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“I did urge you to flee, you will recall, but you esteemed your honor more than your life. An honorable death is well and good, but if the life at stake is not your own, what then? Would your answer be the same, ser?” (The Mystery Knight)
The first act of Aegon’s reign was the arrest of Brynden Rivers, the King’s Hand, for the murder of Aenys Blackfyre. Bloodraven did not deny that he had lured the pretender into his power by the offer of a safe conduct, but contended that he had sacrificed his own personal honor for the good of the realm. (The World of Ice and Fire)
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Dunk found Lord Bloodraven alone in his solar at the Tower of the Hand, calmly greeting the arrival of the knights of the Kingsguard as if he had been expecting them to escort him to a small council meeting instead of the dungeon.
“I have been waiting for you, Ser Duncan,” Bloodraven said. His hand made a gesture inviting Dunk to take the seat across the table from him.
Dunk made a point to remain standing. “You knew I was coming, my lord?”
“I still have my spies. Even in the White Sword Tower. Even after my downfall.”
Dunk nodded. That much he had expected. “I thought to find you gone, truth to tell. I thought to find you long gone.”
The king had commanded the gates to the city closed and the ports and harbors patrolled, but His Grace harbored no illusion that those measures were sufficient to prevent Lord Bloodraven from escaping, should he wish to do so.
Or from hiding, thought Dunk. There must be countless nooks and crannies, hideouts and hideaways in King’s Landing known only to the man with the thousand eyes and one. Lord Bloodraven could have remained hidden in the Red Keep itself for years with the king and his guards being none the wiser, Dunk suspected.
“You thought to find me gone, ser? You thought I would scurry away like a rat, like Bittersteel?”
“Is that the reason you stay, so you will not be likened to your half-brother? Bittersteel fled like a coward, but brave Bloodraven remains to face his fate?”
Dunk’s question seemed to amuse Lord Bloodraven instead of angering him. He smiled a sardonic smile and said, “The hedge knight I met at Whitewalls two-and-twenty years ago would not have known to speak such sharp and pointed words. He was earnest to a fault, the young Ser Duncan. I should have treasured him more, that young man who called me m’lord.”
“I am a young man no longer, my lord,” replied Dunk. He had passed his fortieth nameday, that much he was certain, but his precise age would remain a truth only known to the mother he had never known.
“A young man no longer … and a hedge knight no longer. The white cloak fits you well, ser. I told King Maekar that he would be doing his successor a great favor by naming you a Sworn Brother of the Kingsguard. I also told His Grace to name his heir before departing for battle, but he chose not to heed my counsel on that matter. If only he had taken my counsel on both occasions rather than just one, the realm would not be in the pickle that it was after his demise.”
Dunk frowned. Was it really to Lord Bloodraven that he owed his white cloak? He had assumed that it was Prince Aegon who convinced his father, though the prince always insisted that King Maekar did it on his own accord.
“Had I fled,” said Bloodraven, “your beloved King Aegon would be suspected of aiding and abetting my escape. Or turning a blind eye, at least. For one reason and one reason only, because he was complicit in my action. Or worse, because he was the one who commanded it in the first place.”
Egg had nothing to do with it, Dunk almost sputtered. No, not Egg, Dunk reminded himself. He had not been Egg to Dunk for many years, since the day Dunk knighted him. Or at least that was what Dunk kept telling himself.
Prince Aegon, now King Aegon … the anguish on his face when Bloodraven walked in with Aenys Blackfyre’s severed head was still seared in Dunk’s mind. For a brief moment, he had seemed like that little boy again, like Egg. He had stared at Dunk with a pleading, bewildered look in his eyes. It was done for me, ser. I never asked for it, but it was done for me, so I could be king. It was done for me, so my hands are not clean, though I never asked for it, and never even wanted it.
“His Grace never commanded you to commit such a vile act,” Dunk said, outraged. “He never even hinted that he wanted it done. You did the deed and saddled him with the guilt, while you –”
“While I walked away not feeling guilty at all?” Bloodraven laughed. “You have me there, ser. I do not regret my action in the slightest. Not in this particular matter. I have had no sleepless nights because of Aenys Blackfyre. I would do it again, if you were to turn back time. The king profited by my action, did he not? It was not only guilt he gained by it. He gained the throne as well.”
“He would have won the throne without your intervention. The Great Council –”
“The Great Council was composed of many lords who despised him for meddling in their gods-given rights and privileges when he was a prince. If he dared to go that far as a prince, they whispered to one another, how much further would he go as a king? You taught him too well, Ser Duncan, when he was your squire. You taught him to think too much about the little folks and not enough about the big lords.”
“So the fault is mine? Is that what you are saying, my lord? How could it be wrong to think about the smallfolk who make up the vast majority of the realm? If a king is supposed to protect his people, then how could he turn a blind eye to a whole host of his people?”
Bloodraven brushed off Dunk’s questions, returning to the subject of Aenys Blackfyre’s death. “The king was not complicit, but that accusation will afflict him for the rest of his days. Which is why I must be punished. For his reign to be secure, I must be punished for the death of Aenys Blackfyre. I am well aware of that. I did not make Aegon king only for him to lose his throne immediately because of me.”
“You must be punished,” said Dunk, “because you murdered a man after luring him to King’s Landing under the promise of safe conduct.” And you did not make Aegon king, thought Dunk. He is not your creature, nor is he mine. He is his own man, for good or ill.
“Would it have been better to murder Aenys Blackfyre in the field of battle?”
“There is no dishonor in killing a man in battle. There is great dishonor in luring a man to his death with the promise of peace.”
“Ahhhh yes, honor. I should have known that you would bring up the question of honor, Ser Duncan. At Whitewalls, I counselled you to flee, but you esteemed your honor more than your life. Though perhaps not necessarily more than your squire’s life, eh?”
Dunk stared, confused. “You? No, that was a fellow hedge knight. His name was … Plumm, Ser Maynard Plumm. He was the one who told me to flee. He –”
“He was a hedge knight like John the Fiddler was a hedge knight? Oh, they are plentiful, these so-called knights of the hedges. But what sort of hedge, ser?”
Dunk flushed. He had been suspicious of Ser John the Fiddler from the start. The knight of the golden hedge, he had silently dubbed the Fiddler. Ser Maynard Plumm, on the other hand, had not given Dunk any reason to suspect that he was not a hedge knight. He appeared and behaved exactly like one.
Dunk’s thoughts turned to another hedge knight he had befriended at Whitewalls. Ser Kyle the Cat, who had spoken recklessly about Lord Bloodraven, calling him a kinslayer and blaming him for the woes of the realm. Maynard Plumm had defended Lord Bloodraven, but in a very off-hand manner, as if it did not truly matter to him.
What had become of Ser Kyle? As far as Dunk knew, he and Glendon Ball had been among the men released from captivity at Whitewalls, on the strength of Egg’s assurance to Lord Bloodraven that they had assisted in thwarting the Second Blackfyre Rebellion. But if Maynard Plumm had been spying for Lord Bloodraven, there was no telling what Ser Kyle’s fate would have been after that. He could have been recaptured after leaving the castle without Dunk and Egg knowing anything about it.
Dunk shuddered at the thought, wondering if Ser Kyle had faced the same fate as the hunchbacked septon whose body he and Egg had seen at Stoney Sept. The septon had been preaching against Lord Bloodraven, and it did not take long for his words to reach the King’s Hand.
“Was Maynard Plumm one of your spies?” Dunk asked, hoping against hope that it was not so.
“One of my spies? Well, I suppose you could call him that.”
Dunk bristled at that. “Either he was or he wasn’t, my lord.”
“He had my eyes,” said Bloodraven, with an enigmatic smile and an insinuating gaze that made Dunk want to claw out his one remaining eye. How did the man manage to look as if he was winking when he was doing no such thing?
Dunk was tired of hints and winks, puzzles and riddles. “Speak plainly, my lord,” he demanded. “He was your eyes, you mean?”
How many eyes does Lord Bloodraven have? A thousand eyes, and one. Did two of those eyes belong to Maynard Plumm? In Dunk’s recollection, Ser Maynard had seemed too world-weary, too cynically contemptuous of everyone and everything to be serving any lord with deep-seated loyalty, but perhaps that was merely a mask he had put on to fool others, to lure them into speaking rash and reckless words in his presence. Words that he would then report back to his master.
“He had my eyes,” repeated Bloodraven, “and my tongue as well. I told you that eggs do well to stay out of frying pans. Do you remember?”
Dunk blinked, repeatedly. What was Lord Bloodraven trying to tell him? That he was Maynard Plumm? But Plumm had two seeing eyes, none of them red. He had no wineskin birthmark. He –
Dunk tried to recall their last meeting, before Maynard Plumm disappeared from Whitewalls. Plumm’s figure looking more and more insubstantial, as if he was dissolving into thin air. Back then, Dunk had attributed it to his feverish imagination. He was wounded, had lost a lot of blood after Alyn Cockshaw tried to kill him, and he was almost out of his mind with worry about Egg.
Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall. He had not thought that about himself for many years. Egg – Prince Aegon – had vowed to cure him of that predilection. You are not a fool, ser, far from it. I wish you could see it for yourself. I wish you would try, at least. In the beginning, Dunk had promised to try merely to humor the boy, but later he started to believe in it himself.
I was a fool about Maynard Plumm, though. A fool who had not remembered until now that Plumm had used the same phrase as Lord Bloodraven to describe Whitewalls. This nest of adders, they had both called it.
You could not be expected to know that they were the same man just from that, ser. Anyone could have used that phrase, Egg would have said.
I should have known, lad.
“Was it … was it some kind of sorcery?” Dunk asked, two-and-twenty years too late.
Bloodraven dismissed the word sorcery with a contemptuous look. “Men call sorcery the kind of magic they fear and do not understand.” He plowed ahead before Dunk could think of a reply. “Do you recall what else I said to you at Whitewalls, ser? About an honorable death? I hope you remember. It has some relevance to our recent predicament.”
Dunk remembered well enough. At Whitewalls, Maynard Plumm had asked him, An honorable death is well and good, but if the life at stake is not your own, what then? It was Egg’s life at stake at the time, Egg’s life Dunk thought was in mortal danger.
How was that related to the current situation? Whose life was at stake? The lives of Prince Aegon and his family, if Aenys Blackfyre had been chosen by the Great Council to be king? Was Lord Bloodraven claiming that he had murdered Aenys Blackfyre in cold blood in order to protect them?
Bloodraven said, “What is the life of one young man against the lives of countless other young men who will surely perish in battle, should there be another war? What is the life of one Blackfyre pretender against the fate of the realm?”
What is the life of one hedge knight against the life of three good men, one of them the heir to the throne who would surely have been a good king if he had lived? What is the life of one hedge knight against the fate of the realm? In the years since the tourney at Ashford, Dunk had asked himself those questions over and over again. He had never found the answer, though he knew of a man who had risked – and lost – his life because he believed the answer to those questions to be, Everything.
In the years since the death of Prince Baelor, Dunk had tried his best to understand why Prince Baelor had made the decision he made at Ashford. He had done his utmost to learn what had driven the prince to his final act. He owed his life to Prince Baelor; the least he could do was to keep the flames of the prince’s ideals burning brightly.
Every life must be valued or no life was truly valued, Prince Baelor had believed. It began with one life, with indifference to the destruction of one life, and then another, and another, until there came a time when the destruction of one million lives could be justified to save ten millions. If one life was not sacred, then no life was truly sacred. Even if the life in question belonged to a lowly hedge knight.
Or to a Blackfyre pretender.
This, however, was not a subject Dunk wished to debate with Lord Bloodraven. “I am a simple man, my lord,” he said instead. “All I know for certain is this: what you did to Aenys Blackfyre will always be remembered by the Blackfyres and their supporters. They will not forgive and they will not forget. They will retaliate, make no mistake. By this act, you have plunged the realm into a deeper calamity. And you will always be remembered for it. You will always be remembered as the man who gave your word with no intention of ever keeping it.”
Bloodraven shrugged that last part aside. “And what of it? I sacrificed my personal honor for the good of the realm. I was more than willing to do it.”
“You sacrificed more than just your own honor.”
“You’re speaking of Aegon’s honor.”
“I’m speaking of the king’s honor. The throne’s honor. As the Hand to the late King Maekar, you were the voice of the king while the throne stood empty. The power of the Iron Throne was invested in you until a new king was selected by the Great Council. You gave Aenys Blackfyre the Iron Throne’s word and then broke it. Why should anyone believe any proclamation made by the throne after that, promising safe conduct or clemency? The damage you have done to your personal honor is your own concern, my lord, but the damage you have inflicted on the Iron Throne’s honor is incalculable. And that will have lasting consequences for the realm you claim you were protecting.”