yours in ascendancy.

Baris Blackmont had once, when he was a very small boy, put out his hand to one of the hunting dogs that his father kept tethered in the practice yard at Blackmont Keep. The dog had sniffed the boy’s fingers, and then promptly bit two of them off. To young Baris’ credit, he did not scream, nor did he cry, but he did watch the beast seize off with his pair of knuckles, blood dripping from its jaw and his serrated bones breaking forth through the torn and ravaged skin of the remaining portions of ring and pinky fingers. He had watched the animal retreat, had gazed on even as the dog gnawed and snacked on his own finger bones. Just as it seemed the hound was quite finished licking the ivory pieces clean, young Baris picked up the stick he’d found, intended for a game of fetch, and walked placidly over to the dog. It looked up at him and snarled, as though it would remove what remained of his hand, but Baris was unmoved.

“I’ll have my fingers back then,” he told it, and then he plunged the fetch stick into the beast’s eye, and twisted it. While the animal howled and whined and writhed to get the stick from its eyeball, and while it bled and clawed upon the ground, Baris reached down and took back the two finger bones from the dirt, stuffing them into his pocket.

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Ser Baris stood now on a terrace that eased to the edge of the world; built into the side of a craggy mountain, Blackmont Keep afforded several such balconies of magnificent view, mist and dry winds rustling all around. From the east terrace, Baris imagined he could even see Highgarden spearing through the clouds in the distance, irreverent and white and haughty.

Barely more than smallfolk, he thought darkly, and yet the flash of an emerald cloak and the scent of roses had haunted the Dornish mountains now for two generations. A hundred quiet, hissing years of hatred – his father had carved a rose into his bedpost, added a thorn for every Tyrell raider slain by his blade, and his grandfather had been a general during the first border wars that ravaged the countryside. Men died first in the mountains – the bloody maw that split the South from Dorne, the jaw that clenched upon the Marches.

He’d hoped for an end to it when his sister ascended to the throne of Dorne, but Aysel had pleaded and begged Eren Martell to launch a full, true war against Highgarden, and time and again he refused. Aysel called him weak, went mad for loving a man who would not bend to her will. Baris tried to persuade Eren himself, but the Prince of Dorne had smiled knowingly and shook his head, bidding Baris be patient and wise, telling him to look toward peace, not war. But Ser Baris did not have a soul for peace.

A raven swept down onto the balcony’s railing, feathers ruffling, and settled. Ser Baris reached over and picked it up, flipping it over, and removed the parchment attached to its leg. It bore the seal of Prince Dareios, all the way from Pentos.

Ser Baris, the letter read. I have dispatched my ships according to schedule. Magistrate Hesperos assures me that they will be awaiting Her Highness at White Harbor, pending your escort. The wedding will not take place until you have confirmed that the peace treaty between yourself and the Widow of Wyl is scheduled and imminent.

The letter went on, but Ser Baris had stopped paying attention to what he was reading. He was reminded that he still had to start a war with the Widow of Wyl, let alone sign a peace treaty.

Yours in ascendancy, Dareios.

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M a r t e l l