hand. And your arrogance in believing I have anything to fear from a creature such as you.
AERYS’ nostrils flare with rage. So tightly does he clench his fists that the bandage about his right hand blossoms a stain of deepest red once more, the stillness of the chamber scented with the sharp metallic scent of blood.
AERYS
There will be no negotiation. There will be no charter.
DARKLYN
You finally bestirred yourself from the Red Keep to deliver a message a raven could have carried?
AERYS
I wanted to be here in person, to see your face when you realised the full cost of your outrages against my authority.
AERYS reaches into his cloak and hands a rolled-up scroll to GEROLD.
AERYS [CONT’D]
If you would, please, Lord Commander.
GEROLD does as he’s bid. Unable to let the matter go, JONOTHOR nudges JAIME and nods his head at the errant banner as though seeking assurances that the irregular spacing is only a trick of the light. JAIME frowns, but returns his attention to DARKLYN’s receiving his delivery.
AERYS [CONT’D]
Lord Denys, as of this moment you may consider yourself denounced, attainted, and stripped forthwith of all lands and titles held by House Darklyn.
DARKLYN looks up from the scroll, but whatever satisfaction AERYS hoped to source in his reaction withers on the vine at the sight of DARKLYN’s mocking smirk.
DARKLYN
My ancestor Robar Darklyn was the first of the old lords to oppose Aegon and his sisters. When he bent the knee and joined our House to the Conqueror’s campaign, so steadfast was our fealty that Queen Visenya named his brother to the inaugural Kingsguard. That tavern you passed on your approach to the Dun Fort, that was named for Darkrobin and the six subsequent sons of House Darklyn to wear a white cloak, more than any other house in all Seven Kingdoms. His grandson Ser Davos commanded the royal forces at the Battle Beneath the God’s Eye, and gave his life defending Prince Aegon’s birthright against his usurper uncle. When Maegor was devoured by his stolen throne, it was Ser Davos’ own grandson Ser Carroll that yielded the Red Keep to Prince Jaehaerys. When the dragons danced, and all the realm was forced to choose, black or green, Ser Gunthor Darklyn sat on Rhaenyra’s Small Council, while his brother Steffon was burned alive trying to claim the dragon Seasmoke in the name of his queen. He did not live to see his city sacked and Gunthor executed by the whoreson Criston Cole for the crime of holding to the oaths his forefather’s swore. My own grandfather perished beneath a Targaryen banner fighting in the First Blackfyre Rebellion. My father fought in the third, and stood in the shield wall that protected Brynden Rivers while he duelled with Bittersteel. That should have been the end to the bastard wars, but your fool namesake pardoned Rivers and permitted him to escape across the Narrow Sea. And so, when my time came, I did what every Darklyn before me had done: my duty. I sailed with my father across the Blackwater and took my place in Ser Duncan’s vanguard. After the battle, he laid his hand on my shoulder and promised that my father had not died in vain. Maelys the Monstrous would prove the lie of that, of course, though Ser Duncan did not survive long enough to know it, for reasons I’m certain I need not remind you. When the Band of Nine arrived with the Golden Company at their back, I led every able body in Duskendale down to the Stepstones, including every man born of my blood then living. Once again, I returned to the Dun Fort alone. My sons died on Bloodstone. My grandsons died on Bloodstone. And for what? The up-jumped dregs of some blasted wasteland half a world away? Three-hundred years of service. Twelve generations of sacrifice…and it all comes down to this…
Slowly, DARKYLN feeds the scroll to the flames of the candle set between he and AERYS.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
A dagger to the heart, forged from the finest parchment.
JAIME
Those are the king’s words.
DARKLYN
And what a king he is. The Warrior King. The Scourge of the Stepstones. The Bane of Blackfyre.
I’d rather my boys had died fighting beside Maelys the Monstrous. At least he was a warrior worthy of the name.
AERYS
Need I remind you, Darklyn, I slew the Blackfyre bastard with my own blade.
DARKLYN’s eyebrows arch in pantomime intrigue.
DARKLYN
Did you now?
AERYS glowers at DARKLYN, though his death-stare is undermined by the shadow of self-doubt flitting at the corners of his eyes. At his side, JONOTHOR steps away towards the wall bearing the line of banners. AYNOR tracks his movement, but makes no objection. GEROLD too takes quick note of JONOTHOR’s movements, but returns his attention to table and his growing sense that all his reservations are proving well-founded.
JAIME
If I may, my lord, your sons and grandsons died as heroes. The men and women of the Seven Kingdoms owe them a debt of gratitude that-
DARKLYN [INTERRUPTING]
What is their gratitude to dead men?
Snapping JAIME into silence, DARKLYN looks back to AERYS and gestures to the small pile of ash settled upon the table.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
It seems to me as redundant as this pitiable proclamation of yours.
I have no heirs. I have no future. You cannot take anything from me you did not take twenty years ago.
AERYS
You are not dead yet, Darklyn…and there is always more to give.
Once more, DARKLYN meets AERYS’ malevolent tone with a humourless smirk.
DARKLYN
How right you are. I do have one more gift to lay before my king.
DARKLYN holds out his hand and AYNOR draws three pieces of parchment from his leathers, laying them in DARKLYN’s palm.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
Tell me: do you enjoy games, Your Grace? For I have here in my possession three sets of instructions. The first, received several moons ago, commands that I hold you here in my dungeons, unharmed, until I receive word to release you.
AERYS’ face darkens. JAIME draws his sword, but GEROLD points a commanding finger at the younger man.
GEROLD
No, Jaime.
JAIME
He just made a threat against the life of the king!
GEROLD
There is no crime in receiving a letter, but I would know who sent it. Calm yourself.
Reluctantly, JAIME lowers his steel. Despite his words, GEROLD’s hand settles on his pommel and he beckons to his brother.
GEROLD
Jonothor.
But JONOTHOR is aloof to goings on at table, distracted as he is by investigating the mystery of the misplaced banner.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
The second arrived only a few days ago. It gives me leave to execute you in however unpleasant and prolonged a manner as best pleases me.
GEROLD
Lord Darklyn, this game of yours is a dangerous one. I would counsel you –
DARKLYN[INTERRUPTING]
And the third…the third is still warm from the raven’s clutches. I confess I had little time to study its contents before your arrival, but it appears to countermand both its predecessors and insist upon my taking no action at all against your royal person.
Now, as to the rules of the game: I will reveal to you who wrote these letters…if you can guess the author.
No conferring, please.
Standing at the banner’s tail, JONOTHOR holds out a hand, furrowing his brow at the draft of cold air tickling his fingertips.
AERYS
You think it wounds me to know Tywin has been plotting against my throne? That is no more a surprise than the knowledge that the cowardly old fool lacks the courage of his convictions.
The smile that splits DARKLYN’s grows so broad as to threaten the corners of his eyes, inflecting their aged milky-whiteness with a sparkle of perverse delight.
DARKLYN
Oh my. And to think the Maesters warned me such sweet treats were bad for my health.
No, Your Grace, these letters did not come from one person, but from three. Three different authors, all of whom – whatever their state of mind when penning these missives – were at one time or another privy to and participant in a plot against you.
JONOTHOR
Lord Commander.
GEROLD turns at his name to discover JONOTHOR has pushed aside the heavy black fabric to reveal a doorway, an inky blackness filling the foot-wide space between frame and open door. His divided attention is summoned back to table at the sound of DARKLYN’s chair as the Lord of Duskendale leans back, spreading his hands in invitation as though extolling some bounteous feast laid out before them.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
And there is my last, best gift to you, Aerys: the realisation of just how despised you truly are. This life you have built for yourself upon the bodies of those you left behind on Bloodstone…everything in this world you hold dear…all of it as rotten and hollow as your heroics upon the battlefield.
S.E: sword drawn.
Drawing his sword, JONOTHOR uses it’s point to push the door back into the darkness. He takes a step forward.
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
I will die a broken man, it’s true, but I will die peacefully at a time and in a manner of mine own choosing. When you die, it will be to the sound of everyone you’ve ever trusted fighting for the right to boast that they drove their knife the deepest.
GEROLD turns back to JONOTHOR just in time to see his brother lean into the doorway, peering with squinted eye to discern the contents of the room beyond.
GEROLD
Jonothor, stop!
Every head gathered about the table turns at last to interrogate the cause of GEROLD’s exclamation. They watch as JONOTHOR takes a step back away from the doorway, ceding ground to the pair of crossbowmen step through the disguised doorway, their weapons trained at JONOTHOR’s heart. A flood of armed and armoured guards surges past the crossbowmen like a torrent about a piece of driftwood, their bared steel raised and ready.
S.E: sword drawn.
GEROLD and JAIME form a two-man cordon at AERYS’ back. In the same instant, AYNOR flips the table over and snatches up a shortsword strapped by rope to the table’s underside. AERYS cowers into his chair, his face white with terror.
DARKLYN
Enough!
Aynor! Lower your steel!
Never breaking eye-contact with GEROLD, AYNOR slowly does as he’s commanded, mocking the Kingsguard with a wink as he repairs to DARKLYN’s side. DARKLYN
DARKLYN [CONT’D]
Ser Gerold…I only want the king. I mean you and your men no harm.
GEROLD steps in front of AERYS, the king feeling sufficiently emboldened behind GEROLD’s back to straighten his shoulders and peep out at DARKLYN with what little dignity remains to him.
AERYS
Have you taken leave of your senses, Darklyn! I will have your head for this!
GEROLD
Now is not the time, Your Grace.
DARKLYN
Save your breath, ser. The thrice-damned fool ignored your command on the Stepstones, and hundreds died. He ignored your counsel against coming here, and Ser Jonothor died. He would sooner sentence you and your brother to die here in my hall than change his ways even now.
AERYS
Lord Commander, I command you to strike down this treasonous cur right this instant!
DARKLYN
You see! His own words condemn him. But they needn’t do the same for you, Ser Gerold, not this time. Stand down and hand him over to me, and I give you my word that you may exit my city without harm.
GEROLD
I would never abandon my king, and I have no care for whatever that may cost me.
DARKLYN
And what of the cost to your men? I have three hundred-sellswords hidden away in homes on every side of the square. At my word, they will butcher your army like swine in a slaughterhouse. I will grant you a warrior’s death, as is only your due, but not before Aynor here leads you up to the battlements so you can see for yourself what your misplaced loyalty has wrought.
DARKLYN takes a step towards GEROLD. AYNOR opens his mouth to dissuade him from stepping within reach of the Lord Commander’s sword, but DARKLYN waves him away, inching slowly closer as one might approach a wild animal likely to spook.
DARKLYN
You do know what they say, don’t you? You must have heard the jokes they tell, the songs they sing: “the bull that lost his balls”; “the commander turned a cow”…the realm has been laughing at you for twenty years, ser, and all because of this false king you inherited from the grandfather you swore your sword. He and his friends made themselves heroes, and made a fool of you.
AERYS [COMMANDING]
Lord Commander!
DARKLYN
All these years wasted in defence of this shit-smeared swine; the prime of your life squandered in bowing and scraping to the same mewling craven that built his reputation upon the ashes of your own. Fetching and carrying for the man that made the name “Hightower” something at which to scoff.
AERYS [LESS CERTAIN NOW]
Hightower…
DARKLYN
I know what he instructed you to do with Tywin Lannister’s boy. I know he expected you to throw away your honour in service to his petty little schemes. And I know those schemes could well have killed your oldest friend.
AERYS [OUTRIGHT PLEADING]
Gerold…please…
DARKLYN
You were far too principled a man to bend to his demands then, and I trust you are too pragmatic a man to bend to them now. Lead your men out of my city, and live to fight another day, and for a king that may one day prove himself worthy of a man as good as you…
All you need do is simply set aside your steel…and be free.
12.19 EXT: TOURNEY GROUNDS, HARRENHAL – DAY
S.E: cheers.
CRYER
Your champion: Prince Rhaegar of the House Targaryen!
From the royal box to the sidelines, from the bleachers to the back row, the men and women of Westeros stand and applaud the Dragon Prince.
In the stalls, ROBERT holds out his paw expectantly but NED waves him off, concentrated as he is on his older brother lying in a crumpled heap beside his horse. LYANNA clutches her father’s arm, waiting with baited breath for any sign of life from BRANDON. CATELYN similarly clings to her father, her face buried in his chest, too afraid to look.
As though entirely deaf to the adoration raining down upon him, RHAEGAR leaps down from his mount and hurries to BRANDON’s side.
RHAEGAR
Brandon. Brandon, can you hear me?
RHAEGAR motions for help, underwhelmed but not dissuaded when little BENJEN in the first to answer the call.
RHAEGAR
Support his head, lad. We need to get this helmet off.
Doing as he’s bid, BENJEN watches through teary eyes as RHAEGAR slowly frees BRANDON’s head and places his own hands under BENJEN’s.
RHAEGAR
Bran. Bran. Brandon!
As though roused from sleep, BRANDON’s eyes flitter open.
BRANDON
Benjen? What time is it? Has Lord Tully arrived already?
BENJEN throws his arms about his brother, drawing a pained wince from BRANDON.
RHAEGAR
Easy, now. Your brother took quite the fall.
BRANDON focuses bleary eyes on the prince, the surprise plain on his face gradually replaced by a reluctant gratitude. Together, RHAEGAR and BENJEN assist BRANDON in rising unsteadily to his feet. RHAEGAR raises BRANDON’s hand and presents him to the crowd.
S.E: cheers.
BRANDON
I can’t be certain, but if I hurt this badly I reckon that must mean you won.
Waving sheepishly to the people, BRANDON permits BENJEN to lead him slowly towards the stalls. There, an overjoyed CATELYN embraces LYANNA, while ROBERT pats an ashen NED brusquely on the back as though to dislodge an errant morsel from his windpipe. Among the rhapsodies at BRANDON’s deliverance, RICKARD alone remains stone-faced. He turns to JON, and receives a nod in signal. He places one foot on the wooden benching, ready to rise himself up. He looks back towards the royal box, seeks out TYWIN applauding lustily beside the Whents.
Such is their celebration, none among BRANDON’s support realise RHAEGAR’s approach until the sudden silence of the crowds alerts them to his presence only yards away. The same does not hold true for ELIA, the princess’ proud smile sliding away into an agonised grimace, her head shaking in disbelief and her heart falling fast as a sinking stone as a seed of slow suspicion at her husband’s intentions blossoms agonisingly into evidence. Back atop his horse, RHAEGAR carries his lance tucked beneath one arm, a ring of flowers hanging from its point. Holding LYANNA’s eye, he gently but purposefully presents the crown of blue winter roses before her.
RHAEGAR
My lady Lyanna: as champion, I would name you my Queen of Love and Beauty.
Will you do me the honour of accepting my favour?
From the royal box to the sidelines, from the bleachers to the back row, the men and women of Westeros highborn and low stand astonished and appalled: the prince and the maiden, lost in one another’s eyes, the world about them as distant as the farthest star, only the slightest ripple of breeze across the blue-white petals discerning the scene from an artist’s impression.
Slowly, hesitantly, LYANNA STARK reaches out a trembling hand…
OUTRO.