Scene 1: The Shame
Location: Robert's Bedchamber, Riverrun.
Time: 02:00 AM (The night of the wedding).
The castle was finally quiet. The drunken toasts to Ser Denys and Lady Catelyn had faded. The captains had passed out in the great hall.
Robert sat on the edge of his bed. He was still fully dressed, though he had unbuckled his sword belt. His warhammer leaned against the heavy oak wardrobe.
He wasn't sleeping. He was waiting.
"You can come out, Siro," Robert said to the empty room. "The shadows are too short to hide you tonight."
For a moment, there was nothing. Then, the darkness in the far corner seemed to shift.
Siro stepped into the candlelight.
The spy looked ragged. His leather riding leathers were stained with the dust of four hundred miles of hard travel. His face, usually a mask of professional detachment, was etched with something Robert rarely saw in him.
Shame.
Siro didn't bow. He dropped to one knee, looking at the floor. He didn't offer excuses.
"I was not there," Siro whispered. His voice was a dry rasp.
"Stand up, Siro," Robert said quietly.
"I left you," Siro continued, ignoring the command. "I took your eyes away. I left you in the woods. Blind. You bled, my Lord. Connington found you because I was not there to watch the perimeter."
Robert sighed. He walked over to the kneeling man. He reached down and grabbed Siro by the shoulder, hauling him to his feet.
"You went where I sent you," Robert said firmly. "That is not desertion. That is obedience. Now, stop looking like a kicked dog and tell me what you saw."
Siro hesitated, then nodded, the scout replacing the penitent. He moved to the table, pouring a cup of water with shaking hands.
"I rode hard, my Lord. I reached the Causeway in two days. I was looking for the Stark host."
Siro took a long drink, his eyes distant.
"I saw them. But not the host. I saw the vanguard. Five thousand heavy horse. No baggage train. No foot soldiers. Just the cavalry, riding the horses into the ground."
Siro looked at Robert.
"Lord Eddard was at the front. He wasn't marching an army, Robert. He was leading a rescue party. When I saw their speed... the sheer desperation of their pace... I knew I did not need to make contact. They were already hunting. I knew they would reach Stoney Sept before I could return."
"He came for me," Robert murmured, a small smile touching his lips.
"He came for his brother," Siro corrected softly. "I turned back at the Green Fork. I thought the danger was passed. I thought the board was set."
Siro paused. He set the cup down. The relief vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, sharp tension.
"But on the road back... I stopped to change horses at the Inn of the Kneeling Man, near Stone Hedge."
Robert narrowed his eyes. "Go on."
"The Inn was full of merchants coming down from the Golden Tooth," Siro said. "Men fleeing the West."
"Fleeing?" Robert asked, sitting up straighter. "Why?"
Siro stepped closer, his voice dropping to a whisper.
"Because the Bird flew to the Rock, my Lord. Aerys sent a raven to Tywin Lannister."
The room seemed to drop ten degrees. Robert stood up, the old fear of the Old Lion tightening his chest.
"And?" Robert pressed. "Did Tywin answer?"
Siro looked at the flame of the candle, watching it flicker.
"The Rock has gone silent, Robert. No ravens have come out. But the merchants say the gates of the Golden Tooth are closed to trade."
Siro looked up, delivering the news that turned the victory at Stoney Sept into a prelude to a nightmare.
"The Lions are waking up. Tywin Lannister has called his banners."
[End of Scene]
Chapter 20: The Spy's Belonging
Scene 2: The Promotion
Location: Robert's Bedchamber, Riverrun.
Time: 02:15 AM.
"Called his banners?" Robert repeated; the color draining from his face. He paced the room, his heavy boots thudding on the stone. "If Tywin attacks from the West while Rhaegar marches from the South, we are finished. We will be crushed between the Lion and the Dragon, with the river at our backs to drown us."
"That is what I feared, my Lord," Siro said quietly. "That is why I did not return to you immediately."
Robert stopped pacing. He looked at the spy. "Explain."
Siro took a breath, his eyes staring into the middle distance as he relived the decision.
"I saw Lord Eddard racing South. I knew help was coming for you. I stood at the crossroads and I saw two paths."
Siro held up one finger.
"First: I ride back to you. I tell you Ned is two days away. We wait. But if Tywin was already marching... the Stark host would be smashed in the flank before they even saw the river. We would die without ever knowing who killed us."
Siro held up a second finger.
"Second: I go West. I confirm the Lion's intent. If he is moving to strike, I ride back and we flee immediately. If he is not..."
"You rode to the Golden Tooth," Robert realized, stunned by the distance.
"I did," Siro confirmed. "I reached the pass ten days ago. The camp is massive, my Lord. Thirty thousand men. Siege engines. Heavy horse. It is a host built to conquer a kingdom."
Robert gripped the hilt of his warhammer. "Then we must move. We must—"
"No," Siro interrupted gently.
He looked up, a strange glint in his eyes.
"That is the thing, my Lord. They are not moving."
Robert frowned. "What?"
"I couldn't just look and leave," Siro explained. "I needed to know. So I killed a drover on a supply wagon, stole his cloak, and drove a cart of grain right into the Lannister camp."
Robert stared at him. "You infiltrated Tywin Lannister's vanguard alone?"
"I listened to the captains," Siro said, ignoring the praise. "They are angry. They are fully armored, their horses are shod, their swords are sharp. But the gates of the Tooth remain closed. One captain spat on the ground and said, 'Why do we sit? The Realm burns, and Lord Tywin is just polishing his armor.'"
Siro leaned forward, delivering the verdict.
"Tywin Lannister is stalling, my Lord. Aerys commanded him to march, and Tywin is disobeying by doing exactly nothing. He is waiting to see who wins."
Robert let out a long, shuddering breath. The tension that had coiled in his chest since the mention of the West unspooled.
"He's watching," Robert whispered. "The Old Lion is waiting for Rhaegar and me to bleed each other dry."
"Yes," Siro said. Then, his shoulders slumped. "I rode back as fast as I could. I expected to find you still hiding in the woods near Stoney Sept. I thought I would bring you this news to save you from panic."
Siro laughed bitterly.
"Instead, I found Stoney Sept half-burned and the banners of three Great Houses flying from the walls. I heard the songs about the Battle of the Bells. I missed the war, my Lord. While you were fighting for your life in a burning town, I was driving a grain cart three hundred miles away."
Siro dropped his gaze again, the guilt returning. "I failed you as a guard."
Robert walked over to the table. He poured two cups of wine. He handed one to Siro.
"You are right," Robert said. "You are a terrible guard."
Siro flinched.
"But," Robert continued, clinking his cup against Siro's. "You are a magnificent spy."
Robert drank deep, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked at the ragged man before him with new eyes.
"Any man with a sword could have stood next to me at Stoney Sept. Ned brought eighteen thousand of them. But only one man had the brains to realize that the real threat wasn't the dragon in front of us, but the lion behind us."
Robert placed a heavy hand on Siro's shoulder.
"You brought me the most valuable secret of this war, Siro. You brought me peace of mind. Because of you, I know I can turn my back on the West and focus everything on Rhaegar."
"I only did what was necessary," Siro murmured.
"You did what I needed, before I knew I needed it," Robert corrected.
He looked at the spy—a man with no last name, no lands, known only to a few in the Stormlands. A man who had risked torture and death in the Lannister camp just to bring Robert a piece of the puzzle.
"When this is done," Robert said, his voice lowering to a confidential rumble. "When I kill the Dragon... there will be a chair for me in the Red Keep."
"I suspect so, my Lord," Siro said.
"That chair comes with a Council," Robert said. "And that Council has a seat for a Master of Whispers. Right now, a eunuch named Varys sits in it. They say he is a spider who serves the realm."
Robert leaned in close, his blue eyes intense.
"I don't want a spider, Siro. I don't want a man who serves the realm, or the game, or himself. I want a man who serves me."
Siro looked up, realizing what was being offered.
"You want me to be your eyes," Siro whispered.
"I want you to be my Master of Whispers," Robert promised. "No one knows you. The Starks don't know you. Arryn doesn't know you. You are a ghost. Stay a ghost."
Robert raised his cup again.
"Until I sit the Iron Throne, this is just between us. But know this: you didn't fail me, Siro. You saved my flank. Now, go get some sleep. We march for the Trident in by end of the week."
Siro stared at the King for a long moment. Then, slowly, he straightened his back. The shame evaporated, replaced by a cold, steely purpose.
"As you command, Your Grace," Siro said.
He downed the wine, bowed once, and slipped back into the shadows.
[End of Chapter 20]
Chapter 20: The Spy's Belonging
Scene 3: The Face
Location: The Servants' Quarters, Riverrun.
Time: 03:00 AM.
Siro sat on a rickety three-legged stool in the darkest corner of the barracks. The air in the long, low room was thick enough to chew on. It smelled of wet wool, unwashed bodies, drying leather, and the sour, yeasty stink of stale ale drifting up from the floorboards where the serving boys had spilled their cups during the feast.
He had one boot in his lap. It was a good boot, stolen from a dead man three months ago, but right now it was caked in clay.
Not the dark, soft mud of the Riverlands. This was red clay. Sticky. Heavy. The kind of earth found in the mountain passes of the West. The kind of earth found at the Golden Tooth.
He held a stiff brush in his hand. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.
The sound was rhythmic, like a heartbeat. He focused on it. He needed the noise to drown out the buzzing in his head.
Around him, the room was full of sleeping men. There were fifty of them packed into the straw like sardines. Grooms, scullery boys, runners, pot-scrubbers. The invisible army. The people who didn't matter. The people the high lords looked right through as if they were made of glass.
Siro stopped scraping for a moment. He looked at the sleeping boy on the mattress next to him—a lad of maybe fourteen with a face full of pimples and hands raw from scrubbing armor.
We are the dirt, Siro thought, not with anger, but with a cold, simple understanding. That is the way of the world. Lords ride the horses. We shovel the shit. It has always been this way.
Siro had been born in that dirt. His mother was a washerwoman who died coughing up pink froth when he was six. His father was... well, his father was likely a passing sellsword with a copper penny and three minutes to spare. Siro had grown up in the alleys of flea-bottoms and camp trains, learning the only lesson that mattered: Keep your head down. Keep your mouth shut. Be useful, or be dead.
He felt a dryness in his throat, a thirst that felt like it had been there for days.
He reached for the wooden bucket sitting on the floor beside his pack. There was a ladle floating in it. He dipped it in and brought it to his lips.
The water was cool. It tasted of nothing.
Siro froze, the ladle halfway to his mouth. He stared at the clear liquid in the dim light of the single tallow candle.
It tastes of nothing.
To a highborn lord, water was just water. They drank wine. They drank hippocras. They washed their feet in rosewater. But to a soldier? To a camp follower?
Clear water was a miracle.
Siro closed his eyes and let the memory take him back. He remembered Ashford.
He had been there, skirting the edges of the Reach host, watching the Tyrells and the Tarlys gather. It was a camp of silk and glory. The knights wore armor that shone like the sun. They had pavilions as big as houses.
But Siro had seen the ditches.
The Tyrell camp was rich, but it was filthy. The latrines were dug too shallow. The horses were watered upstream from the men. The barrels were full of green slime and wriggling worms.
Siro remembered seeing the levies of the Reach—strong farm boys forced to hold a spear. He saw them clutching their bellies by the roadside, their bowels turning to water and blood. He saw them dying of the Bloody Flux, screaming for their mothers while the Tyrell lords rode past with scented handkerchiefs pressed to their noses.
The Flux killed more men than swords ever did. It was the ghost that haunted every army camp. The lords called it "bad air" or "the curse," but Siro knew what it was. It was shit in the water.
But not this army. Not Robert's army.
Siro lowered the ladle. He looked at the water again.
He remembered the order given months ago, back when the Stormlands host was first gathering. The Big Man—Robert—had been standing by the supply wagons, his face red with shouting at a quartermaster who was trying to cut corners.
"I don't care if it takes all night!" Robert had roared, his voice booming like thunder. "Burn the wood! Crush the charcoal! Put the sand in the pots! If I see one drop of river water go into a soldier's belly without being filtered first, I'll have your hide nailed to the wagon wheel!"
The knights had laughed behind their hands. They called it "The Washerwoman's Decree." They rolled their eyes and whispered that the Lord Paramount was fussing like a grandmother.
Let them laugh, Siro thought, taking a long, deep drink.
The men didn't die. The latrine trenches weren't full of blood. The boys didn't fall down puking on the march. They marched strong. They marched fast.
Robert Baratheon, a High Lord who could have drunk Arbor Gold every night, had spent his coin on charcoal and sand so that men like Siro wouldn't shit themselves to death.
Siro wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The water settled in his stomach, clean and safe.
He picked up the boot again. Scrape. Scrape.
His mind drifted to the hunger. He hadn't eaten properly in a day, riding hard from the West to bring the news. He reached into his saddlebag, pushing past the spare bowstring and the flint, until his fingers closed around a block wrapped in cloth.
He pulled it out.
It was hardtack. A grey, dense slab of salted flour and water, baked until it was hard enough to hammer a nail. It was the food of desperation. It tasted like salty dust. It sat in your gut like a stone.
Most lords would throw it to the dogs. Most lords had a private wagon with smoked hams, wheels of cheese, and soft white bread baked fresh every morning.
Siro turned the grey brick over in his scarred hands.
He remembered a night more than 2 moons ago.
It was before Stoney Sept. Before the ambush. They were marching hard in the rain—a cold, miserable rain that soaked through wool and chilled the bone. The tents hadn't been raised yet. The mud was ankle-deep.
Siro had been on guard duty, standing near the command fire, hidden in the dripping shadows. He watched a squire run up to Robert, carrying a silver platter covered with a cloth. Under the cloth was a roasted chicken, steaming and hot, smelling of garlic and herbs.
"For you, My Lord," the squire had said, beaming. "The cook saved the best bird. He says a King needs his strength."
Robert was sitting on a wet log, water dripping from his black hair. He looked at the chicken. Then he looked at the men sitting in the mud around him—spearmen, archers, grooms—gnawing on their grey hardtack, shivering in the cold.
Robert had stood up. He took the platter.
And he tossed the chicken to a group of pikemen who looked half-starved.
"I eat what they eat," Robert had growled at the stunned squire. "Get me the tack."
Siro had watched, holding his breath, as the Lord of the Stormlands sat back down on the wet log, took a piece of this same grey, rock-hard trash, and cracked it with his teeth. He didn't complain. He didn't ask for wine to wash it down. He just ate it, staring into the fire.
He starves with us, Siro thought, a lump forming in his throat that had nothing to do with the dry bread. He walks in the mud with us.
That was the secret. That was the magic. It wasn't the warhammer. It wasn't the claim to the throne. It wasn't the grandmother with the dragon blood.
It was the fact that when Robert looked at a soldier, he didn't see a tool. He saw a man.
Siro took a bite of the hardtack. He chewed slowly, letting the salt sting his tongue.
That was why they came back.
He thought about the battle he had missed—the Battle of the Bells. He had heard the stories in the castle courtyard. Connington had struck at night. Fire. Chaos. Panic.
In any other army, that is the end. When the camp burns at night, the levies break. They throw down their spears and they run for the trees, and they don't stop running until they find a farm where no one knows they were soldiers. A peasant doesn't die for a lord who treats him like cattle. A peasant runs home to his pigs.
But the Stormlanders... fourteen thousand of them.
They ran into the woods, yes. But they didn't run home. They froze in the dark. They waited in the cold, clutching their weapons, listening for the signal. And when the horn blew, they didn't hesitate. They turned around and ran back into the fire.
They came back because they trusted the man blowing the horn. They knew he wouldn't leave them behind. They knew he wouldn't ride away on a fast horse and leave them to die.
Siro swallowed the dry bread.
He looked down at his hands.
They were ugly hands. The knuckles were swollen. The skin was rough as tree bark, stained with grease and old dirt. There was a jagged white scar running across his left palm where a knife had bit him years ago in a drunk fight.
These were hands made for working. For digging graves. For holding reins. For holding a knife in the dark.
They were not hands that held goblets of silver.
But tonight...
Siro stopped chewing. He stared at the stone wall, seeing the scene replay in his mind for the hundredth time.
Tonight, in the Lord's bedchamber, a King had poured wine from his own pitcher. He had handed the cup to Siro. Their fingers had brushed.
Robert hadn't wiped his hand. He hadn't flinched. He hadn't looked at Siro like he was a dirty thing that had crawled out of the floorboards.
He had looked Siro in the eye—not looking over him, not looking through him, but looking at him—and he had offered him the world.
Master of Whispers.
The words echoed in his head, loud and strange.
Master of Whispers.
It was a title for a highborn. A title for a Maester with a chain of Valyrian steel links. A title for a man like Varys, the Spider, who wore silk and smelled of powder and whispered in the ears of mad dragons.
It wasn't a title for Siro, the nobody from nowhere.
Siro looked around the sleeping barracks. He looked at the straw mattresses. He looked at the holes in the boys' tunics. He looked at the groom across from him who was muttering in his sleep, dreaming of a warm meal.
I am a rat, Siro thought. I have always been a rat.
He knew how to scurry in the walls. He knew how to listen when the great lords thought they were alone because they didn't count the servants as people. He knew that a servant is just furniture with ears.
He knew how to slip a knife between the ribs of a man who got too close. He knew how to read the tracks of an army in the mud. He knew how to lie so well that even he forgot the truth sometimes.
In the old world—the world of Aerys the Mad, or Rhaegar the Prince, or Tywin the Lion—a rat stays a rat. If a rat shows he is smart, the cats kill him. If a rat shows he is strong, they send him to die in the vanguard so the knights don't have to get their swords dirty.
In that world, blood was everything. Who was your father? Who was your grandfather? What is your sigil?
Siro didn't have a sigil. He didn't have a name. He was just "Siro."
But Robert...
Robert didn't ask for a name. Robert didn't ask for a family tree. Robert didn't ask which great house had spawned him.
Robert just asked: Are you good? Can you do the job?
Siro put the boot down. He picked up his dagger from the stool. It was a plain piece of steel, wrapped in worn leather cord. No jewels. No gold filigree. Just good, dark steel.
He grabbed his whetstone. Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk.
The sound was sharp and clean.
He thought about the Golden Tooth. He thought about the Lannister captains in their polished armor, sitting in their tents, complaining about the wait while their men drank rot-water. He thought about Tywin Lannister, sitting in Casterly Rock, moving men like cyvasse pieces, not caring if they lived or died.
If Tywin Lannister won this war, Siro would be nothing. Just another corpse in a ditch, forgotten before he was cold.
If Rhaegar Targaryen won, Siro would hang. A traitor's death for a lowborn spy who dared to look at a Prince.
But if Robert won...
Siro stopped sharpening. He held the blade up to the candle. The light danced on the edge. It was razor sharp.
A sharp knife in the hand of a peasant could kill a King just as dead as a sword in the hand of a Lord. Robert understood that. Robert respected the knife. Robert respected the man holding it.
Siro felt a tightness in his chest loosen.
For his whole life, he had been drifting. Serving this hedge knight, guarding that merchant, fighting for coin, fighting for food. Belonging to no one. Always looking over his shoulder. Always waiting for the kick.
But tonight, sitting in the dark, smelling the sweat and the straw, he felt something he had never felt before.
He had an anchor.
He blew out the candle.
The room plunged into darkness. The heavy, suffocating black of the barracks.
Usually, the dark was a place to hide. The dark was where you went so you didn't get beaten.
But tonight, the dark felt different. It felt vast. It felt... open. It felt like his domain.
Siro lay back on his prickly straw mattress, staring up at the ceiling he couldn't see. He crossed his arms behind his head.
He wasn't just a stray dog anymore, looking for scraps. He was the King's dog. And the King had just taken off the leash.
Let the high lords keep their songs, Siro thought, a fierce, cold smile touching his lips in the darkness. Let them keep their silk cloaks and their fancy words and their stone castles.
I don't need a castle. I have the shadows. I don't need a name. I have a purpose.
He closed his eyes, listening to the breathing of the sleeping servants, feeling the sharp steel of his dagger resting against his hip.
The King don't care that I was born in the dirt, Siro told himself, and the thought was stronger than wine, warmer than a fire.
The King don't care about my blood.
"I am measured by my skill, not my birth."
And by the Gods, he was very, very skilled.
[End of Chapter 20]