Chapter Text
Quenlyn Greyjoy was born on Pyke during a savage storm—red-faced and squalling and regrettably female.
She was named for her grandfather, the Lord Reaper of Pyke. Quellon Greyjoy held her with strong, sun-browned hands, kissed her mottled brow, and proclaimed her fierce. Four years later, he would die at sea with a sword in his hand like so many proud Greyjoys before him. Quen only remembered the tall man with the snow-white beard who tossed her into the air and always caught her, always.
Quen was not, in fact, fierce. Her mother called her shy, and her brothers called her soft, but she could be brave when she wanted to.
Balon Greyjoy was not soft or shy, and it was her brothers who got all of his time, all of his hopes. Quen was grateful to be beneath Lord Balon’s notice, for it was as hard and unforgiving as Pyke’s sheer cliffs. She had her mother, and Asha, and Dagmer to keep her busy. She could play with thrall-sons and lord-sons while her brothers were trapped in the Sea Tower, sweating over maps and letters.
While Lord Balon made his plans, Quen was free to roam. She spent the days digging up sand crabs to boil, riding her shaggy garron along the wind-swept flatlands, and swimming naked in the sea. Sometimes she played at swords with Asha, using bleached switches of driftwood to crack each other’s knuckles.
On her eighth name-day, Dagmer put a real sword in her hands. It was a crude little shortsword, not at all like the elegantly-wrought longsword her uncle Victarion wielded. But it was hers, and that made it leagues finer than any other blade, even her cousin Harras’ Valyrian steel Nightfall.
Dagmer taught her the proper grip, then he let her swing it around, guffawing as she leapt and slashed and made a fool of herself. The Cleftjaw had a booming laugh and a big, ugly, four-lipped grin that Quen loved. She called him uncle, even though he wasn’t. He was only a sworn man of her father’s with perhaps a pinch of Greyjoy blood four or five lives back, and that from the wrong side of the blanket. But Dagmer was more of an uncle to her than any of her father’s brothers, and she loved him for it.
In the week following her name-day, Quen wore the sword lashed proudly to her belt. She pretended she was a reaver like her uncles, standing tall at the helm of her own longship with all the world before her. As she swept across one of Pyke’s hidden docks, cutting down imaginary foes, her brother Rodrik plucked the sword from her fingers and tossed it into the sea. Cruelty was easy like that for him, and he laughed as her sword disappeared into the murky, grey-green water.
Quen didn’t bother trying to hit him. Rodrik was always quicker, and she could smell the wine on his breath. Her uncle Aeron’s mirth grew when he drank—till he was dancing on tabletops and howling like a hound—but wine and ale only made Rodrik meaner. He liked having an excuse to hurt her, so she refused to give him one.
Without a word, Quen turned and jumped off the dock, plunging into the cold waves below. She searched for the sword for hours, swimming down to claw through the sand at the bottom and surfacing only for desperate gasps of air. Diving again and again, Quen cried to her heart’s content, letting the salt water wash away her tears. Asha told her she was too old to cry, but Quen still did sometimes, when no one could see.
It was Dagmer who found her, trembling in every limb. She was so weak that she could not pull herself back onto the dock; she could only cling to it, the tide swelling about her. The sun was setting by then, and the waves glimmered red and orange like an endless carpet of candle flames.
“Oh, lass,” Dagmer said softly, softer than she deserved. Mayhaps Asha had tattled, but the Cleftjaw always seemed to know. He knew when she lied and misbehaved, he knew where to find her when she hid, he always knew.
Quen must have looked a sorry sight, all ragged braids and gooseflesh, but Dagmer just took her arms in two huge, callused hands and hauled her back up onto the dock. He wrapped her nakedness in a sealskin cloak that smelled of tallow and the soot and coal tar used to make maester’s ink. It was her mother’s cloak, Quen knew. Her mother’s things oft smelled of candles and old parchment from her frequent visits to Ten Towers. In particular, Ten Tower’s library, where her uncle, Rodrik Harlaw, tucked himself away amongst the stacks of books like a rabbit in its burrow.
“There are other swords,” Dagmer told her, not unkindly.
“But that one was mine,” Quen replied, cold and miserable.
Dagmer carried her back to the castle proper, her stomach curdling with shame. When they entered the main hall, Rodrik glowered at her, but her own anger rushed up so fiercely that Quen glared back before she could think better of it. If I still had my sword, I’d stick it in your belly.
She cried herself to sleep that night, but the next morn, Dagmer gave her a new blade. It was castle-forged steel, the length of a dirk but wickedly thin. The Cleftjaw grinned as she checked the balance, then he set her to hacking apart men of straw. Quen took to the task with glee, sending brittle yellow guts spilling into the dirt.
In the months afterward, she practiced with her dirk as often as she was allowed, clanging it eagerly against Asha’s own blade. Her sister was three years older, but Quen was of a height with her, which drove Asha mad. Even so, her sister had a surprising strength to her stick-thin arms, and when their swords clashed, the force of it made Quen’s teeth rattle.
Sometimes, when Tris visited from Lordsport, he’d watch them spar. Tris Botley was awkward and had terrible pimples, but he was the nicest boy in all of the Iron Islands, so Quen liked him anyway. He wouldn’t spar with them, no matter how much she begged or Asha needled him, but he would sit and gaze at them with big brown cow eyes. It was obvious Tris fancied Asha, even though Quen was almost as tall, and her hair was far prettier—everyone said so.
Not that she fancied Tris either; he was plain of face and a hopeless stumble-tongue, and his cousins were all loud and smelly. But Asha was better with a sword than her, and that chafed terribly. Worse, Asha took to throwing axes as naturally as a gull to the wind, whilst Quen struck the ground ten times for every throw that met the target. She hated her sister for that, but at least she was still her mother’s favorite, and Dagmer’s, and that was better than swords or throwing axes.
As sure as the seasons, the men left for reavings. Some of the women, too. The ironborn sailed further north than the Wall, and further south than Dorne. They had sailed everywhere and seen everything there was to see, because they were the bravest people in all the world.
Quen sailed too, though seldom with her brothers or uncles. It was Dagmer who took her to visit Harlaw, Blacktyde, and Old Wyk, and he even let her guide the tiller as they stole through snarls of foaming rocks. Elsewise, Dagmer put her to tying knots, and she’d sit cross-legged on the prow and practice her bowline and Nagga’s hitch until her hands were raw and stinging. It was worth it for one of Dagmer’s hideous grins.
Sometimes, they even sailed to the mainland, though only so far as Seagard or Lannisport. The people of the green lands did not care for ironborn, so Dagmer kept her close at hand as she raced around the bustling marketplaces, goggling at all of the frivolous trinkets, fine fabrics, and fragrant food.
One of the stalls in Seagard sold round pastries stuffed with pork and pine nuts, and Quen stopped short when she saw it. Dagmer gave a hearty laugh and tossed the baker a few groats, but the baker’s eyes had gone wide as saucers at the sight of the Cleftjaw’s splintered face, and he let the coins clatter to the ground.
Quen scooped them up and slapped them on the counter with a scoff. Maron had told her that green landers were stupid and craven, and Quen had to agree. Dagmer didn’t seem to mind. He just grabbed them a pair of pastries and handed Quen the fatter of the two. They ate together as they wandered back down to the harbor.
Of course, her uncles did take her sailing sometimes, but only when well in their cups. Once, her uncle Aeron even took them all the way to Oldtown—the wealthy maester-city sitting at the mouth of the Reach.
Aeron’s steersman, a man with few teeth and even fewer fingers, only laughed. “The mouth of the Reach, yer uncle calls it? Aye, the cunny of the Reach, more like. Ripe and sweet-smelling, to be sure.”
Oldtown was not, in fact, sweet-smelling. In the heat of the summer, the quays and slums steamed and sweltered and stunk such to make her eyes water. The salt winds of the open sea were intoxicatingly sweet compared to the city-stench of unwashed bodies, night soil, and rot. Even without the stink, Quen misliked the city. It was too large and much too tall. They couldn’t even see the Hightower standing proudly atop Battle Isle once they left the harbor, hemmed in as they were by lofty stone buildings. It left Quen feeling like a mouse in a rat pit.
Aeron led her and Asha through the snaking streets with purpose at first, but with every deep swallow from his stained wineskin, his steps grew slower and more meandering. At one point, he seemed to forget that she and Asha were following at all, and he turned toward a brothel like a fish snagged on a hook.
Even then, Quen knew what a brothel was. She had seen the one in Lordsport, with pretty painted girls spilling from every doorway and window. Like the brothel in Lordsport, it belched a poisonous cloud of lust and lavender into the narrow streets below.
As men hollered crudely at the perfumed women leaning from the terraces and wide, white-washed windows, Quen grabbed Asha’s sweat-sticky hand.
“I want to go back,” she whimpered, but Asha just looked at her down her nose. I’m only seven, she might have added, if she wasn’t sure that would earn her a clout. Asha was ten, almost a woman grown, and she hated Quen’s whining. But then one of the slatterns went to her knees in front of a man, right there in the street, and Asha relented. Aeron seemed a fly stuck in honey, mouth agape and dribbling wine as he gawked at the women. He didn’t notice them slip away.
Somehow, Asha found their way back to their uncle’s Golden Storm. Part of Quen still wanted to explore, but the foulness that soiled her boots and the stench that clung to her clothes made her think better of it. So she bedded down in a disused corner of the longship, her head pillowed in her arms. She would have slept in her uncle’s cramped cabin, but it stunk of ale and sick and every other revolting thing in the world.
Quen started to sniffle, but Asha pinched her by the ear and dragged her to her feet. “Stop being such a baby,” her sister snapped, giving her ear a twist.
When she cried out in pain, Asha sighed in disgust and let Quen slink back down to the deck. They stayed like that for a long while, with her huddled against the rough wood of the ship and Asha standing above, as if to guard against rapers and thieves. The Golden Storm listed idly in the water of the inlet as they listened to the sounds of the city. It rocked Quen into a fitful sleep.
When she woke, the sun was high in the sky and Asha was curled up on a pile of loose rigging, sound asleep with her skinny legs tucked up to her chest.
It was evening again by the time Aeron returned, sheepish and haggard from the night’s frolics. He cringed all through the return voyage, doubtless imagining Balon Greyjoy’s fury. And furious her father was, meeting them with a look that turned Quen’s bowels to water.
Thankfully, her uncle bore the brunt of Lord Balon’s wrath. Quen lingered only long enough to hear her father threaten to hang Aeron from his longship’s mast, so the gulls might peck out his eyes and feast on his worthless manhood. She would’ve giggled at that, but the sight of her mother, red-eyed and wan with worry, made Quen feel like the worst daughter in all the Seven Kingdoms.
The rest of the time, Aeron ignored them, and Victarion seldom ever left the Stepstones. They were busy with men’s work, though ‘men’s work’ seemed to consist mostly of drinking and wenching. Her uncle Euron was the only one to bring them gifts when he returned from reavings. He had chests full of golden torcs and fine silver hair clasps and jewels of every shape and color. Asha shunned the Crow’s Eye’s gifts, but her sister was always stubborn like that.
Once, as he settled an ivory comb studded with jet in Quen’s snarled hair, the Crow’s Eye crouched down to face her, so close that she nearly took a step back. “Would you like to keep a secret?” he asked. One of his eyes was covered with a leather patch. The other was very blue.
“A secret?” Quen asked, nervous for a reason she didn’t understand. “Asha says I’m no good at keeping secrets.”
“It’s a special secret,” her uncle said, leaning closer and smiling in that queer way of his. “Just between us.”
She was saved from answering by another voice, this one harsh and tight. “Quen, come here.”
It was her uncle Aeron. He seemed… afraid. It was a strange look, one that she hadn’t seen before on his smiling, droopy-eyed face. Quen had never known reavers to be afraid of anything, and it frightened her.
She obeyed unthinkingly, darting away to take Aeron’s hand, her stomach twisted in knots. Euron rose slowly, laughing. The noise had a cruel edge to it, like the curved end of a flensing knife.
Aeron’s hand tightened around hers as he dragged her from the room. He was trembling, but he didn’t let go until they were standing before her and Asha’s bedchamber in the Sea Tower. It had been Aeron and Urri’s bedchamber once, back when her uncles were little. Back before Urri died.
“You must stay away from him,” Aeron told her, snatching the comb from her hair and sending it skittering down the stone hallway. He grabbed her arms so hard it hurt. “You must. You must. Do you understand?”
Quen could only nod, and heed him. She shied away from the Crow’s Eye and his gifts. From his smiling eye. Yet there were nights when she dreamed of his other eye, black as polished onyx and shining with malice.
She woke from those nightmares to endless silence, a scream trapped in her throat.
Quen loved music even more than swords or sailing. The Iron Islands had a thousand taverns and inns, each one filled with merriment and song.
When they were little, Dagmer would take her and Asha to Fingerdancer’s Luck and settle them on either shoulder, swinging back and forth with the music to make them shriek and squeal with delight. Asha was too big for that now, or so she claimed, but Dagmer still let Quen sit on his shoulders, her knees knocking against his split chin.
From her seat on his shoulders, Quen could feel the rumble of Dagmer’s voice as they sang “Steel Rain” and “The Bloody Cup”. Men bellowed along, beating their tankards against the tabletops. Asha said that Quen’s voice was high and terrible, like two cats fucking, but Dagmer never minded. He even let Quen have a sip of his ale when he let her down from his shoulders, though it tasted watery and wretched like the puddles in Pyke’s yard after a rain.
Other times, when she wanted music, Quen followed her brothers or uncles at a distance as they wandered to one winesink or another. The places that her brothers and uncles frequented were darker and shabbier, but more fun, too. Aeron picked the best ones. He was the youngest of her uncles, only a bit older than her brother Rodrik, but he was the best at drinking. Aeron drank so much that Quen wondered how it was that his belly didn’t swell up like an overfilled wineskin.
Even for all his drinking, Aeron also sang and danced. Rodrik and her uncle Victarion almost never danced, because they were both big and dumb, but Aeron danced for the sake of dancing. He even danced with Quen, spinning her round and round just to make her giggle. They clapped and stomped and shouted, and everything was warm and alive, even when cold winds wailed outside. It was in those moments that Quen loved being ironborn the most. The ironborn were brave and fierce and full of life, and so was she.
Then her uncle Aeron left on his longship. With it went her father’s proud Great Kraken, Victarion’s mighty Iron Victory, Euron’s terrible red Silence, her brother Rodrik’s maiden Queen Alannys, and Dagmer’s Foamdrinker with its high, carved prow.
Quen made a game of trying to name them all, from Lord Sawane Botley’s Swiftfin to the Black Shepherd’s Dagger, but soon they had all crested the horizon, leaving naught but empty ocean.
For long months, the islands were eerily quiet, with all the menfolk gone on their great reaving. According to her father, this reaving would yield the greatest prize of all: a crown.
When the sky was blue and beautiful, the noise came back, but it was loud and howling and hateful.