A Dream of a Red Door Ch. 03

THE HOLD

"I suppose I have you to thank for my head still being attached to my shoulders," Tyrion said immediately upon exiting his quarters to find Jon, flanked by two brothers of the Kingsguard, waiting for him.

"Tyrion, I ..."

Tyrion waved off whatever he was going to say.

"Let us not speak of it again."

Jon leaned over so that the Kingsguard could not hear. Given the Hand's height, an observer would have thought the king was bowing to the dwarf. "Dany's going to apologize, and she does feel awful."

Tyrion, dressed in a finely woven red coat over a brocaded black tunic, leaned in as well. "Jon, apologies are always appreciated, but if it happens again, I'm afraid I have to inform you that there are going to be resignations, starting with mine own."

A weary expression crossed Jon's face, then he nodded and stood back up. "I understand."

Tyrion cleared his throat with a polite cough, and continued in a more conversational, humorous tone in an attempt to lighten the mood, "You needn't worry about my future living arrangements. Casterly Rock may be Crown property now, but I'm sure they have a dusty tower cell somewhere I can use if and when my service here is done. You know how I do so like to have a view. If you've managed to cart off or demolish all the lion sigils, I might even find it quite pleasant."

"Stripping the Lannisters of Casterly Rock was your idea," Jon reminded him

"That's when I thought you might give it to me outright for services rendered," Tyrion replied.

Jon began to laugh, then held a hand over his mouth and stifled it.

"On to business then?"

Lord Commander Brienne of Tarth, who was grim-faced and taciturn at the best of times, and early mornings, for her, were not the best of times, joined them as they walked, along with a few officers of the Gold Cloaks and the commander of the Red Keep household guard. Eventually they reached the barracks, training yards, and various other buildings assigned to the King's Landing garrison, a soldier force which owed its loyalty directly to the Crown. The garrison had been Jon's idea, as he had realized relatively quickly that King's Landing being forced to rely upon Gold Cloaks, who were essentially mercenaries, or rallying armies from nearby lords, represented a disastrous state of affairs. The officers had been handpicked from amongst men who had served well during the early years of his and his queen's reign.

The inspection was, as Jon had anticipated, dull, tedious, and, unfortunately, entirely necessary. Men who didn't see their commanders or their liege lords were men who forgot who they served. Jon made it a point to remember names, to remember details, and to appear interested.

Perhaps halfway through the inspection, Brienne and the two other members of the Kingsguard realized that several individuals were running directly towards them. While the runners wore the livery of the household guard, predictably, the three white-cloaked knights formed up in front of Jon and placed their hands on their hilt.

"Is that really necessary?" Jon had asked.

"Probably not," Tyrion mused.

"I'm sorry ..." whispered a soft voice from the rooftop of a nearby building.

It was uttered so quietly that Jon wondered for a moment if he'd heard it at all. Then he felt a sharp stinging sensation in his neck.

"What the ..." he muttered as he spun around. For a brief moment, he saw a scrambling figure upon the roof of a nearby building. It seemed rather difficult to form words, for some reason.

At first, nobody seemed to realize what had happened, then Tyrion reached up with both hands, grabbed the front of the king's simple black tunic, and yanked him down. Brienne caught the motion, and she instinctively reached for the dwarf and opened her mouth to demand he explain why he'd placed hands on the king.

Then everyone saw the dart.

It was a small thing, wooden with neat fletching laced in green and black, and the tip was no longer than a thumbnail. Jon's eyes were beginning to glaze over when Tyrion plucked the dart from his neck.

The garrison yard exploded into a frenzy of screaming activity. Men began storming the building to locate the assailant, the Kingsguard formed up around Jon, swords drawn, and Tyrion found the most athletic-appearing soldier in the vicinity and using oaths most foul, screamed at him to find the maester and tell him to bring every poison antidote he had.

Jon, who by that time was struggling to breathe, realized the maester wouldn't get there in time. He was dying ... he'd already done it once, so he considered himself an expert on the subject. Curiously, he felt at peace with the end. He'd already lived longer than he should have. He slumped against a workbench in the forge they'd been inspecting and a jumble of blades in the process of being crafted into swords and daggers clanged to the straw-covered dirt.

"Goddammit, Jon," Tyrion screamed as he grabbed Jon's arm to prevent him from collapsing. "The maester is on his way, you just need to hang on."

"It's alright," he croaked to Tyrion. "Forgive ... Dany ..."

Brienne was screaming at someone, triumphant yells from soldiers who claimed to have found and killed the attacker echoed in the yard, and Jon's vision began to grow black. The fire racing in his blood, the bite of magic that he could never be free of, began to cool. Shadows pooled around his feet, and he found himself somewhat thankful that he would finally be free of it.

The two men who had been spotted running towards the king finally, after begs and howls and explanations, reached Jon. They found him white-faced and staggered, barely able to look at them.

"The queen's been taken, your grace!" one of them yelled.

Tyrion did not take his eyes off Jon as he replied. "Are you sure?"

The other man added, "We're sure, m'lord. We found a rope and claw attached to a balcony near where the queen went missing."

Jon growled and his knuckles turned white as he grasped the edge of the table hard enough that his fingers nails began to split from the quick beneath. His heart was lurching in his chest irregularly, and a red pulse was throbbing in the corner of his skull. He placed a hand on the table as he fought to keep from collapsing ... from dying. Death was still coming, he knew.

He thrust the table out of the way when he saw the red of the forge's fire, a massive, squat black opening within which deep flames and smoke churned. That fire had likely been burning since the forge had first been built, and its burning heart called out to him. Jon could feel the pull of the flames, the sickly sweet-song of heat and life screaming to be absorbed by whatever Melisandre had put inside him, the rot that demanded to be fed so it could consume first him, and then everything around him.

For a moment, Jon decided it might be better to die. Let it end rather than feed whatever lived in him, for what Sam had repeatedly warned him he must never do, was to give in to the pull of the flames.

Then his wife's face came to him, smiling, needing him. He couldn't leave her.

He thrust Tyrion out of the way and to his chagrin the dwarf sprawled on the dirt.

Something else to apologize for.

The Kingsguard tried to stop him, but he shook off their hands. Moving his feet was an almost impossible struggle, and he was fairly certain his heart had stopped beating. The last step he took towards the forge would be the last step he'd ever take.

It was enough to reach the flames.

As Brienne grabbed the back of his collar to try to yank him away and Tyrion screamed for someone to take hold of the king. Jon thrust his hands down deep into the forge's furnace, spread his arms wide, and grasped the stonework within. The sleeves of his tunic flared and turned to char.

The fire.

The forge's blaze cascaded into him, and when it made contact with the thing Melisandre had breathed into him, that ball of heat and blood and magic churning relentlessly in his chest, the magic cried out in triumph as the fuel it had long been denied was, at long last, at hand. The poison in his blood burnt away in an instant and his heart skipped and resumed beating a blazing tempo in his chest ... and then the fire kept coming. It poured into him, infusing every tissue, twining into every sinew, and the razor-sharp pain that was a pleasure too pure to bear burrowed through his muscles and then deep into his skull. The heat had become too much for even a dedicated Kingsguard knight, and Brienne had to cover her face with an upraised arm as Jon's chest flared red. The remainder of his tunic burned away to reveal his scars, and as always when anyone saw them for the first time, there were gasps of horror.

When Jon removed his hands from the forge, the metal had gone cold and not even the spark of an ember could be seen within its depths. He dreaded turning around, but he had to find his wife, not run off.

What's done is done.

Bare-chested and with his lungs heaving for air but feeling more alive than he had since the knives first went into him at Castle Black, he turned around. The faces around him were as he expected. Tyrion remained sprawled in the dirt, and his mouth was agape as he stared at him in mute shock. The Kingsguard had raised their helms to get a better look at the king who, by all rights, should have either been dead or missing two arms, and only Brienne had the sense to grab at Jon's forearms and turn them over to check his hands.

The king's flesh was intact and unburnt.

Many of the soldiers and guardsman were whispering to each other, more than a few were praying to a variety of gods, and several, white-faced, had run.

"You," Jon called out to a nearby soldier who was liveried in the black and red of House Targaryen. When the man simply stared and didn't respond, Jon using a commanding roar honed during battles across Westeros, roared, "YOU!"

That snapped the man out of it.

"What armor do you have here?" Jon snapped.

The man blinked a few times, clearly surprised at the question, but before Jon could scream at him again, he finally replied, "Just leather and chain, your grace ... nothing suitable for ..."

The man caught himself before suggesting that what the king's soldiers wore would not be good enough for the king. Apparently, word had already spread through much of the garrison that Jon was unlikely to look fondly upon that sort of talk.

"Bring me tunic, leather, gloves, and chain that looks like they might fit."

The man said, "Yes, your grace," and immediately turned and ran off to accomplish the errand.

Jon stared at another soldier and pointed. "You."

The man nodded. "Yes, your grace."

"Lord Tyrion is going to have a plan for a search any moment now, so I want you to find the fastest soldiers you have and bring them here so that when the Hand tells you what he needs, they can fetch it."

When he pointed at a third soldier, the man seemed to have clued in as to what was happening. "What shall I do, your grace?"

"Bring me my sword," Jon snarled.

The fire burned in him, an unholy, living thing, and Jon realized that he could feel the heat of a hearth in a nearby building, hearths in several nearby buildings, actually, and also something near the Red Keep that felt alive. He turned and stared at the Royal Tower. He could feel Drogon resting on his platform. It was not just fire, either, where the shadows ran deepest, they whispered to him, begging that he bend them to his will.

What has happened to me?

"Your grace," Brienne had finally said. "How are you alive?"

Tyrion was more blunt. "What in the name of the seven hells just happened, Jon?"

It had taken longer than Jon had hoped to respond to the relentless questions about his miraculous survival, particularly as the only answer he wanted to give was to blame Melisandre or his Targaryen blood. Every second they spent talking was a second they weren't looking for Daenerys.

"ENOUGH!" he finally roared. He looked down at Tyrion, who seemed to have recovered faster than the others. "You want Casterly Rock?" he asked. "Find my wife and it's yours."

"We all want to find her, Jon, I don't need a reward," Tyrion had said, somewhat taken aback.

The planning session held in the garrison yard, which had filled with people as members of the small council and guardsmen who had been tasked with searching the Red Keep for Daenerys arrived, was thorough in its efforts. Every room of the Red Keep would be examined, every cellar checked, and if the queen was still there, and so would the myriad secret passages ... to the extent they were known. Tyrion sent some men to search the entrances he knew about and told them to keep walking until they found either the queen or daylight.

All of the gates in and out of the city were barred, Gold Cloaks and soldiers galloped down every road and game path on which a horse could ride, and they were given instructions to check every wagon big enough to hold a person and to examine the faces of everyone riding a horse. The harbor was closed to traffic in or out, and Tyrion ordered that the logs of the harbormasters be brought to him at once.

Finally, a search of the buildings of King's Landing was commenced, starting with those closest to the Red Keep. The small council had looked at each other then, and Tyrion's eyes revealed what Jon already knew. If Daenerys was still in the city, it would take months to search every building.

Jon made his opinion on the subject clear, "If it takes months, it will take months," he informed them. "The gates stay closed until she is found."

As the hours rolled on, fear and panic began to set in. Jon decided that anger was more useful of an emotion at the moment, so he snarled and snapped and raged in an attempt to avoid from screaming in frustration.

The corpse of the would-be assassin yielded the only immediate concrete information.

"Qarth," Brienne had confirmed. "I recognize him as one of the delegates."

Tyrion had squatted down on his misshapen legs and carefully used a dagger to slice open the man's pockets. Odd looking hollow implements, an array of darts, and an extremely unpleasant looking thin, curved knife honed to a razor's edge fell to the ground. The soldiers who had killed the Qartheen reported, in puzzled tones, that apparently, the man could have escaped quite easily, but had actually turned back, seemingly intent on finishing the job he started.

Jon almost admired the man's dedication.

"This is taking too long," he had grumbled at Tyrion as the dwarf pored through the harbormaster logs.

"There are a lot of ships," Tyrion had remarked, not without sympathy for Jon's feelings. The irony was not lost on the king that he was depending on the man who, the day before, had been threatened with execution by the woman he intended to rescue.

Jon eventually resorted to pacing back and forth in the garrison yard and yelling at anyone he could find to join the search of the city if they had nothing useful to add. The only reason Jon wasn't going building to building himself was that Tyrion had calmly reminded him that if they did find a useful lead, the king would probably want to be there to hear about it.

After Brienne had poked at his skin for the fifth or sixth time in an effort to determine how he was still alive, Jon became glad when the gloves, tunic, leather, and chainmail finally arrived. A few minutes later a breathless, red-faced page too winded to speak had given him Longclaw. When he was dressed in black and red armor with his sword slung across his back, he felt ready to take on an army for his love.

But where is she?

It was Brienne, normally surly and disinclined to providing comforting counsel, who finally gave voice to what he'd worried since the moment he'd heard she was missing.

"She's alive, your grace," Brienne reassured him. Tyrion had looked up briefly, then returned to the logs.

"How could you possibly know that?" Jon asked.

"Brienne is probably right," Tyrion interrupted. "They tried to kill you, but they kidnap her? If they wanted Daenerys dead, and please forgive my directness, she'd be dead already. Given the situation, the most likely scenario is they've taken her alive for some reason, and they wanted you eliminated ... probably so you wouldn't start a war to find her."

"It wouldn't matter if I was dead," Jon pointed out, "the entire kingdom would be going to war for her anyway."

Tyrion had paused for a moment, then quietly said, "Of course, I'm sure you're right."

Jon looked around, and everyone was staring everywhere but at him. He was about to begin berating them, then he'd remembered his own advice to Daenerys the night before.

Better for me to hear the truth than a convenient lie.

"Brienne," he said, "if I'm ever so stupid as to leave my wife alone before the Kingsguard arrives, you have my permission to punch me right in the face."

"Yes, your grace," she said quickly and rather enthusiastically. Jon narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm sure you wanted your privacy for a good reason," she added as she blushed slightly.

"Anyone can make a mistake," Tyrion informed him, "and keep in mind that monarchs of Westeros have been captured and returned alive and whole before."

"Aerys Targaryen went mad when it happened to him," Jon replied.

"Let's make sure we find our queen quickly then," Tyrion said as he turned the logbook he was reviewing around and tapped an entry. "I think we have something here."

"What?" Jon asked as he scrambled towards the page. It was a jumble of names and numbers on a ledger of some sort, with symbols he couldn't read. "That's helpful?"

"I think it is," Tyrion said gravely. "The ship from Qarth that brought in the delegates isn't on any of the logbooks, which means there's a false entry somewhere."

"If the Harbormaster took a bribe, hang him," Jon said. Tyrion looked up quickly. "I'm not Daenerys," Jon said in a voice that rasped with steel, "I mean it. The men in charge of the docks knew that if they took bribes and it cost lives, they would hang, and it has."

"Whose life?" Brienne asked.

Jon pointed towards the dead assassin.

"In any event," Tyrion continued, "I think I've found the fake notation." He tapped the page. "This ship. It's the right size and type for a voyage to Qarth, and the entry makes no sense."

"How so?" Jon asked.

"Picking up wine at King's Landing, which is known for having notoriously terrible vineyards, to take to Oldtown, when the Arbor makes the finest wines in Westeros, is ludicrous. It makes about as much sense as White Harbor shipping snow to Winterfell." Tyrion raised a finger. "But Oldtown is the opposite direction of Qarth, and if I wanted to throw someone off the scent, and I wasn't very clever, I'd claim the ship's destination is someplace like Oldtown."

Jon's face fell. "That's it? We're trusting your knowledge of wines."

Tyrion shrugged. "I do know my wines, and it's not like our fleet is doing much good waiting in the harbor for orders."

"That's true," Jon scratched his chin. "Can we find the ship?"

"Well, we know what it looks like," Tyrion said, "but they have the tide and a half-day head start. I recommend we send every fleet in the harbor towards Qarth, have them spread out, with each only staying in sight of the ones next to it, and also send ravens to Dragonstone and Driftmark to put everything that has a sail into the search."

"They could be anywhere by now."

Tyrion looked sad as he stared down at the book. "That's true."

"But we know what the ship looks like?" he asked Tyrion.

"Generally, yes," the dwarf answered. "Sail color, size, number of masts, ... faking that information can be spotted just by comparing the logbook to the docked vessel, so harbormasters know better than to lie about them in their entries."