The road to Duskendale was a scarred one, marked with the remnants of skirmishes and bandits. Farms lay unsown, the fields filled with weeds, and villages stood silent, nothing but filled with smoke. Thoros rode at a steady pace, his red robes torn and muddied from days of travel, a wineskin thumping against his hip. Beside him, Lord Beric Dondarrion sat straight in the saddle, his youth plain on his face. He is only twenty-two, yet there was already a hardness to him, losing an eye to the ambush of Mountain and his men and travelling through devastating state of villages and hamlets they found in their path, the reason for his current state.
The gates of Duskendale creaked open reluctantly, the guards in the city watched the pair with open suspicion. A foreign red priest and a lord with a battered cloak were not the sort of visitors the port town often welcomed. But the name Thoros of Myr still carried a certain weight with—half infamy from King's Landing tourneys and half ridiculous fighting style with a burning sword—and Beric's charred sigil, the lightning bolt of House Dondarrion, marked him important enough. And so the guards grudgingly let them pass.
As they rode beneath the shadow of the gatehouse, Thoros leaned close to Beric and muttered, "What do you make of Jon's plan?" He used the boy's old name, a habit he'd never broken through the travel, a caution against the wrong ears.
Beric gave a low chuckle. "I think he stopped being Jon the day he spoke as he did. Aemon, he calls himself—and by the gods, he wears the name well. I never thought a boy with Stark blood would prove this astute at statecraft."
Thoros grinned faintly. "Ice with dragon's fire. A true King through and through."
Beric's nodded with a note of respect. "He knew where to strike. The Mountain was hated by all—the smallfolk and the lords alike. To set it about that Rhaegar's heir cut him down? It's justice they can taste. Justice they'll whisper in taverns until the truth becomes stronger than any lie."
Thoros chuckled. "Aye. The boy played it well."
The red priest smirked as he continued. "Steel and fire both. I remember the way his eyes burned when he gave us our charge. He carries more of the deviousness in him than he lets out." He let his mind drift back to the camp, to the morning they had parted ways.
Go to the loyalists, the boy had said, his voice steady with a gravity that belied his years. The lords who stood for House Targaryen even when all seemed lost. They will not trust me yet, nor should they. But they must know that Rhaegar's blood still walks in Westeros. Tell them their prince lives. Tell them I will need them soon.
To Beric's soldiers, the boy had given a second charge: send the surviving men out into the villages, the towns, the taverns of the Riverlands and the Crownlands. Whisper the truth into the right ears—that the Mountain and his rabble were dead, cut down not by some Faceless men but by Rhaegar's son himself. A boy with white hair and eyes red as heartwood, carrying his house's ancestral sword.
Justice, Aemon had called it. Justice for the butchered babes in Maegor's Holdfast. Justice for the villages burned by Tywin's beasts. Let the smallfolk see the hand of their prince in it.
Thoros smiled despite himself. It was bold, audacious…perhaps even reckless. But the fire of it had caught something in his chest, a spark of justice he'd thought was long dead.
Beric's voice broke into his thoughts. "He played it well," he said, his tone low, almost reverent.
Thoros turned, his eyebrow raised in question.
"The prince," Beric continued, a wry quirk to his lips that was both admiration and sorrow. "He knew, Rhaegar was loved by the smallfolk, even if Aerys was a monster. And what Tywin's dogs did to Rhaegar's children…" His words trailed off, heavy with unspoken disgust. "It was perfect justice. The kind that binds men to a cause without oaths."
They reached Lord Rykker's castle the Dun Fort as dusk bled into night. Duskendale's keep rose grey against the reddening sky, the banners of House Rykker flying in the evening wind. Inside, Lord Renfred received them in his solar, his dark hair gone to grey but his eyes sharp as they had ever been.
"Beric Dondarrion," the lord said, his voice deep and guarded. "And Thoros of Myr. You come ragged and weary to my hall. What brings you to Duskendale?"
Thoros stepped forward, his hands held open in a gesture of peace. "We come not for coin, nor comfort, but for truth."
Beric followed, his one good eye fixed on the lord. "A truth that must be spoken only to loyal men. We come with information meant only for true ears, loyal to a name the realm thought lost."
Renfred Rykker's eyes narrowed, suspicion and old memory crossing his face. "Loyalty can be dangerous talk in such times, ser. Speak, then. But mind your tongues. I bent the knee when Robert took the throne, though my heart remembered another king. You'd better have something worth the risk, else I'll see you back to the road—or to the dungeons"
Beric nodded. "Dangerous, aye. But true, Rhaegar's blood lives."
The solar grew still. Even the torches seemed to quiet their crackling. Before another word could be spoken, the heavy doors swung closed, and a deep silence swallowed the chamber whole.
Far away, in the Red Keep of King's Landing, a soft rustle of parchment disturbed the stillness of a spymaster's chamber. Varys, clad in his soft robes, unfolded a message with his stubby fingers. His eyes danced across the lines of script, and a slow, subtle smile spread upon his lips.
At last, he whispered into the shadows, "The black dragon meets the red."