Chapter Text
I
Reborn beneath a bleeding Star
Catelyn
"Say your say, Lady Stark."
Renly Baratheon speaks with the casual ease of a lord dressing up for a leisurely hunt, not one being armed for battle.
Crowned by none but his own bannermen and his wife's family, he already carries himself with all the pride of royalty.
Catelyn watches on as Brienne of Tarth sweeps the heavy gold cloth cloak bearing the Baratheon stag over her king's broad shoulders.
She has not had long to take young Renly's measure, and the lady of Winterfell knows well that few men are more blind and foolish than those who are full of pride and certain of victory.
Which means she must choose her words very carefully if she is to succeed. Appeals to prudence are as unlikely to aid her cause as they'd been earlier, during the Baratheon brothers' ill-fated parley. But trying his patience is hardly going to do her much good either, so she decides to try with candor:
"The Lannisters tried to…" and gets a mere few words in before a different voice cuts her off.
"Your Grace! Your life is in danger! Step away from the entrance if you…" a small, bright, breathless voice from deeper in the tent, that's making all three of them wheel around. Renly has his hand on his sword, and Brienne's blade has half cleared its scabbard.
The king, the knight, and the noblewoman stare at the most curious sight as the shadow grows into the royal pavilion.
No, not a shadow, a girl.
A small, wretched little thing, dressed in peasants' rags, coming to unsteady feet after squeezing in where the tent's tarpaulin meets the floorboards. Just a hint of olive tan, the kind that can be found among the fisherfolk of the Stormlands or the people of the Free Cities, rendered indistinct because her face, her hands, and her cloak are all covered in a thick layer of soot.
She must have been invisible in a night this dark, it occurs to Catelyn.
She's young.
Poorly kempt, her raven hair is wild, uneven, and knotted and just as stained as her skin, and for a moment Catelyn has to blink away the all too painful images of Arya, returning from one of her misadventures, clothes in rags and hair covered in mud and leaves.
The girl's chest is still fighting to regain precious breath, her small frame trembling with urgency, big, dark eyes that anxiously flicker back and forth between the tent's entrance and Brienne's half-drawn blade.
Stunned silence hangs over the tent, broken only by the girl's heaving breaths - but the silence does not get to last more than a heartbeat or two before the urgency wins out, and the stranger begins to plead, "Your Grace, please. You must believe me! Dark things move this night, and you are in terrible danger and…"
She makes a timid attempt to step closer and then freezes when Brienne moves to intercept her. It's King Renly's hand on his guard's arm that stops the hulking woman's advance, and if the monarch is at all concerned by all this strangeness, his voice does not betray it.
"Easy, Brienne. This one hardly seems like much of a danger."
There is no relief at the king's magnanimity on the girl's face. If anything, her eyes widen in disbelief and terror. Her features mouth a quiet 'oh no' that gets carried from her lips by the gale of wind that blows into the tent.
And then a number of things occur, each too quick for Catelyn to comprehend them, each one more unusual than the last.
The girl moves with desperate swiftness. Her hand darts down into a pouch on her hip, and she lunges for the closest brazier.
The knight of the Rainbow Guard moves as well, with a frightening speed for a woman of her size clad in armor. In the blink of an eye, she has put herself in front of Renly, and perhaps it is down to the King's grace that it is Brienne's boot and not her sword that plucks the girl out of her motion with a savage kick.
As fast as the she-knight may be, she is too slow.
Just before she is felled, the intruder has managed to swipe her hand across the brazier, right through the flames.
And from her open palm arc sparks, bellowing painfully bright white fire surges in a wide crescent, a dread star of orange and red and white igniting in the middle of the tent that reaches high, and partially engulfs Brienne.
In a flash, the otherwordly flame banishes every last strand of darkness from the pavilion.
All but one.
Catelyn flinches at the impossible display of magic, at the searing sting in her eyes when night turns into day without transition or warning. And yet the flame from nothing is not what binds her awestruck gaze.
The noble lady and the king both are staring at the open space between the king and the pavilion's entrance.
They're staring at the king's shadow that has grown from the ground.
For it alone among all the shadow and smoke has resisted the sudden bright.
For it stands behind Renly, sword raised high for a killing blow.
For it stands frozen, caught in the center of the fire's arc.
The shape of a man, raw darkness wreathed in flame that will not fade.
A man burning from within.
Screaming.
A high-pitched howl caught between surprise and agony. Impossible to tell if it's a man's or a woman's scream, or something else entirely.
If the scream is even human at all.
It's a sight drawn right from the darkest nightmares, forever seared into Catelyn's retinas, suspended into eternity between madness and reason, between old wives' tales of creeping grumpkins and dread certainty of what is occuring right in front of her.
And then reality reasserts itself.
The shade collapses under the fire's weight, its form dissolves in white heat. The scream subsides, carried out of the tent's entrance on a swarm of embers that race each other on the wind.
And then the real chaos falls upon the tent.
****
King Renly Baratheon, first of his name, is still pale as a sheet by the time cooler heads have managed to return some semblance of order to the mess of overzealous knights and shouting servants and curious lords that have swarmed the tent.
For the first time since she has made the journey south, Catelyn is glad for the presence of the Tyrells.
It's down to Mace's efforts that the night's events do not spread chaos through the camp. It is down to Queen Margaery's patience and a few cups of wine that the king seems to be regaining his composure. And it is down to Ser Loras that Ser Emmon and Ser Parmen have not executed the strange girl on the spot, though there has been so small amount of incensed shouting and accusations and the members of the Rainbow Guard have almost come to blows over it.
Catelyn has done her best to make herself useful. To call men to calm and reason, to direct servants to put out the fires that have ignited in the pavilion's rafters and where the brazier's coals have spilled. Or at least she thinks she has helped to restore order.
In truth, her voice still sounds terribly distant and frightful to her ears every time she opens her mouth to speak, and she is still reeling. Trying to catch up to the night's insanity. Perhaps that is what's keeping the exhaustion at bay and what has allowed her to refuse the offers of wine, opportunities to excuse herself, and or to see the Maester once he's done tending to Brienne's burns.
Curiosity.
No, that's not quite it. Curiosity drives to investigate an unused room at the far end of a castle's basement.
What she feels is a different kind of urge. The world as she knows it has suffered a crack, and she needs to see it filled.
She needs...
Certainty.
Right now, Catelyn needs the truth far more than she needs rest.
And there is only one place to get it.
The girl has curled up in a corner of the tent, wilting away from the knights and the shouting and the far less than gentle treatment at the hands of the Rainbow Guard, and by the Seven, she looks pitiable like that. A malnourished heap on the floor, clutching her left to her chest, the hand still wrapped in the king's washcloth, because the magic she has conjured has set her own sleeve alight as easily as it has burned the tent, and judging by the pained whimpers, she's paying the price for her workings.
Catelyn glances at the table where Ser Royce has emptied the girl's bag.
The contents leave more questions than they offer answers.
A few dried bushels of herbs or grasses. A handful of satchels with powders or flour. Some strips of linen, brown with old stains. A waxcloth with the smallest morsel of hard cheese and a few crumbs of bread left in it. A short knife, handle wrapped in string, that seems barely big enough to eat with, a rough-hewn wooden bowl and spoon. A few needles and thread, a chipped flint stone. Four copper halfpennies.
A length of old, threadbare cloth, tied in knots so it almost resembles a dark humanoid shape. She's heard one of the knights call it an effigy, but even after witnessing the white fire, Catelyn cannot bring herself to see spellcraft in the rag, rather than a child's doll, crudely made and yet well loved to the point of tatters.
Seven know, she misses her girls badly.
And she only hopes that tonight will not become even harder to bear. Because Renly has finally found his wits again and steps closer now that the group in the tent is finally down to Catelyn, his bride, and his knights.
The king motions his guard to action.
Catelyn can tell that by the look on his face that he wants answers as urgently as she does.
"You! Witch! Rise!" comes Ser Parmen's dutiful bark.
It prompts no more than a whimper, and the girl's feeble, groaning attempts to get her legs under herself clearly fall short of the knight's patience. Small wonder that is. Catelyn isn't sure if she would be able to stand herself, after a kick from Brienne of Tarth to her gut.
Ser Parmen has no such reservations, and when his order is not heeded, he unceremoniously grabs the girl by the hair and pulls her up and onto a stool across the table from his king, and the Lady of Winterfell has to bite her tongue not to protest.
Three knights tower over the girl now, vigilant and suspicious, blades at the ready, and it only serves to make her wilt deeper into herself and to make her look even more ridiculously small amidst all that steel.
Perhaps it is Margaery's whisper in his ear, but even Renly seems to realize the cruelty of this treatment, and his voice has noticeably softened when he finally addresses the shivering little creature: "I don't believe we have been properly introduced. And you must excuse my guards, but I am sure you understand that we have… a lot of questions."
The girl's head turns toward him, though she keeps her eyes firmly cast down, and her response is a meek, quivering mewl: "I… I'm… beg pardon, your Grace. S-Saldriza, you can call me. I… am awful sorry about the unannounced entry. And about the lady knight. I… swear I didn't mean to hurt her, and I'm sorry I did, I… whatever answers I can give, you shall have them, just… please, I mean no harm, there is no reason for… for all of this."
For just a moment, the girl glances at one of the knights, at his bare blade, and then her eyes flinch back down and leave it impossible to tell if her labored speech is down to fear or pain lingering from the kick to her gut and the burns she's suffered. Or perhaps she is simply overwhelmed, and who could blame her?
Still, even terrified and beaten, she speaks well for a peasant girl. An odd name, too. Tyroshi perhaps?
"Sers, if you will? I trust that my brother will suffice to keep the King safe from a little girl." Margaery chimes in, her tone perfectly pleasant but absent any doubt that she is giving orders. It's not quite enough to dismiss the knights, but it gets them to back off a few steps and seems to calm Saldriza's shivers just a little.
"So", the King asserts firmly. "Why don't you start by explaining what just happened, Saldriza? What is a witch doing in my tent?"
The girl on the stool draws in a deep breath and winces when that seems to cause her pain, but finally she begins to speak: "I… beg pardon, your Grace, but I am no witch. There was magic here tonight, that's true, but my part in it was no more than a… trick. My pouch…" she weakly gestures her unburnt hand at the table. "Dried ragweed and pine dust, mixed with wheat chaff and ground fine. The mixture lights at a mere spark, and a cloud of it makes for a fine display and carries the fire well, but the flame was the brazier's, not mine."
She takes another deep breath, and Catelyn finds herself exchanging a look with Renly as they both search their memory of the flash of fire.
She had gone for her pouch, hadn't she? And run her hand through the fire.
Still, an awful lot of flame for a fairground display.
But absent patience to dive deeper, Renly speaks out what they are both desperate to know: "And what was… that shadow?"
Saldriza's shoulders sag and her eyes lower even more. "That I cannot say for sure, your Grace. Magic, as far as I know. An old and vile curse from across the sea. I've… read about such things, but I could not tell you how it works. I… I'm no witch, like I said. All I know for sure is that it was here to kill you, your Grace."
Read? Literacy is hardly a common quality among the smallfolk, and at a glance, Catelyn can tell that the young queen has caught on to it as well, as suspicion flickers across Margaery's features. On the other hand, king Renly's nerves seem worn too thin for him to notice.
"Stop speaking in riddles, girl! What do you know? How do you know these things?" His tone is still merely firm with insistance, not harsh exactly, but it's enough to make Saldriza flinch, and she begins to speak in a hasty, terrified babble:
"I… I dream things, your Grace. I've always had nightmares, bad ones. For as long as I can think back. And I see things sometimes. In those dreams. For more than a moon now, I've had the same dream, over and over." A strange, distant hollow crawls into the girl's words, a fear that seems far older and deeper than worry over beatings. "A red witch gives birth to a black stag that slithers on the winds to cut down a good and kindly king, clad in green and gold. A brother dies at a brother's orders, and the world bleeds for his vanity and pride."
She takes another deep breath, and servile haste returns to her words. "And that… that isn't right, that shouldn't happen, I could feel that, and the dreams would not stop, night after night. So I… so I came. To try and stop it. An army like yours is not hard to find, your Grace. But it took me long enough, I wasn't sure if a warning would reach you in time. Or if anyone would believe me. So I… decided to try and stop it myself. Covered myself and my cloak in soot. Few sentries think to look at shadows in the night, and I fit into small places, and your tent is the biggest around, so it wasn't too hard to find either, and I figured that a creature of the dark cannot be where there is flame, right? So I tried to stop it myself. And I did! I did it, didn't I?"
For just a moment, her fear and pain seem to dissolve into incredulity, into almost giddy excitement at that thought.
Not a witch, but a seer?
Catelyn Stark is unsure what she believes. What she wants to believe.
A little too convenient, too odd of a tale to be the whole story. She's raised enough children to fancy herself able to tell if the young woman was lying, and she has caught no falsehood, only desperation. Fear. And oh so much strangeness. If nothing else, she's sure the girl herself believes what she says.
But the absence of lies does not make truth, does it? Nor do the words of an odd young peasant girl make certainty.
But Catelyn can also tell that her doubts no longer matter.
Whether by coincidence, by providence or by some strange cunning, Saldriza has spoken all the right words.
Just enough blame to point towards Stannis, he of so much pride, accompanied by his red woman.
Just enough flattery and sincere concern for the 'kindly king' in green and gold.
Whatever quarter or grace Renly Baratheon might have been contemplating not an hour earlier, Catelyn can tell by the look in his eyes that it is gone now. Saldriza, hunched over on her stool and busy with her own hurt, seems the only person in the tent who does not realize what her words have wrought.
Every man in this tent has their eyes set firmly on a culprit for tonight's darkness now.
And every man in this tent has bloody, vengeful murder in their heart.