A Song of Ice and Fire Cut Short by Dust

by Starfox5

Summary:

It had been a simple mission for Team RWBY: Check some ancient ruins for danger. Then they found themselves in the middle of a frozen wasteland fighting strange ice monsters. That wasn’t actually that hard. But finding a way back home? That’s much harder. Especially without turning into monsters themselves.

Notes:

Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Fire and Ice or any of the characters in the series. I do not own RWBY or any of the characters in the series.
Author’s Notes: This story is set in an Alternate Universe. While the canon events of RWBY up to Season 2 and of A Game of Thrones before the start of Book 1 happened, there will be changes to either series’ background.

Chapter 1: Prologue & Chapter 1: The Strangers at the Gate

A Song of Ice and Fire Cut Short by Dust (RWBY in Westeros)

Summary: It had been a simple mission for Team RWBY: Check some ancient ruins for danger. Then they found themselves in the middle of a frozen wasteland fighting strange ice monsters. That wasn’t actually that hard. But finding a way back home? That’s much harder. Especially without turning into monsters themselves.

Disclaimer: I do not own A Song of Fire and Ice or any of the characters in the series. I do not own RWBY or any of the characters in the series. 

Author’s Notes: This story is set in an Alternate Universe. While the canon events of RWBY up to Season 2 and of A Game of Thrones before the start of Book 1 happened, there will be changes to either series’ background.

Cover:

Prologue: This is not Solitas, is it?

One moment, they were standing around a shiny object; the next moment, they were falling. Free-falling! Ruby Rose had a flashback to the Initiation at Beacon and whipped Crescent Rose around to slow her descent, but she hit the ground before she could pull the trigger.

The impact was jarring but softer than she expected, though when she went to roll with it, she found herself buried halfway in… snow? She scrambled up, coughing and spitting, and looked around. Definitely snow. Lots of it - the whole area was covered in snow! The ground, the trees around them, the hills and mountains in the distance… She blinked. This didn’t look like Vale.

“Ruby, you dolt! I told you not to touch that thing!”

Ruby turned around and saw Weiss raising her head from a mound of snow that had seemingly swallowed her. She was angry, but that was kinda normal for her. The small patch of snow on her head that was slowly slipping down was new, though.

“I was already touching it when you said it!” Ruby defended herself. “Besides, our mission was to check out the ruins!” And that meant checking out weird shining objects that kinda floated.

“We were sent to look for any Grimm that might threaten an archaeological expedition to the ruins.”

Ruby turned again. Unlike Weiss, Blake didn’t look angry, but it was hard to tell - she generally kept cool and calm. She wasn’t covered in snow, either, though. “Yes, but checking for other dangers was kinda implied,” Ruby told her. 

Wait a moment - Weiss, Blake… where was…?

“Woohoo!”

Ruby jerked to the side when another mound of snow exploded in a shower of, well, snow and… steam? Ah, there was Yang, her fists raised and a broad grin on her face. Her sister blinked and looked around. “What happened? This doesn’t look like the ruins where we were.”

“Our reckless leader didn’t listen, again, and triggered something, and we must have been… transported here,” Weiss replied as she brushed off more snow from her clothes.

Ruby did the same and grimaced when she noticed some of the snow had already slipped beneath her clothes and was melting. It was cold here, da…very cold. She could see her breath.

“And where is this? It looks like Atlas, doesn’t it?” Yang asked.

“You mean Solitas. Atlas is a city,” Weiss snapped. “This is the wilderness.”

Yang kept grinning. “So, we’re stranded in the wilderness near your home?”

“If we’re lucky,” Weiss replied. She pulled out her scroll, then frowned. “No signal. We’re not near Atlas.”

“Signal’s on Patch.” Yang’s joke wasn’t really funny.

“You don’t recognise the place?” Ruby asked before Weiss could blow her top at her sister.

“Do you expect me to recognise every place on an entire continent?” Weiss glared at Ruby as if it was her fault that Yang’s sense of humour was kinda questionable.

“I could recognise every spot on Patch.” And Yang wasn’t helping.

“Your home is a small island. Solitas is a continent,” Weiss said. “Now, we need to find out where we are.”

“Oh!” Ruby perked up. She knew what to do! “We can check the stars for our position!” She remembered how that worked. Kinda. She had been a bit distracted planning another upgrade for Crescent Rose during that lesson. But it couldn’t be too… She blinked and heard someone gasp.

“That’s…”

“That’s not the moon!”

“Did we skip a phase?”

“That’s not our moon.” Blake sounded both sure and unsure at the same time. Somehow. “It’s different.”

“Well, yeah, it’s not broken,” Yang said.

“It could just be facing us with the unbroken side,” Weiss disagreed, but she didn’t sound as convinced that she was right as she usually did.

“No. It’s not our moon,” Blake disagreed. “It looks different from when it’s in the full phase.”

“I don’t think we’re on Solitas,” Ruby said in a low voice.

“That’s… that’s impossible!” Weiss sputtered. “It has to be our moon!”

“No,” Ruby said. “That doesn’t look like our moon. The colour is wrong, and ours doesn’t have that big dark sea.”

“It’s not a sea; it’s a crater,” Weiss corrected her.

“Whatever, it’s not our moon,” Ruby shot back. “We’re not in our world any more.”

“Unless… we went back in time? Before the moon shattered?” Blake ventured.

“That’s impossible as well!” Weiss disagreed.

“Well, the moon changing is also impossible,” Yang pointed out.

“Whatever,” Ruby repeated herself. She was the leader of RWBY, she had to take charge now. “We can’t bicker about the moon. We need to decide what we do. Where we’re going.”

“We don’t know where we are, so how can we decide where to go?” Weiss asked. “This is…” she shook her head almost violently, her ponytail whipping around her face. “What do we do?”

“Quiet!” Blake hissed before Ruby could try to calm her friend down. “I hear steps. Someone’s coming.”

Ruby didn’t hear anything, but her ears weren’t as good as Blake’s. She didn’t see anything either, though. “From which direction?” she asked.

“From…” Blake tensed. “From all around us!” she spat, drawing Gambol Shroud.

“Wait!” Ruby held up a hand. “Calm down! We don’t want the people here to think we want to do them any harm!”

“I don’t…” Blake drew a sharp breath. “What are they?”

What did she mean? Then Ruby saw the first figure appear between the trees, slowly walking towards them. Almost stumbling. The first of many. They looked…

“What are they?” Weiss repeated Blake’s question.

Ruby didn’t know either. They looked like… “Zombies! Ice zombies!” she blurted out.

“Don’t be ridiculous! This is not one of your silly games!” Weiss snapped.

But the people surrounding them, slowly encircling them, looked like zombies. Some of them had visible wounds. Some had missing limbs. And they were armed. Clubs, spears, staffs. 

Still… Ruby was the team leader. She had to lead. Maybe the people here looked like this? Maybe this was normal? She smiled and waved. “Hello there! Can you help us? We’re kinda lost!”

They didn’t react. Didn’t say anything. They just kept coming closer. And they didn’t look friendly at all!

“We come in peace!” Ruby tried again.

“Ruby!” Yang hissed behind her. “I don’t think they’re listening.”

Ruby didn’t think so, either. But what else could they do? “Can you understand me?” She pointed at herself, then at them. “Me Ruby. You?”

“Ruby…” Yang groaned.

The first of the maybe-ice zombies had almost reached her. He - he looked male - raised his club and grunted, showing gapped teeth, before he swung at her.

Without thinking, Ruby parried the blow with Crescent Rose, taking off half his club in the process and sending him stumbling. “Oh, sorry! I just…” 

He swung the stump of his club at her again, growling like… like a Grimm!

“Ruby!”

Ruby had reach on him. She hit him with the shaft of Crescent Rose. But instead of sending him back a few steps, as she had wanted, she heard his ribs break as her weapon caved his chest in and sent him flying. Gasping, she stared at him. That was… “I didn’t mean to!”

But he got up despite his chest now sporting a hole. And he wasn’t bleeding at all!

“They’re really ice zombies!” Ruby blurted out - right before the other zombies charged in.

Ruby fended off a staff blow and kicked a smaller zombie trying to stab her with a knife. Her kick caught the zombie’s head and ripped it off! For a moment, it felt as if her heart stopped.

But the headless zombie kept swinging its weapon at her.

Horrified, she swung Crescent Rose at it, cutting it in half, then swung her blade around and slashed through two more who were trying to flank her.

Around her, her friends were fighting as well.

“They’re not staying down!” Yang shouted, shattering - exploding - a pair of zombies with a series of blows with Ember Celica. “Not even if they lose their heads!”

That wasn’t how it worked in the games! But this wasn’t a game! They were surrounded by unstoppable ice zombies that kept going! Ruby clenched her teeth, then used her semblance, sweeping through the dozen zombies converging on her and cutting them into pieces before coming to a stop between Blake and Weiss.

“They don’t die!” Weiss yelled, stabbing a zombie before blasting it away with a shot of dust. “They keep coming.”

That was… “We need to set them on fire!” Ruby yelled. If headshots didn’t work, then fire would! It had to! It always did in the movies! “Kill them with fire!”

“Yeah!” Yang roared, diving into the middle of a bunch of zombies.

They jumped on her, and Ruby gasped again. “Yang!”

She started to move, hefting Crescent Rose. A zombie charged at her, and she jumped over it, flipping around and cutting it apart. She landed on a second zombie, kicking it in the chest and pushing off, slicing the zombie’s chest open with her scythe in the process. She had to get to Yang! She had to…

In the middle of the zombie group, a fire flared up - Yang had activated her semblance. And the zombies were burning - and falling down!

“Fire works!” Ruby yelled, landing on one knee before sweeping Crescent Rose in an arc around her and cutting off two more zombies at the knees. Literally!

Weiss landed next to her, jumping off a floating glyph. Ruby heard Myrtenaster cycle, and a zombie about to swing a club at her caught a fireball to the face that burned him to ashes.

“Take this!” Yang barreled through another group of zombies, leaving them broken and burning. 

Blake, flitting around from clone to clone, leaving cut and falling zombies behind, caught three more in Gambol Shroud and flung them on the burning ones. “They’re not that strong,” she said as she reached Weiss and Ruby.

“Just hard to kill,” Ruby agreed. They were not nearly as dangerous as Grimm, though. They just looked so… She clenched her teeth and activated her semblance again, cutting a swath through the rear of the zombie horde and trying to punt the pieces into the fires the others were starting.

She mostly succeeded. A few pieces missed. One almost hit Weiss, but her partner could handle it.

“Hey!”

Should be able to handle it.

Ruby appeared next to her, taking quick breaths and looked around. Most of the zombies were burning in pieces now, but the rest were still coming, not caring about the fate of the others. “Like Grimm,” she whispered. “Just like Grimm.” They weren’t people. Just people-shaped monsters. They had to be.

“Yes,” Weiss agreed, also breathing a bit heavily. “We should… Watch out!”

Ruby spun around and just caught an arrow shattering on one of Weiss’s glyphs that had appeared in front of her face. An ice arrow!

She looked around. That had come from… There! Between a patch of trees! Her eyes widened. Sitting on a huge spider, a figure, pale as ice, with glowing blue eyes, was notching another ice arrow to a shiny white bow. And it was surrounded by more of the zombies.

“That’s the boss!” Ruby yelled as she flipped Crescent Rose around and shifted her into a rifle.

Another arrow flew toward her - no, toward Blake! But it only hit a clone that turned to ice before shattering.

And Ruby had a bead drawn on the figure. She pulled the trigger, and a dust round from Crescent Rose hit the archer in the chest while she flipped head over heels to compensate for the recoil.

Her target blew up, splattering the zombies passing him with blueish blood or something. But the zombies didn’t stop. They kept coming.

Not for long, though - Yang leapt at them, followed by Blake and Weiss. Yang’s first blow caved in the spider’s head, leaving it twitching on the ground. Weiss jumped from glyph to glyph, firing dust charges with Myrtenaster and fending off feeble blows from broken weapons. Blake wove through the ranks of the enemies, clones confusing them until they fell with their limbs cut or entangled.

And Ruby swept around, cutting into them from behind. Crescent Rose flashed, and parts flew.

A minute later, it was over. A flick of her scythe set the last pieces into the fire Weiss had started over the spider’s carcass. 

“Whoo! That was…” Yang trailed off with a sigh. “Satisfying,” she finished.

“It was cathartic,” Weiss surprisingly agreed - at least Ruby thought she did. “But we’re still stuck in…. An unknown place, facing unknown dangers.”

“And known dangers,” Blake said. “We’re in the middle of an icy wasteland without shelter or supplies.”

Their aura would keep them from freezing. For a time, at least. But… “Does anyone have food on them?” Ruby asked.

“Hungry already, sis?” Yang joked, but Ruby could tell that her sister was concerned.

And she was hungry, actually. And she only had a few chocolate cookies on her. She gasped, then checked her pockets. No! They had been crushed in the fighting!

“We need to find shelter and get some food,” Blake said. “We can’t…” 

Her ears were twitching again, Ruby saw. She grimaced. “More zombies?”

Blake nodded with a grim expression.

More fighting, then. Ruby clenched her teeth and gripped Crescent Rose harder. No matter what stood against them, they would get out of this. She wouldn’t let her team down!

*****

Chapter 1: The Strangers at the Gate

‘The origin of the group we know as the Ruby Order remains one of the great mysteries of Westeros. It has been agreed by all reliable scholars that their claims to have come from another world were an exaggeration meant to obfuscate their true origin. From a modern perspective, their tales of a broken moon, flying cities and monster hunters are obvious exaggerations like the myths related to the Age of Heroes. Nevertheless, the fact remains that despite extensive research and Maester Aeon’s famous but ultimately fruitless expedition to Yi-Ti to investigate a possible link between the Yellow Emperor and Yang Xiao Long, no one has been able to find where the four maidens came from. This, coupled with their choice of obvious noms-de-guerre, has, of course, led to a lot of unfounded speculation ranging from the fantastical - such as the theory, if one could call those ramblings that, of Ruby Rose being a daughter of Brandon the Builder who had been put into a magical sleep with her companions to save Westeros in its time of need, to the utterly mad, such as the claim that the entire tale was a fabrication and that the Ruby Order was actually Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, based on nothing more than the colour of Weiss Schnee’s hair. 

In this work, I will cut through all this speculation and focus on what we can prove based on records, evidence and sound logic.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Haunted Forest, Westeros, 298 AC

After four years at the Wall, Will had grown used to the cold, and the Haunted Forest held no terrors for him any more. As a veteran of a hundred rangings, he knew the territory as well as - better than - the Wildlings who claimed the land here, and he knew from experience that he was better at sneaking through the woods than they were.

Proof of that was the fact that he had been tracking the band of wildling raiders they were after for days now without them being able to lose him. And they were getting closer as well. 

No, the only thing Will worried about was that he and Gared were under the orders of Ser Waymar Royce, and that noble was not quite as experienced as he thought he was - just enough to be too confident, which was bad everywhere but doubly so beyond the Wall. Three brothers of the Nigth Watch could take half a dozen wildlings, but only if you were smart about it. If you were dumb, even warhorses and the best armour and weapons wouldn’t save you from an ambush. Will could only hope that by the time they caught up to their prey, the noble would not be too reckless. The Lord Commander should have let Gared lead this ranging; Gared had been a Brother longer than Will had been alive. But Ser Waymar was a noble, and nobles didn’t serve under smallfolk, not even in the Night’s Watch, where everyone was a brother.

He snorted and moved ahead another dozen paces, past a scraggly bush. The raiders were loaded down with their loot, and that made them sloppy. They had tried to walk in a single file to hide their numbers but hadn’t quite managed it. He checked a broken twig - they were even closer than he had thought. He could almost smell the wildlings…

He blinked, sniffing the air. That was smoke! Had the wildlings set camp already? They weren’t that far from the last campsite Will had found, so why would they have stopped here? Sure, the sun would be setting soon, but the wildlings had still been hours ahead of Will’s band when they had set out this morning.

He looked at the sky and squinted. It was cloudy, but… yes, that was a column of smoke. That was even weirder - even the dumbest wildling raiders knew how to build a smokeless fire.

Something wasn’t right.

He quickly started backtracking to where Gared and Ser Waymar were waiting, not caring about hiding his own tracks any more. This was too important.

It didn’t take him long to reach the others. When they saw him running, both jumped up, hands on weapons, and he waved them down.

“There’s smoke ahead! Someone made a fire!” he blurted out between catching his breath.

“Hah! We have them!” Ser Waymar grinned.

“Smoke?” Gared, of course, realised what that meant at once. “Can’t be. Must be a trap.”

That was a possibility Will hadn’t considered. But it made sense, kind of. Or not - most brothers would know better than to charge ahead blindly.

“If it’s a trap, we’ll spring it!” Ser Waymar strode to his horse. “Mount up! We’ll show those raiders that they cannot escape the Watch!”

Will exchanged a glance with Gared. The older brother sneered for a moment, then clenched his teeth and started for his own horse.

Will sighed and followed them. He had a bad feeling about this.

“Show us the way, Brother Will!”

Yeah, definitely a bad feeling. But he had sworn the oath, and orders were orders. With his back to the others, he grimaced and started to lead them towards the fire in the distance.

They made good time, but not good enough for Ser Waymar. By the time they approached a small snow-covered ridge that hid the fire from them, the noble was chomping at the bit. 

Will held up a hand. “They’re beyond that ridge,” he whispered - they were still too far away to be overheard, and he hadn’t spotted any guards around, but you never knew.

“Good! Follow me!” Ser Waymar didn’t stop. He urged his horse up the ridge, sword drawn.

Gared and Will, grimacing again, drew their own swords and did as told.

Ser Waymar was first on the ridge, uttered a battle cry Will didn’t quite get, and charged down the slope. 

Will heard shouting and high-pitched cries. Then he reached the top of the ridge himself, half a pace ahead of Gared, and his eyes widened.

Ser Waymar was down, his horse riderless. The noble was on the ground, disarmed - but still alive; Will saw him squirming under the boot of a… Will blinked. That wasn’t a wildling!

He realised that he had stopped charging, as had Gared next to him. They were facing four people in… colourful clothes. He had never seen, not even heard, of any wildling wearing such garb!

The one holding down Ser Waymar was wearing a bright red cape over a pitch-black garment - and holding the biggest scythe he had ever seen. It was bigger than herself! Next to her stood a woman with a mane of golden hair wearing… Whatever it was, her legs were almost bare! And the one next to her wore a skirt so short it bared her entire legs!

“Targaryen!” Gared whispered next to him.

Yes, the woman had the silver hair of the old kings. And she was wielding a slim, shining sword. And the blonde wore golden gauntlets. Wildlings didn’t dress like that. And they didn’t have such weapons! And they didn’t show any concern or fear faced with two mounted brothers. Of course, they had dismounted Ser Waymar seemingly easily - and for all his overconfidence, the brother was a trained knight.

Will licked his lips. Somehow, he didn’t fancy their chances to charge double their numbers. Not to mention they had Ser Waymar at their mercy.

The silver-haired one took a step towards them and pointed her sword at Will. “You there! Why did you attack us?”

She sounded like a noble. She acted like a noble. Best to treat her like a noble.

Will shrugged and pointed at Ser Waymar. “Ser Waymar is in command.”

All four looked at the still squirming and cursing knight on the ground. Will thought he heard the shorter one say: ‘Oh!’ and despite how serious their situation was, he couldn’t help snorting.

*****

“Do we look like wildlings? Do we?” Weiss Schnee glared at the oaf who had attacked them. She expected, based on far too much experience, to be attacked by the bandits roaming those woods - she wouldn’t call them ‘free folk’; they were common criminals - but the members of the Night’s Watch were meant to be civilised, not barbarians!

The leader of the small band, supposedly a knight, glared back at her. “Only wildlings live beyond the Wall!”

For someone Ruby had dismounted and disarmed without fully waking up, he had nerve! Weiss sniffed and raised her chin a bit more. “We don’t live here, as should be obvious.” She was a Schnee, far more refined than this ruffian. How could anyone mistake her for one of those barbarian folks wearing rags? Granted, they had been sleeping under a few layers of furs taken from those barbarians, but still!

“We were stranded in these lands by an accident, and we’re on our way south,” Ruby chimed in with a wide smile on her face.

“Stranded? We’re nowhere near either coast,” the younger, more sensible man, Will, blurted out.

“They were unique circumstances,” Weiss told him with all the dignity she could muster.

“We got lost,” Yang commented. “It took a while until we found someone who could tell us how to get out of here.”

“What?” Will stared at her.

Weiss frowned again. Yes, these people here were obviously not as sophisticated as the people back home in Atlas, or in Vale, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t tell when Yang was making fun of them.

“OK, it was like this! We were on a mission to investigate an old ruin back home, in Vale, when a magic device dropped us in the middle of this country,” Ruby interjected. “Before we could really understand what had happened, we were attacked by ice zombies and some white, uh, monsters with glowy blue eyes and ice powers, and monster spiders - with ice powers. We had to fight our way through them - they didn’t stop coming even though it was obvious they couldn’t really beat us, not when we were working together, but they were like the Grimm, those are monsters back home, monsters we hunt, but they are not like your monsters here, anyway, we had to burn them all so they stayed dead, because otherwise they would keep attacking us, but only until we met their Alpha…”

“King,” Weiss corrected. “He wore a crown.” And Alphas were animals. She didn’t know what those ‘Others’, as the wildlings called them, were, but they were not animals.

“Witch-King,” Yang added with a grin.

“Whatever!” Ruby pouted for a moment. “Anyway, what matters is when we destroyed that guy, everyone else fell down and didn’t move any more - ice zombies and other guys. Well, there were a few monsters left, but those were easy.”

“And edible.”

Weiss glared at Yang. There was no need to remind them that they had had to eat giant spiders to survive. And they didn’t taste like lobsters! Weiss had eaten enough lobsters for her palate to know the difference!

“Anyway!” Ruby repeated herself. “We defeated those ice monsters and looked for a way back, but there weren’t even ruins where we had landed, and we didn’t find anything in the Alpha’s - Witch-King’s - lair, so we started walking south. At least we think it’s south, we don’t know if south here is actually south, you know? But back home, south is where the sun is highest at noon. Kinda - it varies with the seasons, I think, and where you are, but it was close enough, and we met the locals, the wildlings, you call them, before we ran out of spider legs. And they told us that further south was the Wall, and behind that wall was civilisation! So, here we are!” She beamed at the three men. “On the way to civilisation so we can get home!”

Weiss suppressed a sigh. It was obvious that none of the men had understood a word Ruby had said. Ruby meant well, but she wasn’t experienced enough to deal with this. “We’re not wildlings. We have no quarrel with you. We simply wish to travel to civilised lands where you aren’t attacked by bandits trying to steal your valuables at every corner.” That was technically a slight exaggeration - they hadn’t been attacked quite that often, though Weiss was sure that was mostly due to the population of these lands being spread rather thin - but seeing as those barbarians were also trying to ‘steal’ Weiss and her friends for obvious and utterly disgusting purposes, as some of them had stated before being violently taught the error of their ways, she felt it was a true reflection of the situation.

“Exactly!” Ruby kept beaming at the ruffians dressed in black. “So, can we go back with you? We could probably scale that wall easily, but we’d rather not have another misunderstanding. We just want to go home!”

“Yeah.” Yang was smiling as well, though showing more teeth.

Weiss glanced at Blake, who nodded. She hadn’t said much so far, but as long as she didn’t make things worse, Weiss could live with that.

Really, all they needed was to get out of this wasteland and back to civilisation. Or what passed as civilisation here - it was obvious that they were not as technologically advanced as Atlas or Vale. But then again, a lot of Remnant wasn’t either.

At least they knew that they had kingdoms behind the wall. Weiss desperately needed a hot shower - no, a hot bath! And a meal cooked by a chef, not scraps of dried meat roasted over a campfire or spider legs the size of her own legs! And decent clothes and bedrolls! She was so sick of sleeping wrapped in smelly furs!

And they needed to replenish their Dust reserves. They had spent almost everything on fighting the ice monsters and then surviving in this wasteland. Weiss still hated that she had wasted so much expensive Gravity Dust to check for buried ruins under the location where they had arrived, only to find rocks and dirt.

*****

The Wall, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna squinted as she gazed up at the top of the Wall ahead of them. The fortification was so massive, even with her sharp eyes, she could barely make out the people - members of the Night’s Watch - up there. It was easily over two hundred metres tall, casting a long shadow over the frozen wasteland it separated from the, supposedly, more civilised kingdom behind it. As far as they had been told, it ran across the entire continent, a hundred leagues - about five hundred clicks, if her maths was correct. She could barely imagine how people without modern technology had erected such an edifice. Even if it was, as their semi-voluntary guides claimed, mostly built out of frozen water, it would have taken a very long time to finish it. And the stone foundations it would take to support such a massive structure…

“And I thought the walls back home were tall,” Ruby commented.

“It has been standing for eight thousand years, protecting the Seven Kingdoms from the wildlings,” Ser Waymar, the leader of the small band of warriors, declared, pride dripping from every word.

“All that for a bunch of bandits?” Yang snorted. “Seems like overkill.”

“What?”

While Yang explained what it meant, Blake was tempted to remind her friend that she had denied, on numerous occasions, that such a thing as overkill existed. Yet, Blake held her tongue. The ensuing banter would volunteer more information to the soldiers with them, and the men hadn’t earned their trust. Quite the opposite, actually - the so-called ‘knight’ had attacked them without warning, not bothering with even a token attempt at learning who they were and what they were doing here. Blake wasn’t about to lower her guard amongst people whose first impulse was to attack a stranger.

Although she had to admit, if she was honest, that, based on her and her friends’ experience so far with the people living in the so-called Haunted Forest, she couldn’t completely fault the men for assuming the worst. Every time they had met those nefarious bandits, they had attempted to rob them - and to kidnap them for vile purposes. She would be a hypocrite of the worst order if she ignored how such experiences could form or cement prejudices - she had lived through that herself when she had been in the White Fang.

And yet, Blake neither could ignore how strangely familiar this felt, albeit in a twisted way: A band of outcasts eeking out a difficult existence in a harsh wilderness, kept out of more hospitable lands by the armed guards of supposedly more civilised men? The Atlas military and SDC guards might use more advanced technology, but the principle was the same. The top of the Wall might even be an allusion to Atlas floating above Mantle.

She clenched her teeth as they continued to approach the Wall, her friends and herself easily keeping pace with the mounted warriors. She didn’t know if there were Faunus in this world and how they were treated, but she would keep hiding her ears. What she had seen so far from the three members of the Night’s Watch had not left her with the impression that they would treat her as an equal. It was obviously a rather stratified society, with nobles ruling commoners, as happened in ancient times on Remnant, and she was intimately familiar with how people on the lower rungs of society tended to look for others who were even worse off in a stupid and self-defeating but, sadly, very common attempt to assure themselves that there were people still beneath them, and so they had an interest in upholding the very order that diminished and oppressed them.

And yet, the Wall also was a symbol of hope. If the people here had been able to build such a monumental fortification in the past, then it was quite likely that they achieved other, similarly impressive feats. Such as creating whatever mythical device transported Team RWBY to this forsaken place in another world and which, therefore, should also be able to transport them back home. Blake still had her doubts about the claim that the Wall was thousands of years old, but unlike the remains of whatever civilisation had preceded the Kingdom of Vale back on Remnant, the Wall had not fallen into ruins, their builders forgotten, lost to a bloody, violent past filled with Grimm.

“I see.”

Ser Waymar didn't sound as if he truly understood Yang's explanation, and Blake couldn't honestly blame him for it. Her friend had used so many other terms and examples related to Remnant - people who didn’t know firearms wouldn't be familiar with video games, much less memes, which Yang would have been aware of had she shown the least interest in literature set in Remnants past or in fantasy worlds - that the man must be more confused than enlightened. Hell, from what they had gathered, the people here were not even aware of Dust, although the tales of Alchemists creating Wildfire sounded as if at least some people were aware of the properties of Dust. The substance certainly sounded as volatile as Dust.

“Look! There's a gate at the bottom of the ice wall!” Ruby suddenly called out, pointing ahead.

Blake cocked her head and stepped up the faint slope to join her friend who had walked in front of her. Indeed, there was a black gate set into the Wall - directly under the busiest part of the wall she could see, she noted. So, this would be their destination, the way past the Wall, into the Seven Kingdoms. 

As they approached, Ruby eagerly rushed ahead, and Blake exchanged glances with Yang and Weiss. If their ‘guides’ meant them ill, this would be their best opportunity to make a move. A narrow tunnel would be the perfect place for an ambush. And while Blake didn't think much of the chances of even a large force of soldiers such as the three men with them to take on Team RWBY, there were other ways than direct attacks to threaten them. Just closing the tunnel on both sides would be a lethal threat if they could not blast or cut their way free.

Ser Waymar rode ahead, barely keeping pace with an excited Ruby, and pulled out a horn. Blake narrowed her eyes at the harsh sound - it grated on her ears - and glanced at the other two men, Will and Gared. They didn't look tense but relieved, though while she believed that they were not putting up an act, that alone didn't mean that this wasn't a trap. They might still wish them ill, and their relief might be rooted in the - quite mistaken - belief that reunited with the rest of the Night’s Watch, they had the power to take on Blake and her friends.

Maybe they should scale the Wall instead? It would avoid an underground trap or ambush. But it would also show that they didn't trust the men here and reveal more of their capabilities.

Blake shook her head. They had been travelling for days with the three soldiers, and while she was not as skilled in judging people as her parents - much less skilled, she had to admit, since she had fallen for Adam's lies and had taken far too long to see him for what he was, despite her parents’ misgivings - she was not naive either, and she had observed the three extensively during the nights, when they would have thought themselves safely hidden by the darkness, and had not seen any sign of plotting.

And so they followed their enthusiastic leader to the gate and, after a short discussion between Ser Waymar and the gatekeeper, through it and into a tunnel carved into the ice.

Despite her calculated optimism, Blake didn't relax even a little until they were safely out of the tunnel and Ruby was complaining that the other side was just as cold as the land they had just left.

*****

Castle Black, The Wall, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and then we had to fight a whole bunch of blue-eyed ice zombies and pale Grimm-People until we killed their leader, and then they all fell down. Like puppets with cut strings - you know what puppets with strings are, do you? Marionettes. Anyway, they just fell down and stopped moving.” 

Yang Xiao Long grinned and leaned back against a wooden fence, arms crossed over her chest, as she watched Ruby and Weiss talk to the ‘Lord Commander’ of the Night's Watch. Jeor Mormont or something. A really old guy, all wrinkled.

Her sister didn't give the man time to answer and went on: “Anyway, since we couldn't find whatever had dropped us in the middle of the zombie horde, we decided to head south and look for others. Others, as in other people, not more Others, as the wildlings called the Grimm-People - though they weren't really people, you know? People don't stop moving and die when their leader gets cleaved in half. They seemed to be more like some kinda Grimm. Grimm are monsters in our world, you know, which want to kill everyone and which we fight, and that fit the Others here, and…”

“Ruby!”

Ah, Weiss’s patience had reached its end. 

The girl frowned at Ruby, who looked sheepish for a moment and rubbed the back of her head with that beaming smile of hers, then turned back to Mormont staring at them. “I'm sorry, sir, my friend is, sometimes, a bit too enthusiastic.” She flashed what Yang privately called her ‘business smile’ at the man, polite and cold. “But she is correct; we have been stranded by an unknown device, possibly an uncontrolled interaction of various exotic Dust, in the lands up north, and we are looking for a way to return home.”

“I see.”

Yang would bet that Mormont didn't see it. Or believed them. The side glance he sent at Waymar told her enough. It reminded her of how Dad would glance at a fellow teacher at Signal whenever they weren't buying Yang's perfectly plausible explanation for whatever had happened.

“So, we would be very grateful if you could point us to the closest expert on similar phenomena,” Weiss gamely went on while Ruby nodded with wide eyes and a wider smile.

Yang narrowed her eyes at the expressions she caught on some of the men's faces watching the talk upon hearing that. It reminded her of some of the scum in Vale she'd had to beat up. And why were all the soldiers here men, anyway? She hadn't seen a single woman so far. Talk about a sausage party! And, even worse, they all wore black. As if the name of the castle was an order. No speck of colour or style among them - worse than Junior's goons. In fact, a lot of them gave off the same vibe as those thugs…

She glanced at Blake, who was leaning against a post a few metres away. Her partner was acting bored, but Yang could tell that she was tense. Must have picked up the mood as well.

“Yes!” Ruby nodded emphatically, and Yang sighed. Her innocent sister hadn’t got a clue. “We were on an important mission, and we have to return as soon as possible before the school starts worrying. Or informs our families that we're missing.”

“The school?” Mormont frowned as if he didn’t know what that meant.

“Beacon! The best school for Huntresses in all of Remnant!”

“A distinguished institution with a long tradition of turning out the finest Huntsmen and Huntresses in Vale,” Weiss said.

Yang smirked; Weiss couldn't let the claim that Beacon was better than Atlas stand even though she attended the school herself. Her humour didn't last long, though.

Mormont nodded slowly, though he looked even stonier than when Waymar had presented them. “You claim to come from the Vale?”

“Not the Vale,” Ruby corrected him, causing Weiss to make another face at her. “The Kingdom of Vale - our home. Well, mine and Yang's, Weiss and Blake aren't from Vale. Our Vale, not yours. Though yours is probably great as well, I think, right?”

Mormont held up his hand. “Please, enough of this.”

Ruby blinked, Weiss drew back a little, a frown on her face, and Yang pushed off the fence and rolled her shoulders. Just in case. The old guy didn’t give off the same vibes as some of the men, but you never knew. Next to her, Blake didn’t move from her spot, but Yang saw her shift her balance some, ready to jump into action.

“Sorry?” Ruby still looked confused. “Did I talk too fast?”

“Ruby!” Weiss hissed.

“What?”

“You made him mad!”

“I didn't mean to! I’m sorry!”

“Let me do the talking!” Weiss flashed another of her business smiles at Mormont. “She's sorry. Please don't hold her youthful enthusiasm against her or us. We really just want to be on our way towards the closest expert on… unknown displacement effects.”

Yang snorted. “Good one, Weiss.”

It earned her a glare, but Weiss quickly focused on the man in front of them when he cleared his throat.

“Please, before I regret having let you pass through the wall on Ser Waymar's counsel, just tell me, in simple words: Where are you from, and what do you want in the Seven Kingdoms?”

“But…” Ruby was gaping at him. “We told you that already!”

“You spoke a lot, but you didn’t tell me much. Not much I could make sense of, at least.” Mormont smiled, though a little toothily. 

Probably not used to Ruby, Yang thought. Well, he’d probably warm up to her if they stayed here for a while. Everyone did. Not that Yang planned to stay here for long; the cold cramped her style. She didn’t want to end up like Weiss.

“I know these lands as I know the back of my hand, on both sides of the wall, and I have never encountered any of those creatures you claim to have met - and fought,” Mormont went on. “You are armed with steel, and you dress so…” He looked as if he had swallowed a lemon. “...so outrageously, it is clear you aren’t wildlings and not from the North or any other of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“Exactly!” Ruby nodded several times, then flinched and ducked her head when Mormont narrowed his eyes at her, 

“So, where are you from, and how did you end up in the North? Were you on a ship and stranded on the coast? Do you hail from Braavos?”

“Lys!” one of the men standing in the back yelled, causing a wave of chuckling to spread through the ranks.

Yang scowled. She didn't know what Lys was - but she knew that tone and that reaction. They had just been insulted.

Before she could tell the idiots to shut up or she’d crush their balls, Mormont whipped around and bellowed at his men, loud enough to make Yang and her friends flinch: “Silence!”

The men jerked, a number of them taking a step back. “But, Lord Commander…”

“I said silence! You are men of the watch! Black Brothers! Sworn to defend the realm! Do not shame the Watch or me by acting like boys thinking with their cocks!”

Yang heard Ruby gasp at that, and when she glanced at her, she saw both her sister and Weiss blush a little, which made her smirk.

Mormont was still glaring at his men. “The next one who brings dishonour on us all will rue it. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Lord Commander!”

Taking a deep breath, the old man turned back to address Ruby and Weiss. “I apologise for my men. They serve a noble cause, yet not all of them have forgotten their brutish roots.”

“Ah… It’s OK!” Ruby chirped with a forced smile that told Yang she wasn’t quite sure about the whole thing.

Weiss cleared her throat. “We are not from Braavos - or from any other kingdom you know. We are from a different world.”

“It’s the truth! Your moon is completely different! Ours is broken!” Ruby cut in.

But Mormont wasn’t buying it. The old man was too polite to yell at them, but Yang could tell he didn’t believe them. And she knew that neither Ruby nor Weiss would be able to convince him. He was too rigid.

Well, if things were too rigid, they needed a bit of shaking up.

Yang grinned widely and took a step forward, smashing her fists together. “We’re not from your world. Let me demonstrate just how much we’re not from your world.”

“Yang! What are you doing?” Ruby blurted out.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” Weiss hissed.

Yang didn’t listen to either. She looked around. She could punch a hole into the ground, but people generally didn’t like holes in their yards. Backyards or schoolyards. So… ah! There!

She crouched, then jumped over the gathered men, landing ten metres behind them next to a cart. Or wagon, whatever. It looked heavy and sturdy enough for a demonstration. “Watch!” she yelled over the gasps and comments, then gripped the cart’s bottom with both hands and lifted.

It was unwieldy, and she had to shift her grip twice while she raised the thing over her head, but a few seconds later, she was holding it up with one arm and smiling widely at the gaping crowd. 

“Don’t break it, Yang!”

She raised her eyebrows at Weiss. As if she was about to break the cart! Well, to be fair, shattering it with one blow would be really impressive, but she knew better than to break other people’s stuff. Unless they deserved it, at least.

“So?” She asked, tossing her head back and grinning at Mormont. “Ever seen this before?”

The old man slowly shook his head. “No, I did not.”

Yang smiled. It wasn’t exactly a glowing agreement, but it was probably good enough. 

“And you haven’t seen anything yet!” Ruby blurted out. “Watch this!”

A moment later, she vanished in a cloud of red petals, then reappeared on the roof of a small stable on the side, then flickered around the entire yard like Zwei when he got the zoomies until she stopped - on top of the cart Yang was holding since it suddenly got heavier.

“We’re Huntresses! We fight the Grimm to protect the people! Kinda like you, I guess!” Yang heard her announce.

The next thing she heard was the thunk of Crescent Rose’s butt slamming into the cart, followed by a creaking, familiar noise as the cart broke into pieces.

“Oops! Sorry!”

“Ruby! You dolt!”

“I’m really sorry!”

*****

 

Chapter 2: Visitors to Winterfell

‘It goes without saying that we can safely dismiss the blatantly mythical deeds attributed to the Ruby Order. Their claims to have defeated a horde of humanoid ice creatures in the Lands Beyond the Wall that commanded the dead to rise and attack the living are obviously an exaggeration meant to increase their fame, as much factual as the claims of them performing superhuman deeds such as lifting entire carts with the draft animals still attached or leaping above buildings. Some of my colleagues, even those diligent enough to dismiss such reports, point at the records of the Night's Watch as proof that such ‘humanoid ice creatures’ existed in the past. Indeed, the Night's Watch records speak of a ‘Great Ranging’ in AC 298, which discovered the corpses of the ‘Others’, legendary creatures made of ice and malice. However, at this time, the Night's Watch’s reputation was at such a low point that many expected the institution to vanish from Westeros. It is very plausible that its commander, Lord Mormont, used the opportunity to convince the Crown that the Wall served a more important purpose than merely holding back wilding incursions by claiming to have encountered creatures from the Age of Heroes, which were a threat to the entire realm. Creatures whose corpses were all burned, supposedly to ensure they could not be restored to life through fell magic - a convenient excuse for the complete absence of any remains of the creatures they claimed to have found, unlike, for example, the extinct ice spiders, a once-thought mythical beast, but one of which several specimens have been found dead but preserved in the permafrost of the North.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Castle Black, The Wall, Westeros, 298 AC

Standing in front of the old, weathered desk in the Lord Commander’s office, Benjen Stark stared at his friend and superior. “You want me to go to Winterfell when we are preparing a Great Ranging? I'm the First Ranger of the Night's Watch; if anyone should be heading out to investigate the claims of our guests, it should be me!” Ice monsters raising the dead to form an army! It was outrageous, and yet, Aemon had found old records of the very first years of the Watch that matched the descriptions the four girls had given them. And after seeing what those girls could do, Benjen was loath to dismiss any of their tales. Of course, there was a massive difference between being far, far stronger than you looked and raising the dead, but even something not quite as outlandish could present a danger for the realm.

Sitting in a chair older than Benjen’s grandfather, Jeor shook his head. “Benjen, we have several rangers who can lead our brothers safely through the Haunted Forest. They might not be as experienced as you are, but they know the lands and how to navigate them and have proved that many times. I need you to accompany our visitors to Winterfell.”

Benjen pressed his lips together. Jeor was correct. Benjen would have been a poor fit for his post if he had not ensured that all his men were up to the tasks that their duty demanded. He would trust any of them to serve as a guide in the Haunted Forest. Well, maybe not Kren. The latest brother to join his band had the aptitude and skill to be a ranger, but he was still pining for the home he had been forced to leave when he had been caught poaching and had chosen the Wall over the headman's block. A few more years in the Watch would see to that, though.

And yet, that was no reason for Benjen to miss the most important ranging of the Watch in decades, perhaps even centuries!

“You should be happy to have the opportunity to see your family, Benjen,” Aemon, sitting in a chair very close to the fireplace at the back of the room, spoke up in his raspy voice. “You never know when it will be the last time you laid eyes on them. Trust me on this - I lost too many of my own.”

Jeor nodded as well, though he had a more grim than sad expression when he did.

Benjen clenched his teeth. His brother was the Warden of the North, the ruler of the entire land between the Neck and the Wall. His family was as safe as you could be in the North. And yet, Aemon was correct - every time Benjen ventured out beyond the Wall, every day he did his duty, he could end up dead. A wildling raider, a wolf or bear that got too desperate or rabid, or just bad luck like slipping on a patch of melted ice and falling down the Wall could end his life. But that didn't matter - he had sworn the oath and knew his duty as a brother of the Night's Watch!

“Benjen!” Jeor spoke up again. “I need you for this. No one else I could send would be trusted by Ned as much as you are.”

“I could go after the ranging. I would have more information to share with Ned,” Benjen pointed out.

“This cannot wait. You've seen our guests. You think they will wait for weeks before venturing out on their own?” Jeor scoffed. 

Benjen winced. No, he didn't think they would wait that long. They were young, seven, eight-and-ten years, or even younger, according to them, and while girls were, as a rule, not as foolish and impatient as most boys that age, that didn’t make them mature by any means. Certainly not those girls. And if they decided to leave, the entire Night's Watch couldn't stop them. Of that Benjen was sure after what had seen them do.

“Even worse,” Aemon cut in with a dry snort, “imagine if they did wait here.”

Benjen winced. Men of the Night's Watch swore an oath not to take a wife or father any children, but they were men all the same, not eunuchs. And their guests were, no matter their origin, great beauties without exception. Exotic beauties, even. The only man Benjen could be sure would not be tempted was Aemon, and only because the Maester was not only far too old to still feel such urges but also blind. That a number of the brothers had been rapists who had chosen the Wall over death or a maiming didn't help, of course.

No, if their guests stayed, no matter their inhuman strength, someone, drunk or simply too worked up, would accost them. And that could end in a catastrophe in light of what power those girls wielded. It would also shame the entire Watch for letting one of their own attack a guest in their headquarters.

He let out a sigh. 

Jeor stood and walked over to the window, peering out through the slits left bare by the wooden shutters that kept both prying eyes and the cold somewhat out. “You’ve seen what they can do.”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t, but I’ll take your word for it.”

Benjen snorted against his will. To make fun of his blindness! Aemon’s wit was very dark and spared no one, not even himself.

Jeor shook his head. “You’ve heard their plans.” 

Benjen nodded. “They want to travel south and search for a magical way home. Or so they claim.”

“Whatever the truth of that claim, it’s clear that they will travel south. Four girls, each of them stronger than a dozen knights.”

“Maybe stronger,” Benjen said. Each of them was more skilled than the best swordsman he had seen. And their weapons… He wondered how they would match up against Valyrian steel, but they outclassed anything the brotherhood could muster.

“Maybe. Can you imagine what would happen if a lord accosted them?”

Benjen could. He had been imagining what would happen if they turned against the Watch for a few days - ever since they had arrived and had revealed their strength. “Yes.”

“So could, and will, others.”

“Ah.” Others like every noble with ambition and enemies, both real and imagined. Yes, Benjen understood why he had to be the one to present their guests at Winterfell and talk to Ned. He was one of the only people Ned would believe without a demonstration that would set tongues wagging and raven flying.

He sighed again, and Jeor clapped him on the shoulder with a rueful smile.

*****

Kingsroad, South of Castle Black, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“You know, I am sure we'd be faster if we walked. No, really. This wagon is going soooo slooooow.”

“Feel free to walk, Ruby. I don't feel like stumbling along a road that looks more like a trail.”

“You wouldn't stumble if you wore sensible boots, Weiss.”

“I don't see you walking either, Yang.”

“You don't hear me complaining, either, do you?”

Benjen Stark, riding next to the wagon, bit his tongue so he wouldn't make a rude comment in response. The four girls - Team Ruby, as the apparent leader insisted - had done almost nothing but complain ever since they had set out for Winterfell. At least it felt like it. Well, complain and ask questions even a young child should have been able to answer. It was a miracle that the driver, Creg, had kept his temper. Then again, according to rumours, Creg had joined the Watch after raising a dozen children as a widower, so he was probably used to this.

“Besides, my boots are perfectly sensible!”

“As riding boots, yes,” Benjen said before he could stop himself. You didn’t make fun of people who could shatter boulders with a single blow and fell trees as thick as they were tall with a single swipe of their scythe. Even if they didn’t know that freshly cut wood didn’t burn well.

“See?” Weiss smiled at him, then turned back to grin at her friends.

“You can't ride, Weiss.”

“You can’t either!”

“Well…”

“Bumblebee doesn't count!”

“I wasn't going to say anything about my bike…”

“Yang!”

“Yang!”

Complain, ask inane questions and make crude remarks, Benjen amended his thoughts, though the last was limited to Yang. Still, this was an opportunity to learn more about their supposed home. Usually, he would have assumed that ‘Bumblebee’ was the name of Yang's horse or pony, but he had quickly realised that such assumptions were generally wrong. “What's a bike?”

“The best way to travel!” Yang replied, flashing him a wide, cocky smile.

“Except for airships, bullheads, trains, ferries…”

“Ah, Weiss, don't be jealous that you never got to ride a bike!”

“I am merely stating the objective truth.”

“Yang! Weiss!” Ruby spoke up. “Don't fight!” She nodded at both, then turned to smile at Benjen. “I'm sorry about that. Anyway, a bike is a vehicle you drive, with two wheels.”

“You don't drive it; you ride it!”

“Like a cart?” Benjen asked.

“Not quite - the two wheels are arranged one before the other. Kinda if you cut this wagon in half length-side and then moved the wheels to the centre,” Ruby gave another explanation that did open more questions than it answered. “And it's driven by Dust!”

“Ah.” Their world apparently ran on magic dust. Homes were heated with dust, instead of wells, they had water dust - and Benjen was afraid to ask how that was supposed to work - and their weapons and even clothes used dust. It sounded too fantastical to believe, but Ruby had, against Weiss's objection, given him a demonstration. Benjen now knew that magic dust was real - and that they didn't have much of it left.

“And if we had Bumblebee here, I’d already be in Winterfell!”

“You'd be lost in the woods.”

“Weiss! Yang!”

“Bumblebee would have trouble on this road,” Blake spoke up. The girl was usually quiet, her nose buried in her book, but she rarely missed anything, Benjen had noticed.

“Nothing we couldn't manage!” Yang snorted, then leaned over. “Rubes! Pass me another sausage, will you? I'm feeling a bit peckish.”

Benjen winced a little. They would have to restock supplies more often than he had planned. The girls ate more than men twice their number and three times their size. Obviously, the appetite they had shown after arriving at Castle Black hadn't been due to having gone hungry in the Haunted Forest; they ate that much every meal.

”Here, Yang!”

“Thanks, sis!”

Benjen clenched his fist holding the reins. This was something that he had been wondering since they started this trip. He hadn't asked them about it because it was the sort of question that could start fights, and the absolute last thing Benjen wanted was to anger four girls who could tear him limb from limb without trying. But at the same time, he needed to know. Because other people would make assumptions based upon how the four behaved, and if those assumptions were wrong…

Besides, he told himself, the group might be complaining constantly, but overall, they were in a remarkably good mood.

So, he took a deep breath, cleared his throat, and hoped he wouldn't insult his guests. “Lady Ruby, I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Your relationships are a little confusing.”

“My relationships? I'm not in any relationship!” Ruby blurted out.

For a moment, Benjen's heart seemed to skip a beat. Then he realised that her cheeks were not flushed with rage but embarrassment and felt his own face heat up in return. “I am deeply sorry, I didn't mean to insinuate that…” He trailed off, clenching his teeth for a moment. He couldn't say that. Yang was laughing, but Weiss was glaring at him. “I was merely wondering how you are related,” he was quick to explain. “In Westeros, it's very unusual for the older, ah, sibling to follow the orders of the younger.”

“Ah, that's because Ozpin, the Headmaster of our school, picked Ruby here as the leader of our team because she's the best!” Yang said, ruffling her sister’s hair.

“Yang!”

That explained things. To an extent, at least - Benjen still wondered what would have possessed this man to give such an order.

“You're wondering about their familial relationship, aren't you?” Weiss asked.

Among other things. “Yes,” Benjen confirmed. The girls’ polite tone still left no doubt that it wasn’t a question.

“Oh. Well, we're sisters!” Ruby said. “But I think we already told you that, didn't we?”

“We've got the same dad. And the same mom for all that counts,” Yang said. “She raised us both.”

Ah. Benjen nodded. That explained it. It was now obvious that the older girl was a bastard raised in the family. ‘Xiao Long’ likely was their home's ‘Snow’. And, of course, that wasn’t something the two liked to talk about, so Benjen wouldn’t pry further - he was no fool, after all.

It was another thing Ned needed to know about so he wouldn’t make a blunder. The heraldry - crests - all four wore was already confusing, not to talk about their foreign manners. To think they expected to bathe every day on the road! 

*****

Kingsroad, North of Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Behold: Winterfell.”

Ruby Rose perked up at Benjen's announcement. Winterfell! Finally! She pushed the furs covering her to the side, activated her Semblance and dashed from the wagon next to Benjen in the blink of an eye, or faster! “Yes?” She peered ahead while Benjen struggled a bit to get his startled horse under control - not her fault; the animal should be used to her Semblance by now! - and then rushed forward, up the gentle slope, until she could see over its top. 

But now she could see it! “Winterfell!” she breathed at the sight in front of her. “Wow! It's beautiful!” It was a huge castle, bigger than Beacon! It had two tall walls, with lots of towers, one wall overlooking the others! And bigger towers and buildings inside the yard - the castle's keep. It looked straight out of a Fantasy movie!

“Yang! You have to see this!” she yelled without taking her sight off the castle - and the village in front of it!

“We're coming,” Weiss replied. “It's not going to go away.”

That was… well, true, but still! Ruby pouted. This was great!

Benjen reached her side. He was probably frowning at her for spooking his horse, but that was partially his fault for calling her. And he should have realised she couldn't see anything from his position before calling her!

“Wow!” Yang echoed her reaction. “I guess they make things bigger in the North, huh? Walls, castles and woods…”

“Yang!” Weiss hissed for some reason while Blake giggled.

“What? We've been travelling for ages through a forest!” Yang sounded smug, so Ruby probably had missed something, but that didn't matter. 

“This is sooo coool!” she blurted out.

“It's actually warm,” Benjen corrected her. “The keep was built over a hot spring, and the water runs through pipes in the walls to heat it.”

“You've got central heating? That's even cooler!” Ruby beamed at him for a moment before focusing back on the castle. She couldn't see weapon emplacements, though they probably didn't need them without Grimm to worry about. Still, a catapult or trebuchet would have been even better! Oh, if they had hot springs, couldn't they build a steam catapult?

“‘Cool’ means ‘hot’ in this case,” Yang told him.

“Yang!” Weiss sounded annoyed. “Cool means both cold and great, actually.”

“Ah.”

Ruby shook her head. “And that's your brother's castle?”

“Yes. Ned is the Warden of the North. This is his seat. And where I grew up.”

“Cool!”

“Ruby!” Weiss was glaring at her, Ruby knew without looking at her. “It’s a very impressive castle. I don't think I've seen anything like it before,” Weiss told Benjen.

“Yep.” Ruby nodded firmly.

“Thank you.”

Ruby checked that she hadn't missed anything else, then turned to her friends and Benjen and Creg. “Come on! Let's hurry! We're wasting daylight!” Blake could see perfectly well at night, but Ruby couldn't, and they didn't have good lamps in Westeros, so she didn't want to miss anything on arrival. Oh! 

Halfway to the wagon, she turned. “Do you think we'll get a tour of the castle?” she asked Benjen.

“Ruby!” Weiss cleared her throat. “We appreciate the opportunity to visit your family seat.”

Benjen snorted. “I don't doubt that you'll get a tour. Even if Ned were too busy to be a good host, my nieces and nephews will love to show you around.”

“C… Great!” Ruby beamed at him, then dashed into the wagon. “Team RWBY, assemble! Onward!” They were still burning daylight!

*****

They took ages to reach the castle's gates. Ruby had been so tempted to dash ahead - with her Semblance, she could have covered the distance in no time! - but Benjen had told them not to show off because people were not used to Aura and Semblances and this could scare them. Or cause them to be mistaken for witches or something. In any case, Benjen had been clear that it would be bad.

It didn’t matter anyway. Now, after an eternity spent sitting in a slooow wagon, they were finally here! At Winterfell! Inside Winterfell!

Ruby looked everywhere as they entered the castle. Up, to check for murderholes in the gatehouse. (They had some!) Down, to check if the ground was covered in cobblestones. (It was!) Left and right, to check what weapons the guards were carrying. (They had boring spears and swords, no scythe, not even an arbalest.)

And ahead, where a group of men were waiting for them. Men and boys, she corrected herself. Then she blinked, looking at Benjen and back, squinting a little. “Is that your brother? He kinda looks like you.”

“That is indeed my brother, Eddard Stark.” 

Benjen sounded a bit tense, Ruby realised. Did Ned carry a grudge against him? But they were siblings! And everyone seemed to like Benjen - people had been greeting him all the way from the outer gate to the courtyard.

Well, she would be extra-friendly to help smooth things over! Like when Dad and Uncle Qrow had a row!

“Benjen!” 

“Ned!”

Ah! Ruby smiled. She had been worrying over nothing - Ned was hugging his brother as soon as Benjen had gotten off his horse. Everyone else was smiling as well - well, almost everyone. The red-haired boy was staring at her team. As were the other boys.

“It's been too long!” Benjen said.

“Indeed. What brings you to Winterfell?”

That was their cue! Ruby smiled widely and jumped over the wagon's railing, letting her furs drop to the wagon’s floor behind her. “He was escorting us!” she blurted out. “We're Team RWBY!”

“Ruby!” Weiss hissed behind Ruby as her friends joined her.

Ned blinked, his smile fading a little, Ruby noticed, as he stared at them. Everyone was staring at them, she realised. Like the men at Castle Black had been - in some cases, exactly like the men back there.

Benjen cleared his throat. “Ned, these are Lady Ruby Rose and Team Ruby - Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long. Lady Ruby, this is Lord Paramount Eddard Stark, Warden of the North.”

Ruby almost blurted out that they already knew that but managed not to. That would have been rude. “Hi!” she said instead, waving at him. She had stopped trying to explain that they didn’t have noble ladies in Vale. Benjen had insisted that it was the correct title for her rank.

“Hello.” Ned - Lord Eddard, Ruby reminded herself - was still blinking but no longer staring. Unlike the rest of the men and boys.

“They are from a far distant kingdom and were stranded in the Haunted Forest beyond the Wall. They’re travelling south to look for a way home,” Benjen explained.

Ruby nodded a few times.

Weiss nodded as well - no, she was bowing her head, Ruby realised. “Indeed, my lord. We’re searching for any information that would show us a way home. We are completely lost.”

“You have no idea where your home is?” Lord Eddard asked.

“Unfortunately, no. We don’t know how we arrived here,” Weiss replied. “We only remember ancient ruins of an unknown origin, and we hope that records of such or similar ruins will help us find a way to return home.”

Ruby pressed her lips together in a slight frown. That was technically correct, since they didn’t know how they had been transported here, but they knew what brought them here. Weiss, though, knew best how to talk to nobles - well, compared to the rest of the team - and Ruby trusted her. Most of the time, at least. Weiss wasn’t perfect even if she wanted to be. “Our families must be frantic with worry,” she said. Dad certainly would be. She hoped that Uncle Qrow wasn’t drinking too much.

“The Night’s Watch couldn’t help them, but the Lord Commander thought you might be able to, Ned,” Benjen cut in.

“Of course!” Lord Eddard took a deep breath and nodded. “Let me welcome you to Winterfell. These are my eldest son, Robb, and my ward, Theon Greyjoy.”

While the two boys smiled and nodded, a man approached them with a tray with salt and bread.

No, bread and salt, Ruby corrected herself as Lord Eddard took a roll of bread and broke it into a few pieces, sprinkling salt over it. Benjen had explained how important that was, so she had to get it right. Once they’d eaten it, they were Lord Eddard's guests. “Thank you!” She beamed at him.

The bread was nice - fresh, although it wasn’t warm any more - and the salt wasn’t too much. Of course, she’d have preferred a cookie - she hadn’t had any cookies since they had arrived in this world! She’d have to ask if they had any. Such a huge castle was bound to have cookies in it, right?

Benjen seemed relieved when this was over. Weird - things were going well. “So, how about you have them shown to the guest quarters while I tell you some news from the wall, Ned?”

Lord Eddard glanced at him, then nodded. “Of course. Robb, show Lady Ruby and her friends the guest quarters. And inform your mother that we have new guests.”

“Yes, Father.”

Ah, the redhead was his son! He looked kinda cute. And he blushed when he looked at her, which made him look even cuter.

Ruby felt relieved. They were in a Fantasy castle - with central heating! - and everyone was really helpful. Things were definitely looking up now!

“If you’ll follow me, my lady?” Robb offered her his arm.

Ruby had seen that in those fantasy movies she didn’t watch because they didn’t have enough action even though the actors were handsome, and hooked her arm into his - and he was jerked to the side. Oops! She almost forgot her strength. “Sorry!” she told him. “My fault!”

“Ah…” He looked a bit confused. Maybe embarrassed. 

Weiss whispered ‘dolt!’ behind her, but Ruby could exactly turn around and frown at her. “So… lead on?”

“Of course, Lady Ruby.”

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

The quarters were adequate, Weiss Schnee found after a brief inspection. For a ‘Fantasy Castle’, as Ruby called it, at least. The lack of modern amenities was grating - their scrolls had run out of power days ago, and there was no way to recharge them without tapping into their very limited Lightning Dust reserves, something they had to save for emergencies, like should they need such short-range communication or access to their files, like the pictures they had taken of the ruins before this started - but at least it was warm, and the presence of hot springs promised hot baths.

Weiss felt filthy after that trip. They had barely managed to maintain minimal hygiene! If she ever had to use cold water and a sponge to wash herself even once more, it would be one time too many.

“So… What do you think?” Ruby asked from one of the two beds - which used a straw mattress that must be filled with all sorts of things and creatures that shouldn’t be near much less inside your bed. “Neat castle, huh?”

Weiss glanced at Blake, who was leaning against the door. Weiss hadn’t sensed anyone observing them, but she wasn’t really trained in using her Aura for that - that was a skill Huntresses usually acquired later during their career. Blake, on the other hand, was skilled at detecting eavesdroppers.

Her friend shook her head, though.

Good. Weiss took a deep breath. “They seem friendly. And they’ve welcomed us formally, so we’re protected by guest right.” 

“And that’s super-important!” Ruby said. “Benjen said so.”

Weiss sighed softly. Ruby was correct - Benjen had told them that breaking guest right would dishonour an entire house, and Weiss didn’t think he was lying, but… She was also very familiar with how laws and agreements could be bent and outright broken without the culprit suffering any backlash for it, as long as they were powerful and connected enough. And if Jacques Schnee was able to do it, Eddard Stark, as the absolute ruler of the entire region - one of the Seven Kingdoms forming the realm - certainly would be able to do it as well. “Just remember that guest right binds us as well. If we break it, we also lose its protection.”

“Well, we won’t break it!” Ruby replied with a wide smile.

“As long as that Greyjoy boy keeps his hands to himself,” Yang added, hitting the palm of her hand with her fist without bothering to get up from where she was sprawled across her half of the bed. “He was leering at everyone.”

Weiss suppressed a shudder at the memory. The boy had indeed looked at them as if he was picturing them naked - which he probably had been doing. And he hadn’t been the only one who had done so, though he had been the most obvious.

“Well, Robb was a perfect gentleman,” Ruby said.

Weiss scoffed. “He was checking out your legs.” 

“He did?” Ruby blushed.

Weiss pressed her lips together. Her friend and team leader was far too naive. “They’re not used to Huntresses.”

“Well, of course not - none of them have Aura.”

“No, I mean, they are not used to women like us,” Weiss corrected her. “Haven’t you noticed? None of the guards were women.”

“How could you tell with their clothes?” Ruby asked. “They were all so drab. The armour, I mean.”

“Trust me,” Weiss told her. “I could.” Growing up in a kingdom renowned for its cold climate, and in a family where any faux pas was grounds for a lecture, she had quickly learned.

“Yeah,” Yang added.

Blake nodded as well.

“Well, that’s probably how they do things here.” Ruby shrugged. “They’ll get used to us.”

Weiss hoped that Ruby was correct but couldn’t help having doubts. “I hope so. But remember: We’re guests. You can’t crush someone’s balls if they annoy you.”

“Well, we totally could. But you probably mean we shouldn’t,” Yang replied with a toothy grin.

Weiss took a deep breath. This wasn’t the time to lose her temper over childish comments. “They might not realise that they are annoying you.”

“Oh, I usually don’t leave any doubt if someone’s annoying me.”

Ruby and Yang hadn’t really gone anywhere but Vale, Weiss reminded herself. “What I am trying to tell you is that we can’t expect them to know our customs and vice versa. What is perfectly polite for them and in line with keeping guest right might be annoying to us.” Or worse.

“That’s not exactly uncommon on Remnant, either,” Blake said with a faint smirk.

Weiss shot her a glare. Her friend was correct about that - Weiss had experienced such situations far more than she wished - but this was important. They couldn’t annoy much less offend their hosts! They needed their help to find a way home!

“So, we tell them about Remnant!” Ruby said. “That way, there aren’t any misunderstandings!”

“We can’t!” Weiss snapped. She straightened. Composure, she reminded herself. “I mean, we have to be careful what we tell the people here. We don’t know if we can trust them, and revealing our weaknesses would endanger us all.”

“I think we can trust Benjen and Ned. And Robb.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes for a moment. The last thing they needed was some romantic entanglement. Ruby better not fall for some local boy who had grown up in a completely alien culture with who knew what weird views and expectations! “Even if we can trust them, can we trust everyone they trust? Word travels fast, even without scrolls. And we know from Benjen that the kingdom has seen two rebellions - civil wars! - in his lifetime.”

“Well, yes, but…”

Blake cocked her head to the side and raised a hand. “Someone’s coming.”

Ah. Weiss smoothed her dress out - a dress in dire need of cleaning, even though the battleskirt had held up admirably during their journey so far, thanks to good craftsmanship and her aura - and straightened. Time to put her best face on.

Ruby got up as well. “Who is it?” she asked as she joined Weiss in the middle of the room, followed by Yang.

“It seems to be Lady Stark and her daughters,” Blake said.

Oh. Weiss took a deep breath. This would be an important meeting. But she was ready.

“Oh, no!” she heard Blake mutter under her breath.

“What?” Weiss glanced at her. “What’s wrong?” 

Blake was tense - very tense. Was this an ambush? Weiss looked at the door, then at the bed against which Myrtenaster was leaning. Should they arm themselves?

“Blake?” Yang asked.

“They’ve got a dog with them!” Blake hissed.

Oh. Weiss relaxed.

“Oh?” Ruby perked up.

“Oh?” And Yang grinned.

Before Blake could say anything else, there was a knock on the door. “Lady Ruby?”

After a moment, Ruby replied: “Yes! Coming!”

Before Weiss could stop her, Ruby had dashed forward and opened the door. “Hi!” she said, beaming at the three - four - people outside. One woman, two girls and a guard. “Come in!” she added before the obvious leader, a redheaded woman in a high-quality gown, could say anything. “Everyone, we’ve got visitors!”

Weiss swallowed her grimace. This was probably - no, certainly - a faux pas, and it was her fault. She should have explained to Ruby that the leader of their group wasn’t supposed to open the door themselves. Or act so… so Ruby-like. At least she hadn’t squealed at the two dogs that the girls carried.

Time to mend the ruffled tempers. “Lady Stark, I presume,” she said, bowing her head. Fortunately, the others followed her example. Even Blake, though Weiss didn’t miss that she was fixated on the two dogs. Unfortunately, so was Ruby.

“You presume correctly. I am Catelyn Stark. These are my daughters, Sansa and Arya,” Lady Stark said as she entered. The fourth person, a guard, stayed outside, Weiss noted. 

Both girls - one about thirteen years old, the other a bit younger, Weiss estimated, though she didn’t know how the life conditions in this kingdom would affect growth - dropped into curtsies. Weiss made a mental note of that.

“And these are Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xia Long. I am Ruby Rose. We’re Team RWBY, but you already knew that, right?” Ruby nodded, then leaned forward. “And who are those adorable puppies?”

“Those are our dire wolves!” the younger girl, Aryan, said. “This is Nymeria. And that’s Lady.”

Wolves? Dire wolves? Weiss eyed the two more closely. Apparently, Ruby had been correct - those were, despite their size, puppies. Weiss wondered how large they would grow.

A hiss next to her, followed by Blake taking a step back, told her that she wasn’t the only one wondering that. She really should get over her cynophobia. At least she wasn’t running away. That would be a faux pas for sure.

“Arya.” Lady Catelyn didn’t frown, and her tone was even, but the girl still flinched.

It was obvious, at least to Weiss, that there would be a private scolding after this. She could sympathise from experience.

“Please have a seat!” Ruby said, pointing at the two chairs in the room, next to the small window. “I mean, it’s your castle, so it’s your room, technically, so I don’t want to, ah, sound presumptuous…”

Lady Cately smiled, hopefully amused and not offended, and sat down. Ruby promptly sat down on the closer bed, and Weiss sighed as the two girls eyed each other, obviously unsure if and where they should sit down.

A subtle pinch and whispered hint straightened things out, though, and soon everyone but Blake, who was standing as far from the wolves as she could, trying to fade through the wall, was properly seated - Ruby on the chair, clearly trying not to let the puppies distract her, and the rest on the beds, split between guests and hosts.

“First, allow me to welcome you to Winterfell,” Lady Catelyn said. “My lord husband has let me know that you were stranded in the wildings lands and lost your baggage.”

“More or less, yes. We’ve made do,” Ruby added. “We’ve got some furs and food from the wildlings, and the Night’s Watch got us some more supplies, but it’s not exactly…” She trailed off, glancing at Weiss.

“We only have what supplies we were carrying on us, my lady,” Weiss replied. “We don’t want to impose on you…”

“It’s not an imposition at all,” Lady Cately said as soon as Weiss trailed off. “You are our guests.”

“We can help you out in return,” Ruby offered at once. “We can hunt. Or if you need lots of wood chopped down, we can do that as well.” She patted Crescent Rose. 

Lady Catelyn looked irritated and slightly confused for a moment. “It would be shameful to have a noble lady working when she’s our guest.”

“Oh.” Ruby blinked.

As Weiss had suspected. “Please excuse our ignorance, my lady. In our homeland, Huntresses like us are expected to offer their help wherever they might find themselves, whether the community needs them or not.” She was bending the truth a little - or more than a little - but it was true. Best not to mention that Huntresses were generally remunerated for such help.

“Ah. Well, in the Seven Kingdoms, things are different.” Lady Catelyn nodded slowly. “And we would be poor hosts if we would not provide you with suitable clothes.”

The glance she sent at their attire, coupled with the way the girls were trying not to stare - the elder, Sansa, was blushing, Weiss noted - left no doubt that their clothes weren’t deemed suitable for social occasions. Judging by the people they had seen on the way, their clothes probably were not deemed suitable for any occasion, though that might be explained by the locals’ lack of Aura.

“We would be grateful,” Weiss told her. A few dresses weren’t much of an imposition, at least. 

“Yeah,” Yang added with a grin. “A girl wants to change her look sometimes, you know? Although we’re always dressed to kill.”

Lady Catelyn stared at her, and Sansa gasped. Arya, though, leaned forward. “Dressed to kill?”

“It’s an idiom in our homeland, my lady,” Weiss was quick to explain. “It means to dress very fashionable, in the latest style.” There was no need to mention the other meanings of the expression - Lady Stark didn’t strike her as the kind of woman who would appreciate her young daughters learning about those.

“Yeah,” Yang confirmed, tossing her hair back.

“Oh.” Arya sounded disappointed. Her puppy climbed up her lap to lick her face, and she pushed it down into her lap again with a giggle. “Down, Nymeria!”

“They don’t mean actual killing, Arya,” Sansa whispered, rolling her eyes. “They’re ladies.”

“We’re Huntresses,” Ruby said with a nod at the younger girl. “We don’t kill people. Only monsters.”

“We beat up people who deserve it, though,” Yang added, slapping her fist into the palm of her hand. “Like bandits.”

“You’ve fought bandits?” Arya straightened.

“Arya!” There would be a rather pointed scolding from Lady Stark later, in private, in Weiss’s opinion.

“Yeah! When we were travelling south to the Wall, we were attacked by bandits,” Ruby said. “We beat them, though.”

“That’s where we got the furs.” Yang pointed at the pile of pelts in the corner. “Spoils of war.”

“I see.” Lady Catelyn nodded, though Weiss couldn’t help feeling that the woman remained a little sceptical.

She was tempted to offer proof of their claims but refrained from it since Benjen had impressed the need to be a bit more discreet to avoid upsetting the locals.

Lady Catelyn subtly looked them over for a moment. “You were taken from your homeland and brought to foreign lands. That must have been a terrible experience. Especially for young women.” 

Weiss frowned slightly. The way she stressed that, she must mean something more than… Oh, no!

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” Ruby said. “It was mostly the surprise, you know? One moment, we were looking at the ruins, the next - poof - we were gone!”

Weiss cut in before Ruby could continue. She had to correct this misunderstanding at the start. “I can assure you, my lady, any distress we suffered was due to our dislocation, not because of anything of a, ah, more personal nature.”

Ruby looked confused, but Yang nodded emphatically with a serious expression. 

“I am relieved to hear that,” Lady Catelyn said with a - seemingly - genuine smile. 

Weiss also saw that Sansa suddenly gasped while Arya didn’t quite seem to get it. Good. That could have been a very uncomfortable topic to sort out.

“I think I’m missing something…” Ruby frowned, looking from Lady Catelyn to Weiss and back.

“Ah…” Yang trailed off, glancing at Weiss.

Weiss glared back at her.

“Guys?” Ruby was frowning more profoundly now.

Weiss was very relieved when Nymeria suddenly slipped from Arya’s grip and started towards Blake, yipping enthusiastically as she began to chase the girl around the room.

It was far easier to explain that Blake was deathly afraid of dogs, and yes, that that included wolves.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Standing in the shadow of a tower on the inner wall, gazing at the courtyard below, without anyone present aware of her, Blake Belladonna smiled. She liked Winterfell, and not just because it was a vast castle that dominated the area it was built in and looked as if it had been taken straight out of some of her favourite novels, something she had only seen before in computer games and animated movies. No, she liked the castle because it was actually too big for its garrison - which was by design since, according to Benjen, it housed a lot more people during the long winters, which, again according to Benjen, could and did last years. Blake had no idea how that was possible, but even though she was fairly certain that Benjen was not quite as honest with them as Ruby seemed to think, albeit Blake suspected it was more a case of omitting parts rather than telling falsehoods, she was reasonably certain that Benjen wouldn’t be lying about such an easily checked fact of life in Westeros.

Which she reminded herself to check anyway as soon as she had unfettered access to the local library. She was sorely missing her books; the one novel she had taken with her on the mission because she couldn’t bear the thought of waiting to finish it until she returned she had read a dozen times by now. She could recite it from memory in her sleep and had done so, at least according to Yang, which meant she was fortunate it hadn’t been one of her spicier novels; that would have been embarrassing.

As embarrassing as being spotted by one of the scarce guards on the wall, she reminded herself as she heard steps coming up the stairs inside the tower. The garrison was too small to effectively cover the castle’s walls, but that didn’t mean they didn’t make an honest attempt anyway.

But they were not up to the task of spotting her; she was too skilled at this, and they had no idea about her capabilities. So when the door opened and the guard stepped out on the rampart, she had already used two clones to dart over to the other side, impossible to spot from his position or by anyone on the ground.

Blake herself, on the other hand, just had to take two steps to the side to have a perfect view of the courtyard where the guards and members of the household were training, allowing her to observe and estimate the skill level of the garrison.

Which wasn’t very high, if she was honest, albeit higher than she had expected. Unlike most militia fighters on Remnant whom she had seen, both on missions for Beacon as well as during her time in the White Fang, those men - and they were exclusively men - were career soldiers, and Lord Stark obviously wasn’t paying them to laze about and grow rusty. She rated them as about as skilled with their weapons, swords and spears today, as the average member of the Atlas military or SDC guard. Which meant that not even taken together, would they pose a threat to even a first-year Huntress, of course, but that aside, they were doing well.

But next to the average guards - men-at-arms, as they were called by some - there were people down below who were more skilled. Lord Stark’s eldest son and heir, Robb, who was sparring with the master-at-arms, a Ser Rodrick Cassel, father of the captain of the guards of the castle, was showing to be a quite talented opponent with his sword - more skilled than some students at Beacon, even, though without Aura, the outcome of any fight would still be a foregone conclusion. 

Another boy was showing equal if not greater talent as well: Jon Snow, or so she had overheard during her first excursions. Pretty handsome, and not as loud or brash as most boys his age, as far as it seemed, he was apparently a bastard son of Lord Stark, something Robb’s friend, the lecherous Theon, seemed almost as fond to mention as he was to talk about Blake and her friends’ appearance and appeal when he thought Blake couldn’t hear him, although he was not nearly quite as witty about either as he obviously thought he was.

And he was very fortunate that Yang’s ears were not nearly as good as Blake’s; if she had heard what he was saying, she would likely have done something regrettable about his ability to implement what he was talking about. As it was, Blake was sorely tempted to engineer an accident that would leave the boy in pain for some time, though given the lack of modern medicine, the risk of crippling him was far too high.

Although, she amended her thoughts with a grin, it might not become necessary; apparently, Robb had taken offence to his latest remark - about Ruby’s legs - and the sparring match had grown a little heated as a result, so with Robb far more skilled than Theon, at least with blades, the lecherous boy would be nursing bruises for some time.

Snorting, she moved along the rampart to the lesser-used part of the castle, giving the kennels a wide berth. She had no intention at all to go near that cursed area full of dogs and, even worse, wolves, and dire wolves at that - apparently a breed that grew as large as horses according to the gossip of the servants she had overheard complaining about the appetites of the new pets of Lord Stark’s children. She shuddered at the thought of a wolf as big as a beowulf.

And, speaking of those children… She shook her head as she spotted the second-youngest son of Lord Stark climbing the walls of a broken tower, something his family disapproved of vocally, as she had observed. The boy seemed determined to reach the top of the tower but he was rushing things a bit too much, in her opinion. He must be at the point where he had enough experience to feel so confident, he was getting slightly… not sloppy, just not as focused as one should be when, without Aura, a single mistake would see him falling to his death. He was barely ten years old, and she gave him even odds of reaching eleven years or not if he didn’t wise up. It was not really her business, of course, but his parents’, yet what person would she be if she closed her eyes to this potential tragedy?

Frowning, she checked for witnesses with eyes and nose - people here had a stronger body odour than back home, which, while often aggravating, also had advantages. Then she double-checked that the bloodthirsty howling monster Bran treated as a pet wasn’t around before quickly jumping down from the ramparts. She didn't use her Semblance and landed in a crouch on the cobblestones below, light as a feather, then dashed across the empty yard here to the base of the tower.

In the meantime, the boy had continued to climb, clearly very familiar with the weathered stones forming the wall, and was about a third from the open window at the top. Should she wait here, in case he slipped? She narrowed her eyes, then decided against it. That wouldn't really serve as a lesson to the young climber. And he might not slip, anyway. Not today.

Instead, she entered the tower, confirming that it was deserted, then rushed up the winding stairs until she reached the room at the top, where she leaned against the wall next to the window and listened to Bran's heavy breathing coming closer and closer as he continued his advance up the wall.

Soon, she saw a small hand reach over the windowsill, grasping for purchase, followed by another, and then Bran's head appeared in the window as he pulled himself up.

“That's dangerous, you know.”

He froze with a gasp, but his fingers didn't loosen, much less lose their grip on the windowsill. “Lady Blake!” In the blink of an eye, his scared expression morphed into a charming if mischievous and guilty grin. “What are you doing here?”

“Do your parents know you are climbing walls?” she asked, cocking her head at him.

“Ummm…” He pulled himself into the room, then took his time wiping dust from his clothes, blatantly trying to find a good answer to her question. “Yes, they do.”

Technically correct. She snorted. “And do they approve of it?”

“Ah…” He flushed, which was answer enough. But then his lips shifted into a pout. “They worry over nothing. No one beats me at climbing!”

She raised her eyebrows at his boast.

The little scamp flushed some more, then grinned. “I've never seen you climb, Lady Blake.”

“What makes you think I know how to climb?”

“You're always on the ramparts, and I never see you climb the stairs,” he said.

“Are you watching all the stairs all the time?”

“Ah…” He pouted for a moment. “But can you climb?”

“I can.”

“Better than I can?”

Ah, that was his game. In the days since Blake and her friends had arrived at Winterfell, Lord Stark's children had, all in their own ways, tried to satisfy their curiosity about them. As such attempts went, Bran's was better than most - for his age.

Blake grinned. “Follow me.”

His face lit up as she walked down the stairs. He undoubtedly expected her to show off by climbing the same tower faster than he could, but she had something else in mind.

Ten minutes later, he was glaring at her between rubbing his posterior after yet another fall. “This is stupid! You can't climb this wall! It's much too smooth!”

Apparently, he didn't like bouldering. To be fair, the wall she had picked out was far smoother than the old tower. But it was also far lower. As Bran had demonstrated quite thoroughly, falling down from it was painful but not really dangerous.

She snorted, then went to demonstrate once more that, yes, she could climb the wall.

When he clenched his teeth and went back to trying to climb it, she smirked. That would occupy the little boy. And maybe teach him that he wasn't as good as he thought while she kept her ears peeled in case Bran might let slip some tidbits he had overheard from his parents.

And it was payback for setting his ravenous beast on her. If the monster had been just a little older, its teeth would have left deep gouges in her leg when it tried to gnaw it off. Even as a puppy, it was almost as bad as Zwei. She suppressed a shudder as she thought, briefly, of the corgi from hell that haunted Ruby and Yang’s home - and, occasionally, their dorm, which Blake shared with them.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long stretched as she walked across the yard. She noticed that Bran was, again, trying to climb a low wall in a corner. Emphasis on trying. She winced when she saw him fall down on his butt. That looked painful. But it wasn't any of her business. 

“Yang!”

She turned her head and smiled when she saw Arya. The little girl was running at her, weaving through the people in the yard and almost running into a guy carrying water to the stables. Her little wolf was running after her, barely keeping up. Yang raised her hand and waved. “Yo.”

Arya came to a stop in front of her. “Err… Hello! What are you doing?”

Yang liked the kid. She didn’t try to talk all posh and stuff, like her sister. Or like Weiss. Just straight to the point. “I’m walking. Or I was, before you stopped me.”

And Arya had an adorable pout, like Ruby had when she was little. “I mean, where are you going? Are you going to hunt?” She leaned a bit forward to peer at Yang’s combat clothes.

“Nope.” Yang shook her head. There weren’t any monsters to hunt. At least, she hadn’t heard about any.

“But you’re wearing your hunting clothes. You’re only supposed to wear them when you’re hunting, aren’t you?”

Ah, right. Lady Stark had been polite and diplomatic about it, but she’d made it clear that trousers were not ‘proper garments’ for women, guests or not. Or, rather, that anything but a dress that covered you from neck to toe was ‘inappropriate’. Yang didn’t really care for that kind of bullshit, but Weiss had gone off about guest right this and fitting in that, and that they had to compromise. Well, Yang knew all about how to use loopholes. “That’s not quite right,” she corrected the girl with a grin. “You’re also supposed to wear your hunting clothes for training. How else would you be able to properly train, hm?” It wasn’t as if you could fight in a dress that she’d rip to shreds just by stretching. At least Lady Stark had accepted that.

Arya blinked. Apparently, ‘train as you’d fight’ wasn’t something she was familiar with. Well, she was a kid. “You’re going to train?”

“Yep.” Yang nodded and ran a hand through her hair, noting how the guys nearby were staring. “Check out if we can train there.” It had been some time since they had last trained properly. They could go into the woods for a training session, but they would have to hold back some unless the locals needed a lot of firewood, and if they had to hold back anyway, they might as well train in the yard.

“Oh, you can! Everyone trains there!” Arya nodded enthusiastically, and her wolf barked. She seemed as excited as her owner.

“Well, my team isn’t everyone,” Yang said with a chuckle. “But let’s check out the yard.” Robb had shown them the area a few days ago, but they had just been passing through, and no one had been training at the time.

“Arya!”

“Jon!” Arya grimaced as a boy about Yang’s age approached them, followed by another wolf puppy. 

A handsome boy, Yang noted, if a bit too young, so she smiled at him. “Hi there. You must be Jon. I’m Yang.”

He looked taken aback for a moment, blushed, then bowed his head. “Lady Yang.”

Aw, too cute! “Call me Yang,” she told him. Sure, they were supposed to fit in, but all that bowing and scraping and lady this and lord that made her feel as if she was in a period piece of the Great War. One without the correct weapons of the time, as Ruby would point out whenever there was a combat scene.

He nodded, then turned to Arya. “Lady Stark is looking for you. You have lessons today.”

Arya ducked her head. “Can’t you act as if you didn’t find me? We’re going to the training yard!”

“You’re skipping school?” Yang laughed. “You’re the delinquent of the family, huh?”

“Delinquent? What?” Arya looked confused.

“Of course not!” And Jon seemed worked up.

“It’s just a manner of speaking,” Yang told both. “What we call kids who don’t always obey their parents.”

“Ah!” Arya nodded. “Then I’m a delinquent!”

“Arya!” Jon hissed.

“I’m also a good host by showing our guest the way to the training yard!” Arya added. “That’s more important than some boring needlepoint lessons.”

“Arya.”

“Jon!”

Yang was tempted to meddle but… this wasn’t any of her business. So she watched while the two stared at each other.

Arya sighed first. “Alright.” Looking like a condemned prisoner, she slunk off, her wolf puppy trailing after her with a whimper.

“Being an older sibling is hard, huh? They always go for the puppy dog eyes,” Yang told him.

“What?”

“Arya reminded me of Ruby when she wanted more cookies or staying up longer,” Yang explained. “She used the same sad expression to try and make me give in.”

“Oh. It’s not… I was merely passing along Lady Stark’s request.”

“Ah.” Yang nodded and watched Arya enter the keep.

“Arya reminded you of your sister?” Jon asked after a moment.

“Well, after we lost Mom, it was basically just Ruby, Dad and me,” Yang explained. And Uncle Qrow, but he was struggling with his own problems, so there was no need to go there. “So, we’re very close. I wouldn’t say I raised her, but… someone had to look after her, and I’m her big sister.”

He nodded again with a wistful expression. Yang wondered if he had lost his mother as well - Blake hadn’t heard anything about that, and it wasn’t something Yang could just ask. Well, enough gloom and doom! “So, wanna head over to the training yard and watch the show?”

“The show?”

“The guys training, sparring, that stuff,” she explained.

“I have nothing else to do.”

She snorted. “That’s just what a girl wants to hear when she’s asking a boy to accompany her.”

He blushed. “I didn’t mean it… I mean…”

“I’m just yanging your chain, relax!”

He didn’t laugh at her perfectly placed pun. And it wasn’t because she had elbowed him - she had taken care to control her strength. Perhaps he was just the broody type. Well, some girls liked those boys. 

While they walked across the yard, she caught him sneaking glances at her and grinned. “Like what you see?”

“I… I wasn’t staring.” And he was a lousy liar, too. She snorted at him, and he flushed again. “I am… Girls don't dress like that!”

“They don't dress like that here,” she said. “It's normal back home.”

“I can't imagine such a place.”

“Really?” She smirked. He was too easy. Then again, he was the same age as Ruby, maybe even younger. “It's easy. Just imagine every girl you know wearing clothes like we do.” She pushed her chest out to underline her point.

Ah, his face was redder than a tomato!

“That's… How can their families allow that?”

Yang frowned at that. “Hey! We fought a war about the right to wear what we want!” It wasn't as if she’d let anyone tell her what to wear. Well, maybe Coco - the girl knew her fashion.

“What?”

“Yeah. Back a few decades, there was the Great War over our rights to express ourselves. All four kingdoms went at it. We won.” It was a bit more complicated, but Jon didn't need to know any details. It was ancient history, anyway.

“Your kingdom must be very different,” he said, shaking his head.

“Oh, bet your ass it is!” She grinned, then focused on the training yard ahead of them. “Ah, look at that! Your brother's pretty good.” Easily better than Jaune - he had that older guard he was fencing with down on the ground in no time.

“He is, yes.”

Yang turned and leaned her back against the fence that surrounded the training yard. “How about you?”

“I am a passable swordsman.” 

“Could you take Robb?” Yang nodded toward his brother.

Jon didn't answer right away. 

“I can take my little sister more often than not in a sparring match,” she told him. “But she wins her share of our bouts.”

“Another difference between your home and the North,” he said. And he was back to brooding.

Yang was about to pry some more, but before she could think of the right way to pick at his attitude, someone else cut in. Someone unwelcome.

“Hey! Lady Yang!” Theon Greyjoy waved as he walked over to her. “Did you come to watch us spar?” 

She straightened with a frown - not that he'd notice, with his eyes glued to her legs and chest. “I came to check out the training yard. See if it's suitable for training.”

“I can assure you it is.” He leaned on the fence between them, turning his back to Jon. “As the best archer in the castle, I should know.”

“Lady Yang mentioned an interest in swordfighting,” Jon said.

Theon scowled for a moment but didn't acknowledge the other boy. “What kind of training has caught your interest, my lady? As the heir to the Iron Islands, I would be only too happy to be of service!”

Oh, boy! Or boys! Usually, Yang didn't mind boys trying to impress her, but not if it involved weapons and no Aura to keep a fight from becoming bloody. “I just want to know if it would be safe for my team to spar here.”

“Oh, don't worry - none here would dare harm you!” Theon's smile somehow looked more smarmy than Cardin's back at Beacon.

And Yang felt the same urge to introduce him to a few love taps from Ember Celica she got when Cardin annoyed her. We're guests here, she reminded herself. “I don't think that's a danger,” she told him.

“Of course not! We would rather die than let a lady such as you get hurt!” He reached out to grab her hand, but she pulled it back.

The idiot had no clue about Huntresses.

“Theon?” Robb had noticed them and was walking over. “Oh, Lady Yang. Jon.” He wiped his face, slightly sweaty, with his padded sleeve.

“Lady Yang is interested in the training yard, Robb,” Theon told him.

And Lady Yang doesn't like it when boys speak for her without being asked to, Yang thought. Out loud, she said: “I would like to see if my friends and I can safely train here.”

Robb was taken aback. “You are our guest! You are perfectly safe here, my lady!”

“Not what I meant,” she said. “I'm not worried about us. I'm worried about damaging the yard.”

Robb blinked, and Jon looked confused, but Theon laughed. “Oh, there's absolutely no chance of that, my lady! If all the guards have not damaged it, you won't do anything to it either.”

Alright, to hell with not showing off! She wouldn’t use Ember Celica, but she had to show that boy what he was dealing with. Yang flashed him a toothy smile, then looked at Robb. “Is that true? There's no chance that I could, say, accidentally punch a hole in the ground?”

“Ah…” Robb looked at her, then at the ground - packed sand - and then back at her. “Even if you did, it would be no trouble at all, my lady.”

“Mind if I test that?” She slapped her hands together and stretched.

“Ah… you want to punch the ground?” Robb looked bewildered.

“Yeah.” She nodded. “Only if there's no trouble if I do leave a hole.”

“Ah, no, go ahead,” Robb said.

“Robb!” Jon hissed.

“Are you going to punch the ground?” Theon sounded confused and amused.

Yang flexed her knees and jumped over the fence - and over Theon and Robb. In the air, she pulled her fist back - and punched when she hit the ground. Lightly, of course. Just enough to make a point.

When the sand her impact had thrown up settled, everyone was staring at her. Robb and the others were gaping, even Jon.

Yang made a point at looking at the small crater she was standing in, then at Robb. “Doesn't look that safe to me.”

Robb shook his head, and Theon cursed under his breath.

“Yang! What did you do?”

Uh-oh. Here came Weiss, and she looked mad.

Yang flashed a smile at her friend. “I made an impression!”

*****

 

Chapter 3: Cultural Misunderstandings

‘As mysterious as the origin of the Ruby Order are their customs. Contemporary records, owing to the often very obvious bias and agenda of their authors, are wildly divergent. Even the Citadel’s own accounts, sadly, reflect this, as the feud between Maester Halmon Rivers and Maester Leyton Thornbud, which escalated into a brawl that damaged an entire library wing, illustrates. Nevertheless, with a modicum of deductive reasoning and common sense, one cannot fail to sort the truth from fiction. First, the accounts that the Ruby Order dressed and behaved like the most daring women from Dorne are obviously fabricated, a blatant attempt to damage their reputation. Not only would they have frozen to death in the North should they have dressed as scandalously, but my diligent research has unearthed the receipt for the dresses Lady Catelyn Stark had made for them shortly after their arrival at Winterfell, and it is inconceivable that a noblewoman like her would have spent so much money on dresses - this was before technological advances significantly reduced the cost of clothes - that she wouldn’t have deemed appropriate attire for a lady.

Second, back then, it was common for political enemies to slander each other and their families by accusing them of libertine behaviour. It goes without saying that this would have applied to the Ruby Order as well, regardless of how they actually behaved. Nevertheless, it is clear that they came from a country with customs that vastly differed from those of Westeros since all sources, even the most disparaging, agree that all four maidens were very skilled fighters, able to match and surpass trained knights and that this was considered normal in their home country - something unheard of even in Dorne at the time.

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

In the privacy of her chambers, seated on her favourite chair and looking through her notes, Catelyn Stark cursed their newest guests. Not out loud, of course - her daughters were in the room, and it would have been a shameful display. They were their guests and deserved to be treated accordingly. But Team Ruby, as the four girls called themselves, was a source of both annoyance and worry for her. Their mere presence threatened to disrupt - was disrupting, she couldn't deny it any longer - the harmony of her household and the way she was running Winterfell, and did so right on the cusp of a royal visit! Catelyn should be focusing on preparing to receive King Robert and his court, ensuring that they could be housed and fed for the duration of their stay, that everything was perfect, instead of dealing with four… foreign noble girls with too much beauty and too little modesty or shame, she amended her first thought. Or common sense.

All members of the so-called ‘Team Ruby’, to a girl, were used to wearing the most scandalous clothes. Even Lady Weiss, the most… reasonable girl amongst them, saw nothing wrong with wearing skirts so short, even a courtesan from Braavos would baulk at showing off her legs in public like that! Or expose so much skin. And compared to her, the others were worse! Much worse, in the case of Lady Blake and ‘Lady’ Yang, who did not even wear skirts. Their leader, Lady Ruby, was not as shameless in her attire, although her clothes were still far from what would be considered appropriate, but her manners, or lack of them, made up for it in spades. She was far too friendly with the smallfolk and showed no care for her own station. Not that the others, except for Lady Weiss, were any better. 

Really, if not for her good brother's introduction and private explanation, Catelyn would have never taken them for noblewomen! Noble ladies simply did not behave like that! 

And yet, in the same way, their manners clearly betrayed their noble, if obviously foreign, upbringing. The way they reacted to the dresses Catelyn had ordered to be made for them, as well as their response to the treats Catelyn had stocked up in preparation for the royal visit, proved that. Only highborn ladies raised in such luxury that they had not the slightest idea of how much work and expense went into a single dress of high quality, and how much it cost to import such delicacies from foreign shores, would treat such gifts with such careless and guileless ignorance. No merchant, no matter how rich, would leave his daughters ignorant of the heartblood of their trade, and no smallfolk would be able to fake such an attitude. They had not been as rude as to complain, but they had not been able to hide that they considered such things common and were accustomed to them.

No, as much as it galled Catelyn to admit it, their guests, well three of them, were noblewomen. Which made their scandalous behaviour much worse, of course! They might have deigned to wear proper dresses for the shared meals, but they insisted on going out in public ‘to train’ in clothes that caused every man and growing boy in the vicinity to lose their wits. Even her own eldest, Robb, was all but panting after them whenever he saw them in such garb - and Catelyn knew very well that none such meeting was accidental!

How was Catelyn supposed to prepare Winterfell to host King Robert and his family and court like this?

“Mother, did you see Yang and Ruby spar today? I could barely see them move, they were so fast! Some thought they were fighting a duel!”

And, worse, they were training to fight, setting an example that was corrupting even those members of Catelyn's family who weren’t lusting after them. Arya would be following them around all day if not for the diligent efforts of Catelyn and Septa Mordane, and Bran was hardly any better. At least he wasn’t climbing the towers any more, something she apparently had Lady Blake to thank. But she couldn’t dwell on her son when her daughter needed instructions.

“When did you visit the training yard, Arya?” Catelyn frowned at the unruly girl.

“Ah… I saw it from the keep!”

A blatant lie. Catelyn sighed. “I told you to keep away from the training yard. It's no place for a lady.”

“But Team Ruby trains there!”

Something Cately cursed every day. The spectacle attracted and distracted far too many of the smallfolk who should be working hard so Winterfell could host royalty.

“They're foreigners, Arya.” Sansa, at least, was sensible. “Their customs are different. Ladies don't fight.”

“I bet Lady Mormont and her daughters train every day, too!” Arya sniffed. “And they're our bannermen!”

Another thing Catelyn had come to curse.

“And King Aegon the Conqueror's wives - Queen Visenya and Queen Rhaenys - both fought on the battlefield! They must have been training as well.” Arya went on, then stuck her tongue out at her sister.

The Targaryens had much to answer for, Catelyn thought. To think she had hoped Arya would dedicate herself to study more. If she had known what kind of books her daughter would study… She would have to talk to Maester Luwin about what books he let her family read.

“And they were mad,” Sansa told her sister. “All Targaryens were mad, one way or the other.”

That wasn't entirely correct, Catelyn knew, but correcting her daughters would send the wrong message, especially so close to the arrival of King Robert, whose stance on the former ruling dynasty was widely known. Things would be tense enough with Lady Weiss even though she had assured Catelyn that she was not descended from Valyria despite her appearance. Catelyn still wasn’t certain that the girl was telling the truth; with their dragons, the Valyrians had been able to travel far, and there were rumours about the Blackfyres surviving…

“They still conquered all of Westeros!”

“Because they had dragons!”

“Team Ruby doesn't need dragons! They are stronger than dragons!”

“Children!” Catelyn raised her voice a bit, and her daughters fell silent. She did not wish to hear Arya ramble about Team Ruby again. She didn't need a reminder of what those girls were capable of. Just seeing the hole one of them had made with her bare fists had shocked her. If Catelyn had not listened to her good brother's seemingly fantastical tales and had insulted their guests because of their attire and manner, who knew what would have happened? She took a deep breath. “Our guests follow their customs, and we follow our own, as is proper.”

Sansa nodded with a gloating glance at her sister, but Arya scowled. “That doesn't make sense. Why is it proper for them but not for us?”

“Arya! They're not like us!” Sansa replied before Catelyn could say anything. “It’s just like what is proper for knights is not proper for ladies!”

“And what about female knights?” Arya shot back.

“There are no female knights! No woman was ever knighted!”

“Who cares about being knighted! There were plenty of women warriors!”

Catelyn rubbed the bridge of her nose. Team Ruby had a lot to answer for. At least, women training with weapons wasn't unheard of in the North. And, if she was honest, she couldn't blame Arya's interest in those things, as unseemly as it was, on their guests. Despite Catelyn’s best efforts, her youngest daughter had wanted to learn how to wield a sword for years before the arrival of Lady Ruby and her friends. And while any nobles in the South would be appalled at such notions, Ned's bannermen were more tolerant of such foibles, so her marriage prospects shouldn't be affected too much.

“Just because they can do something doesn't mean you can do it, Arya!”

“Lady Yang said I can do anything if I really want it!”

“Lady Yang is wrong!”

Wrong and a bastard, Catelyn added in her head while her daughters huffed at and then tried to ignore each other. That was the worst part of it. Those foreigners treated the bastard sister of their leader as one of their own - Lady Ruby even deferred to her illegitimate sister at times, heedless of the danger to her own position! What if this gave Ned's bastard ideas about his station in life? The boy was already talking far too often with that girl, and the other girls seemed to see nothing wrong with that, either…

If only Benjen had never brought them to Winterfell!

No, that was a foolish notion. If her good brother hadn't escorted Team Ruby to Winterfell, someone might have provoked them into a fight - or a feud. 

Or, worse, welcomed them as guests. That could cause a catastrophe.

Catelyn didn't think the four girls were more powerful than a dragon, but it was obvious even to her untrained eyes, and Ned and Benjen had both confirmed it, that whatever side the girls joined would win any battle against any foe with ease. If they allied with an ambitious or disgruntled bannerman of Ned… No, despite all the trouble they caused, it was a good thing that they were guests in Winterfell.

But that was merely a temporary solution. If Catelyn's family was to be safe from such a threat, they needed a much closer tie to the girls. As much as she disliked the idea, she had to talk with Ned about this. And she had to sound out their guests, although she would have to be very subtle about it, to ensure that they would not take offence at any offer. They had peculiar customs, after all.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and then you sweep their legs out from under them, and when they are on their back, you gut them - their belly is not armoured.” Ruby Rose finished demonstrating the move - without a training dummy; they were far too easy to break, she had found out - and beamed at Robb while she let Crescent Rose come to rest on her shoulders. Weiss hadn’t been happy about the whole thing, but Ruby was pleased that her team didn’t have to hide their training sessions any more - well, not completely, at least. They were still not going all-out when sparring in the training yard. No Semblances, no Dust, so Ruby wasn’t fighting Blake’s clones or dodging Weiss’s glyphs when training, and Yang couldn’t power up from taking blows. Not that she would do that anyway in the training yard - she would probably punch a hole through both walls or so.

“I see.” Robb slowly nodded. “They sound very dangerous.”

“Ah, if you know how to handle them, they're easy!” Ruby smiled. “There are Grimm which are a lot more dangerous! We had to fight some of them on our Initiation at Beacon.”

He looked surprised. “You had to fight such monsters to enter your school?”

“Yeah!” Ruby nodded. “Beacon only takes the best. You have to show that you have what it takes. If you aren’t prepared to fight Grimm, you’ll fail.” Unless you got really lucky, like Jaune.

“That sounds like a rather strict regime,” Robb said. “Dangerous as well.”

“Ah, it's not that dangerous. They don't let just anyone try.” Ruby shrugged. “Anyway, that's how you fight a Boarbatusk. Of course, flipping a Grimm on their back and gutting them works for other Grimm as well, but most of them, you can usually kill straight away.” She gave Crescent Rose a quick check to see if she had to fix anything. Not that there was a real danger of that, her baby was built too well to get damaged in a spar, but a Huntress who didn't regularly check her gear wasn't gonna live long in the field.

As expected, her baby was fine. She patted the shaft and collapsed it to carry it on her back.

“So, you said you were trained by your family as a Huntress since you were little?”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded and grabbed a cup of water from the jar she had brought with them. “Well, mostly by Uncle Qrow. He taught me how to wield Crescent Rose. Dad helped as well - he teaches at the Combat School in our home, so he knows his stuff - but Qrow's an active Huntsman.”

She frowned a little. Was she telling Robb too much? They weren't supposed to tell the people here too much about Remnant, but… Robb was nice. He could be trusted. Besides, it wasn't as if they'd ever meet Uncle Qrow or Dad until Team RWBY had found a way home, and then it wouldn’t matter what they knew about Remnant one way or the other because Ruby and her friends would be home! Home with their families! Who probably thought they were dead… No, Ruby wasn’t going there. She was going home.

“Is he as powerful as you are?” 

“Uncle Qrow or Dad? They’re better. Both went to Beacon.” Dad wasn't active any more, but he still kept his skills up. And Uncle Qrow was, well, Uncle Qrow. One of the best Huntsmen in Remnant.

“They must be impressive knights.”

“Ah, well…” Ruby shrugged again with a smile. “They're just family, you know?” Family she was missing. Family she would see again.

“I know.” Robb nodded with a serious expression, and Ruby wondered if she had said something weird. 

“Anyway, there are lots of different Grimm, and that's why we train like we do - we need to be ready for anything.” She grinned. “It takes a lot of training to fight as a unit.”

“That's what Father says as well.”

Ruby drank another cup of water. If only they had soda here! But they didn't even have coffee. The closest was tea with honey, but she couldn't get that here in the training yard for some reason.

Then she stretched. “Well, I think I'm done with the training today.”

“May I escort you to your chambers to change, my lady?”

“Sure. I'll probably not change, though. Not yet. I'm probably gonna just hang around on my bed for a bit. Maybe sketch a bit - Blake found some paper and charcoal stuff - and some of your weapons are interesting.” And just begged to be improved - well, if she had access to decent facilities, which she didn’t.

Robb blushed for some weird reason. Had Ruby said something wrong? Oh!

“That means I am going to lie down on the bed and sketch. I’m not, like, gonna hang down from the ceiling and do it upside down or something,” she explained. “Want to come as well? In case I have questions about weapons? Or are you busy?”

He was blushing harder. “Ah, I am not sure that I should enter your chamber, my lady.”

“Why not?”

“It wouldn't be proper.”

That again! As if anything would happen just because they were in her room! Sure, Robb was cute, but he wasn't that cute, and Ruby wasn't about to do anything like that anyway. Besides, he probably would die from blushing if a girl kissed him - she might have to warn Yang about that. She still wanted to pick his brain about the local weapons, though.

So she grinned. “But we would have a chaperone!” Weiss had explained about that.

“We would?”

“Yes!” She beamed at him. “Weiss will be there as well. And probably Blake and Yang.” They usually met in their room before lunch.

“Ah, but… they can't serve as a chaperone.”

“Why not?” That made no sense.

He grimaced. “Well, they are… maidens.” 

“So?”

“A chaperone needs to be older,” he explained. Or, in this case, didn't.

“There's a minimum age?” Drat. “That makes no sense.”

“But it is so.”

“But why?”

“Ah… it's because an older woman can, well… She wouldn't be… vulnerable?”

She frowned at him. Was that a joke? She patted Crescent Rose to make a point.

“I mean, she wouldn't be… tempted?”

“Tempted?” Ruby frowned. Oh. Tempted like that. She chuckled. “Wow, you've never met a cougar then!”

“A cougar?”

Drat. Now she had to explain what a cougar was. She blushed. At least she knew what they were, thanks to Yang and a few TV shows. “Cougars are, ah, older women who’re looking for, well… younger men.”

Robb seemed shocked.

It didn't look like Ruby would be able to pick his brain about the local weapons today. Maybe she could write down her questions and ask them over lunch or dinner? 

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss Schnee had been raised as a member of the Schnee family. The ability to control herself, to keep her temper in check, and to remain polite and composed no matter the situation, had been drilled into her since her earliest childhood, and the lessons had been reinforced by her interactions with her father. She had faced deadly danger without losing her cool.

And yet, she was pushed to her limits. The stress of keeping calm was almost unbearable. Nothing had ever challenged her self-control like this. She took a deep breath and kept smiling as she slowly nodded. “Indeed, Sansa, Lady is a very well-trained wolf. And a beauty to boot.” And so fluffy, Weiss really, really wanted to just scoop the adorable pup up, hug it and bury her face in its soft fur!

“Oh, yes! She’s the best!” Sansa beamed proudly while Lady rolled on her back, wriggled her paws in the air, and presented her belly with her tongue lolling out of her mouth.

Weiss trembled at the sight. But she was a Schnee. Keeping cool was ingrained in her very soul. So, she did not break down but calmly turned to Sansa and asked: “May I pet her?”

“Of course! You don’t need to ask, Weiss!”

Weiss knelt down, perhaps a little too fast, and she might have ruffled the puppy’s fur a little too enthusiastically according to her family’s standards, but who would be able to tell? She sighed with bliss as she indulged her base urges and petted the furball. To think Blake was terrified of those fluffy little puppies! “Who’s a good girl? Who’s a good girl? You are!” she whispered before she could stop herself.

But all good things came to an end, and so she had to - very reluctantly - leave the little wolf alone and resume her stroll through Winterfell with Sansa and Jeyne. Appearances had to be upheld, after all. Weiss had no doubt that Lady Catelyn and Lord Eddard would not be nearly as welcoming or tolerant, much less helpful, should they find out that the members of Team RWBY weren’t nobility - or that while their countries were called kingdoms, they were so in name only, the monarchies having been abolished long ago. Weiss was aware that she could not judge Westeros by the standards and history of Remnant, but she was certain that none of the nobles here, especially not those ruling realms larger than any kingdom back home, would react positively to the very notion of abolishing monarchies and aristocracies. Their disdain towards the neighbouring continent, which apparently was ruled by city-states with differing forms of government, had been very clear when the topic had come up.

And they needed the help of the Starks - and other local noblemen - if they wanted to find a way home. They knew almost nothing about this world. So, they had to stay in the good graces of their hosts.

On the other hand, it was not hard to pretend. Good manners had been drilled into Weiss from birth as well, and Sansa and her friend Jeyne were polite and friendly girls, if just a tiny bit too childish for her taste. Although that might merely be envy - it was obvious that their relationship with their parents, especially in Sansa’s case, was vastly more loving than Weiss’s own. Weiss’s father would only care about her going missing and presumed dead - she knew what the odds were if you disappeared in the wilderness - in as much as it affected SDC’s bottom line, and her mother would likely just drink even more. Winter would be devastated, of course - her sister was the only family member who cared. What sadness Whitley might feel would be outweighed by his glee at being Father’s heir…

She schooled her features. She wouldn’t let her envy influence her. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” she commented.

“Oh, yes.” Sansa nodded. “I hope the day the king and his court arrive will be equally beautiful; it would be a shame if their first impression of Winterfell were spoilt by rain.”

Jeyne nodded. 

“If it happens, you could take solace in the fact that any home looks more welcoming if you can seek shelter from the rain in it,” Weiss said. “Or from a snowstorm.”

“It’s not yet winter,” Sansa said. “So, let us pray to the Seven Who Are One that there won’t be snow.”

Weiss nodded with a calm expression. Back home, she would have laughed at the comment, sure that it was meant as a jest, but Sansa might be serious, and Weiss didn’t want to give offence to the girl. Religion was a thorny topic.

“Do you pray to the Seven Above as well, Lady Weiss?” Jeyne asked.

Weiss bent down to pet Lady while she weighed her answer. She could lie, but… Her father once said that it was best to be honest about matters when you didn’t know enough to convincly make up something, and while she loathed him, she couldn’t deny that this at least was useful if situative advice. “No. I rarely pray at all.”

“You don’t?” Sansa seemed surprised, and Jeyne mirrored her expression.

“Religion is a very private affair in my home,” Weiss said. That wasn’t a lie, technically. “People worship many gods, and sometimes, that’s liable to cause tensions.” Mostly when it involved the god of the Faunus, and that was because of politics, but it was close enough.

“Ah, like the differences between the Old Gods and the new?” Jeyne asked.

“Before the Andals came, all of Westeros worshipped the Old Gods, but nowadays, they’re only worshipped in the North,” Sansa explained. “The godswoods in the South were mostly burned.”

Wonderful. Weiss made a mental note to tell the others to avoid getting involved in religious discourses. She could only hope they’d listen to that better than they listened to her about not showing off… “Let’s talk about something less… serious,” she said. “What are your brothers up to? Is Bran still trying to climb the smoothest wall in the castle?”

Both girls giggled. “He is! He can be quite stubborn when he wants to be,” Sansa said.

“And he keeps falling down. One day, he won’t be able to sit down for a meal,” Jeyne added with a snort. “But do you really want to talk about little boys when there are far more interesting older boys to talk about?”

Ah. That was familiar terrain. Weiss laughed. “What did Robb and Jon do?”

Sansa frowned for a moment, Weiss noted, before nodding with a sly smile. “Well, Robb seems to spend quite some time with Lady Ruby.”

Weiss nodded. “She’s interested in his views and knowledge of your weapons.”

“Is that all she’s interested in?” Sansa asked. They had stopped to chat in the covered passage to the keep, and she petted Lady while a pair of servants stepped around them while carrying baskets full of vegetables.

Weiss laughed again. “To the great chagrin of Yang, Ruby seems only interested in weapons.”

“Really?” Now Sansa was frowning.

“Yes.” Which was a good thing, of course. If Ruby became infatuated with a local boy, that could greatly complicate things. She was the leader of their team but also the most inexperienced of them when it came to relationships. “She’s still young, after all.”

“She’s older than we are,” Sansa replied.

Ah. Weiss suppressed a wince. That had been a gaffe, but she could recover from this. “Compared to the rest of the team,” she tried to correct her remark.

“Still, at her age, doesn’t she have any suitors?” Jeyne asked.

“I think between Crescent Rose and Yang, a number of boys might feel too intimidated to approach her,” Weiss said.

“What? Is Yang sabotaging her prospects?” Sansa sounded shocked.

Weiss frowned. That was… a weird take on this. Why would she think that Yang would do such a thing? Different customs, she reminded herself. But she had to correct this assumption. “No, no. Yang’s just looking out for her. Some boys would want to take advantage of her.”

“Ah.” Sansa nodded. “In the absence of their father, and with no brothers around, it falls to Yang to watch over her?”

“Well, she is the older sister.” Weiss smiled. “My own older sister did watch out for me as well.” Until she joined the Atlas military. To be fair, Winter had tried to keep looking out for Weiss, but after leaving the manor and the family, there hadn’t been much she could have done.

“Oh? You have an older sister?” Sansa asked.

“Winter, yes.” Weiss nodded.

“Your sister is named Winter?”

“Yes.” Weiss had to suppress another frown when the girls giggled at that. It was a good name.

But the girls quickly grew more serious - or curious, to be more precise. “Do you miss her?”

“I do,” Weiss replied. “Although I’ve been missing her since she left our home for the military - to join the army,” she added when both girls seemed confused. “She chose to become a soldier.”

“Oh.” Sansa seemed surprised. “Not a Huntress? I thought women who trained to fight became Huntresses in your home kingdom.”

“Men and women serve in my kingdom’s army. It’s an honourable profession,” Weiss said. No matter what her father thought, both served to protect their homes and those who couldn't protect themselves. You could scarcely find a more honourable calling.

“Of course,” Sansa said.

“So, what about you? Do you have suitors?” Jeyne asked after a moment.

Weiss laughed. Did Jaune count? “None I would approve of,” she said. “I am not planning to marry anyway.” 

Both girls gasped. “You don’t want to marry?”

“No,” Weiss said and bent down to pet Lady. Sansa had told her she didn’t need to ask, hadn’t she?

“And what does your father think about that?”

Weiss froze for a moment. “What my father thinks about that doesn’t matter.”

She hoped she wasn’t lying - and then wondered why the girls seemed shocked.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna was so close to heaven and yet so far away. She was surrounded by books - the greatest collection in the entire North according to Maester Luwin, and she had no reason to doubt him, Winterfell being the seat of the North’s ruler - but she wasn’t allowed to touch, much less read them, as if she were a heathen who would damage them out of negligence or use them as paperweights or… She pushed the brief memory of a particular bunk bed’s construction away. She would never do that with books she had yet to read, or books she didn’t own, and Maester Luwin didn’t have to know this or he would never let her peruse Winterfell’s library. Sure, she was aware that, legally, the library belonged to Lord Stark, but as an avid reader, she also knew that this was a mere technicality and that the one to control access to a library was the librarian, and in Winterfell, this was the resident Maester.

Who was currently smiling at her in an increasingly and frustratingly familiar apologetic manner. “As much as I wish to tell you otherwise, Lady Blake, I must sadly confess that I still haven’t found any descriptions or sketches that match what you seek. But please, rest assured that I will continue my search.”

Of that, she had no doubt. The Maester - a local kind of scholar, or the closest thing these lands seemed to have to scientists, according to Weiss - had been intrigued by the tale of their translocation, and Blake was quite certain that he would not stop searching for any hint or clue that might help them find the ruins they searched until he either found one or had gone through the last of his books and texts.

Of course, if he weren’t the only one pursuing this task, it wouldn’t take nearly as long, but Blake couldn’t really disagree with both Lord Eddard and Weiss’s opinion that such a search should be conducted with all necessary discretion. Of course, that wouldn’t prevent Blake or her friends from helping, if not for Luwin’s - in Yang and Ruby’s case quite understandable - reluctance to let strangers touch his books and for the fact that none of Team RWBY was able to read the local script. Which meant that even if Blake were allowed to touch the books surrounding her, she wouldn’t be able to read them.

She had started to learn the alphabet, but it was vexingly complicated and, even worse, there were no standards; apparently, as Luwin had explained, people wrote as they spoke, and with linguistic drift, which he had had to explain, and many local dialects, just knowing the alphabet wasn’t enough; you also had to know the author’s preferred pronunciation. And that was just for the Common Tongue, as the dominant language of Westeros was known. Many books detailing ancient civilisations were written in foreign languages, some of them dead.

So, for the foreseeable future, they had to rely on Luwin if they wanted to find a way to return home. Blake smiled at him. “Thank you for your effort, Maester. We really appreciate it.”

“Oh, please, it’s the least I can do for our guests.”

“Then I don’t want to hold you up any longer.” With a smile at the old man and a last glance at the tantalising bounty lining the shelves here, she left.

She had barely set a foot outside the keep when she spotted Bran walking towards her. At once, she checked with eyes, ears and nose if that horrible monstrous wolf masquerading as a pet was in the vicinity. It wasn't, and she let out a soft sigh of relief before raising her eyebrows at the young boy.

“Hello, Lady Blake!” He smiled at her, and she was once again reminded that once he grew up, he'd likely be a heartbreaker, provided he could keep his boyish charm. “What are you doing?”

She was doing many things - watching the people and looking for potential trouble, noting who deferred to whom, which people were friendly to everyone and who reserved such for their superiors - but it wouldn’t do to tell Bran that. “Enjoying the fresh air,” Blake replied instead. It was not, technically, untrue - between the large number of people that lived in the keep and the lack of deodorants amongst the majority of the population, any time spent outside was a relief for her nose. 

“Sounds boring. Are you going to train?”

“Perhaps later today.” Blake had to hand it to the kid; he was quite determined. But if he hoped to make her spill any secrets, he would end up disappointed; she had spent years in the White Fang and knew how to talk without revealing anything she didn’t want to be revealed.

“And what are you doing until then?”

She shrugged. “I don't know yet. What do you have planned for today?”

“Uhm.” He scrunched his nose. Either he hadn't made any plans, or he was trying to think of an answer that wouldn't reveal them. “Enjoying the fresh air?” he asked more than he said.

She snorted with amusement at his cheek; for his age, he was quite cunning as well, but he still was a little boy. “So, you're planning to shadow me all day?”

“Shadow you?” He blinked. 

Ah. “It means following me around,” she explained, “and watching what I am doing.”

“Well, if you ask me to…” He flashed her a wide grin.

She could lose him easily - she now knew the castle well enough to plot a route that would allow her to dash into cover as soon as she broke his line of sight - but what would be the point? She could observe the castle's population and how they interacted with each other with Bran tagging along; the boy was unlikely to notice what she was doing.

And she could see what he let slip at the same time.

“If you can keep up, be my guest.” She grinned and picked the closest stairs to reach the ramparts above, hustling all the way.

To his credit, he kept up quite well, though he was breathing heavily when they reached the top. But he recovered quickly and was already babbling when they reached the spot overlooking the training yard.

At this time of the day, soon after breakfast, few people were training down below, and Blake made a mental note to tell the others, in case they wanted to train together with relative - although only relative when compared to the crowds they drew in the afternoon - privacy. Of course, she suspected that if Team RWBY truly wanted to train privately, they could request to be left alone - Lady Catelyn might even be eager to grant them that, based on some dressing-downs Blake had overheard her - but that would be abusing their positions as guests here.

Next to half a dozen guards, Theon and Robb were present as well, both looking a bit worse for wear, likely due to imbibing more alcohol than they could easily handle the evening before. Blake felt her ears twitch slightly under her customary bow when she listened in to what the two boys probably considered witty banter.

“So, did you take up your lady love on the invitation to her chambers?”

“Theon! Of course not!”

“Why not, Robb?”

“Lady Ruby didn't intend it to be taken like you hint at!”

“What else could she have intended when she invited you to her chamber and said that there wouldn't be a chaperone? Did you think she wanted to talk about weapons?”

“Yes, in fact, I believe so!”

“Robb, there's only one sword she's interested in, and that’s yours.”

Blake frowned at the crude comment. Theon either honestly didn't know anything about Ruby - a not very implausible assumption, in her opinion, given the boy's obvious cultural biases - or he knew and was yanking Robb's chain while spreading rumours about Ruby, likely out of wounded pride since none of Team RWBY had returned his advances.

“Theon!” Well, whatever his aim, he had succeeded in rousing Robb's anger - the heir of Winterfell was glaring at his friend. “You don't talk like that about our guests!”

“Robb! Everyone talks like that about them!”

Blake narrowed her eyes. While she had overheard similar remarks from the castle's staff, they had usually been made in private, not in the middle of the training yard. Hadn't Theon or Robb noticed how the half a dozen guards who were training were neglecting their forms so they could focus on listening to the two boys? 

“Not in my presence they don't dare!” Robb spat.

Judging by the way the guards closest to him grimaced and pretended to be busy doing drills, he was correct.

“What are you looking at?” Bran asked. “It's just regular training. Nothing exciting. They’re just hitting the posts.”

“I’m watching Robb and Theon,” she replied without taking her eyes off the two boys.

“They aren't sparring either.”

“But they might be - Robb looks angry.”

“He does? I can't tell from here.” Bran peered over the ramparts.

Blake focused on the talk down below again and tried to ignore the noise from the other people nearby. If only she didn’t have to hide her second set of ears; it would be much easier to listen to such talks if she could move her ears!

“Besides, aren't you supposed to court her?” Theon asked. “If you take her maidenhood, marrying her is the honourable thing to do, isn’t it?”

“What?” Robb gaped at him. “How… How can you suggest such a thing! Father would tan my hide if I dishonoured a guest!”

“Oh, come on - do you think your father would mind if you married Lady Ruby and secured an alliance with her people?”

“Of course, he would! That's not how such things are done!”

“As long as it works out, who cares?”

“My family does.”

Blake hissed under her breath. What was this talk about marriage? Had Ruby…? No, Blake's friend would have mentioned it if she had such an interest in Robb. Blake could imagine her floating into their chamber with the sappiest expression on her face and declaring her undying love or something if she had finally met someone she liked more than her weapon.

So, what was up with this? The way Robb had reacted, Theon's claims were not completely off-base…

She turned to look at Bran and narrowed her eyes. Maybe she should find out what Bran knew about this.

*****

This was great! It had taken a while to convince the locals - smash a few training dummies without trying, and they all think you have no self-control - but Yang finally got someone not from Team RWBY to spar with her!

She grinned as she ducked under Jon’s swing, then dodged his follow-up. The boy was good. Sure, she had to hold back, like, a ton, since without Aura, he was slow as ass, but skill was skill.

She met his shield bash head-on with a block and a slight grunt - she had to be careful not to wreck his shield. “Nice one!”

He grunted in return, then stabbed at her legs without hesitation. 

She jumped back, and he managed not to stick his sword into the packed earth of the training yard. “Finally realised you won’t hurt me?” And it had only taken a deliberate ducking into a swing to convince him that it was safe to spar without her wearing armour. Next step, make him use his real sword!

But first, finish the sparring match! She faked a straight to his head, forcing him to retreat and raise his shield, then circled around his sudden blind side. He managed to move in time to bring his sword to bear, but she ducked under his wild swing, then darted forward, inside his reach, pushed his shield to the side and stopped her headbutt just before she connected. “Tag! You’re out!”

And for good measure, she then dropped into a leg sweep that sent him to the ground - although almost head first. Oops! She had to control her strength a little more, but that was on him to get her so worked up.

“Good match!” She beamed at him as she offered him a hand up.

He didn’t take it and got up himself, but he nodded curtly, so that was vocal agreement for him.

“Made me work for it,” she said as she stepped over to the water can.

“You held back a lot.”

“Sure did. None of us would learn anything if I went all-out.” She filled one cup, downed it, then another, and grabbed a sausage and a bread roll from the basket next to the can.

Another grunt. She wasn’t sure if that was agreement or just wounded male pride. Jon wasn’t as bad as Theon. He didn’t pout like Robb, either, when the boy was shown, again, that Huntresses were in their own league. But Jon was a local boy, and Yang had yet to meet a local boy who hadn’t some issues with getting beaten by a girl. Talk about weird!

She turned both bread and sausage into a sort of not-hot hot dog and wolved it down. Jon drank a cup of water in the meantime, and the ‘smallfolk’ who had been watching returned to whatever they were supposed to be doing. “Seriously, you did well.” For someone without Aura. “Should spar with Blake or Weiss sometime. They both use swords.”

“Maybe.” That meant ‘No’ in Jon-speak.

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged. Of Team RWBY, she was the only one Jon sparred with. He probably had a crush, but as long as he didn’t make a move, she didn’t have to shoot him down. He was cute, but he was like Ruby’s age. And a bit too brooding for her taste - if she did shoot him down, he might stop sparring, too.

“It wouldn’t be appropriate,” he said after a moment.

“What?” She frowned. He was sparring with her, wasn’t he? So, why wouldn’t it be appropriate to spar with the rest of her team? Oh, Hell! Had she missed another cultural difference, as Weiss called it? “Don’t tell me sparring is, like, asking someone out!”

“What?” He stared at her.

“You know, start a relationship,” she explained.

“What? No!” He flushed like a tomato and shook his head almost as wildly as Zwei after a bath. “It’s…” He took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “I’m a bastard,” he said through what Yang was sure were clenched teeth.

“Actually, you’re too nice for…” She blinked. “Oh, you mean literally.” She nodded. “Yeah, we’ve heard. Still doesn’t tell me why you can’t spar with the others.”

“A bastard shouldn’t spar with high-born ladies. I wouldn’t spar with you if you hadn’t… insisted so strongly.” And that pout showed he was Robb’s brother.

She grinned at him. Sure, yelling ‘Defend yourself!’ and jumping at him had maybe been a bit much, but sue her - she liked sparring, and she liked fighting new guys! He wasn’t laughing, though, so she turned serious as well. “Sorry to hear that.”

He shrugged. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

He obviously was feeling sorry for himself, but she wasn’t gonna needle him over it. That was his business.

He must have caught a clue, though, since he narrowed his eyes at her for a moment. Then he sighed. “I am a bastard. I can’t change that.”

“It’s not as if it’s your fault you were born.” People blaming kids for their parents were idiots, in her book.

Another half-glare, another sigh, and he nodded. “I just wish I knew my mother.”

Oh. Yang knew that feeling. And she knew better than to step on that landmine. But she could sympathise - and did. “Yeah. My own - I mean, the woman who gave birth to me - ran away and left me with Dad when I was a baby. Haven’t seen her since. Don’t even know if she’s still alive.” She shrugged as if it was no big deal. But it was. But, thinking of family made her think of Dad. He would be broken. Worse than he had been after Mom hadn’t returned from a mission. Now he’d think both Ruby and Yang were dead… She clenched her teeth and took a deep breath. Brooding about stuff she couldn’t change right now was pointless.

He must have noticed her mood but he didn’t push her on it either, and they just stayed there, silent, for a while, staring at the wall until it got too gloomy for her, and she went back to the rest of her team. It was about time for lunch, anyway - or would be, soon.

But when she entered their room, ready to apologise for having forgotten the time while sparring - not that there was a clock to use, anyway - she wasn’t scolded by Weiss for being late. Instead, Ruby jumped up from her bed and rushed to her. “Yang! We’ve got a problem! A huge problem!”

“What?” Yang tensed. Had someone broken into their room? They had taken a few precautions, like hiding the stuff they couldn’t carry with them where normal people couldn’t easily get it, but…

“They want to marry us off!”

What?

Weiss sighed. “What the dolt is trying to say is that our hosts apparently plan to ask for the hand in marriage of at least one of us, presumably to forge an alliance with our team and, although that’s conjuncture, our home kingdom.”

Yang blinked. “Seriously?”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded several times with a pained expression. “Blake overheard them! And Bran confirmed it!”

“Bran? The little boy?” Yang asked. What did little boys know about such things?

“He confirmed that alliances here are done by marrying two family members,” Blake said. “Which fits what I overheard from the talk between Theon and Robb.”

“And Robb might try to seduce me to trap me in a marriage! I don’t want to marry anyone, Yang! I’m too young! And I don’t like Robb that way!” Ruby shook her head.

Yang winced. Ruby was going a bit too fast here.

“You don’t have to marry anyone, Ruby,” Weiss said. “None of us do.”

“You said we had to compromise and honour their customs!”

“Not to that extent. Besides, you heard Blake - Robb rejected Theon’s idea and said Lord Stark would never condone such underhanded means!”

“And what about not-underhanded means? Overhanded means? What if they just ask for my hands? Hand?” Ruby flitted over to stare at Weiss.

“Then you tell them you’re not going to marry anyone,” Weiss replied.

“I’m not good at telling people no!”

“Then learn how to tell people no, dolt!”

“Or let me tell them for you,” Yang said, bumping her fists together. She clenched her teeth. If anyone tried to do anything underhanded like that with her sister… Well, there would be no holding back on Yang’s part! They would have to scrape whoever it was from the ground. And probably the walls and ceiling as well!

*****

 

Chapter 4: Thoughts About Marriage

‘Another matter that has been in great contention, according to some sources even during the time of the Ruby Order, was the four maidens’ home’s views on marriage and related affairs. Some of my colleagues obviously consider the various records that the Ruby Order did not shun bastards of all kinds as proof that their home held views of such things that would not have been amiss in Dorne - might, even, have even been a bit too much for their well-documented customs of the time. However, those people made, and keep making in some cases, a fundamental mistake no scholar can afford: They did not fact-check their sources and claims before making deductions, which leads to their theses being conjectures at best, complete delusions better reserved for the theatre’s most base productions at worst. Even if all those records were factually true - and some of them seem quite a bit too convenient to add legitimacy to houses founded by bastards - they would still only prove, and I am using the word lightly here, what the views of the members of the Ruby Order were. And such views are, as even those not used to scholarly pursuits know, generally based on personal biases. Just because one bastard was accepted in the Ruby Order does not mean that this would apply to everyone else. Once again, we have to look at the records and examine them through the lens formed by the biases of those who wrote them.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“I don’t know what to do, Jon.”

“About what?” Jon Snow asked, encouraging his brother to continue. Robb wouldn't have called him to this deserted section of the ramparts for a talk if it wasn't important.

“I had a talk with our parents.” Robb turned to look at the outer wall.

Jon pressed his lips together. Lady Catelyn wasn't his mother. But Robb was his brother all the same.

“They are considering a marriage between me and Lady Ruby.”

Ah. Jon nodded. He couldn't say that he had expected it, but… “That makes sense.” Robb glared at him, and Jon shrugged. “You're Father's heir.” Robb was expected to marry the daughter of either one of their important bannermen or a powerful noble from the South, whatever served the family best, but that had been before Team Ruby had arrived. “And you're closest in age to our guests.” Meaning, a marriage wouldn't have to be delayed for years until, say, Bran was of age.

Of course, Jon was about the same age, but… No one would marry a bastard for an alliance. Just the offer would be seen as an insult. A part of Jon was happy about that. A stupid part that should know better - but couldn't let go of the notion that bastards could marry each other even though that only applied to bastards who weren't divided by a gap almost as wide as the one between a bastard and a trueborn heir to a noble house.

“I know!” Robb scoffed and leaned against the stone.

“So, what is the problem?” Jon asked. Lady Ruby was a beauty, although not quite as beautiful as her sister, in Jon's opinion, and both friendly and charming. He had not seen her show malice to anyone. She would make her husband very happy; Jon had no doubt about that. And Robb would know that as well, so why... Oh. “Would you prefer to marry one of her friends?” Or her sister? he thought.

“What? No!” Robb blurted out, shaking his head. “Father can't ask for me to marry one of her ladies; it would be an insult to both of us.”

That didn't answer the question Jon had asked. “But would you prefer someone else if that weren't a consideration?”

Robb frowned, then sighed. “I… If I had to choose, I would pick Lady Ruby. She's the most… gentle of them.”

Jon briefly glanced around to check that no one was listening, then snorted. “You mean she won't order you around or ignore you.” As Lady Weiss and Lady Blake might do - the former clearly was used to getting her way, and the latter apparently used to read a book during meals back at their school. Maester Luwin apparently had taken offence at the thought of putting books at risk like that.

“Yes.” Robb nodded. “And Lady Yang…” He trailed off.

“...is a bastard,” Jon finished for him.

Robb frowned at him as if Jon had said something untrue. “Lady Yang doesn't seem like she would listen to her husband at all,” he said. 

“That might depend on the husband,” Jon pointed out, though he wasn't sure if that was just his stupid, silly, doomed desire talking.

Robb scoffed. “For that to happen, a man would have to be even stronger than she is.” He leaned against the stone wall again and sighed. “In any case, this is not about Lady Yang.”

Jon nodded, trying not to smile at that. “What's the problem with Lady Ruby then?”

“It's just… Is it honourable to propose marriage when we can't contact her family?” Robb paced a few steps.

“They can't contact their family either - they don't know how they arrived here or if they can return,” Jon pointed out. Team Ruby seemed convinced they would find a way to return home, but Jon couldn't tell if that was merely a baseless hope - one not unlike his own.

“I know. Mother said the same - I think that was what made Father agree,” Rob said. “That in those circumstances, Lady Ruby represents her family herself, and so it would fall to her to decide on whom she would marry.”

Jon nodded again. That made sense.

“But what if she agrees, and then they manage to find a way to return to their home?” Robb went on. “What would her father think of… everything?”

Oh. Jon grimaced. “If he's as strong as they are…”

“Stronger. Both said their father is stronger than either of them,” Robb cut in.

Right. “That could be bad.”

“What if he thinks I forced this on her?”

“You didn't, though,” Jon replied. “And Lady Ruby would tell him so.” His brother didn't look too reassured, so Jon added: “And do you think she would let him hurt you?”

“No, of course not.” Robb sighed once more. “Still… It feels as if I am trying to take advantage of her situation.”

“But you are not, are you?”

“Of course not! That would be dishonourable.” Rob scowled. “Theon suggested I seduce her and then offer to marry her. It was in jest, but still!”

Jon doubted that Theon had been jesting, but he held his tongue.

“But that's not all.”

“What else is there?” Jon asked. It seemed simple to him - make the offer and settle things. And, a small voice seemed to whisper in his mind, if Robb married Lady Ruby, her sister would likely stay in Winterfell as well - only a fool would miss how close the two were. Jon had thought about joining the Night's Watch, an honourable choice for a bastard, but what if he stayed? Even bastards could earn a position that allowed them to provide for a family. If he asked Father for a post or maybe even a keep of his own, maybe…

Robb's voice interrupted his silly fancy. “Lady Ruby has never mentioned marriage at all in our talks. Not hers, not anyone's. All we talk about are weapons and fighting. What if she has sworn an oath never to marry?”

Jon blinked. “I think she would have mentioned that.” But he wasn't sure. Maybe he should ask Yang about it.

If he could think of a way to ask such a question without embarrassing himself or making it look as if he were asking for himself.

Even if he was, at least partially.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Facing the door to the hallway, Ruby Rose took a deep breath and steadied herself. She didn't have anything to fear, she reminded herself. She was a Huntress (in training). She had her Aura awakened, making her stronger, tougher and faster than anyone in this world except for her friends (or so she hoped; at least she hadn't met anyone yet here who had Aura). She had her Semblance, letting her outrun anyone even if they had their Aura awakened (unless they cheated somehow). And she had Crescent Rose, her baby, allowing her to cut through anything (or anyone) or snipe anything from hundreds of metres away (though she didn't have that many bullets left).

She could do this!

“Ruby! What's wrong?”

“Nothing!” She flashed a smile at Yang and rushed out of the door before her sister could pry. She wasn't afraid.

She was just a tiny little bit embarrassed at the thought of talking to someone who wanted to marry her when she didn't want to marry them. That was as bad - no, worse! - as trying to let someone down who had confessed to you without hurting their feelings. Not that she had any experience with such a situation since no one had yet confessed their feelings to her, but she had seen such scenes plenty of times in shows, and just thinking of being in the heroine's place made her blush.

Robb might not even like her, she told herself. He might just be doing this because of his parents - and how barbaric was that? Trying to tell your kids whom to marry? - and might want to marry someone else instead. Maybe a local girl. Or maybe one of Ruby's friends. They were far more attractive, anyway. Weiss was all classy and elegant and composed and smart and could sing and had been raised as a princess (of sorts) in the richest family of Remnant. Blake was all cool and mysterious, with a tragic past and the cutest cat ears you could think of, a real ninja girl but with a hidden romantic soul (or she wouldn't always be reading romances). And Yang was… Yang. Tall, beautiful, athletic, confident, curvy and brave. Always happy, always strong (and always there for her friends and for her sister when it counted.)

Compared to them, Ruby was just… a little girl. Two years younger, not as experienced, not as cool. Why would Robb want to marry her? He probably didn't.

She sighed and kicked a stone on the ground, watching as it flew across the yard and crashed and splintered against the inner wall ten metres ahead. This was… She blinked. Robb not wanting to marry her was a good thing! She didn't want to marry him (she didn't want to marry anyone! She wanted to go home!), and so she wouldn't have to let him down without hurting his feelings, messing up, and starting a feud or whatever - Weiss had mentioned something like that, but Ruby had been a bit too concerned about anyone trying to marry them at the time to listen too closely. If Robb didn't want to marry her, she couldn't hurt his feelings, and Team RWBY wouldn't be forced to cut their way through dozens of guards trying to make them pay for insulting their hosts, breaking guest rights or whatever started a fight in this country.

Sure, it was a bit of a blow to her ego (she was a girl, wasn't she?), but Robb not wanting to marry her was a good thing! Besides, Ruby was a Huntress, not a lady, and she would be a terrible lady - she didn't know anything about running a castle.

Not that she wanted to run a castle. Least of all Winterfell. It was cool and all, like living in a Fantasy movie, but she really missed Dad and Uncle Qrow, her home, Beacon, Zwei… She didn’t want to think how they would be doing, back home. She also missed games, cookies and chocolate (they had no chocolate in this kingdom!) and cakes and scrolls and modern bathrooms and everything else, but that wasn’t as bad as missing her family…

“Lady Ruby?”

Apparently, she had also missed Robb walking up to her. “Robb? I mean, hello, Lord Robb!” As long as she was polite, it was OK. Weiss had said so. Well, she had implied it. Ruby smiled at him.

He blushed, and she winced. That wasn't a good sign, was it? “I’m sorry if I disturbed you .- you seemed to be lost in thoughts.”

And plain lost - she realised she had wandered from their room into the courtyard without realising it. “Oh… I was. But I’m better now! Much better!”

“Ah.” He smiled at her.

She smiled back. Even if it was awkward. What did he want?

After a few even more awkward moments, he cleared his throat. “Are you headed to train?”

Right, she was wearing her combat clothes. Because there was no way she was walking around without her baby when people were talking about marrying her. Or about seducing her to trap her in a marriage, though why they thought that would work was anyone's guess. Anyway, Ruby needed Crescent Rose as emotional support weapon, and since carrying her baby could be a bit hard on normal dresses, as she had found out doing maintenance, that meant combat clothes. But those were supposed to be worn for training, and fighting, and since she didn't want to fight… “Yes.” She smiled as confidently as she could. “I need to work out a bit, burn some energy, you know?”

“I… think so.”

He didn't sound as if he did. But she wouldn't pry. “So… training time? Do you want to go a few bouts?” Talking was awkward, but sparring was OK.

“Ah… well, why not?”

His smile looked a little fake, but whatever! Ruby nodded. “Let's go then!” She reached out to grab his arm, then hesitated. Was that a bit too… forward, they called it in the period dramas?

He tensed a bit when he offered her his arm, but that was normal even though she hadn’t accidentally dragged him with her for two days straight now, and they walked over to the training yard.

Unfortunately, Theon was there. The guy whom Blake had overheard talking about seducing her. Fortunately, he wasn't staring at her but nodding at Robb. But he was smirking when he did so.

Whatever! Ruby unfolded Crescent Rose in her scythe mode and swung it in a flourish Uncle Qrow had said never to use in a real fight that made Theon pale a little when her baby's tip passed close to his forehead. “I'm just doing a few drills, then we can spar!” she told the two boys. 

Wielding Crescent Rose always calmed her down. 

As it turned out, her wielding her baby in a few basic drills and exercises also seemed to calm down the two boys somehow.

*****

“She's still totally freaking out.”

Weiss Schnee was forced to agree with Yang. Even after their team talk - she wasn't going to call it ‘marriage war council’ as Yang had suggested as a joke - and despite Weiss's best assurances that she had nothing to fear, Ruby was still… Weiss wouldn't call her an anxious wreck, but she was clearly not her usual cheery self. She probably blamed herself for stranding them in another world, and she might deny it, but a blind fool could see that she was missing her family. And now this marriage business was adding to her stress.

She pressed her lips together in a slight frown, suppressed the sudden desire to do something painful to whoever was responsible for this - Weiss wasn't quite certain yet of their identity; the culture and society of the people here in ‘Westeros’ were still largely unknown to her despite her efforts to learn as much as she could - and sighed. “I hope she won't do anything foolish.”

“Foolish?” Yang asked, cocking her head to the side. “Like what?”

Like maiming someone who courted her. She didn't say this, though. Ruby wouldn't do that. “Like overreacting to a proposal,” she said, taking a few steps to the window.

“Do you mean crushing some balls or accepting it without thinking?”

Weiss scowled as she turned around to face her friend. Did Yang have to be so crude? “Not quite…” She blinked. “You don't think she'd actually accept, do you?” Ruby couldn't be that stupid, could she?

“Naw, I don't think so.” Yang shrugged. “Robb's not that cute.”

“Whether his appearance is attractive or not does not matter,” Weiss explained, putting her fists on her hips. “Even if we were stuck here for good, he clearly wouldn't be a suitable partner for Ruby. They are much too different - Lord Robb was raised in an utterly alien society with completely different values. He is the heir of the feudal ruler of this entire region, a high-ranking noble.”

Yang frowned at her. “You sound like Ruby wouldn't be good enough for him.”

“What?” That was absurd! “No, quite the contrary,” Weiss said, shaking her head.

“You mean he's not good enough for her?” Yang grinned for some reason.

“It's a far more nuanced situation than that, but essentially, yes,” Weiss replied. “While I can't claim to be an expert on the local society and norms…”

“You're the best expert we have,” Yang interrupted her.

Weiss was both happy at the acknowledgement of her efforts and annoyed at being interrupted as she went on as if Yang hadn't said anything: “...I have talked with Lady Stark and her daughters often enough to know that the expectations raised for a noble's wife in this region would be both impossible to fulfil and unacceptable for Ruby.” Ruby was a Huntress, not some… housewife wouldn't be correct; Lady Stark had a fair range of responsibilities, if mostly related to family matters - although that would cover far more here than back home - and was running a household with several hundred members. In any case, Weiss couldn't see Ruby in Lady Stark's position. Not at all.

Yang made an agreeing noise from where she was sprawled on her bed. “Yeah. She's never going to be a princess hobnobbing with high society.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes slightly. Was that a dig at her? In any case, Yang was wrong. “I beg to differ. Ruby might need a few lessons in how to avoid making a faux pas, but she could attend a gala in Atlas without a problem.” Well, maybe more than a few lessons. But Ruby was a Huntress, and Huntresses were known to be… eccentric. Besides, if Ruby were to attend a Gala in Atlas, Weiss would be with her partner and be able to run interference and smooth things out. Being a Schnee, and the heiress of the Schnee Dust Corporation, granted her a few privileges in society.

Yang snorted. “Ask me about the birthday party of her first friend at Signal if you think so.”

Her first friend at Signal? Weiss frowned but decided against indulging her curiosity. “In any case, trying to fit into nobility here would be a challenge magnitudes greater than entering high society back home, for Ruby and for everyone in our group.”

“You seem to be doing a fine job,” Yang said.

No thanks to you, Weiss thought. If you had not decided to show off and punch a crater into the training yard…

“They are tolerating a lot more than they would from others because they think we're foreign noblewomen,” Blake spoke up. “And because we could defeat all of the guards in the castle at once.”

Weiss nodded. She hadn't missed the change in Lady Catelyn's attitude after Yang's demonstration. In the meetings shortly after they had arrived at Winterfell, Lady Catelyn hadn’t been rude, and it had been subtle, but she had treated Weiss and her friends with a bit of condescension. That had changed after their first training session; the noblewoman had become noticeably more respectful and had treated her as an equal.

“And imagine if they knew what we could do if we went all-out!” Yang grinned and slammed a fist into the palm of her hand. “Think they'd offer us crowns?” she joked.

“Indeed, I think that is what they would do,” Weiss told her with a slightly toothy smile. “By offering more marriages.”

Seeing Yang blink and then scowl was quite satisfying.

“Or they'd try to murder us in our sleep,” Blake said.

“What?” Yang looked at her. “Aren't we under guest right here? Untouchable? Weiss! You were on our backs about that for days!”

Blake raised her eyebrows. “If people feel threatened enough, they will break the law without a thought.”

Weiss almost made a comment about the White Fang but merely nodded in agreement instead. This wasn’t the time to open that particular can of worms.

“You really think the Starks would do that?” Yang shook her head. “That all their talk about honour is an act?”

“No, I do not believe they would do that,” Weiss agreed. Mostly. “But people like… Theon?”

After a moment, Yang nodded with a scowl. “He's just one guy here, though, and a guest like us.”

“Some of the guards might also decide to take it upon themselves to remove a threat to their liege without his permission, sacrificing their own honour to do their duty,” Blake added.

Weiss frowned. That sounded a little… As if it was taken from one of the novels from Mistral Blake liked but denied reading. “I don't think we can make such assumptions without more information.” But neither could they dismiss them. “But for now, we haven’t received a formal proposal, so this is not an urgent problem.”

“Looks urgent enough to me,” Yang commented.

“Not as urgent as it will be if we refuse an offer and keep refusing them,” Weiss said. If the locals started to think that Team RWBY wouldn't follow their customs and laws and let themselves be married off… Weiss wasn't quite certain about the most likely reaction to such a development, but she didn't doubt it would be problematic. Very problematic.

*****

“So, what's your take on this mess, partner?”

Blake Belladonna turned her head to look at Yang as they walked along the rampart of the inner wall of Winterfell, avoiding the bustling crowd in the courtyard below and their prying gazes. “Hm?”

“You've been pretty quiet about the whole thing,” Yang went on, tilting her head a little to avoid the glaring sun on this part.

“I've informed you about it in the first place,” Blake pointed out - after double-checking that no one was listening; you could never be too careful, a lesson many Faunus had to learn early on. 

“Yes. But you haven't really said much about it afterwards. Ruby freaked out, Weiss is… well, she's also freaking out, just in her own way. But you've remained pretty cool about everything. As if it doesn't bother you.”

Blake suppressed a snort at the notion that the threat of forced marriages wouldn’t bother her. The opposite was true, given her past - she merely had a bit more self-control than Ruby. Or than Weiss, whose attempt to cope by trying to micromanage everything and everyone was obvious to anyone who paid attention. “They can't force us into marriage,” she said, barely above a whisper. She wouldn't let that happen; she hadn't escaped one abusive relationship to enter another - or to allow one of her few friends to end up in one.

“Of course not!” Yang smashed her gauntlets together, startling a crow nearby. “But what about the rest of what we talked about?”

“That someone might try to assassinate us if we don't submit to their customs?” It did sound straight out of one of her favourite novels, ‘Caught Between Duty and Love’, to be precise, a captivating tale of a nobleman having to choose between upholding his personal honour and preserving the engagement to his long-lost childhood friend or saving his liege lord and his realm from a war that would cost countless lives. But that didn’t make it improbable.

“Yeah. I can smash anyone in a fight, but…” Yang scowled. “I'm not good at dealing with that stuff.” She looked at Blake and raised her eyebrows.

“I’m keeping my eyes and ears open,” Blake replied in a low voice, feeling her ears trying to lay flat against her skull at the thought of anyone attempting to murder her friends in such a manner.

“But you can't be everywhere at once.”

She realised that her partner, who was almost always confident to the point of recklessness and optimistic even in the face of near-certain disaster, was worried about the situation they had found themselves in. “I don't think we're in immediate danger,” she said, tracking another bird, a hunting bird, that flew above them, circling as if it was looking for prey below. “We haven’t refused anything so far - we haven't even received an offer yet. They haven't even tried to sound us out about that. Except for Bran, but I don't think he was spying on us.”

Yang snorted. “Not for his parents, at least. But the little boy is sneaky.”

“Not as sneaky as Arya,” Blake said. And neither kid was good enough to blindside her friends, much less herself, although they could be stalking horses - or distractions - for the actual spies. Blake hadn't noticed anyone who might be poised to take advantage of such a thing, yet a really dangerous spy wouldn't be noticed at all until their job was done…

“Still…” Yang scowled. “Why do they have to go after Ruby? She hasn't been in a relationship yet. I don't think she's had a crush so far!”

Blake wasn't so sure about that - her partner sometimes had a slightly idealised view of Ruby. Sure, their leader was the youngest member of their team, but at her age, Blake had already been in a relationship - already been emotionally manipulated by Adam. And speaking of that… “She's the leader of us. If they can get her on their side, we will follow. Or so they think.”

“Well, they aren't wrong, are they?” Yang cocked her head at Blake, almost challenging.

“Not unless Ruby goes off the deep end and starts indiscriminately killing innocents,” Blake replied, meeting her partner's eyes without flinching. She wouldn't let anyone lead her down that path. Never again.

“Ruby?” Yang chuckled. “She'd never do that.”

“I know.” Blake nodded, though she knew Ruby was, perhaps not as innocent as Yang professed, but still the most vulnerable to emotional manipulation of the kind Blake was familiar with. At least Robb wasn't the kind of boy who would try to take advantage of that - unlike others, she added while clenching her teeth.

“Still, Dad will be amused when he hears that Ruby got a proposal before I got one.” 

Yang’s joke was weak but still better than her puns, and Blake snorted in return. “You sound jealous,” she said with a grin.

“Jealous? Please!” Yang sniffed and tossed her hair back with a smooth and sensual motion. “If I wanted, I could lead all the boys in this castle by their noses.”

Blake didn't doubt that. Yang was very attractive - both her appearance and her other qualities made her a very desirable woman, and while she was not perfect, her flaws were not a deal breaker but sometimes even endearing. “Well, if Ruby turns Robb down, you'll probably be next in line as her sister.” That was how such marriage alliances worked, didn't they? 

Yang scoffed. “Robb? He couldn't handle me.”

Blake doubted anyone in this world could - at least none whom she had met so far. “Or Jon.”

Yang frowned. “I don't think so. He's pretty gloomy about being a bastard or whatever.”

Blake nodded; she had noticed the boy’s moody disposition as well. “He doesn't seem to be the spare heir.”

“The spare heir?” Yang grinned. “That sounds like it’s from one of your period drama books.”

It was, actually, but Blake shrugged, not willing to admit it or let her thoughts linger on how much she missed her library. “It would be good if they went after you. You could string them along until we’ve found a way back.”

“Ah, yeah, sure.” Yang smiled, though Blake could see that her heart wasn’t entirely in it - her partner was not as easy to read as Ruby, but Blake knew how her well enough to tell when she was as confident as she acted and when she was merely trying to hide her true feelings behind a brash act.

So she frowned at Yang and made an inquiring sound, letting her partner know she had not been fooled and prompting her to explain.

“Well…” Yang pouted at her, then sighed and looked over the rampart at the landscape in the distance. “I know I am a flirt, but… Stringing someone along? Someone who wants to marry me? I wouldn’t do that to someone who just wants to date me, well, not unless he was a complete asshole and needed a lesson in humility or something, and it was just for a short time. And that’s back home, where I know the rules of the game. Here?” She shook her head, her golden locks swaying back and forth, briefly hiding her face. “It would be a disaster.” Then she perked up. “So, it’ll be up to you to play up your cool, mysterious act.”

Blake tensed, pressing her lips together so she wouldn’t blurt out her first thought. Taking a deep breath, she slowly shook her head. “I really would rather not.” She would not follow in Adam’s footsteps. Not if she could help it.

Instead of, as Blake had feared, calling her a hypocrite for asking Yang to do what Blake wouldn’t, her partner looked at her for a moment, then nodded with a gentle smile. “Yeah.” After a moment, she grinned. “So, let’s Weiss do it. She probably has the most experience dealing with such stuff.”

Blake wasn’t certain if that was true - given her status as the heir of the Schnee Dust Corporation, Weiss probably wouldn’t have had to string any suitor along - but merely by the method of elimination, she was the best, or the least bad, choice for this. “You’re telling her, though.”

“Hey!”

Yang glared at her for a moment, then started laughing, and Blake smiled. 

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long pressed her lips together so the small screwdriver she was holding in her mouth wouldn't drop while she checked if Ember Celica's shotgun chambers were still perfectly aligned. They were, which she had expected since she hadn't fired them in weeks. And she hadn't really fought, either, just sparred - but you didn't skip weapon maintenance. A Huntress's weapon was her life, as the saying went. And her soul, what with all her Aura strengthening it, but that was pretty much the same thing. Lose your Aura and your life will soon follow was another saying for a reason. 

She reassembled her gauntlets, then ran them through the standard checks, chambers clicking empty as she pointed them out the window and cycled the shotgun's firing mechanism. Perfect. As it should be.

She returned her screwdriver to her pocket. If she lost her tools… Well, she could replace most of them if she had access to a smithy, but if she lost most of her tools, she would be screwed. And so would her friends. Without tools, they couldn't maintain their weapons. The best they could do would be to lock them in melee modes.

“Are you done? I need the table for Myrtenaster,” Weiss said behind her. “Ruby's hogging all the space for her oversized farming implement.”

“Hey! Don't diss Crescent Rose!” Ruby complained from the corner she had taken over, surrounded by the parts and pieces of her own weapons. “Don't listen to her, Baby - I would never treat you like a farming tool!”

Yang grinned “You used it to cut down trees.” With great enthusiasm.

“That… that was weapon training! Like when we cut down dummies!” Ruby pouted.

“We're not supposed to cut them down,” Weiss told her. “They aren't supposed to be replaced every day.”

“It's not my fault! Robb asked me to demonstrate how to wield my baby! Should I have cut down a wagon?” Ruby shot back while fiddling with the receiver of her weapon.

“You don't have to show him everything we can do.” Weiss shook her head with a frown, then turned back to her rapier, cleaning the Dust chambers of Myrtenaster.

“I don't! I'm sticking to basic moves!”

Basic moves for a Huntress. The average man here could barely lift Ruby's weapon, much less swing it around, Yang knew.

“Thanks to Benjen, they are already aware that we can do more than what we show in the training yard,” Blake said.

“That doesn't mean we should be sloppy,” Weiss grumbled. “Information security is paramount to our survival here.” She turned her head to frown at Yang.

Yang grinned back. Sure, maybe she had shown off a bit too much, but as Blake had told them, Benjen would have spilt the beans anyway. And it felt good to cut loose from time to time. Besides, they couldn't let their skills grow rusty. They might not be in the wilderness, where Grimm could attack them at any moment, but sometimes, it didn't feel any different.

And Yang was very much aware they didn't have much Dust and bullets left for their weapons. Sure, they could kick the asses of everyone in the castle without either Dust or bullets, but if they stumbled on another bunch of Ice Grimm or whatever the zombie lords were, or something like them, they could be in trouble. They had to stay sharp.

“Showing that we cannot be easily subdued also helps our survival by preventing attempts to use force to control us,” Blake said, briefly looking up from where she was checking Gambol Shroud's ribbon for any sign of fraying or tearing.

Yang flashed her partner a grin - Blake had her back, as always. Then she walked over, briefly using her boot to stop one of Ruby's oversized bullets from rolling across the entire room, and sat on the bed next to Blake. “Need any help?”

“I’m almost done,” Blake replied.

“That wasn't my question.” Yang grinned again.

“I am fine. Thank you for the offer.” Blake stood and shifted Gambol Shroud from sword to pistol and then to chain-sickle before checking the sheath's cleaver mode.

“We need to head to the woods for some real training,” Yang said. “Where we can go all-out.”

“Oh, yes!” Ruby beamed at them as she reassembled her own weapon without looking at the parts. “We need to work on combo attacks, and Weiss said we can't do that here where everyone can watch us.”

“Because, you dolt, we don't want to show all our cards to our hosts,” Weiss said, doing a few moves and flourishes with her own blade.

“I know! But…” Ruby pouted again. “It feels like we're lying to our hosts.”

“We aren't lying to them,” Weiss said.

“We are - we're pretending to be noblewomen,” Yang corrected her with a grin.

“Technically, we merely didn't deny their assumptions,” Weiss replied with a slight pout.

Yang shrugged. “Works out the same from their point of view.” That kind of word-mincing never paid off.

“They have no opportunity to find out the truth. Not unless you slip up,” Weiss added with a glance at Ruby.

“But Weiss… The more you lie, the bigger the risk you’ll mess up! Even a kid knows that!” Ruby protested.

“Some secrets have to stay secrets,” Weiss shot back. “Our position as honoured guests here depends on our reputation, which derives from our supposed status.”

“And on the knowledge that we could take over the castle if we wanted,” Yang added with a grin.

“Oh, yes - we take over a castle we have no idea how to run. We probably kill or drive off all those who do in the process.” Weiss scoffed. “And then? We would not be any better than bandits!”

“‘Bandit Queen Yang’ has a nice ring to it,” Yang joked.

“Yang!” Ruby glared at her. Weiss did as well, but that was expected.

“Relax, I am joking.” Yang shrugged. “I know we can't do that.”

“We shouldn't even think about that! We are Huntresses, not bandits!” Ruby huffed.

“Sure, sure,” Yang said. “No taking over the castle. Not unless they try to forcefully marry you to Robb.”

Ruby gaped at her. “The Starks wouldn't do that!”

“I know,” Yang agreed.

“As long as they are aware that we might be hiding our true power, they will be cautious in their dealings with us,” Blake said. “But the line between respect and fear is thin. And fear can drive people to take actions they will regret.”

That sounded like a quote from one of Blake’s spicy books, but that didn't make it wrong, in Yang's opinion.

“As long as we do not break their laws and respect their customs - within reason,” Weiss added with a look at Ruby, “we can handle this.”

“I'm not marrying anyone,” Ruby said. “I'm too young, and I don't want to be the queen of the castle here.”

“Of course not. That's Nora's line!” Yang said, chuckling at the memories of their friend.

“She would love this,” Ruby said.

“Only until she realises that she can’t get more dust to blow up things here,” Yang said.

“Oh, yes.” Ruby looked down. “But neither can we.”

“Hey!” Yang reached out and tousled her sister's hair. “We don't need Dust to kick ass!”

“But…”

“No buts, or it's noogie time!”

“Eep! I'll be good!”

*****

“Ah, so this is how you do it here. Thank you, Mikken.” Yang smiled at the blacksmith even though she wasn’t really pleased by his explanation. She wouldn’t be able to recreate as many tools as she had thought. Not with the smithies here. “It’s a fine smithy.” It probably was, for Westeros. Though it would be better if this were a bad smithy - it would mean she could find a better one in this kingdom. Hopefully, they’d be back home before any of their tools or weapons broke.

“Thank you, my lady.” The old man smiled back at her, obviously proud. “It might not be up to your standards,” - he nodded at Ember Celica - “but I’ll match anyone in Westeros when it comes to castle-forged steel.”

Yang didn’t know if that was an empty boast or not, but the blades she had seen in the smithy were of good quality. For simple steel. Unfortunately, none of Team RWBY’s weapons were simple. “I believe you,” she said. “If I need to do some work, I’ll know where to go.”

“‘Do some work’?” Mikken cocked his head to the side, seemingly confused.

Yang grinned. “On my weapons - I made them myself.” She raised Ember Celica and let the empty chambers cycle and click. “But they need regular maintenance. Care,” she added when he didn’t seem to understand the word.

“I didn’t know you were a blacksmith as well, my lady,” he said, staring at her as if he had never seen her before.

“It’s tradition for a Huntress to craft her own weapon,” Yang explained. “My sister spent months designing and crafting Crescent Rose.”

“Oh, I had no idea. Of course, you can use the smithy,” he said. After a moment, he added. “I don’t want to presume I could watch when you use it?”

“Sure thing,” she told him.

His eyes widened and he gasped. “Oh, thank you, thank you, my lady. It’s an honour! Thank you!”

Yang nodded, trying not to show how confused she felt. Letting someone watch wasn’t a big deal, was it? Of course, if you knew how a Huntress’s weapon was built, you could plan how to counter it… Still, Ember Celica was a straightforward weapon. You couldn’t get simpler than shotgun-gauntlets - hit stuff and shoot it. OK, you could, but Jaune was an exception.

So she kept smiling, said her goodbye and left the smithy. She would have to check with the others if she had made another mistake.

On the way back, she spotted Jon and Arya in a corner of the yard. They seemed to be arguing with each other - at least Arya seemed angry at him.

Frowning slightly, she changed course. They two were usually thick as thieves, and it didn’t look as if Jon was fetching his sister for her mother - Yang was pretty familiar with how that usually went down.

“Yo!” she yelled halfway to their corner and waved.

Both jerked, looking startled, and Jon blushed at once. 

Now, that was unusual - and made Yang even more determined to find out what was going on. “What are you up to?” she asked as she joined them.

“Nothing,” Jon badly lied.

She raised her eyebrows at him, smirking, and he blushed even more. Then she turned to look at Arya, who was scowling - at Jon. 

But the little girl perked up at once. “We were discussing marriage, Lady Yang.”

“Arya!” Jon hissed.

“Marriage? Whose?” Yang kept her tone light, but if this concerned Ruby…

“Yours. And Jon’s,” Arya replied.

Yang blinked. “Mine?”

Jon actually grabbed Arya’s shoulder and pulled her back. “Don’t listen to her, my lady. She’s being stupid. I told her so, but she doesn’t listen!”

“Well, I’m listening,” Yang said, flashing her teeth at them.

Both froze, but Arya was quicker to recover and wriggled out of his slackened grip. “Jon is being stupid and doesn’t want to marry you even though he wants to, and it would be perfect!”

“What?” Yang stared at her.

“My lady… Lady Yang.. please, it’s not… Arya! Don’t… Don’t say such things!” Jon stammered.

Arya, though, glared at him, then stared defiantly at Yang. “It would be perfect! If Jon marries you, we have an alliance and Jon - and you - can stay here!”

It was obvious that Yang was missing something. But the gist was clear. More or less. She didn’t know why Jon couldn’t stay, but that wasn’t important right now. “And why does it have to be me?” she asked, trying not to clench her teeth at Arya.

The way Arya flinched meant Yang hadn’t been too successful. But she rallied quickly. “Because he can’t marry any of the others, but he can marry you because you’re both bastards!”

Bas… “What?” 

“Arya!” Jon grabbed her again. “You can’t say that!” He pulled her behind himself and faced Yang. “Please… she didn’t mean any offence! She’s just a little girl who doesn’t know anything! A stupid little girl!”

Did he think Yang would actually attack Arya? A girl half her size and about half her age? Really? Yang shook her head. She had to correct that. But, first… “Why do you think I’m a bastard?”

Now both were staring at her as if she had activated her Semblance. “But… Father said so!” Arya blurted out while peeking around Jon.

“Arya!”

“But he did!”

Oh. Yang sighed. Another misunderstanding. “Is this because Ruby and I have different last names?”

“Yes?” Arya didn’t seem very sure about that.

“That is how it works, my lady. If you are a bastard, you have a bastard’s name. Like Snow,” Jon said.

Oh. They hadn’t known that. Weiss wouldn’t like that. But Yang had to set things straight here. Weiss had been clear that they had to be seen as noblewomen. And Yang might not be an expert on nobility, but she knew that bastards weren’t nobles in Westeros. “That’s not how it works back home,” she told them. “You take the name of one of your parents. I took Dad’s, Ruby took Mom’s.” It was a bit more complicated than that, but Yang wasn’t going to explain the Xiao Long/Rose household arrangements.

“Oh. So… you’re not a bastard?” Arya started.

“Arya! She just told us that!” Jon said. “Please excuse us, my lady!” 

He sounded so desperate, Yang nodded and then waved while he literally dragged Arya away, starting to scold her before they were out of earshot.

Yang sighed. She was sure once she told the others, Weiss would blow her top again.

*****

 

Chapter 5: Meeting Royalty

‘Most of the records, for obvious reasons, that cover King Robert Baratheon’s reign focus on his rebellion against the Targaryen dynasty or the Succession. There is a dearth of sources covering his actual reign, although all agree that it was rather unspectacular, with the Greyjoy Rebellion standing out as the only notable event during the period - showing an unfortunately common bias towards war and other conflicts that persisted for centuries and, together with the loss of various records due to environmental hazards and wars, greatly hampers a modern historian’s attempts to gain a clearer picture of the realm at peace in those times. Fortunately, the Ruby Order appeared during the waning days of King Robert’s reign, and so we have several primary sources about the King’s meeting with the Ruby Order in Winterfell. However, as with most sources from that time, all of them have to be considered biased for the various factions involved in the Succession, so they must be diligently examined and interpreted to sift truth from fiction.

While it is well-documented, again for reasons that should be obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with that period of Westeros, that the King was prone to fathering bastards, even sources very favourable to his house mentioning it, we can state with confidence that he did not have any such relations with the Four Maidens. There is only one, albeit relatively oft-quoted, source claiming this, and the author has been proven not to have been in Winterfell at the time. Lacking any verified sources, the report can be dismissed as a complete fabrication. However, dismissing the claims that Queen Cersei, one of the most controversial persons of the era, showed hostility towards the Order as soon as they were introduced to her is much more difficult. Even sources favourable to her do not deny that she had a volatile temper and was both excessively vain and extremely proud, which would make such a reaction plausible. However, even this task pales in comparison to trying to determine what claim about Prince Joffrey’s reaction is actually true. The only thing all sources agree on is that he took great interest in the Four Maidens, albeit that could be said of anyone in the King’s company at the time.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Yang isn’t a bastard?” Eddard Stark asked again. Just to be sure he hadn’t misunderstood Jon and Arya. 

“No, father. We, ah… happened to bring the topic up,” Jon said with a glance at Arya that told Ned exactly who had brought up the topic, “and she clearly denied being a bastard - her father had married her mother, but she had left him shortly after Lady Yang’s birth.”

“Benjen said she had told him she was a bastard.” Ned’s brother had been clear about that.

“That apparently had been a misunderstanding. It’s a sore subject for Lady Yang, with her mother gone, and so she didn’t, ah, talk about it much,” Jon said. “But she told us that she took her father’s name, and Lady Ruby took her mother’s name, as was custom in their home.”

“Neither of them are bastards,” Arya added.

“I see.” Ned tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his guts, and the brief guilt for hiding the truth about Jon’s parentage from him, and leaned back in his seat. So, he had heard correctly. And what had seemed like another children’s scuffle blown out of proportion when Jon and Arya had all but barged into his solar, prompting Cat to scold them both, was now turning out to be a serious affair. Maybe deadly serious - he searched his memory; had he or anyone else ever treated Lady Yang as a bastard? Implied it? Insulted her honour? He didn’t recall any such incident, but people might have done so out of his view.

“By the Seven!” Cat whispered. Ned glanced at her and tensed - she had grown deathly pale and had stayed silent since Jon and Arya had started to explain. “We thought… And she knows that we - that all of us - have been mistaking her for a bastard?”

Jon and Arya grimaced, which was answer enough to bury Ned’s faint hope that Lady Yang hadn’t been aware of this part.

“Ned… she will think we have been telling people that she was a bastard!” Cat was trembling, and with good cause.

Ned felt like his blood had frozen in his veins. Calling someone a bastard… Blood feuds had been started over less. Much less. And if Lady Yang and her friends took offence, they might tear down Winterfell in response. Literally.

“Well, you told us she was!” Arya said. “I wouldn’t have asked her if I hadn’t thought she was a bastard.”

“Arya!” Cat snapped. “What possessed you to ask her such a thing?”

Arya pouted. “I wanted her and Jon to marry so we get our alliance and Jon can stay here.”

Ned blinked. Arya had… That was what she had kept in mind from the whole lecture they had given the children? 

Cat seemed too shocked to say anything.

And Jon shook his head. “I didn’t say anything! It wasn’t my idea! I tried to stop her, Father. I did.”

“You like her! And she likes you! It was obvious!” Arya protested.

Ned ignored her and looked at Cat. “We have to do something. Quickly.”

“Yes.” Cat nodded, regaining her composure. “We have to make amends. Before Lady Yang takes action.”

And Lady Ruby, of course. It was obvious now that they both were heirs to their families. 

“She didn’t seem mad,” Arya said. “She was more… surprised. Confused. She wasn’t mad, I tell you!”

Ned sighed. He couldn’t trust his daughter’s judgement in this, but maybe he could salvage this. “I’ll talk to her.” And he’d think about what amends he could offer to avoid a bloodbath.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Ned nodded at the courier and let the man take care of his horse and himself; he had ridden hard to bring the news Ned had expected: Robert was arriving today. Unless the wheelhouse of the royal family broke down again, though, unless Ned’s friend had suddenly become much more patient, Robert would probably ride ahead anyway.

He suppressed a sigh. Robert had the worst timing. Not that it was his friend’s fault. No, if anyone was at fault, it was Ned. And Benjen. If Ned’s brother had not mistakenly assured Lady Yang was a bastard, things might be different.

Might be, or might not - even with that knowledge, Ned wasn’t sure that he would have managed to secure an engagement between Robb and Lady Ruby or her sister. Cat thought so, but Ned disagreed. Arranging an engagement with the daughter of a house that wasn’t part of the North was often a delicate and lengthy affair under the best circumstances. And the circumstances with Team Ruby could hardly be called ideal, even without the unfortunate misunderstanding. 

He scoffed at his own thoughts. A misunderstanding? They had mistaken a legitimate noblewoman for a bastard! He had gone to the godswood and prayed to the Old Gods in gratitude that Lady Yang had not taken offence - had, actually, asked him not to punish Arya for her blunder! Despite her somewhat rash manners, she was obviously as kind as her sister.

And, unfortunately, as strange and different as well. All of them were - even Lady Weiss, who seemed the closest to understanding the North, likely because she hailed from a similar region in their homeland. Their manners and views sometimes seemed to be even more outrageous than their power. The way they acted, uncaring of their obvious rank and status, the way they sometimes marvelled at the most common things, such as common lemon cakes from the kitchen, yet seemed to take the Glass Gardens, Ned’s pride and joy, and the heated pipes of Winterfell, a marvel in the North, in stride… It was all so confusing. To be so powerful, yet naive in some ways, was as endearing as it was terrifying and made trying to deal with them a challenge. One like trying to transport a jar of Wildfire on a rocky road.

Honestly, Ned would prefer not to deal with their visitors. Send them away to Oldtown or King’s Landing, or Essos, and wish them well. But he couldn’t do that. The girls were too strong to be set loose, far too strong. If Ned didn’t get an alliance with them, someone else would - and Ned knew what many noble houses would do if they achieved that. Honour didn’t mean as much in the South as it did in the North, and even oaths would be put aside to satisfy ambition. Team Ruby might not fly or breathe fire, but they would wreck an army in the field as effectively as dragons could, and three dragons had been enough to conquer Westeros. How many nobles would follow Balon Greyjoy’s example if they thought - with good reason - that they could win against the might of the Seven Kingdoms?

The answer was: Too many. If Ned wanted to keep his family and lands safe, he needed to have an alliance with his guests. Otherwise, his own oaths to the crown might see him and his banners face them in the field. Ned had fought in two wars already; he didn’t want to fight in a third, and certainly not on the side doomed to lose.

Sometimes, Ned thought it would make the most sense to simply ask Lady Ruby straight away if she was amenable to an engagement with Robb, either for herself or for her sister, instead of trying to subtly sound them out beforehand.

But Cat was right; they couldn’t risk another blunder. Not when dealing with girls who could not only lift wagons without any trouble and cut down trees thicker than a man’s torso with a single swing of their blade, but also took full swings from swords to the face without a scratch. Granted, that had been a training sword, but any normal girl would have been dead or maimed after such a blow instead of telling Jon how happy she was that he finally stopped holding back. 

And as terrifying as it was to see them spar with each other, trading blows that could shatter stone on a miss, Ned was certain that they were holding back and hiding their true strength. They were good, easily better than most knights Ned had seen fight, but sometimes, they seemed to stumble or hesitate at odd moments - making mistakes no knight as skilled as they were would do. 

No, starting a fight with them would be a disaster for Ned and his family. And that was without considering that some of the smallfolk in Winterfell were muttering about the girls being messengers of the Old Gods. Or the Old Gods themselves. A ludicrous notion, of course - the girls might be foreigners from a strange land, but they were no more divine than Ned himself was unless the gods had truly gone crazy - but Ned didn’t want to find out what might happen if his people thought he’d go against the gods. Nothing good would come of that.

But all that didn’t change that Ned had failed to secure an engagement with Lady Ruby, and now Robert would arrive, with half the royal court, or so it seemed, and that would complicate matters.

Ned would have to talk to his friend as soon as possible to head off the potential disaster.

*****

“I can see the King's banner!” Perkin, the guard stationed at the top of the closest tower, yelled down.

Ned straightened and looked at his family. Everyone was present and dressed in their finest clothes. Even Arya - after her blunder had imperilled the entire family, his daughter knew better than to disobey her parents again. Cat just finished redoing the ties of her cloak before inspecting the rest of their children. Benjen stood next to them, dressed in the black leathers of the Night's Watch, and… Ned sighed. To the side, near the stables, Lady Yang was chatting with Jon. The last thing Ned wanted was for his nephew to draw Robert's attention, and even wearing a proper Northern dress, Lady Yang's hair and face would draw his friend's eye. 

But before he could think of the best way to separate the two, Lady Weiss had already wandered over and all but dragged Lady Yang back to the rest of their group, who were waiting slightly behind Ned as honoured guests. Lady Yang seemed amused rather than offended by being treated like a wayward child, he noticed.

“Alright, Team!” he heard Lady Ruby exclaim. “We're gonna meet a king, so let's be on our best behaviour!”

“Yeah!” Lady Yang chimed in, to the obvious displeasure of Lady Weiss. Lady Blake, on the other hand, seemed to be too busy staring at the kennels on the other side of the courtyard to pay any attention to the scene.

“Well, they aren't wearing their ‘combat clothes’,” Ned whispered when he saw Cat frowning as she joined his side.

Cat frowned at him in return. “You know how much work that took,” she whispered back.

“I know.” Kissing her would have been inappropriate, but he wrapped his arm around her waist for a brief, one-sided hug. If Lady Ruby and her friends had insisted on ‘making an impression’... Well, no need to worry about it any more.

And there came the King! Ned straightened and took a step forward as the royal party rode into Winterfell, with his friend in the lead, flanked by two members of the Kingsguard. He smiled - he hadn’t seen his friend in almost ten years. And Robert…

…had grown fat, Ned realised. 

“Ned!” Robert bellowed - at least his voice had not changed - as he dismounted and walked towards him.

“Your Grace.” Ned knelt, as did everyone else in the courtyard. He resisted the sudden urge to glance over his shoulder to check if his guests were kneeling as well, though the lack of any reaction from Robert and the others in his party told him they were. “Winterfell is yours.”

“Stand up, Ned, and let me look at you! You haven't changed a bit!”

“Unlike you,” Ned replied with a faint smile as Robert hugged him. He heard Cat gasp softly next to him, but his friend laughed. “I know, I know! I can still swing a hammer, though!”

Ned believed him - his friend might have grown fat, but his strength hadn't waned much, if at all, as Ned's ribs told him.

Robert released him and greeted Cat. “Lady Catelyn! As beautiful as you were at your wedding!”

“Your Grace.” Cat curtsied, and Ned caught Lady Ruby staring intently at her as Robert greeted his children before turning towards the Prince, who had dismounted. 

“Joffrey! Come! Let me present you to my best friend!”

Ned studied the lad as he approached. He was slender and had the Lannister hair, Ned noticed. Though, he realised with a mixture of amusement and worry as he saw the Prince stare at Ned's guests, the Prince obviously had his father's eye for the ladies.

Prince Joffrey wasn’t too distracted to forget his manners, though, and greeted Ned and his family properly.

Then the queen arrived with her two younger children in tow - on foot, since they must have been travelling in the giant wheelhouse, too wide and tall to pass through Winterfell’s gate, and more greetings were exchanged, as well as bread and salt shared. Where Robert was genuine and charming, Queen Cersei was polite but aloof. And her expression when she noticed Lady Ruby and her friends, coupled with a glance at Robert, spelt trouble.

“And who are those charming maidens, Ned?” Robert had noticed them as well, of course.

Ned cleared his throat. “Ah, Your Grace - may I introduce Lady Ruby, Lady Weiss, Lady Blake and Lady Yang. They are guests at Winterfell - they were stranded in the North after a mishap.”

To his relief, Lady Ruby didn't cheerfully start telling the royal family about everything they had gone through but merely curtsied with an almost shy smile. “We're honoured to make your acquaintance, Your Grace!” she said as her friends curtsied as well - with more grace than her, Ned couldn't help noticing.

Robert beamed at them, but the Queen's expression could have frozen molten steel, and despite the scowl that appeared on Queen Cersei’s face, Ned was relieved when Robert insisted on paying his respects to Lyanna, prompting the Queen to proceed to their quarters with her children without him.

Their quarters, which were, he realised, perhaps, a bit too close to Lady Ruby's, but Ned couldn't do anything about that without offending either the Royal family or Lady Ruby and her friends.

He needed to explain a few things to his friend, and that was best done in private and as soon as possible. Fortunately, the crypt offered both.

*****

“A word, Robert,” Ned called when his friend had paid his respects in front of Lyanna's grave.

“Yes?” His friend frowned. “I actually have something to talk to you as well…”

“It’s important,” Ned told him. “Very important.” For everyone. “You need to know a few things about my guests.”

“Oh?” Robert grinned.

Ned sighed again. “They are not from Westeros. Nor from Essos. They aren't familiar with our customs, so if they seem to give offence, it's because they don't know better.”

“Oh, don't worry! Who could carry a grudge against such lovely maidens?” Robert smiled, then frowned. “Except for Cersei, of course. I see the problem.”

No, you don't, Ned thought. He took a deep breath. “Each of the four maidens also could defeat the entire Kingsguard by themselves.” Probably with one hand tied behind their back.

Robert blinked. “What?”

Ned sighed. This would take a bit to explain so his friend would believe it.

*****

The King kept looking at them even though they were wearing the proper dresses and looked perfectly normal. So, why did he stare at them as if they had done something wrong? They hadn't! Ruby Rose glanced at her team, who was seated next to her, at the end of the ‘high table’, as they called the table for the Starks and their guests, to check again, but no, everyone was on their best behaviour. And Blake's cat ears were hidden under her ribbon, as usual, so that wasn't it either. And Ruby hadn't stained her dress.

She glanced at her team. None of their dresses were stained. Or ‘inappropriate’ - they were covered from neck to floor, not very tight so at least they could move in them though fighting would tear them, with long sleeves - though not as long as the billowing sleeves of the Queen; those almost reached the floor or so - and a high collar with lots of needlework and fur that was slightly itchy if you closed it. They also looked very similar to each other, but apparently, that was the style in the North. At least, they had different colours - Ruby’s was dark red, Yang’s was dark yellow, Blake’s was dark grey and Weiss’s was dark blue. But they were so bland, no one should be looking at them!

She clenched her teeth. This was making her nervous! She felt like she did whenever a teacher at Beacon frowned at her even though she had done all her homework and hadn't been sneaking out of the school at night. But they hadn't really done anything - they hadn't even done any training today; Weiss had insisted that they went over, again, how to behave in front of the King instead. All those rules had been very confusing. Fortunately, Ruby had paid attention to how Lady Catelyn curtsied, or she would have messed up.

Oh.

“Do you think Lord Eddard told him about us? The King, I mean,” she whispered to Weiss, who was seated directly next to her.

“I believe so, yes,” Weiss replied in that tone she sometimes took when she thought Ruby had asked a stupid question. 

She blushed and hoped that Benjen, seated on her other side, hadn't overheard them. That would be embarrassing. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t also assumed that, but it was better to check before making assumptions, especially if they involved royalty. There were just too many mistakes you could make if you were nervous (like she was)! She was very glad that Team RWBY wasn't spread out between the new guests, like the other Starks were, but seated together. 

“Where are you from, Lady Ruby?”

She froze for a moment. That was Prince Joffrey, talking to her across the table - he was sitting much closer to Lord Stark, next to Sansa. Was she supposed to talk across so many other people? Wasn't that rude? Oh, the others around them had fallen silent. Even the little man, Lord Lannister. Well, Joffrey was the crown prince. If he spoke, people listened, right?

And she needed to answer, or she'd be rude. To royalty. “We're from Vale,” she told him. “Your Grace.” Couldn't forget the title. Weiss had been very clear about that. “Not the Vale of Westeros, but one of the four kingdoms of our home. Well, Yang and I are from Vale, Weiss is from Atlas and Blake from Mistral.” That was the cover story, at least, since she was hiding her Faunus ears. “But we all go to Beacon, the Huntsman Academy of Vale.”

“You have an academy for hunters?” The Prince sounded amused.

“Huntsmen and Huntresses, Your Grace,” she corrected him, then flushed in embarrassment. Was she supposed to correct royalty? But if no one corrected them, how would they keep from repeating their mistakes?

“They are the protectors of their people, Prince Joffrey,” Lord Eddard cut in. “Like an order of knights.”

“Knights?” The Prince was laughing, and Ruby frowned. He wasn't the only one, she noticed - many of the new guests were laughing or smirking. Even the handsome Knight of the Kingsguard.

Arya looked like she wanted to yell at the Prince but didn’t. And Sansa looked lost.

“They are formidable warriors, Your Grace,” Benjen said. “I've not seen the like in my life.”

Ruby smiled at him for his support.

“I'll believe that you haven't seen girls fighting,” the Prince replied with a smirk. “You're a Black Brother, aren’t you?”

Benjen tensed at that but didn't correct the Prince even though Ruby knew that he had been fighting Wildlings, and they included women - spearwives they were called, as Ruby had learned - amongst their raiders. Some of them had attacked Team RWBY on the way south.

Benjen wasn't the only one who looked annoyed - or angry. Robb was glaring at the Prince, and even Lord Stark was frowning. Maybe Ruby should say something? The King and his family obviously didn't know about Team RWBY, so…

“You have to admit, Ned, that none of them looks as if they could lift a sword, much less swing it while wearing armour,” the King spoke up. “Now, I believe you - you have never told me a lie - but you have to admit that it sounds a little far-fetched that they could not merely fight but defeat any knight in the castle, including the Kingsguard.”

Ruby almost missed how Lord Stark winced when everyone at the table started to talk at once.

“Preposterous!”

“I've seen them cut through trees with one swing!”

“Little girls like that? Do you think we're fools?”

“They could fight you all at once and win! Maybe they should!”

“Arya!”

“Your Grace, please, I've seen them train myself…”

“And here I thought Lord Stark had no sense of humour!”

“I would not be so sure, brother…”

“Those little girls beating grown knights? Hah!”

“Northern knights, maybe - there’s so few of them to begin with.”

“I know what swords they are handling!”

“I wouldn't mind ‘fighting’ them!”

Ruby pressed her lips together and balled her hands into fists under the table. They were supposed to be polite and behave like ladies, but this wasn't how ladies were treated! She didn’t know as much about this country’s customs as Weiss did, but she knew that! She glared at the King - he was the King, so he was responsible for his people! And he wasn't doing anything! No, even worse - when he looked at her, he was smirking! Smirking when people were mocking her team!

Screw it! She stood up, narrowed her eyes at him with a huff, then activated her Semblance and dashed around the table too fast for anyone to see, much less react, coming to a stop behind him. Gritting her teeth, she grabbed his chair and lifted him over her head while the rose petals trailing behind her faded slowly.

Everyone froze and stared at her, and Ruby felt her cheeks flush before she clenched her teeth. She had no reason to be embarrassed!

“Unhand the King!” someone - one of the knights in white plate armour - snapped, his sword out and pointed at her. The other Kingsguard she recognised, the handsome blonde, though he wasn't wearing his armour, was standing as well, sword drawn.

“Ruby!” Weiss yelled.

“You go, Sis!” Yang cheered.

“Lady Ruby!” Lady Stark looked shocked.

Then the King laughed out loud. She looked up and saw he was leaning over the side - she had to adjust her grip - and he was smiling at her. “So, Ned was right! You are stronger than the Mountain!”

Now, she felt embarrassed. Had he wanted her to lose her temper? Had she played into his hand? But she had made her point. She slowly lowered the chair down to the ground, taking care not to drop it or break it. “I don't know who the Mountain is, but we're pretty strong, yes.”

“And modest, too!” The King had a booming laugh, like Professor Port. He had a similar figure as well.

“Well…” What should she say? She felt like a fool for losing her temper. Everyone was staring at her. “...we're Huntresses,” she finished. Lame.

He laughed again, and the others joined in. Or almost all of them - the Queen and Lady Stark weren't laughing, she noted. And Weiss was covering her face with her hands.

But the King was laughing, and the creeps making lewd comments had shut up, and her dress hadn't been torn while she ran, so she counted this as a win.

*****

Weiss Schnee was going to kill Ruby. In self-defence because Ruby kept trying to kill her. Assaulting the King! After everything they had gone over about how to act in front of royalty!

At least the king had a sense of humour and was amused - he was laughing and joking with Ruby. And, unless Weiss was completely mistaken, which was unlikely but not entirely impossible, the King had expected something like this to happen - and had engineered it. Of course, as the King, he would be used to plots and power plays, and she could see how he used his portly stature and boisterous nature to fool others into overlooking his depths. Not unlike Professor Port.

She looked away from Ruby, who was blushing furiously in response to another joke from the King, and glanced at the rest of Team RWBY. Blake was as composed as ever, though Weiss could tell she wasn't truly relaxed but ready to spring into action, and Yang…

“That's my little sis!”

…was as cheerful about the whole near-catastrophe as Weiss should have expected.

She sighed under her breath and looked at the rest of the table. Lord Stark was smiling, though it was hard to tell if he was truly relaxed or just polite - he wasn't very expressive. Lady Catelyn, on the other hand, was not happy; Weiss knew her well enough now to be able to tell. Sansa was looking relieved and slightly confused. The girl was obviously still adjusting to the sudden development. And the Prince…

Weiss frowned. The Prince was staring at Ruby. He had gone from dismissive to completely focused, maybe fixated on her. No, she realised when he glanced in her direction, he wasn't fixated on Ruby - he was focused on Team RWBY.

She met his eyes with a cool expression, inclining her head in the slightest hint of a nod. She was a Schnee, and prince or not, Schnees bowed to no one. Well, not unless manners demanded it. But no one would intimidate her.

He smirked and then looked at Blake, then Yang, ignoring Sansa's attempts to restart their conversation. 

Weiss suppressed the urge to shake her head and let her gaze wander. Arya was talking the second prince’s head off, or so it seemed, and Bran looked like he was answering a lot of questions from the princess. Children being children, in other words. The adults were far more important. Lord Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf, was joking with the blonde Kingsguard; as Weiss understood they were brothers to the queen, though the knight only seemed to listen half-heartedly. He wasn’t smirking at them any more, Weiss noted with more than a little satisfaction. While Ruby's impulsive action had gone against the plan they had agreed upon for this - it was pretty much the opposite of keeping your head down and behaving like noble ladies - Weiss had to admit that it had been galling to be laughed at and dismissed as liars.

She would still have a talk with Ruby about this.

Yes, she told herself when she saw the Queen's cold expression as Ruby was talking with the King, they would have to discuss this.

But in private, not in public.

“This was an impressive demonstration, Lady Weiss.”

She turned her head and looked at the little man - Lord Tyrion, she corrected herself. “I am happy you think so, my lord,” she replied. He had heterochromia, she noticed when she met his eyes.

“Are all of you as fast and strong?”

“We're not quite as fast as Lady Ruby, but we're much stronger than we look.” That was already known by everyone in Winterfell, and she had no doubt that the visitors would know it by tomorrow at the latest.

“I've never seen someone so fast you couldn't see them move - not that far, at least,” he went on. “Those petals she was trailing… They appeared and vanished like magic.”

Oh. “It's a family trait,” she told him. And it was an effect of Ruby’s Semblance, not ‘magic’, but that was another topic.

“Ruby's a Rose,” Yang added with a grin.

“Ah.” Lord Tyrion nodded. “And you have similar traits, I presume.”

“Not like her,” Weiss said.

“I just hit stuff,” Yang cut in again, smacking her fist into her palm.

“Fascinating.” The man smiled. “Although, as my dear brother is fond to say, mere strength and quickness will always yield to skill.”

Not when facing a Huntress, Weiss thought. “Indeed,” she said, smiling politely.

“Well, I suspect we'll be granted the opportunity to judge how skilled you are ourselves - I believe the King will insist on a demonstration.” Lord Tyrion nodded towards the head of the table with a smirk.

Weiss followed his gaze and saw that Ruby was still talking to the King, standing between him and Lord Stark - and moving her hands as if she were wielding her scythe while she told him about Crescent Rose. “I believe so as well,” she said in a dry voice.

Maybe giving Ruby a chaperone wouldn't have been a bad idea. Weiss wanted to join the discussion, but she knew better than to push their luck and butt in. Ruby's stunt had worked out, but that didn't mean another faux pas would be tolerated, much less welcomed.

“Will you be sparring with the Kingsguard, then, my lady?” Lord Tyrion asked before taking a sip from his glass.

Weiss would rather not spar with, according to Bran, the best fighters in the entire kingdom. She had no doubt that they wouldn't take a loss well. But she also was sure that they couldn't avoid that. Still, this would take a delicate touch to…

“Hell, yeah!” Yang beamed at Lord Tyrion's brother. “Can't wait to find out how good you are!”

The knight seemed surprised at first before he smirked at her. “You took the words out of my mouth, my lady.”

“Oh, great, now there are two of them,” Blake whispered next to Weiss.

Weiss nodded, but her attention was on the Queen, whose expression had grown even colder - she was openly frowning, and at Yang and the others, not at Ruby any more, Weiss noticed.

And she couldn't help wondering again if Ruby charming the King had been a good idea or not.

They had to discuss this. And soon.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and you spent the entire evening talking to that barbarian, shaming your own family! Shaming me!”

“What are you talking about, woman? I spent the whole evening next to you!”

“Ignoring me while that harlot all but crawled into your lap!”

“Don't insult Ned's guests, woman! I know the difference between a harlot and a noblewoman!”

“And yet, you treat them all the same! I bet they're already waiting in your bed!”

“It's not as if you'll be there, is it?”

“Get out!”

“With pleasure! Who would want to stay in the same chamber as a woman so cold, even hot springs freeze around her?”

Blake Belladonna, hiding in the shadows beneath the windows leading into the royal bedroom - the Queen's chamber, it seemed, given what she overheard - winced as she heard the sound of a door being slammed shut. It was obvious that the marriage between the King and Queen was… ‘rocky’ would be an euphemism if this was a typical evening talk for the royal couple.

“That oaf! To disgrace me so by lusting after foreign barbarians! In front of the entire hall and his supposed best friend. So much for the ‘honourable Lord Stark’! Shaming me by bringing such foreign sluts to the table as if they were noble ladies! And that after dragging us up to this freezing wasteland just to name this northern oaf as his hand!”

Blake's ears twitched as the Queen ranted on. She presented an icy demeanour, but it seemed that right beneath it, a volatile temper was hiding to erupt as soon as she was in private. And given her obvious jealousy - even though there was no reason for her to be jealous at all; it wasn't as if Ruby had any designs on the king since the man was old enough to be her father and as fat as Professor Port! - that spelt trouble for Team RWBY. 

She looked around - the King was supposed to be guarded by at least one member of the Kingsguard at all times, but they obviously didn't patrol the outside of the keep's walls - and, once assured there were no witnesses, quickly climbed along the wall to listen at the next window, which, according to what she had overheard two servants talk about in the morning, would be the Crown Prince's chamber.

“What do you think, Hound? Is it a trick? A mummer's farce?”

Hound? Blake shivered. If the prince had a dog…

“Didn't look like a trick.”

That was a harsh voice…. Oh. That would be the Prince's ‘sworn sword’ - his bodyguard. The one as tall as Yatsuhashi from Team CFVY, with half his face covered in burn scars. Why was he here? Did the Prince fear an assassination attempt in the keep of his father's best friend? Or… did the Prince fear Team RWBY had taken offence at his comments?

“But how could a slip of a girl be so strong? It must be a trick. This is impossible. Oh, no! I know it! She is no girl but a Faceless Man!”

Faceless man? Blake hadn't heard that term before.

The Hound grunted.

“No, it makes perfect sense! They know Father's weakness for pretty women and used that to get close to him to assassinate him! We have to tell the Kingsguard!”

Blake froze as she heard the door swing open. The Prince thought Ruby was an assassin posing as a girl? How would that work? Magic, obviously, but… That could wait; she had to know how the King would react! 

Quickly, she scaled the wall, using her Semblance to create clones to push off from, allowing her to jump from hiding spot to hiding spot while they shattered beneath her, until she was hanging from a slight outcrop above the king's chamber. If the Prince was running, he would reach the chamber's doors about… and she should…

Oh. She blushed. The King was… ‘busy’, or so it sounded. At the very least, he was distracted. 

And, she added, when she heard the knocking on the door and his harsh reaction, not happy to be disturbed in the middle of being busy with carnal activities.

“What? Ser Barristan!”

“Your Grace, Prince Joffrey insisted that it was a matter of life and death.”

“Yes, Father, it’s… what are you doing?”

“Being interrupted, Boy. By you. Why aren’t you in bed yet?”

“But… Who's that in your bed?”

“None of your business. Now, what do you want?”

“But…”

“Boy!”

“I know how the girl could lift your chair with you sitting on it, Father! She is a Faceless Man!”

“What?”

“That's why she was so strong, father! It all makes sense! She's here to assassinate you!”

“That's the stupidest thing I've heard all day, Boy!”

“But, father…”

“If she were an assassin, she would have posed as dear… Lerra here.”

“It's Lorra, Your Grace.”

“Whatever! They would be sneaking into my bed to kill me, not out themselves by showing off their strength!”

“But Father…”

“Now, get out, Boy! I'm busy!”

“But Father…!”

“Out, or I'll tan your hide!”

Blake winced again and left before the king returned to being busy. The others had to hear this.

*****

“What? The Prince thought I was an assassin?” 

Blake nodded. “He did. He went to disturb the King in his bed.”

“But… how?” Ruby looked incredulous.

“I could imagine a Semblance allowing you to mask your true form,” Weiss said, “but since they don't have Aura in this world, it must be magic.”

“Or it's bullshit,” Yang commented. “Rumours and hearsay. If that was possible, wouldn't someone else have brought it up?” She looked at Blake.

Blake shook her head, “I haven't heard the term until today. I'll check with Luwin tomorrow.” Another excuse to visit the library was always welcome.

Ruby was still shaking her head in obvious disbelief. “He thought I was a man? That makes no sense!”

“Well, at least the King set him straight,” Yang said. “Imagine if he had believed the Prince!”

Ruby groaned.

“We have another problem, though,” Blake said. “The Queen thinks we're trying to seduce the King.” Or vice versa - not that it seemed the Queen would care about the difference. “And she's got a low opinion of us.” Better not go into details. Yang might take offence on Ruby's behalf.

Weiss sighed.

“We just talked about weapons! He has a huge warhammer!” Ruby blurted out. “And she was right there, next to him! She should have heard everything!”

“I could hear you, and I was sitting at the other end of the table,” Weiss said.

“Really?” Ruby blinked.

Blake was intrigued. She had had trouble overhearing Ruby’s talk with so many others speaking up, so…

“No. But I knew what you were saying from how you acted,” Weiss told her.

Ah.

“Oh.” Ruby pouted.

“So… tomorrow. We're expected to demonstrate our ‘fighting prowess’,” Weiss said. “This will complicate things.”

“Why? The Starks and their people already know we're strong,” Ruby said.

“The Queen might be even more offended if we show off,” Weiss said. “I don't have to explain how bad it is if the wife of the King dislikes us, do I?”

“No…” Ruby sighed. “And I was looking forward to sparring.”

“And if the Prince tells others about his theory…” Weiss shook her head. 

“We're still sparring,” Yang said.

“But now the mood's ruined!”

“Then we'll change the mood!”

Blake smiled. Her partner was always so optimistic. But she doubted that things would be as easy - or smooth - tomorrow. Not after what she had overheard today on her excursion. And she hadn't even reached Lord Tyrion's chamber.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

As Yang Xiao Long approached the training yard, the men using it stopped at once - the guards of Winterfell because they knew her, the new guys because they were staring at her as if they had never seen a hot Huntress before. Well, they had never seen a hot Huntress in her combat clothes.

“Good morning, Lady Yang. You’re early,” Ser Rodrik Cassel, the master-at-arms, greeted her. He was frowning, but probably more at the gawking crowd than at her. At least, Yang hoped so - she knew she was disrupting his daily routine. But, hey - she had a reason she was here before the rest of Team RWBY. And the reason was standing in the back with another Kingsguard.

“I promised to spar with Ser Jaime,” she said. “I wanted to check if he was available before we give our demonstration.”

“Ah, of course.” Ser Rodrik smiled broadly. “In that case, the training yard is yours.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, frowning a little. She had never seen the man look so happy before.

“Oh, yes. Ser Jaime was concerned he could not train properly in Winterfell, lacking skilled opponents, so I am happy you will step in.”

“Ah.” So, that was it - the new knight had dissed the guards, and Ser Rodrik wanted to see him taken down a peg or two. Well, Yang was happy to oblige; the knight was handsome, but he had an insufferable smirk.

“Thank you,” she told the old man, then jumped over the fence and stepped into the middle of the training yard. “Ser Jaime! Are you free for a little sparring match?”

He looked at her, then looked her over, raising his eyebrows with one of those stupid smirks. “Shouldn’t you put your armour on before challenging people?”

Yang snorted and put her hand on her hip, flashing a grin at him. “I am ready; these are my combat clothes.”

“You fight in these?” He seemed surprised.

“We train as we fight.”

“Without armour? I would never forgive myself if a strike of mine would add a blemish to your fair appearance!”

She rolled her eyes. Unlike Jon, who had said more or less the same, in simpler words, Jaime didn’t sound as if he meant it. “Trust me, there’s no danger of that.”

“You seem very confident for someone who has never seen me fight,” he shot back, still smirking. “Strength isn’t everything.”

She made a point of sighing loudly, then turned to look at their audience, focusing her Aura. “Ser Rodrik, would you mind demonstrating to Ser Jaime that he can’t really hurt me?”

“Gladly, Lady Yang.” Ser Rodrik started walking towards her and drew his sword. Half the audience started snickering. The other half looked confused.

Ser Jaime was part of the latter and frowned. “I fail to see what…” He trailed off when Ser Rodrik reached Yang, raised his sword high - and brought it down in a two-handed swing, straight on Yang’s head. 

People screamed, and the older Kingsguard next to Ser Jaime rushed forward, his own sword drawn. “Stop!”

Ser Rodrik didn’t stop and hit her on the head. Her Aura took the blow - she could easily afford the cost - and she turned to grin at Ser Jaime while the guards of Winterfell chuckled, and some cheered.

Both Kingsguards were staring at her. The older one recovered first, nodding at her with slightly narrowed eyes as he sheathed his blade, and Ser Jaime smiled wryly. “Well played, my lady,” he said as he stepped forward. 

She grinned at him and did a few stretches. “Don’t hold back.”

“Oh, trust me, I won’t.” In a lower voice, he added: “Let’s see if you are as skilled as you are thickheaded.”

She chuckled - the guy had some wit to him - and smashed her gauntlets together. “We fight until one yields or is knocked out, alright?”

“As you wish.” He nodded, still smiling, but, as Blake would say, it didn’t reach his eyes. So, he was taking her seriously. Good.

“Ser Rodrik, if you’d like to give the signal?” Yang asked, turning her head.

“Very well.” The knight was still smiling widely, and judging by the narrowed eyes of Ser Jaime, the Kingsguard knew what was up.

“Begin.”

Yang dashed forward, drawing her right fist back for a telegraphed punch.

Ser Jaime moved to the side, his shield raised to deflect her blow, and lunged, trying to stab her in the stomach.

She threw herself forward, over his blade, flipping over in the middle of her jump, and planted both boots onto his chest and shoulder. It wasn’t really a kick - she flexed her knees as she did so, but it sent him staggering anyway, and when she pushed off, jumping away, he was sent sprawling.

Half the audience cheered again. Loudly. Ser Jaime must know how to make friends.

He rose quickly, shield and sword ready to defend against an attack, but Yang stayed back - it was no fun kicking a guy when he was down.

But it was fun teasing and taunting a guy who was a bit too full of himself, so she smirked and gestured with her right hand, inviting him to attack.

He did and charged at her, and she blocked his sword with her left gauntlet and his shield with her right. He stepped back before her - admittedly slow - kick could sweep his feet, then attacked again, trying to stab her in the calf.

She jumped up, flipping head over heels, and landed in a crouch a few metres away, then charged him. A flip of her left arm struck his sword to the side, and while he got his shield between them, she dropped in front of him and swept his legs out from under him.

Once more, he ended up on the ground, but he got up as quickly as before. “Well done,” he said - a bit too lightly, to be honest, in her opinion. “I see I will have to work on my footwork.”

Yang grinned. “Let me give you a hand and a leg up!” She dashed forward, and they started trading blows, sword and shield against Ember Celica, with the occasional high kick thrown in.

She was holding back, of course, but he was good. Damned good - he made Jon look like a beginner. If she weren’t stronger, faster and hotter, he probably would make her sweat. And he might trounce Jaune even with Jaune not holding back - as long as Jaime could avoid getting hit, of course, which would be a very tall order.

But Yang wasn’t Jaune, and so the match ended with Jaime yielding, breathing heavily and not looking quite so smug or shiny any more, and with Yang not even winded.

“And here I thought I wouldn’t find good entertainment until the evening. To see my dear brother humbled like this by a mere girl… How will your pride survive this?”

Oh. Lord Tyrion must have arrived at one point during the sparring match, and Yang hadn’t noticed. He was smirking at Jaime, and despite how different they looked, they had the same smirk. Definitely brothers.

“My pride would say that there’s no one who can stand up to Lady Yang,” Ser Jaime shot back. “It was a good bout, my lady. Enlightening, I’d say.”

“Yeah, good fight,” she replied. But she couldn’t help thinking that the man didn’t really mean it. Well, Winterfell’s guards might have been cheering a bit too loudly at his defeat, and that would hurt anyone’s ego or pride.

The other Kingsguard, though, nodded at her with all the signs of honest respect.

“Well, you’ve got the right hair - can we claim you as a Lannister? So Jaime’s loss stays in the family?” Lord Tyrion chuckled at his own joke, and Yang laughed as well.

But she suspected that the small noble wasn’t completely joking.

*****

 

Chapter 6: Royal Affairs

‘Some might wonder how the Order of the Ruby, stranded far from their home, might have earned such - documented beyond doubt by multiple sources - efforts of various noble houses to form an alliance with them through marriage if they did not actually possess supernatural powers. A few scholars even went so far as to denounce the four maidens as frauds who were using a made-up homeland, conveniently too distant to be reached, to deceive Westeros’s nobility in order to secure a life as nobles, citing their lack of familiarity with Westeros’s customs and nobility as proof that they were of common origin. However, such deductions could only come from an appalling ignorance of crucial aspects of the culture of the Seven Kingdoms at the time. In this era, Westeros, both smallfolk and nobility, were obsessed with chivalry and martial might, represented by outstanding individuals. Not unjustly so, for this was a time when the armoured knight still ruled the battlefield - at least in Westeros. While the wars in Essos were already showing glimpses of the changes that would, slowly but surely, result in raising the infantry to a status not enjoyed since the days of the Ghiscari legions, before they encountered the Freehold’s dragons, battles in Westeros were still mainly decided by the charge of the heavy cavalry. And nothing represented this as well as the mounted knight. Tourneys, where the best knights of the realm showed off their skills, were the highlight of the smallfolk’s lives, and whatever house could call a champion their own gained much prestige. The Kingsguard, gathering - at least more often than not - the finest knights of the Seven Kingdoms was renowned not only for their loyalty to the royal family but also for their skill at arms, and several famous battles saw them demonstrate that they had earned their reputation many times over. It should not come as a surprise, then, that four maidens from exotic lands with superb martial skills, on par or superior to the most famous Kingsguard according to how one interprets the entries in the Book of Brothers detailing their encounters with the Order of the Ruby, would garner such interest. What noble house would not wish to claim one of them for their family - and what noble would not hope to see his sons inherit such talent? That the Order of the Ruby inspired many girls and women to follow their example shows the impact the four maidens’ martial expertise had on Westeros’s society and culture. I would even argue that the Order of the Ruby did more to advance the rights of women in Westeros than Dorne’s cultural influence over centuries, although that is harder to prove due to how intertwined both factors often ended up despite Dorne’s contribution mainly being limited to the high nobility.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Hah! Too slow! I will… ack!”

“Haha! Don’t boast about being fast when I’m fighting you!”

“Speed doesn’t help if you can’t hit me!”

“Oops! Didn’t see you! Sorry!”

“Yeah, right! Just wait!”

Ser Barristan Selmy had seen many battles, both at tourneys and in war, and many more sparring matches. He was no stranger to how tempers or grudges could turn even a sparring match with training swords into a dangerous fight, and he had seen too many knights die or end up maimed in a tourney not to be aware that every time you crossed blades with someone, the Stranger was paying attention to both of you.

And yet, if not for the laughter and teasing quips the four girls exchanged while fighting each other, he would have thought he was watching a battle to the death. They were exchanging blows that left craters in the earth and smashed wood to splinters when they missed, showing strength and speed that put the best knights he knew to shame. His pride might baulk, but his honesty required him to admit that Lord Stark had been correct - a single one of the four would match the entire Kingsguard in a fair fight. For even if you were quick enough to see them strike - Barristan managed it more often than not unless Lady Ruby used her strange “Semblance” to vanish and reappear in a flurry of petals - how could you win if your enemy could not be hurt even by blows that would shatter stone?

Did shatter stone, he corrected himself with a slight wince when he saw what Lady Ruby’s scythe did to the wall that Lady Blake had just used to vault across the entire training yard.

“Sorry! It’s Blake’s fault for moving!”

“Don’t blame me if you can’t control your weapon!”

“Hah!” the King, sitting in front of him on a makeshift dais, pounded his armrest, making the page attending him jerk and almost spill his wine. “Did you see that? Who would need siege weapons with that power!”

Lord Stark nodded, not saying much - which, Barristan knew, was typical for the man. He wasn’t transfixed by the sight, though, unlike the members of the royal party. Of course, as Barristan understood, this was not new for him or his guards. To think one could grow accustomed to such a display! If Barristan had not been on duty, he would likely have ignored everything outside the training yard.

Prince Joffrey, standing next to his father, nodded. “Yes, Father.” The boy, unlike his mother the Queen, had chosen to attend the ‘sparring match’ - insisted on it, actually, in a rare display of defying his mother’s wishes. “And their weapons… any sword except for a Valyrian blade would have shattered.”

“Yeah, Boy! Good eye!”

“Thank you, Father!”

Barristan glanced around for potential dangers to the King and his family - other than catching a stray blow from the spectacle in front of them - and hoped that was a sign of the boy leaving the Queen’s shadow and forming closer ties with his father, the King. Although he also hoped the boy wouldn’t take too much after his sire; the last thing the realm needed was for the crown prince to father a bastard with a girl strong enough to kick down a castle’s gate - or wall. 

“Hah!” 

Lady Ruby swung her ‘scythe’ in a wide arc, forcing her sister to jump over it, then spun it around so fast for an overhead slash, Barristan could barely follow the movement - yet Lady Yang still blocked the strike with her gauntlets and jumped away.

Next to him, Ser Jaime shook his head and softly snorted. “Strangely, the longer I watch, the more my pride recovers from the blow Lady Yang dealt it.”

The King guffawed at that, but his eyes remained fixated on the fight before them even as the page refilled his goblet.

Barristan smiled; his brother in the Kingsguard was not wrong. Who would dare mock him for losing to Lady Yang after seeing this terrifying display of power beyond anything he had ever seen? “They could outwrestle the Mountain, I believe,” he said.

“Definitely. Ser Gregor has done many things - often far more horrible things than damaging someone’s castle - but even he would not be able to shatter stone like that,” Ser Jaime’s brother, sipping from a goblet of his own, commented. “I feel I must reassess the tales from the Age of Heroes I’ve read. Maybe they have not grown as much in the telling for thousands of years as I was assured by the Grand Maester. Although in this case, they would have had to shrink in the telling until grown men were reduced to my size.”

Ser Jaime, the Prince and the King laughed at that. “That’s a good jibe, Imp!” the King blurted out. “Oh, watch that!”

In front of them, Lady Weiss had caught a kick to the chest that threw her across the yard and into the stone wall, cracking the surface. Barristan winced. The girl recovered, gritted her teeth and kicked off, leading with her sword, and put Lady Yang on the defensive with several lightning-quick stabs.

“Hah! She must be mad!”

While Lady Weiss attacked Lady Yang, and Lady Blake led Lady Ruby on a chase probably meant to exhaust her - or wreck the training yard - Barristan glanced around again. He could still perceive no threats on the rampart or close to them. Everyone present seemed focused on the fight.

“They’re so strong…” Prince Joffrey breathed.

The girls were powerful, indeed. They possessed strength beyond belief and were as tough and quick as they were strong. If anyone had told such a tale to him, Barristan wouldn't have believed it. 

But, and this wasn’t his pride talking, Barristan also knew by now that they were not as skilled as himself or Ser Jaime. The talent was there, no doubt, but their form, if you stripped away their strength and quickness, lacked the refinement that came with experience. The girls, for all their power, hadn’t trained and fought for decades. He wouldn’t call their strikes sloppy, far from it, but they still had room for improvement.

“Hah! I wonder if I should spar with them - they would give me the fight of my lifetime!”

“Or the last fight of your lifetime,” Lord Tyrion quipped.

Barristan winced - as did Lord Stark, he noticed. The King sparring against Team Ruby… He couldn’t see anything good that would come of that. Even if the King’s pride survived the blows it would receive, people would spread the news, and Barristan knew that those not disposed favourably toward the crown would twist this into a humiliating defeat. And the Queen would certainly take it as something else altogether. And if Team Ruby made a mistake and accidentally hit the King as hard as they were obviously used to hitting each other…

He hoped the King wasn’t serious and realised the same. If he didn't, perhaps Lord Stark would manage to convince him of the folly of such an action.

Another glance revealed no lurking assassins, and he studied the fight before him again. The four maidens were still moving in ways that defied common sense. Sometimes, they seemed to fly across the yard, or disappear altogether to reappear somewhere else. It was an exhilarating yet terrifying sight. But… Lady Weiss seemed to be somewhat wanting, if only in comparison to her comrades. Was she less experienced? Not quite, he decided. She was definitely used to fighting, it shone through in many exchanges. And yet, she didn’t move as fluently as the others.

She was used to fighting differently, as if she were missing something, Barristan realised. But for the life of him, he couldn’t tell what it was. Lady Blake as well, now that he knew what to look for, although it wasn't as evident with her. Incidentally, both were losing the match to the others.

So, what were they missing - or, to be more precise, what were they hiding?

He pondered the question until the sparring match ended, apparently by mutual agreement between the four maidens, and to the applause of the audience.

*****

Later, when the King and his family had returned to their chambers to freshen up before the meal, Barristan and Ser Jaime were left standing guard outside, chatting with Lord Tyrion.

“I am curious, Jaime. Did watching that display of martial might beyond our understanding make you feel as insignificant as I feel when I watch the Kingsguard train?”

The little Lord’s question had a slight edge of self-loathing to it, but it was an apt comparison. If the Kingsguard had to face Team Ruby, Ser Barristan would give them the same odds of winning as he'd give Lord Tyrion when facing the Mountain.

Ser Jaime, however, deflected. “I wouldn’t know how that felt, Tyrion. But at least you can be assured that you can still verbally eviscerate those who prove to be your betters with the blade.”

Lord Tyrion snorted at that. For someone who had matched the King drink for drink, he had kept his wits admirably. “Such displays of wordy might tend to invite more personal displays of martial might from certain parties. And I am not sure my esteemed position as Father’s unwanted heir would be enough to keep them from acting on it.” He chuckled at his own words, then sighed. “Leaving that aside… what do you think? Was this how our ancestors fought in the Age of Heroes? Is this how far we have fallen since then?”

Barristan frowned. He hadn’t really considered that before, but it made sense. “We know the dragons were mere shadows of their ancestors, both far smaller and weaker than the likes of Balerion the Black Dread, when the last of them were killed. Would it be so surprising that men, too, have grown weaker with time?” It was a chilling thought. Would their ancestors see them as failures for growing so weak? And what had caused this to occur in the first place? If it was true, of course. Yet, it would also mean that there was a country whose people had not suffered such a decline. An entire kingdom - four of them, even - full of people with such power… Now that was a terrifying thought.

“Well, men might have fallen, but the women seem to have kept their strength just fine,” Ser Jaime quipped. “If the King wants the strongest knights in the Kingsguard, we might have to adapt to sharing our quarters with women.”

Barristan frowned at that. His brother of the Kingsguard might be joking, but the King might very well consider this - King Robert had been watching the fight with an intensity Barristan hadn’t seen on his face since the Greyjoy Rebellion. And unlike many, he hadn’t seemed to be as terrified as much or more as he was impressed. Instead, he had been fascinated and pleased. “We would need an opening to welcome a new member, which we do not have.” Only if one of the seven members died would a new one be chosen, and all of them were in good health.

“Let’s hope the King will not be tempted to create an opening.” Ser Jaime chuckled.

Barristan frowned at the younger knight; Ser Jaime had quite a sharp sense of humour, but there were things you didn’t joke about.

*****

“...and this is how Crescent Rose folds up so I can carry her easily on my back!” Ruby Rose smiled as she demonstrated mechashifting for the King. “See?” She turned around so he could see how it rested on her back, ready to be drawn.

“Even I could carry it like that,” Lord Tyrion said. “If I could lift it. I don't suppose its weight is reduced as well?”

“No, it weighs the same,” Ruby told him. “It's just more compact.” 

The King chuckled. “I know a few knights who would have loved to have their swords fold up like that so they wouldn't have tripped over them. But don't all those joints and gears weaken the weapon?”

“Oh, no!” Ruby shook her head. “I designed my baby - I mean, my scythe - so the moving parts interlock in a way that reinforces them. Well, kinda - it means they are a tiny bit more flexible, so they withstand blows better. Of course, I had to get the strongest material for that.” And it had taken her a number of attempts to get it right; her first version had been a bit too flexible, and hadn't that been embarrassing!

“I see. The hollow shaft is not merely to save weight, then, but also to reinforce it?”

The King knew his weapon mechanics. Ruby nodded. It also served as the barrel for the sniper mode, but she wasn't supposed to say that - or say anything about firearms.

“How would that work? Wouldn't it be stronger if it weren't hollow?” Prince Joffrey asked.

Lord Tyrion grumbled something Ruby didn't catch, mostly because he was drinking deeply from a mug so large, he had to hold it with both hands.

“Under some circumstances, such a shaft would be stronger,” Ruby replied. “But it's generally negligible. And the hollow shaft resists most damage much better. Most Grimm can't even scratch it!”

“Grimm.” The Prince frowned. “Those are the monsters you fight, yes?”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded again. “Most of them die quickly, but some are tougher. Especially the old and large ones. Crescent Rose can cut through a Beowulf or Boarbatusk easily, but a Death Stalker - that's a huge scorpion-like Grimm, as big as your wheelhouse - can withstand a blow.” As she had found out the hard way during Initiation.

“And how do you kill those?” The Prince leaned forward across the table, almost pushing over the mug with ale in front of him.

“You have to go for the weaker spots, the joints. Cut off its legs, pincers and stinger, then you can kill it more easily.”

“Like when fighting a man in plate armour with a sword?”

“Yes, Boy. Go for the armpits, the gorget, the knees… Or just cave in their chestplate with a warhammer!” the King laughed and emptied another mug of ale. 

He drank almost as much as Uncle Qrow, Ruby couldn't help noticing. He ate much more, though, almost as much as a Huntsman, and he was much bigger, too, so he probably wasn't like her uncle. On the other hand, Lord Tyrion was much smaller - he was a head or more smaller than Weiss, and Ruby was taller than her partner! - and he drank almost as much. But everyone drank ale here. Or wine. Because the water usually wasn't safe, you had to boil it like when you were camping. Only they didn't do that here - Benjen had been surprised when they had done it on the trip to Winterfell.

But she was getting distracted! And that while talking with the King and the Crown Prince! And Lord Tyrion, apparently - it wasn't quite clear, as Ruby understood - the heir of the Lord of the Westerlands, Lord Tywin. And Lord Tywin was both the King's father-in-law - they called it good father here - and had the same rank as Lord Stark, so that made his heir important as well. 

“Can all your weapons ‘shift’ like that?” the Prince asked.

“Well…” How could she answer that without lying and without revealing firearms? “Weiss's Myrtenaster doesn't shift. It's a straight sword.” Kinda. “Blake's Gambol Shroud can shift into a sickle.”

“A sickle?” The Prince chuckled. “You have a scythe, and she has a sickle? Are you facing Grimm wheat as well?”

Ruby frowned - her baby wasn't a farming tool! And neither was Blake's chain-sickle. But she forced herself to chuckle at the Prince's joke as the King laughed again. The Prince didn't know any better, after all. “Well, not unless a Geist possesses a wheatfield. Though I don't know if they can do that. They can possess trees, though. But they prefer tougher objects, like rocks. Or…” She couldn't say machines. “...armour.”

“Armour?” The King frowned.

“Yes. If a suit of armour is attacking you without anyone inside, it's probably a Geist. At least back home.”

“The more I hear about your home, the more I wonder if I have drunk too much - or not enough,” Lord Tyrion said.

The King and the Prince laughed at that.

“Well…” She smiled and shrugged with a slight wince. “...things are different back home compared to here.” Very different.

“Oh, I think everyone realised that when you accidentally created a new hole in Lord Stark's inner wall.” Lord Tyrion grinned and took another sip from his ale. Or more than a sip. Much more.

Ruby blushed. “It didn't go through the wall, so it's more like a dent,” she defended herself.

Everyone else laughed at that. Well, not Ser Barristan, but the man hadn't said a word the whole time she had been talking. He just stood behind the King and to the side, guarding him. Like one of those bodyguards you saw in shows, only without falling in love with their charge. Probably. She'd have to ask Blake about that part; her friend was the expert on such romances. If she wanted to know. (Which she didn't - that was none of her business. People were way too obsessed with the whole relationships and marriage thing here, anyway!)

“I can't imagine how you wage war!” the King said, holding out his mug to be refilled by one of the servants. “You probably put the Field of Fire to shame!”

Ruby blinked. “The Field of Fire?”

The Prince smiled at her. “That was a famous battle during King Aegon's Conquest. His dragon burnt an entire army in the field!”

The King scoffed behind his mug, and the Prince flinched a little. “Bah! Damn Targaryens! Hiding behind their dragons! Without them, they were nothing! I caved in Prince Rhaegar's chest with my hammer in the battle of the Ruby Ford! Put the damn man down for good!”

Ruby winced again. The people here were also far too fond of such gruesome stories. And this one was called the Battle of the Ruby Ford… Ugh! “I guess so,” she said, diplomatically. “We don't really fight wars, though.”

“Didn't you have a war over clothes?” Lord Tyrion asked. “Or I might be mistaken - the chambermaid telling me did not strike me as especially witty and might have misunderstood a dispute for a literal war.”

Ruby frowned a little - all the maids she had met in Winterfell had been nice - and shook her head. “No, it was a war - the Great War, actually, since all four kingdoms were involved. It was between Atlas and Mistral on one side and Vacuo and Vale on the other side. That was…” She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember Obolecks’ lesson. “...eighty years ago. But we haven’t had a war since then. That's why we also call it The War.” Oh, drat - she had forgotten the Faunus Revolution. But Team RWBY had also agreed to keep Faunus a secret, so she couldn't have mentioned that anyway.

The King huffed at that for some reason.

“And it was over fashion?” Lord Tyrion sounded amused.

“Over fashion, arts - our headmaster, Ozpin, likes to say it was over our right to express ourselves,” Ruby explained. 

“Your right to express yourselves?” the Prince looked confused.

“The right to, well, dress like you want, create art, play music, sing…” Ruby shrugged; she wasn't good at explaining that stuff. “You know, live your life.”

“If they banned alcohol and… good food as well, then you'd have been better off dead,” Lord Tyrion said.

Ruby didn't know if the war had been over alcohol as well. Probably not - Uncle Qrow once said if a kingdom wanted to ban alcohol, the government would be toppled the next day. Then again, he was a bit of a drunk. “In any case, we - Vale and Vacuo - won, and we've been wearing what clothes we want ever since!”

“Well, I can't say I disagree with the outcome!” The King laughed his booming laugh again. “If more women dressed like you, the world would be a better place!”

Lord Tyrion, and a moment later, the Prince laughed at that. Ruby joined in, though she wasn't quite sure if it was a joke or not. It had to be, hadn't it? Lady Catelyn had insisted that ladies here didn't dress like Team RWBY did.

“What about the men? Do they dress the same?” Lord Tyrion asked. “Or do they wear dresses?”

“Well… they can dress as they want. But most Huntsmen wear clothes that let them fight,” Ruby said.

“If you don't need to wear armour, you could fight naked. Now, that would be a sight to see!” the little Lord went on.

Ruby was starting to think that he had had a bit too much ale.

“Watch your tongue, Uncle!” the Prince snapped. “A lady is present.”

“A lady that can throw you across both walls of Winterfell if you annoy her,” the King added with a chuckle.

Ruby would never do that, of course - and she couldn’t throw a grown, well, not grown man, that far. Probably not; she had never tried. But she nodded anyway.

“I beg your pardon, my lady!” Lord Tyrion said, though he didn’t look scared - he was still grinning. “I was talking about the men fighting naked, of course!”

Ruby blushed as everyone laughed again and really wished that they could return to talking about weapons. All this… lecherous talk was making her uncomfortable. At least the Prince didn’t seem interested in that sort of stuff.

*****

“I am very disappointed that your friends refused my invitation, Lady Weiss.”

You have said so before. Twice since you received us in your chambers, Weiss Schnee thought. Out loud, she said. “Unfortunately, Your Grace, Lady Ruby was called to attend the King, and Lady Blake and Lady Yang had already left the castle before your invitation arrived.” To check a potential source of rare earth needed for one of Yang’s tools that Blake had heard about from Luwin, but there was no need to go into details - Weiss didn’t think the Queen understood anything about metallurgy.

The Queen sniffed as if she expected everyone to wait in their chambers in case she deigned to call them. Well, Weiss wouldn’t be surprised if she did. At least the Queen had refrained from calling Ruby a hussy. So far.

“I am sure they will be delighted to attend your next invitation, Your Grace,” Lady Catelyn said.

The expression on the Queen’s face suggested that it was somewhat doubtful another invitation would be forthcoming. But she nodded. “At least you are here, Lady Weiss, to satisfy our curiosity about ‘Huntresses’ and ‘Huntsmen’.”

“It’s my pleasure, Your Grace,” Weiss lied. 

“You’ve spoken a lot about your ‘academy’ but not much about your family, Lady Weiss. Is your father a Huntsman as well, like Lady Ruby and Lady Yang’s father?” 

Weiss Schnee shook her head. “No, Your Grace. He rules the family lands.”

“And yet you, as his heir, chose to become a Huntress?”

“I wanted to protect people like my grandfather did. He wasn’t a Huntsman either.” Weiss knew that anticipating the Queen’s question like this was rude, but it was the sort of rudeness one could get away with. “But he personally fought for his land and his people, driving out the Grimm, and turned a monster-infested wilderness into productive land.” 

“He sounds very impressive,” Lady Catelyn added with a smile.

“He was. I miss him.” Weiss didn’t have to fake her sadness. “His example also motivated me to become a Huntress. I wanted to do more than merely rule my family holdings.” Corporate holdings, but the sentiment was the same even if she was deliberately obfuscating the truth. “And I wanted to do so in a different kingdom, where my name wouldn’t carry as much weight as back home.” And where her father’s influence was curtailed. 

One day, she would restore the good name of her family and continue her grandfather’s legacy.

She belatedly realised that she had touched her emblem, embroidered on her dress by Lady Catelyn’s tailors, when the Queen smiled with more condescension than Weiss’s father managed on a good day and leaned forward to peer at it. “Is this your personal heraldry? How quaint. Did you pick it yourself?”

Her long practice in attending family dinners at home kept Weiss from audibly grinding her teeth at the Queen’s question and allowed her to smile politely as she inclined her head. “No, I did not, Your Grace. While most Huntresses pick their own emblem,” she replied, emphasising the correct term just a tiny bit, “all members of my family share the same emblem.”

“That is unusual for your home kingdom, isn’t it?” Lady Catelyn’s smile was as strained as Weiss’s when she leaned forward a bit, holding her teacup with both hands.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded at their host. “But it’s a family tradition, my lady.”

“So, your family at least follows the proper tradition.” The Queen’s smirk was subtle but still clear. Especially if one had spent a feast across the table from her brother, Ser Jaime. He had the same expression, if a bit more pronounced, when he mocked someone. Which he had done fairly often during the meal.

It must run in the family. Or it was a twin thing. Weiss didn’t dwell on it and tilted her head to the side, feigning confusion. “Actually, we broke tradition there.”

“I meant our traditions,” the Queen explained with narrowed eyes.

So, she had seen through Weiss’s act. Or she took any contradiction, no matter how innocent, as an insult. After an hour with the Queen, even with Lady Catelyn running interference, sniping and needling her, Weiss was leaning towards the latter.

But a Schnee didn’t yield to such tactics - or to petty women trying to bully her. She would not lose her temper, she would not pull Myrtenaster and start telling the Queen what the various dust charges loaded into her weapon’s chambers would do when used against a target, especially one without Aura, and she most certainly wouldn’t tell the Queen what she thought about her. So, she faked more confusion. “Your Grace, why would we follow your traditions? We never heard of Westeros until we were stranded here.”

The Queen’s smile grew more teeth. “Every civilised country in the world has heard about the Seven Kingdoms, but I don’t doubt your claim.”

Lady Catelyn grew even more tense, and Weiss was glad that Sansa, Arya and the Princess - who seemed to be the complete opposite of the Queen as far as her character was concerned, had begged their leave a while ago to check with Prince Thommen on the local felines. Oh, if the little prince knew about Blake’s nature… She kept from giggling at the stray thought; she had to focus. The Queen’s veiled insults had grown less and less subtle over time, and they hadn’t really been that subtle to start with.

“Indeed, Your Grace,” Weiss told her, nodding as earnestly as she could, “that would be because we aren’t from this world.” 

“I have been told that, but I must confess, it sounds far too fantastical to believe.” The Queen sniffed as if she had smelt something unpleasant.

Weiss could, for once, empathise with her - she had felt like that since shortly after this ‘friendly gathering’ had started.

“I do not doubt it, Your Grace,” Lady Catelyn cut in again.

Weiss worried that their host - although she wasn’t quite sure if that was technically correct since they were in the Queen’s quarters - would crack her teacup if she held it any more tightly. “And why would we be lying about this?” Weiss followed up. “We have been open from the start about the fact that we want to return to our world and need help finding a way back.”

“Why would anyone lie about their true origins and goals?” The Queen did not quite shrug but still managed to convey the sentiment. “There are many possible answers if one does not naively accept a foreigner’s word at face value.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes. Sure, Team RWBY was hiding a great many things about Remnant, but the Queen just suggested they had hostile intentions toward their hosts. “And what would such ‘possible answers’ be?” she asked. “If there are so many, I am sure you can name a few, Your Grace.” Put up or shut up, as Yang would say - and Weiss was, once again, very grateful that Yang wasn’t present either; her friend would have lost her temper several times already.

“Spies would hide their true intentions and origin - as would assassins. Or they could be wanted in their homeland, like the Blackfyres.”

Lady Catelyn gasped. “Your Grace! You can’t mean this!”

Weiss tensed. Had the Prince talked to his mother about his theory? She couldn’t use the same argument that the King had used to refute this; that would reveal that they had spied on the King. But she couldn’t let this stand. The implication wasn’t merely dangerous; it was also insulting. “It would be a poor spy or assassin who revealed their capability like this, Your Grace. If we were from a kingdom in this world that had ill intentions towards your realm, then what we would have revealed here about our might would vastly outweigh what information we might gain.” Any fool could see that. 

The Queen scoffed. “Aegon the Conqueror would beg to differ. After he demonstrated his power, the mere threat of another such demonstration cowed entire kingdoms - such as the North - and made the vassals of other kingdoms join him - such as the Tullys.”

Oh. That was… not quite as far-fetched as Weiss had thought. How could she answer that?

Fortunately, Lady Catelyn had taken offence. She wasn’t smiling any more but glaring. “Your Grace, are you insinuating that my husband would betray the king? That my family would?” 

The Queen’s eyes widened for a moment, apparently surprised, before she put on a smile so fake, it wouldn’t have fooled Jaune. “I was merely providing the answers Lady Weiss asked for, Lady Stark. I did not intend to insinuate anything. We have heard and seen so many incredible things since our arrival here, I could not help wondering if there were dangers matching them as well, and my thoughts might have run a bit too freely.”

Weiss didn’t believe the Queen for an instant, and she doubted that Lady Catelyn did either, but appearances had been kept up.

And Weiss was now convinced that she had to keep her Aura up at all times around the Queen. And maybe ask Blake if there was a way to check for poison in the tea without having Faunus senses.

*****

When Blake Belladonna and her partner entered the chamber Team RWBY shared in Winterfell, she could tell at once that things hadn't gone well in their absence - Weiss was scowling and, Blake could tell from how she moved towards the centre of the room, had been pacing, while Ruby looked like she wanted to use her Semblance to tackle-hug Yang.

“Yang! Blake!”

“Hey! Missed us?” Yang smiled, but the glance she exchanged with Blake showed that she had noticed their team member's distress as well. 

Blake checked that the door was locked behind them, listened for eavesdroppers - and checked that she wasn't ignoring a hunch from her Aura - and then sat down on her bed, crossing her legs.

“Please tell me you have good news!” Weiss blurted out.

“Ah… I could, but I would be lying,” Yang replied with a wry smile. “Sorry, but the rare earth we were looking for was just raw earth.”

Blake rolled her eyes at… she wouldn't even call that a pun. 

“I thought you had a good lead.” Ruby looked crestfallen. Blake had expected her reaction, of course; every Huntress was attached to their weapon, they put their very soul in it, after all, but Team RWBY's leader was a bit more passionate than usual about hers - and very concerned about not having all the material she would need to repair Crescent Rose.

“Yeah, well…” Yang shrugged. “Turns out that just because the locals know what iron and steel is doesn't mean they use the same elements to make steel as we do. Key parts of our metallurgy aren't known here.”

“Or, as I suspect,” Blake cut in, “they are known under a different name.”

“Works out the same,” Yang said with a shrug. “It's a bit hard to describe the stuff if you only can go with its appearance. Maybe those Qohorik smiths we’ve heard about know more; their steel is supposedly much stronger than the Castle-forged steel here.”

“Great!” Weiss scoffed. “Another complication.”

“So, what happened here?” Yang asked. “I didn't see any additional holes in the walls, and the guards didn't look scared or angry, so what did we miss?”

Ruby blushed. “It wasn't my fault they build their walls so fragile! That never happened at Beacon!”

“Beacon was built with Huntresses in mind, dolt!” Weiss snapped. “Anyway, you missed our meetings with royalty.”

“Oh?” Yang sat straighter. “What did the King do?”

Blake tensed. She had heard enough rumours about the King's 'appetites’ while roaming the castle. If the King’s interest in Ruby included more than her weapon and fighting ability…

“He invited me to talk about weapons, and we did - I showed him how Crescent Rose could shift, and we had a good talk about it,” Ruby said. “He knows his stuff, too; he should talk shop with Nora about warhammers, though his is smaller and wielded in one hand, usually. But you can use it with a two-handed grip if you really need to smash through something - he told me how he beat the Crown Prince during his rebellion.” She grimaced a little. “Caved his chest in.”

That... didn't sound too bad. Ruby was more innocent than the rest of their team, Blake knew that, but it wasn't as if she was as naive as some thought, having fought criminals and White Fang members before.

“Well, they've got different views here,” Yang said. “About killing and stuff.”

“It’s not that!” Ruby protested. “Well, it's also that, but not much - he just sounded a bit too happy about having killed that man. Like, wanted to kill him a thousand times over, happy!” Yang snorted, and Ruby scowled. “That was what he said, Yang!”

“Oh.”

“Prince Rhaegar abducted the King's fiancée, Lord Stark's sister,” Weiss said. “We know that.”

“Yes, yes, but he doesn't have to be so gleeful about it!” Ruby replied. “Anyway, it wasn't that. But they - the King, and the little Lord, Lord Tyrion - they kept making lewd comments!”

“They made lewd comments about you?” Yang had narrowed her eyes, Blake noted, and showed no trace of her usually easy-going nature any more. If she lost her temper here, with the King so close…

“No. But about other people - well, in general. It was really uncomfortable!”

Ah. Blake nodded. In other words, Ruby had experienced how the locals talked about women when they didn't fear offending Team RWBY.

“Did you tell him you didn't like it?” Yang asked.

“Well…” Ruby looked down. “I didn't want to be rude. But it should have been obvious that I didn't like it! I didn't laugh at the jokes at all! And even the Prince told Lord Tyrion off!”

Blake winced. Hoping that people would notice such things was… naive. People often missed such signals. Or ignored them deliberately.

“If they don't get it, you need to tell them,” Yang said.

“But you said we should be on our best behaviour!” Ruby protested with a glance at Weiss.

“Tell them politely, but don't let them push you around,” Weiss replied. “The locals here are different. What they consider normal would never fly back home.”

“Because it would get their balls crushed,” Yang added.

“Don't crush anyone's balls here!” Weiss immediately blurted out. “No matter the temptation!”

Balke felt her ears twitch. That was a rather uncommon comment from her friend - Weiss was usually far more restrained and calm in her responses and wouldn't even tacitly admit that she, too, was sometimes tempted to use violence to deal with such things. “Were you present as well?” she asked.

“No,” Weiss replied. “I had a meeting with the Queen.” At the last word, her tone grew so cold, it could have frozen an entire lake.

“So… I take it that your meeting didn't go any better than Ruby's?” Yang said.

“Based upon our shared experiences, I am confident to say that it was worse,” Weiss replied.

Blake winced. Weiss wasn't prone to hyperbole - unless it involved studying, not studying enough, and sometimes cleaning or not cleaning.

“She hates us!” Ruby blurted out.

“Well, we knew that already.” Yang nodded at Blake.

“We suspected,” Weiss corrected her. “We knew she was jealous of the King's interest in Ruby and us, but now we know she blames us for it.” She shook her head, her ponytail whipping around, and Blake felt a slight urge to grab it, which she suppressed with long practice; she wasn't actually a cat.

“The worst thing isn't that she loathes us; the worst thing is that she doesn't make an effort to hide it,” Weiss went on. “She barely stays within the limits of what passes for polite society here when expressing her disdain. She insinuated that we’re spies, assassins or wanted criminals!”

Weiss must be affected more than Blake had suspected; she wouldn't have made such a comment about the local customs otherwise. Usually, she was the one to remind Ruby and Yang that they were in a foreign culture and shouldn't judge people as if they were on Remnant. 

Although Weiss had good reasons for this - if the Queen of the Realm behaved like this, things were dire. Just the social influence the Queen wielded could make their stay in Westeros far more unpleasant, not to mention how that would affect their search for a way home. Who would defy the queen to help them?

“So, she hates us, and she lets us know it, but what can she actually do to us?” Yang asked. Weiss huffed and frowned at her, which prompted Yang to grin back. “If things come to blows, we can blow her up.”

“It's not that simple,” Weiss said with a scowl. “It is a bit simplified, but essentially, Westeros is an absolute monarchy. The word of the King is literally law.”

“The King likes us,” Yang replied.

“Maybe a bit too much,” Ruby added. “But I doubt he wants to hurt us or would let her hurt us. I don't think they like each other much.”

Which was part of the problem, in Blake's opinion. “And he knows we can beat his guards.”

Weiss shook her head again. “Even with the backing of the King, we aren't safe. The Queen must have vast influence and resources at her disposal to deal with her enemies, outside the law if needed. I deduced as much from some of the tales that were shared with me.”

Blake nodded. Luwin had shared some of Westeros’s history with her that confirmed this.

“But we aren't her enemies!” Ruby said. “Why does she think we are?

“I think she's stupid,” Yang said. “Or mad with jealousy. Or both.”

Blake nodded; they shouldn't underestimate anyone here, but her impression of Cersei matched Yang's.

“Stupid or not, she is the Queen - and the daughter of the richest Lord in Westeros. Trust me, that means she has a lot of soft power,” Weiss went on. “Bribes, favours owed… And a lot of people would take their cues from her when dealing with us, and that includes the guards and officials. How many people will help us if it's known that doing so would risk earning the Queen's enmity?”

“Yes.” Blake pressed her lips together. Weiss would know about that from her father's machinations in Atlas. And Blake knew how such biases worked when dealing with Faunus. “And how many will twist the law to follow her whims?”

“Well, even a king is not all-powerful,” Yang said. “The last king got killed when he abused his power, right? Started a war that toppled his family.”

“But… who would start a war over the Queen bullying us?” Ruby asked. “I wouldn't start a war over being bullied! It's not worth it! We just want to go home!”

“No one wants to start a war,” Weiss said.

“Well…” Yang grinned, then held up her hands when Weiss glared at her. “I'm kidding!”

Weiss huffed again. “But she can hurt us anyway - we need the help of the locals to get home. And she sabotages that…”

Blake nodded. “And we don't know how far she'll go. What if she tries to get us assassinated?”

“We have Aura, but it's of limited use against, say, poison,” Weiss said.

“It should keep us alive, though,” Yang said. “Even Grimm poison can be resisted.”

“We don't know how strong the local poisons are,” Blake pointed out. “And it'll weaken us and deplete our Aura if it's strong enough.” She didn't have to explain that if they were weakened, even the locals could kill them; every Huntress knew that if your Aura was depleted in a fight, you were usually dead soon afterwards. A competent assassin would plan for that.

“How can we detect poison?” Yang asked.

“I can smell most poisons,” Blake told her. “And taste them.”

“Then it's too late!” Ruby gasped.

“Not if you don't swallow,” Yang replied.

“Yang!”

Blake shook her head. “Aura can also give you a hunch, like when you're watched. But don't rely on that.” You needed experience for that to work - experience Blake had thanks to her time as a member of the White Fang, but her friends lacked.

“We'll have to be on our guard. Never let your Aura down,” Weiss said.

“But…” Ruby bit her lower lip. “Aren't we taking this too far? Do we really expect the Queen to send assassins after us?”

“Can we afford to underestimate her?” Weiss shot back. “I spoke at length with her, and I would rather trust my father to show restraint than her.”

Now, that was a damning judgement if Blake had ever heard one.

“Better safe than sorry,” Yang added.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “But there's more.”

“More?” Yang stared at her.

Weiss grimaced, which was an even worse sign. “She might - might, I am not sure - expect all of us to attend her next invitation.”

Blake froze, and Yang cursed.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and then I grabbed his balls and squeezed - lightly, mind you. Just enough to make him squeal and maybe answer my question. Of course, instead of answering, he had his men attack me, and things started to get interesting.” Yang grinned.

King Robert laughed. “Hah! Facing a dozen foes inside a tavern? That’s gutsy!”

“Well, there wasn't much left of the tavern afterwards. The idiot set it on fire trying to get me,” Yang replied. 

“You either shouldn't have squeezed his balls or crushed them, I wager.” Lord Tyrion cut in. “Half-measures don't cut it - I should know for being one!”

Yang had to laugh at his joke. At least the little lord didn't spare himself when he joked. If only he wouldn't stare so much at Yang's chest with a leering expression. Yang was sure that wasn't just an exaggerated joke. She had experience with leering boys or men, after all.

The King guffawed. “Maybe you should give the gold cloaks some pointers. They never seem to be able to curb the thieves in King's Landing.”

Those would be like the police, then, Yang thought.

“Uh, I don't think it's a good idea to teach them to burn down buildings while fighting crime.” Ruby shook her head. 

“But teaching them how to fight would be good! Put some spine into the bunch!”

“They probably already burn down houses if the owners are late with paying their bribes,” Lord Tyrion said. “Or if someone else paid them.”

Ruby grimaced, and Yang turned her grin into a wince. Her little sister took things a bit too seriously here. Then again, she probably still felt responsible for their team ending up in another world.

The King and Lord Tyrion laughed out loud, of course, but the Prince scowled. “If the city watch is corrupt then they need to be brought to justice! What is Uncle Renly doing?” 

“Trying to make merry and forge better relations with the Tyrells, I would guess,” Lord Tyrion said with a smirk. “He is still not wed, after all.”

Oh, probably a marriage alliance then. Yang took a sip from the ale to hide her grimace. Ruby didn't. That whole thing was incredibly creepy. More so since of everyone here at the table, only the King was married. Well, Ser Jaime was a member of the Kingsguard and not allowed to marry, so he probably didn’t count.

“Bah! Let's not talk about the Tyrells! Let's hear more about your fights, my ladies!” the King bellowed. “More ale!”

His page moved to refill his mug. He was Lancel Lannister - Ruby had asked - and about Ruby's age, but Yang hadn't really paid attention to him. The boy seemed too nervous around them. Probably because he kept staring at them.

“Well… I've already told the story of how I fought Torchwick's gang in a Dust shop,” Ruby said. “And the fight against those ice zombies.”

“And a very amusing story it was, my lady,” Ser Jaime cut in with a smile that was a bit too much of a sneer. He wasn't really as good at hiding his wounded pride as he probably thought he was.

Ruby pouted, and Yang leaned forward. “Wouldn't have been amusing for anyone else. Either of the stories. Roman Torchwick is one of the most dangerous criminals in Vale,” she said.

“Roman Torchwick?” The King frowned. “Is he from a fallen noble house?”

“Named after candlemakers?” Ser Jaime wondered.

Lord Tyrion shrugged. “If it is, it is a good thing that the Torchwicks aren't from Westeros; the Mad King would have probably burnt them all just to honour the name.”

That was the king King Robert had toppled - and whom Ser Jaime had killed. The king who had burnt Lord Stark's father alive.

“No, he's not from a noble house,” Ruby said. “At least I don't think so.”

“Don't you have records?” Lord Tyrion looked curious. “Lady Blake made it sound as if everyone wrote down everything in your home.”

People wrote a lot on their scrolls, but that was it. Not that Yang wanted to go into such details.

“He certainly had the arrogance for a noble,” Ruby said with a pout.

Time to change the subject, Yang thought. “Well, there's a very famous - or infamous - fight we all fought in. And it happened in Beacon’s own halls! And it was all Ruby's fault.” She grinned.

“Yang!” Ruby blushed and stared at her. “You can't tell them that - and it wasn't true!”

Yang shook her head. “Don't be too modest, Ruby. I still remember the moment - you standing in front of us, pointing at the enemy, and loudly declaring: ‘Justice will be swift! Justice will be painful! It will be delicious!’” She sighed exaggeratedly. 

“Yang!”

Yang ignored her. “Let me tell you all about the infamous... food fight in the Great Hall of Beacon! It all started with a foul betrayal of the worst kind…”

When she had finished, everyone was laughing out loud, even Ser Jaime and the Prince. Well, except for Ruby, Her little sister was fuming in the cutest way.

“Yang! That didn't happen like that at all!”

“I was there, Ruby. I remember what you did.”

“It was an accident! I couldn't let them win!”

“So, it is true - everything is stronger in your homeland. Even the food,” Lord Tyrion said, chuckling.

Yang wasn't about to tell him about infusing Aura in weapons - or food. And she kicked Ruby in the shin when her sister looked like she wanted to explain.

“Is that food the reason you are so strong?” the Prince asked - he looked like Weiss during a lesson, Yang noticed, focused and eager. Well, Weiss usually didn’t look that eager.

“I noticed that you ate more than anyone else at the feast, even including you, Your Grace,” Lord Tyrion added with a grin aimed at the King, who threw back his head and laughed.

“Well, hunting is hungry work,” Yang said.

“How droll - here, hunting fills your belly,” Lord Tyrion replied. “Though do you eat those Grimm?”

“No!” Ruby blurted out with a grimace. “Bleargh! No, they fade as soon as they’re dead. Just poof! - they turn to smoke and disperse. We eat normal food. Just a bit more than you do here. And that’s only Huntsmen and Huntresses. Not everyone eats so much - well, athletes do so as well. But normal people grow fat if they eat as much as we do. They don’t burn so many calories.”

The Prince looked disappointed.

Lord Tyrion looked intrigued. “What are those calories you burn? Is that like an offering?”

“No!” Ruby shook her head. “It’s like… the food value of, well, food. The stuff that you need not to starve. If you work hard - like a Huntress - you need lots of calories. If you just sit around all day, you don’t need as many calories.”

“Ah.” Lord Tyrion nodded. “I was wondering how you could feed your population if everyone ate as much as you do. The peasants could hardly feed their own families.”

“Yeah,” Yang said.

“But even so, how can you do farming if such monsters are around?” Lord Tyrion took another sip from his mug. “You’d need a lot of guards.”

“We manage. Though we have walls around farmlands in Vale,” Yang told him. “And the mountains also act as a barrier.”

“And we can grow stuff in greenhouses inside cities,” Ruby added. “And there’s plant Dust.”

“Plant Dust?” Lord Tyrion asked.

“Dust that makes plants grow super-fast!” Ruby explained.

“Even your manure is magical?” The Prince looked boggled.

“It’s not magic,” Ruby protested. “It’s Dust.”

“What is this ‘Dust’?” the Prince asked.

They had already revealed a lot to Benjen and the Night’s Watch when they had asked after Dust, so Yang saw no problem explaining. “Dust is mined and comes in many varieties. You have Water Dust, which produces water, Plant Dust which makes plants grow, Lightning Dust if you want, well lightning, Fire Dust if you want to burn something…” She grinned and showed her teeth. “My favourite!”

The King laughed again, and Lord Tyrion chuckled. “That sounds like magic dust, as my nephew said.” 

It might as well be magic for people who didn’t know anything about Dust. Yang shrugged. “Well, it’s not magic. Anyway, I never really thought much about farming - we’re Huntresses.”

“Yes!” The King chuckled. “You protect the farmers, and they, in turn, feed you. That’s the same everywhere!”

That was… not wrong, Yang decided. Not quite the same, though - Huntresses didn’t rule over the farmers as the nobles did here. But going over that wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Leave the farming to the peasants, yes,” the Prince said. “And fighting to those fit for it.”

“And speaking of fighting…” Lord Tyrion grinned. “You told us that you fought a war over fashion - and over the right to express yourself however you want to.”

Ruby nodded.

“A worthy cause for a war, if I ever saw one! I would go to war as well if it got women to dress like you!” The King laughed at his own joke.

Ruby looked embarrassed, so Yang cut in: “Yes, that’s why we dress like we want - because we earned it.” She smashed her fist into her palm for emphasis.

“And it’s not just restricted to clothes, but includes singing, dancing, everything, right?” Lord Tyrion leaned forward a little, pushing his mug to the side.

“Yes,” Ruby replied. “You’ve got the freedom to do what you want to express yourself.”

Yang frowned a little. The guy was working toward something.

“What about loving?” The little Lord laughed and grabbed his mug again. “Some would say it’s an art form as well. I certainly know a few women I’d call artists.”

Ruby blushed again. “Well… that is…”

“People are free to love who they want,” Yang said, baring her teeth at the man. “And they are free to refuse any advances they want as well.”

“So… does that mean people choose their own husbands and wives?” Lord Tyrion asked. “It’s not a family matter?”

Oh. Yang managed not to wince. That was a question she would rather not answer. But lying would be pointless - the little Lord already had it figured out.

*****

 

Chapter 7: Crime and Punishment

‘Some of my colleagues, probably because they are used to modern Westeros, where the law, not nobility, rules supreme, fail to understand just how different life in the Seven Kingdoms was during those times. The smallfolk were, often openly and legally, but always effectively, at the mercy of the nobles ruling their fief. There was no independent judicial system; the law was applied by the nobles as they saw fit. There was almost no codified law, either, at best, there were precedents - although not every noble judging people had studied them, and even those who were aware of precedents which might apply to a case often were ruling according to their own interests or sympathies. That would have been bad enough if smallfolk were litigating against each other, being forced to curry favour with their lord (or bribe them) to have a chance at justice, but in those cases where the smallfolk had grievances against their lord, it was devastating. Their best hope of finding justice or relief when their lord harmed them was appealing to a higher authority - but, as anyone who studied this epoch knows, the odds were stacked against them even so. Many villages were too remote to travel to court - certainly not without the local lord noticing and taking steps to return them home. And many courts sided with the nobles as a rule - a fact some nobles took care to spread amongst their smallfolk to discourage such attempts in the first place. That was the state of the judicial system in Westeros when the Ruby Order appeared, and it should not surprise anyone who has studied the relevant sources and their character that they took offence to it, albeit the exact circumstances and deeds remain, vexingly, vague since judicial records as a rule were not archived in the Citadel, and every scholar of our Order knows what happened to the Royal Court’s archives during the Year of the Calamity. Nevertheless, most sources agree that the Ruby Order was appalled by corporal punishment, as it was practiced back then, and advocated for mercy in most cases.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Are you going to join us, my prince?” Robb Stark asked as he took a step back from his opponent and lowered his blade. It was the polite thing to do - he didn’t really want to spar with the prince, who was spending far too much time with Lady Ruby. Well, he wouldn’t mind going for a few bouts if the boy insisted. In armour, he wouldn’t really be hurt, and everyone expected bruises in the training yard, right?

“Hm… I think not,” Joffrey replied as he leaned against the fence separating the training area from the rest of the courtyard. Rebuilt just yesterday, it looked sturdy and new, though Robb knew it wouldn’t stand up to a single blow from any of their guests. Behind the Prince, the Hound loomed. “I merely came to watch, Lord Robb,” the boy went on.

“To watch?” Robb blinked. Why wouldn’t the Prince want to spar? Hadn’t he been trained to become a knight? The King was one of the most famous knights in the Realm.

“You spar regularly with Lady Ruby, don’t you?” the Prince asked.

Next to Robb, Theon laughed. “I wouldn’t call it sparring, my prince. She gives us pointers, and we pretend we can follow her advice.”

Robb frowned at his friend. That wasn’t how their sparring matches went. Granted, they couldn’t really spar, Ruby had to hold back too much, but they did train together. And it wasn’t one-sided at all! “We share tips,” he said. “While Lady Ruby is great with her scythe, she is not as experienced with blades, and none of her team uses a longsword, so we do train together even if we don’t spar.”

The prince sniffed. “How many real fights did you take part in?”

Robb clenched his teeth. He hadn’t seen a real fight yet, but that wasn’t his fault. Father wouldn’t let him join any dangerous patrols until he was of age. The closest he got to real fighting was hunting, and that was not much of a challenge.

“I thought so.” The prince shook his head. “Lady Ruby, if she needed advice, would be better served to seek it from those with actual experience.” He nodded at his sworn sword. “Like the Hound. He could teach her how real men fight. It’s not prancing around with blunted blades.”

The giant’s burn scar twisted when he grinned at Robb, making him look even uglier. And scarier, but Rob tried to ignore that by focusing on his anger.

“How many real fights have you been in, my prince?” Theon asked.

“None, of course. I don’t pretend to be a knight while playing around with practice swords.” The Prince smiled in such a smug way, Robb wanted to show him what a practice sword could do.

“You don’t train?” Theon seemed honestly surprised.

That earned him a frown. “I do train. But I wouldn’t claim that it makes me an experienced swordsman. The only way to become experienced is to fight for real.” The Prince showed his white teeth in a mocking smile. “Nor would I presume to teach my betters.”

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in a fight,” Robb shot back. That was what Ser Rodrick had told them whenever they had complained about the training, and it wasn’t wrong! And… He grinned. “Lady Ruby told me that.” Well, she had agreed with the sentiment, so it counted.

The Prince scowled again before straightening. “Well, she is not wrong - but I doubt she would mistake training for fighting.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve seen enough. Come, Hound, let’s go!”

He left without a further word. That was… Well, it felt rude, but Robb didn’t remember if princes were supposed to excuse themselves before leaving. Still… “The Prince is such a…” he swallowed the slur he had been about to utter. You didn’t insult your guests. Mother had taught him that. You especially didn’t insult the Crown Prince of the Realm - history lessons by Luwin had taught him that.

“I know,” Theon said, glancing around for anyone who might overhear them. 

Robb had checked, though - none of the guards from the royal party, most of them wearing Lannister colours, was close by. 

“Insufferable, isn’t he?” Theon snorted.

Robb nodded. “I bet he doesn’t train at all. Just has his guard hit things for him.”

Theon chuckled at that. “Too bad he’s not wrong about our experience, though.”

Robb glared at his friend. “He’s wrong! I did show Lady Ruby a trick with a sword she hadn’t seen before!”

“But did she really need it? Or was she just humouring you?” Theon shrugged. “I offered to teach her how to use a bow, but she refused. Several times.”

Robb frowned. Was Ruby just humouring him? And if she was, was that bad? It would mean she liked him, wouldn’t it? And since according to what he had heard, and confirmed, in her homeland, people chose their spouses themselves, if she liked him, that might mean she would decide…

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Theon’s slightly snide tone interrupted his thoughts. “The Prince has been spending his days with her - as much as he can, or so I hear.”

Robb scoffed. That didn’t mean anything. “She’s just being polite.” The Prince was royalty, and you didn’t snub them by refusing their invitations. 

“She’ll be polite all the way to the wedding night, huh?” Theon chuckled.

Robb clenched his teeth again. His friend was so crude. “Lady Ruby would never do that!”

“Do what?”

“Marry someone out of politeness,” Robb spat.

“Of course not. You marry the Crown Prince to become Queen, not out of politeness.”

“Ruby doesn’t want to become Queen!” Robb shook his head. “You don’t know her at all.”

Theon shrugged. “It’s not as if she lets me get to know her.”

And that was a good thing, in Robb’s opinion. A very good thing. One rival was bad enough. Especially if it was the Crown Prince. But as long as there was no engagement, Robb still had a chance.

He just had to find a way to use it.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Come on, Jon! Don’t hold back! You were doing so well before!”

Robb winced when he watched Lady Yang scowl at his brother. She wasn’t pleased with their bout. 

“I’m doing my best, my lady!” Jon certainly looked the part - covered in dust and sand, breathing heavily, sweat running down his face, he looked as if he had been fighting for hours. Probably felt like it, too.

“No, you’re not! You haven’t really tried to hit me for days!” Lady Yang shook her head, her hair whipping around.

“We’re sparring!”

“Yes, and that means you do your best to hit me! Defend yourself!” She charged ahead, leaving an opening so wide, Bran would have noticed it.

Jon tried to dodge instead of using it and ended up on the ground. A few yards from where he had stood.

Lady Yang huffed. “Stop being stupid!”

“I’m not!” Jon protested.

“Whatever!” Lady Yang ran a hand through her hair and turned away. “Tomorrow, same time!” she called over her shoulder before leaping over the fence and walking away.

Robb sighed and walked over to Jon, who had yet to get up. “You are better than this,” he told him.

Jon sighed, still on the ground. “No, I’m not.”

“You did better before,” Robb told him.

“I know. But that was… before.” Jon sighed again and slowly stood.

Before he had found out that Lady Yang wasn’t a bastard.

“If Lady Yang deigns to spar with you, the least you could do was to acquiesce to her wishes and put in an effort. Although judging by what I saw, it probably wouldn’t make a difference.”

Robb glanced to the side and suppressed a scowl. The Prince had been watching the bout as well, though he hadn’t made any remarks until now.

When none was answering him, the boy shrugged. “Well, I guess this was the most one could expect from a bastard. Let’s go, Hound!”

Robb turned back to Jon. His brother had his lips pressed together but otherwise didn’t show any reaction. And yet… That was a lot for Jon. Robb frowned.

Jon looked away and muttered: “He keeps riding me about my sparring with Lady Yang as a bastard.”

Robb hadn’t known that. “Is that why you…?” He shrugged.

“I can’t hit her! Not as a bastard!”

“She wants you to hit her. You heard her.”

“Lady Catelyn would take offence.” Jon shook his head.

“And Lady Yang seems to be taking offence,” Robb pointed out.

“I know. But I can’t.” Jon sighed again and walked away.

It had to be the Prince’s fault. Jon hadn’t been like this before. Robb wondered if he should tell the Prince to stop needling Jon. If he told him that it would antagonise Team Ruby, the Prince might listen.

But that would help the Prince with Team Ruby. And that would harm Robb’s chances of wooing Lady Ruby. Something he not only wanted but also had to do for his family.

But Jon was also family, and the Prince was a guest.

What should he do?

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose could do this. She just had to be polite, smile and make the approving noises at the right moments, and surviving this invitation to tea with the Queen (who hated RWBY) would be a piece of cake. (Yummy honey cake, to be exact - Ruby had asked in the kitchen beforehand so she wouldn’t be disappointed.)

She took a deep breath and checked her dress again. No stains, and the slight tear on the side she had ripped by accident when handling her baby was barely visible - the tailors here could work miracles! If Ruby had tried that, it would have looked way worse, as her dearly missed favourite plush toy of her childhood proved.

“Stop fidgeting. You’re fine.”

Ruby didn’t feel fine. She glanced at her partner. As expected, Weiss was frowning at her. “I just don’t want to be late,” she muttered.

“We’re not going to be late,” Weiss told her. “They don’t measure the time here as precisely as we do back home. They don’t have the clocks that could do it.”

“And I bet you hate that!” Yang said with a grin. “Can’t fault anyone for being late.”

Weiss sniffed. “Rest assured, the Queen will fault us for being late anyway.”

“I think she would do that even if we were knocking on her door at dawn,” Yang said with a shrug. “Though that’s just from seeing her at the meals and your description.”

“I would say it’s an accurate guess,” Weiss replied. “She’s worse in her rooms.”

Ruby sighed. “Why can’t she just leave us be?”

“Because she’s the Queen, and we’re hotter, younger and more powerful,” Yang said. “And you probably spend more time with the King and the Prince than she does.”

“They keep inviting me!” Ruby protested. “And you!”

“Have to keep an eye on my little sister.” Yang grinned and rolled her shoulders. 

Ruby winced - she had seen Yang rip an old shirt doing that, at home. Fortunately, this dress was tailored to her. And a bit sturdier. She sighed again. She would really be rather home than here.

“I don’t think the Queen wants to spend any time with the King,” Blake said. “But she resents that you spend time with the Prince.”

Ruby hung her head. “And she blames me for it! I didn’t do anything! It’s all the Prince’s fault!”

“She blames all of us for it.” Weiss shook her head. “Though I don’t know what she hates more - that the Prince wants to spend time with you or that he doesn’t obey her. I am leaning towards the latter.”

Who cared? They just had to survive this without starting a fight. Or a feud. Whatever! Ruby scoffed. They could do this. All they had to do was not to react and the Queen would be left fuming. But… that never worked with bullies. They escalated. Or went after others who couldn’t fight back. And the Queen was the biggest bully Ruby had met so far. So… “Are you sure we can’t, like, scare her diplomatically?” she asked Weiss.

“Don’t even think about it! Threatening the royal family would be a crime!” Weiss snapped.

“I don’t mean threaten-threaten,” Ruby explained. “Just… kinda make her see what we can do, you know? Subtle, I mean. Just so she realises that she shouldn’t push us. The King and the Prince are always impressed when we tell them about what we do as Huntresses back home.”

“I am sure that the Queen is aware of what we can do - well, what we have revealed to the locals,” Weiss said.

“I actually am not sure about that,” Blake spoke up. “She has never watched us train or spar.”

“But the others - the King and the Prince - must have told them!” Yang said. “You were listening to them have a row about about.”

“I did,” Blake said. “But she seemed to ignore that when it was brought up. She kept berating the King and the Prince for ‘carousing’ with us.”

“Great. The queen of the kingdom is an idiot!” Yang sighed.

Ruby blinked. “Well… isn’t that a good thing? I mean, if she hates us…”

“She does. Trust me,” Weiss said in a flat voice.

“...since she hates us, isn’t it better if she’s stupid than smart?” Ruby would prefer a dumb instead of a smart enemy. Dumb bullies were easier to deal with.

Weiss shook her head. “No. If she’s dumb, then she might actually try to harm us instead of just sniping at us.” 

Sniping? Ruby tensed, then sighed. Oh, that kind of sniping. Not the real kind. “Yeah, I get that, but… if she hates us and is smart, couldn’t she manage to hurt us? Instead of just trying?”

Weiss frowned as if Ruby had said something wrong but she couldn’t argue against it. “In any case, it’s hypothetical. The queen is not smart. Trust me on that.”

“We do. You’re our expert on spoilt princesses,” Yang told her with a grin.

Weiss pouted, and Ruby stifled a giggle. Her partner huffed, then turned to the door. “Let’s go, or we will be late!”

“But you said they don’t measure time that precisely!”

“And I bet she’ll complain we’re late anyway!”

Ruby smiled as she followed her friends out of their room. They would be OK. It was just an afternoon tea invitation. She had seen that stuff in shows. How bad could it be?

*****

“How nice of you to finally grace us with your presence, Lady Ruby.”

Apparently, the answer was ‘very bad’. Ruby had to force herself to keep smiling at the Queen’s tone. “Well, we already were meeting with the King when you invited us the first time, and we had to wait for another invitation, right, Your Grace?” Oops! She felt Weiss’s fingers pinch her in her back, and Lady Catelyn was tense, so Ruby probably had made a gaffe. “And we came as soon as you invited us again.” That was true.

But the Queen was still glaring at her, and Ruby wanted to fidget while she stood there feeling uncomfortable. Did they have to wait to sit down, or were they waiting for her to sit down? Or for the Queen? Or Lady Catelyn? Those were the Queen’s quarters, but Lady Catelyn was the Lady of Winterfell, and the Queen had invited them, so they were guests… Gah, this was confusing! She had learnt this just the evening before - Weiss had made sure of it.

“Won’t you sit down?” the Queen asked, gesturing towards the seats lined up around a low table. Just like a tea party! Ruby sat down after the Queen - wouldn’t want to take her seat by mistake - and eyed the tea and cake. Oh, plenty of honey for both! It wasn’t as good as chocolate, but it was sweet and even healthy. She would…

…check with Blake if it was poisoned, Ruby reminded herself. They had gone over that as well. She glanced at her friend. Blake looked cool and collected - this wouldn’t be fazing her, of course, she was a ninja catgirl - and hadn’t said anything or given them the signal, so the tea and cake should be safe. Ruby’s Aura hadn’t given her a hint either, but Ruby knew she couldn’t trust that; her Aura never warned her when she was about to get into trouble at Beacon. It hadn’t even warned her when she had been about to be robbed by Torchwick’s gang!

But this was safe, and so Ruby beamed when the Queen’s attendant - Weiss had said she wasn’t a maid - started serving them cake and sweet tea. “Four spoonfuls, please! Large ones!” she said when it was her turn.

The woman didn’t even blink like others had and simply poured the honey into Ruby’s cup. Perfect!

She sighed with satisfaction after the first sip. She was feeling better already.

“Don’t you have sweet tea back home, Lady Ruby?” the Queen asked.

“Oh, we do, yes!” Ruby replied. “But we also have soda, milkshakes, hot chocolate, syrup… we have lots of sweet drinks we can’t get here.” Oh, how she missed chocolate cookies! But she was supposed to be polite, and that meant complimenting their host. “Though this is great sweet tea. I wonder how it would taste cold.”

The Queen blinked. “Cold tea?”

“Yes. Iced!” Ruby smiled. “It’s great in the summer if you want to cool down.” And it was an easy way to get your sugar fix if your parent or teacher didn’t permit you to bring snacks.

“We rarely have to cool down during summer,” Lady Catelyn said.

“It’s a Patch thing,” Yang cut in. “We drink iced tea in the summer on our home island. Weiss, of course, can drink iced anything all year long.”

Weiss’s smile was past polite and into ‘I am annoyed at you’; Ruby could tell. “It’s an acquired taste.”

Yang grinned.

“Anyway,” Ruby went on. “The tea is good.”

“Thank you,” Lady Catelyn said.

And the cake was even better. If only the Queen were not so bitchy.

“So, my brother told me that in your home, the children pick their spouses.”

“Uh, no. You need to be an adult to marry,” Ruby told her.

The Queen glared again - she really couldn’t stand being wrong, could she? “And do you have a potential husband in mind?”

What? Ruby stared at her. “I’m fifteen! I’m not gonna marry anyone!”

“You’re still a child? You haven’t flowered?”

Ruby blinked. What was… Oh! She grimaced. “That’s not…” How could she ask Ruby that? “That’s not important. I’m fifteen,” she repeated herself.

“We are considered to be of age when we’re eight-and-ten,” Weiss explained.

“So, you’re all children?” the Queen smirked.

Ruby smiled. “Yes, exactly.” Far too young to marry.

The Queen didn’t seem happy to hear that, though. At least, her smile was as thin as before. Ruby started to think that the Queen was never happy. “My son is two-and-ten. Still a child. Not yet of age.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. The Prince was definitely a kid.

The Queen glared at her again - Ruby just couldn’t please the woman.

*****

Weiss Schnee was both relieved and vexed when they finally left the Queen’s chambers. Relieved that Ruby and Yang hadn’t lost their tempers. Vexed that the Queen had continued their snide remarks. At least, Ruby had managed to, albeit probably inadvertently, annoy the odious woman. Seeing the Queen become frustrated by Ruby’s honest answers to her barbed questions had been quite satisfying for all that it was also dangerous.

But they had managed to get through the visit without blades being drawn - figuratively, of course; they hadn’t brought their weapons - or anyone being poisoned, so she counted this as a victory. A small victory, and one that would not further their goal of returning home, but it felt satisfying anyway. And slightly guilty - like eating a cookie before dinner.

Hm. Maybe I’m listening a bit too much to Ruby if I’m starting to use such comparisons, she thought with a grin.

But as soon as she opened the door to their room, any lingering satisfaction vanished at once. One wall was splattered with paint, and several items were not where they had been when they had left. 

“My paint trap went off! It worked!” Ruby was awfully cheerful, given their circumstances.

“We have been robbed!” Weiss told her through clenched teeth.

“Yes - but my trap worked!” Ruby nodded.

“And it shouldn’t be hard to find the thief now,” Yang added.

“Unless they already fled the castle, Blake said. “Let’s see what they took.” She went and climbed the wall first, to safely check their weapon cache above the rafters.

“Oh, no! My baby!” Ruby was on the rafter in an instant, trailing red petals. If there had been a trap up there… “Ah, here you are, safe and sound!” she cooed a moment later.

The thief probably couldn’t have carried your weapon, Weiss thought.

“Our weapons are safe,” Blake said. “Though there are cutting marks on the chainlinks holding them there.”

“So they found our cache?” Ruby asked.

Weiss suppressed a sigh. “A thief would look on top of the rafters.” It was a pretty obvious spot, after all. “We put them there anyway because it would make it harder to take them.” For anyone without Aura and a Huntress’s strength.

“Did they take anything?” Yang asked.

They quickly checked their belongings.

“They took my scroll!” Ruby exclaimed.

“And mine,” Yang added.

“You left them in the room?” Weiss blinked.

“We have to save power,” Yang said.

“And I didn’t want to be tempted to use it in case the invitation turned out to be boring,” Ruby added with an embarrassed smile. “That would have been rude.”

Weiss sighed. “Anything else?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Yang said.

“They probably took the most obviously advanced piece of gear we have,” Blake said. “The weapons were the first target, then they went for the scrolls.”

“They knew about the scrolls, then!” Ruby gasped.

“We used them to prove our claims,” Weiss reminded her. “I don’t think a thief could miss hearing about them.”

“Oh, right.” Ruby nodded. “But without Lightning Dust, they can’t recharge the scrolls. And without our codes, they can’t even unlock them if they still have a charge left. Which they should have, actually.”

That didn’t matter. They had been robbed, and the thief had to be brought to justice. No one stole from Weiss or her friends! “Let’s inform Lord Eddard,” she said through clenched teeth.

“After we recover our weapons. I am not leaving my baby alone again!” Ruby looked fierce, Weiss noted.

And she was correct. They had been lucky that the thief hadn’t had the tools to deal with chains. “Yes.” She nodded. After this, Lady Catelyn would hopefully accept that they couldn’t leave their weapons unguarded.

*****

Outside Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“The dogs have found the trail of the thief, my lord!”

The kennelmaster sounded excited. Not nearly as excited as the dogs sounded - they were barking loudly. And it affected the wolves with the party - Ghost and Grey Wind looked every which way eager to help, undoubtedly, despite their young age. They were just too adorable. Although… Weiss glanced at Blake. Her cynophobic friend was holding up well, though Weiss could tell that she would rather be elsewhere. But not even dogs could keep her from pursuing the thief.

“Very well, Farlen, set them on the chase,” Lord Stark commended.

“Yes, my lord.”

“A boar would have given us a bigger challenge,” the King commented. He had insisted on coming along, as had the Prince when he’d heard that Robb was with them as well. And that meant Ser Barristan and Ser Jaime had also joined them. All that for one thief.

The dogs charged into the underbrush ahead of them - the thief had made it out of the castle before the alarm had been raised, but the guards had remembered him easily thanks to his face being covered in paint and had pointed the hunting party to the woods in which he had vanished.

And the two puppies followed the dogs despite Robb and Jon’s cries to stop. Well, they should be safe with so many dogs around. Still, they best gave chase as well. Weiss looked at Ruby. She was their leader.

“Let’s go!” Ruby said. “Err, I mean, with your permission, Lord Eddard.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Ruby didn’t wait a second longer and vanished in a cloud of petals. Weiss sped up as well, with Yang and Blake at her side, leaving the rest of the hunting party, both those on foot and those mounted, behind them. Really, they just should have gone by themselves, maybe with the kennelmaster. Or with the two boys, their puppies probably could track the thief as well as the dogs, and Weiss would keep them safe.

They quickly caught up to the dogs - Blake, unsurprisingly veering off ‘to watch our flanks’ - and slowed down so they wouldn’t overtake them. The thief had been on foot, so if they didn’t have a mount stashed nearby, they wouldn’t have gone far through the dense forest. Not when they couldn’t jump from branch to branch like a Huntress could.

As Weiss had predicted, it didn’t take long for the excited barking of the dogs to change - and for a desperate cry to be heard. They had found the thief!

She grinned as she jumped over a fallen tree trunk - if only she could use her glyphs! - and dashed ahead. Time to end this farce!

When she reached the fugitive miscreant, Ruby, of course, was already there. Her friend was glaring at the man, who was on the ground, surrounded by the dogs and two wolf puppies, holding his ankle and whimpering. And his face and upper body was covered in paint. Definitely the thief.

“Please… my lady… I didn’t want… please let me go! Oh, it hurts!”

“I didn’t hit you that hard! I just tripped you!” Ruby told him.

“And even if we let you go, it doesn’t look like you could go on that ankle,” Yang added, showing her teeth while she retrieved the stolen scrolls.

Blake, of course, was still guarding their flank.

“Please! I didn’t want to… mercy!”

“There will be no mercy!” Ruby spat. “Thieves must be punished! I won’t let another one escape on my watch so they can wreck a city afterwards!”

Right, Torchwick’s escapes - and escapades - were still a sore point for her friend, Weiss reminded herself. Although she doubted that this wretched man would be able to wreck a highway even if he managed to steal a Paladin.

“I didn’t want to steal from you! Please!”

“You shouldn’t have broken into our room then! Or tried to steal my baby!”

“What? Baby?” The man looked confused. “Whoever took your child, I didn’t do it!”

Weiss sighed. “She means her weapon.”

“Oh.”

“You tried to steal her!” Ruby spat. “That, I cannot forgive!”

The man started to cry and didn’t stop even when the rest of the party caught up. All in all, it was a pathetic display.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“It is clear that you were the thief who broke into our guest’s chamber to rob them - the stolen items were found on you, and you were marked by the paint left in their room,” Lord Eddard, seated on his throne in the Great Hall, declared.

Justice is swift in Westeros, Weiss thought. It had barely been a day after the theft, and they were already holding the trial. Of course, it was a clear-cut case, as Lord Eddard had stated, though the lack of a public defender was still obvious.

“Mercy, my lord!”

One night in the castle’s dungeons hadn’t done the thief any good, Weiss could tell. He was pale and shivering, and his ankle had swollen so much, they probably had to cut off his boot to treat it. Not that it looked as if they had done much - the bandage wrapped around his foot looked stained, and for all their faults, at least the people of this world were aware of how you had to keep bandages clean. Of course, the man wasn’t bleeding, so it might not matter much.

Lord Eddard ignored the man’s pleas. “Before I pronounce the sentence, I wish to know if you had accomplices.”

Weiss leaned forward. They hadn’t found any traces of another thief, and it was certainly possible that the man had acted alone, driven by greed. But not quite too rarely, such thefts were, at least back home, inside jobs, as the police called it. Thieves acting with someone familiar with the target. Weiss wanted to know if there was another thief hiding in the castle.

The man glanced towards the King and Queen as if he was about to beg them for mercy despite the scowl on the King’s face and the deadly glare of the Queen. Neither had taken the revelation that one of their servants had stooped as low as to steal from Team RWBY well. The man must have realised that and shook his head. “No, my lord. I acted by myself. I… I thought I could sell the magic devices for gold in King’s Landing.”

Weiss wasn’t quite sure that she believed him. But what motive would he have to protect an accomplice? Criminals, in her admittedly limited experience, rarely showed any loyalty to anyone, and his best chance at clemency and getting a reduced punishment would be to rat out other criminals.

Lord Eddard sighed. “In that case, I pronounce you guilty of theft. In light of the severity of your crime, your hand will be cut off.”

Weiss gasped. Cutting off a hand? For theft?

Her friends were shocked as well. Ruby gaped at the thief - and then at Lord Eddard.

The thief was crying.

“You may also choose to join the Night’s Watch instead,” Lord Eddard went on.

The man kept crying - Weiss wasn’t sure if he had heard Lord Eddard.

“He’s a cripple who can’t walk any more; what use would the Night’s watch have for him?” the Prince asked.

“The Night’s Watch takes everyone who wishes to join, my prince,” Benjen replied. “Even the lame and crippled.”

“Crippled? I only broke his ankle!” Ruby blurted out.

Everyone stared at her, Weiss realised.

“It was a complicated break, my lady,” Maester Luwin said, wincing slightly. “As such wounds usually are. I did what I could, but it won’t heal well.”

“Oh.” Ruby sat back. “I didn’t…” she trailed off, slowly shaking her head.

They couldn’t heal a broken ankle? But… Weiss pressed her lips together. Of course, they couldn’t heal a compound fracture! They didn’t have either modern medicine or Aura!

“I’ll take the Black!” the thief blurted out.

“Very well.” Lord Eddard nodded at Benjen. “You can take him with you when you return to the Wall.”

“I didn’t… I wouldn’t have hit him if I had known,” Ruby said. “I’m sorry.”

“We should have realised that,” Weiss said before she could help herself, then winced and cursed herself when Ruby flinched and looked even more miserable.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

When morning broke, and she woke up, Blake Belladonna considered staying in bed a little bit longer. Unlike her friends, she could see perfectly well with moonlight or even just starlight - well, well enough to read and write easily - so the lack of decent artificial lighting didn’t restrict her nightly activities as much. On the other hand, as much as she liked napping in a warm bed, her friends needed her. The revelations following the trial of the thief had left them, if not shaken, then burdened.

Besides, Yang was likely to accidentally kick her when she woke up, as had happened before, so the odds of Blake being able to enjoy her nap for a decent length of time were low, anyway.

So, Blake yawned and slipped out of bed, stretching a bit - not like a cat at all, despite Ruby’s claims - and quickly used the water bowl next to their bed to wash her face. 

The others might complain about the lack of a proper bathroom - if they wanted to bathe, they needed to call servants to prepare a tub - but Blake was used to roughing it in the field. The White Fang’s hidden camps in the wilderness rarely had decent facilities - sometimes, they had no facilities at all. Compared to that, or even to an extended field mission for Huntresses, this was still quite nice.

And if Blake kept telling herself that, she would start to believe it. No hunting mission would have gone on for as long as their trip in this world had; a Huntress would either succeed or die long before that.

Sighing, she slipped into her clothes - her combat outfit, not the dress her host had have made for her. With thieves breaking into their room, and having earned, although not through any fault of their own but for merely existing, the enmity of the Queen of the realm, Blake would not leave Gambol Shroud behind for the foreseeable future. And she wouldn’t carry her weapon around in a basket or in her hands, which meant she would be wearing an outfit that could accommodate the sheath, which her dress didn’t. She tested if she could draw it as easily as she should, which she could, then gave the weapon a quick check.

A yawning noise behind her alerted Blake to the fact that her partner had woken up. “Good morning, Yang,” she said without turning away from her weapon.

“How did you know it was me?” Yang asked. “Recognised my Yawng?”

Blake groaned. Yang was a great partner, a great Huntress, and the best friend she could imagine, smart and kind, but her puns barely deserved the name. Though that kind of fault made her even more appealing - she wasn’t some perfect Huntress, and not as cool as she could appear at first glance. Which was actually cooler.

Yang got out, complained about the cold floor, as usual, then about the cold water, and finally the state of her hair - which was still great in Blake’s opinion - before she started to dress herself. That meant Blake could open the shutters and let the sunlight in. Along with a brief wave of cold air until she closed the windows again, which served nicely to wake up both Ruby and Weiss.

A few minutes later, everyone was awake and up, dressed and armed - Ruby had slept with Crescent Rose again, Blake had noted; their leader had taken the attempted theft badly in more ways than one - and ready to tackle another day in Westeros.

“So…” Ruby, seated on her bed with Crescent Rose, folded up and laid across her lap, sighed. “I forgot to ask yesterday, what with the whole trial and thing, but… does anyone know anything about medicine?”

“Yes,” Blake said. Ruby’s eyes lit up, but Blake went on: “Just first aid. I can’t treat compound fractures.”

“You need a surgeon for that,” Weiss said, pressing her lips together in a frown. 

“And we’re Huntresses, not surgeons,” Yang stated the obvious.

Ruby sighed again and hunched over. “I didn’t know… I didn’t think. I should have known.”

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t make the guy break into our room,” Weiss told her.

“And he tried to steal your baby,” Yang added with a weak grin.

“He’s still unable to walk,” Ruby said. “And will live in pain for the rest of his life.”

“Well, I think he could get a sort of brace that lets him walk by taking the weight off his foot,” Yang said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to build even here - Mikken should have all the stuff for it.”

“But he’d still be in pain if his broken bones heal up wrong,” Ruby said.

“They can amputate his foot in that case,” Weiss said. “And replace it with a proper prosthetic - or what passes for one here,” she added with another frown.

“They wanted to cut off his hand!” Ruby shook her head. “And now they will cut off his foot? How barbaric can you be!”

“They have different laws and traditions,” Weiss pointed out, but her defence of their hosts sounded half-heartedly to Blake.

“Yeah, ‘different’ as in ‘fucked-up’,” Yang said. “But it’s good that we found out. Imagine if we brought in someone who was hungry and stole some food.”

Ruby grimaced and hunched over even more, and Weiss looked at Yang. “Are you implying that we should ignore thieves in the future?”

“Do you want to see a guy lose a hand just for stealing?” Yang asked, raising her eyebrows. 

Weiss blushed a little. “No, but… ignoring criminals seems wrong. And what if we ignore a thief, and he turns out to be a murderer?”

That was a good point, Blake had to admit. A number of White Fang’s more radical members had been petty criminals before joining the organisation.

“Well, we can still stop a criminal and scare them straight; we just don’t need to involve the cops.” Yang shrugged and grinned. “I bet we can scare anyone straight.”

“I don’t think the Starks would like that,” Weiss said. “It would infringe on their authority.”

“Only if they find out.”

Weiss huffed at that, but Blake agreed with her partner.

“Yes.” Apparently, so did Ruby. “No more delivering thieves to… ‘justice’. One maiming is enough.” She shook her head. “And we need to train harder so we can hold back better. People aren’t just more fragile here, without Aura and Semblances, but they can’t fix them as easily as we can back home. Unless…” she trailed off and bit her lower lip.

Weiss frowned at her. “You aren’t seriously considering activating the Aura of the man who tried to rob us of our weapons, are you?”

“It would fix him…” Ruby said in a low voice.

“He’s a thief!” Weiss hissed. “Would you want to grant such power to a criminal? What do you think he’ll do with it? Only we could stop him if he decided to abuse the power!”

“Right…” Ruby winced.

“Further, it would also show everyone that we can grant our powers to someone else,” Weiss went on. “Everyone will want to have their Aura activated. And if we refuse after doing so for a thief, they’ll be very offended.”

“I know…” Ruby whined.

“And they might arrange for ‘accidents’ to force us to activate someone’s Aura to heal them,” Blake pointed out. Some of the nobles here would do so, at least. Even to their children. Especially to their children.

Ruby and Weiss both winced at that.

“We don’t even know if it will work,” Weiss said. “Aura can be activated through stress without any outside influence. Wouldn’t that have happened at least a few times here?”

“It’s a very stressful life for many, yep,” Yang agreed. “But just because it doesn’t happen naturally doesn’t mean it can’t happen artificially, right?”

“We don’t know that,” Weiss said. “And the only way to find out risks empowering someone. Can we trust anyone here not to abuse such power? Or to hand it to someone else who will abuse it?”

“No…” Ruby sighed.

“But what will we do if, say, one of our friends has an accident, and only Aura can save them?” Yang asked.

Everyone winced at that, including Yang. Weiss shook her head. “We can cross that bridge when we reach it. Let’s not experiment with Aura. Those people already know too much for us to be comfortable.”

“Sorry…” Ruby said.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Yang told her. “We kind of underestimated them.”

“Yes. Just because they don’t know about modern technology, Aura or Dust doesn’t mean they’re stupid,” Weiss said.

Blake nodded. “Some of them are smarter than we are.”

Weiss scowled at that but didn’t contradict her.

“Let’s go to breakfast,” Ruby said. “I need some honey bread to feel better.”

On the way to the great hall, they saw the Captain of the guards with half a dozen guards standing near a tower - the entrance to the dungeons, Blake realised. And they seemed upset. 

“That doesn’t look good,” Yang commented. “Do you think the prisoner broke out?”

That would make him a deserter to be executed, Blake thought. Probably, at least. But… She cocked her head, focusing on the men’s voices.

“...and as I said, when I entered with his bread, I found him dead in his cell.”

Blake’s eyes widened. The thief was dead? How? 

“And you saw no wound?”

“None, Captain. But I found an empty wineskin near him.”

“Someone has smuggled some wine into his cells?” Judging by Captain Cassel’s expression, he suspected the same as Blake did.

Poison.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“I apologise for the delay, Lady Blake, but I had to help with the investigation into the prisoner’s death.” Luwin sounded honestly apologetic.

“I fully understand that this took priority, Maester Luwin.” Blake couldn’t and wouldn’t fault him for that - his research had confirmed that the thief had been poisoned with a wineskin smuggled into his cell, presumably through the window; the wineskin, even if nearly full, would have fit through the gaps between the bars, as a quick test had shown. Unfortunately, they had found no clue who might have been behind the murder - and behind the theft, of course. Blake was sure that the thief had been killed to prevent him from naming whoever had hired him for the task. It was even more unfortunate that the range of suspects included almost every noble in the castle.

Luwin sighed. “Unfortunately, I have further bad news. I have read through all the books in the library that were likely to contain the sort of information you seek, but after weeks of diligent searching, I remain as empty-handed as I was at the start.”

Blake couldn’t help frowning at hearing that. It wasn’t his fault either, but she had really hoped that they would find information about a way home here - or, at least, information that might lead to such a way home. “I’m sorry to hear that.” Really sorry.

Luwin nodded. “If it’s any consolidation, despite Lord Stark’s care for his library, it pales in comparison to the collection in the Citadel. Or the royal archives in the capital. The former dynasty included many members who were either scholars in their own right or talented dilettantes and bibliophiles, and so the royal archives contain a vast collection of tomes that may yet grant you the information you seek, my lady.”

Ah. This wasn’t the first time Luwin had mentioned the seat of his order, but to hear that the royal library might also have books not found in Winterkeep was new. Not that it should be a surprise - they didn’t have easy ways to make copies of books here, yet many ways to lose one, so the older a book was, the rarer it would be. “Thank you. We will have to think about our next step, then.”

Very carefully. There was a murderer around, after all.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and now we repeat that a lot until the metal’s grown harder.” Yang Xiao Long grinned as she worked the improvised machine. Cold-working steel wasn’t exactly taught at the workshop in Beacon, but she had done some extra-credit work at Signal once.

Mikken stared. “That’s… No one but you could bend steel like that, my lady. I don’t think you have to fear anyone duplicating your secret.”

“It’s not my secret,” Yang corrected him. “And you can make a machine to bend the steel - just need enough pressure.”

“Pressure?”

“Uh…” Hydraulic presses were not a thing here. Yang grimaced. “Well, with a really hard and heavy press, I guess.” She had always used the machines at the shops she had access to - it wasn’t as if she needed to mass-produce parts. “I guess you could also use heat-treating.”

“Heat-treating? We can do that, my lady.”

“Yeah, but your oven probably won’t reach the heat needed for this steel,” Yang said, holding out another piece that might end up part of a tool if this worked out. Even if she couldn’t harden the thing and hit the right tolerances - she needed special tools to machine it - it should work to some degree, but wouldn’t last long.

“What kind of steel is it?”

“Chromium-vanadium steel,” Yang explained. “Chromium makes it resistant to rust.”

“Resistant to rust?” Mikken looked even more eager. This tool-crafting session was turning into a little lesson, it seemed.

Yang snorted. If her teachers could see her now…

“My lady?”

“Nothing, just a stray thought. It doesn’t rust as easily, and it holds the edge longer.”

“Like Valyrian steel?”

“Probably not as much,” Yang said. She hadn’t examined Ice, Lord Eddard’s ancestral blade, Ruby had been a bit too eager when she heard about it, and they had decided not to push it to avoid offending their host, but from what she had heard, those blades were way tougher than any steel on Remnant - unless reinforced with Aura, of course. “But it holds up well if you’re in the wilderness.”

“And what is Chromium?”

“Uh…” How to describe that? Yang just bought the stuff. She knew the quantities you needed for certain steel, but she wasn’t a miner or a geologist. “If you refine it, it kinda looks like this…” she started to explain.

I wish I had written this up in advance, she thought while Mikken was repeating her words to remember them.

Then she blinked. 

She really should write that up - Team RWBY could probably trade that for access to other libraries if their owners were being unhelpful.

*****

On the way back from the smithy - Ember Celica was working perfectly as it should - Yang spotted Jon brooding in a corner of the yard. Well, he was sharpening his sword, but Yang could tell that his mind wasn’t on it, so he was brooding. The boy didn’t do much else these days.

She slowed down a little as she pondered if she should make a detour or not. Well, she had finished a little earlier than she thought - probably; without a scroll, it was hard to tell the time. To think she had laughed at Uncle Qrow for having an antique mechanical wristwatch. He would be so smug if he knew. Anyway, she could spare a little time pulling Jon out of whatever hole he was trying to dig with his mind. 

“Yo!” she called out when she closed in - he hadn’t even noticed her approach. He’d so fail situational awareness tests at Beacon.

He jerked and jumped to his feet. “Lady Yang!” he bowed.

She rolled her eyes. “No bowing when I’m wearing my combat clothes, remember?”

“But… You’re always wearing them nowadays, my lady,” he protested.

“So?” She cocked her head to the side and grinned. “And we still wear dresses to dinner. Which you should know if you hadn’t been avoiding us.”

“Ah…” He grimaced.

She sighed loudly. “Still hung up on the whole bastard thing?” 

He pressed his lips together and tensed up.

Oops. “I mean people thinking I’m a bastard,” she clarified. She didn’t want to make light of his bastard thing. It was stupid, but it was a real problem for him.

“Ah.” He blushed.

She quickly shook her head. “You already apologised. Twice. And it wasn’t your fault at all.”

“Still, my lady…” He glanced around.

“Nu-uh.” She wagged her finger at him. “No bullshit about me talking to you not being proper or what.”

“But…”

“Are you really trying to tell me who I can and can’t talk to?” She frowned at him, and he blushed.

“Ah… no, my lady.”

“Good. So, what got you down this time? You usually aren’t that gloomy.” He pouted at her for a moment, and she grinned back at him. Jon could brood through a pep talk from Ruby, so you had to be a bit harsh to get him to react. 

“I was just… letting my thoughts wander, my lady.” He shrugged.

She rolled her eyes again. Even Jaune would have seen through his act. “And where did your thoughts wander to? The Gloom&Doom Emporium?”

“What?” he stared at her.

She sighed. Her best quips were useless if people didn’t have the context. “What got you so down this time?”

“Nothing, my lady.” She kept staring at him, and he relented. “I was… wondering about my future.”

“Oh.” That wasn’t something she could help him with. Maybe she should have let him brood in peace. 

But he already went on without looking at her. “In the past, I wanted to join the Night’s Watch. It’s an honourable calling even for a bastard.”

“It’s also a very cold calling,” she said. He frowned some more, and she suppressed a wince. Right, no making light of this serious discussion.

“But… I thought about, well, other choices. I am good with a sword - this is no empty boast, as you know - so I could become a guard, but people don’t tend to trust bastards.”

“Wouldn’t becoming a guard be like joining the Night’s Watch, just with less ice and snow?”

He frowned at her before nodding. “Maybe it is the same, in a way. Just, I wouldn’t…” He blushed a little. “I wouldn’t have to abandon my family. But it’s hard to make a life as a bastard here.”

Yang nodded. “Yeah, you people are really stupid about that.” He gasped, and she scoffed. “I’m calling it like I see it. Judging someone for being born? That’s stupid.”

He looked at her like Ruby did when she was little and got told she couldn’t have another cookie. “That may be so, but that’s how it is, my lady.”

Well, he was right about that. But he was still being stupid. “Well, from what we saw, the Night’s Watch isn’t exactly easy street either. But Benjen probably told you that already.”

Jon frowned again. Or he had never really stopped. “He said I should consider that carefully.”

“That’s uncle-speak for ‘No, don’t do that’.” She grinned. “Trust me, I know.”

“But… what else can I do? I’m a bastard, and people don’t take bastards into service. I don’t want to live on my father’s charity - I want to earn my place!” he blurted out.

Yang could understand the feeling. But she couldn’t really help him - that sort of problem didn’t happen in Vale. Wait. It kinda did - for Faunus. Oh. 

Maybe she should tell him to talk to Blake about this? But what could Blake tell him? As far as they knew, there wasn’t some bastard community here he could get support from. “Aren’t there any people who don’t think bastards are untrustworthy and would hire you?”

He shook his head. “Not in Westeros. Maybe in Essos, if I became a sellsword, but… Fighting for coin isn’t very honourable.”

That sounded a bit picky, but judging by what Uncle Qrow had told them about mercenaries, he probably wasn’t wrong. “Well, I’d take you if I had a castle, but I don’t.”

He stared at her for a moment with a surprised expression before nodding gloomily. “You don’t need retainers. And you can’t afford them as our guests.”

Yang winced. Seen from that angle, they were in a similar position.

*****

When Yang entered their room a bit later, she was feeling like brooding herself. That talk had gone completely wrong. Not only had she failed to cheer up Jon, but she had managed to make herself feel down as well. Way to go, girl! she told herself as she greeted the others.

“Yang! We’ve got news!” Ruby told her. “Important news!”

Oh? “Good news, I hope,” Yang said. But judging by the looks of the others, it was mixed news at best.

“The King has invited us to return with him to King’s landing,” Weiss said.

“And the Starks are coming along,” Ruby went on. “The King is making Lord Eddard his right hand.”

“It’s called the Hand of the King,” Weiss corrected her.

“I knew that.”

“That’s good, I think,” Yang said. “It was the Citadel or King’s Landing for more libraries, right?”

“Yes,” Blake said. “But it also means we’ll be travelling with the most likely suspects behind the attempted theft of our weapons. And behind the murder of the thief.”

Right.

*****

 

Chapter 8: Unexpected Discoveries

‘While only an ignorant fool would deny that the Ruby Order has significantly influenced the course of Westeros - one can but wonder how the Succession would have played out without their presence - there has been a tendency among scholars to vastly overestimate their impact and attribute not only far-reaching social changes in Westerosi society but also magical instead of technological advancements of all sorts to them. Now, this is somewhat understandable in earlier epochs, when what had to be fairly advanced weapon technology must have appeared to be magical, and people assumed everything else was as well, but there is no excuse for it in our time, when we have far more information available to properly evaluate those claims - first among them the transcripts of the original treatises on smithing by Lady Ruby and Lady Yang themselves, faithfully preserved by our Order.

First, as should be apparent to anyone with even a little expertise in blacksmithing, there is no magic to it. The weapons and tools described in those documents are entirely mundane. It is so obvious that the fact that so many people in the centuries that followed tried to construct the weapons using magic would have been amusing if not for all the sacrifices made during the more determined attempts. No, as has been demonstrated quite thoroughly, if at great material cost, those designs are almost entirely feasible to build with purely mundane means - as long as you have access to advanced materials far beyond what people had at the time, and for centuries afterwards, and you do not mind that the weapons would require extensive repairs or a complete reconstruction after almost every fight. It is absolutely clear, therefore, that the designs we have preserved were not actual weapons that the Ruby Order used (a fact that should also have been obvious since none of the designs fit any of the weapons the four members used) but designs they imagined yet were not able to build. It is an impressive testament to their brilliance as weapon designers and blacksmiths that their designs could be built once technology had progressed enough. One can but shudder to think what would have been the consequences if that had not been the case, and all the attempts to build them would have been a waste instead of a driving factor in the advancement of metallurgy and smithing that saw Westeros eclipse competing realms, with all the effects on warfare that entailed. The world as we know it would certainly look very different today.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Theon Greyjoy sighed as he leaned against the wall in Winterfell’s inner courtyard, looking at the darkening sky above him. It would soon be night and time for the evening feast, but he had a bit more time before that to enjoy the clear air here. With the fat King's court visiting, the Great Hall was always full and busy with guests and servants serving them. It was quite the contrast to the usually much quieter life in Winterfell - a life Theon was very familiar with.

He had grown up with the Starks since his father’s rebellion. He was Lord Eddard’s ward - a hostage by another name. He was aware of it, and so was everyone else, but it wasn’t something anyone brought up, and it wasn’t something he worried much about - his father wouldn’t be as stupid as to try and take on the rest of the Seven Kingdoms again, would he? Certainly not now, when the Starks apparently had gained the friendship of four girls with the power to smash armies. 

Of course, Team Ruby wouldn't be as effective at sea as they were on land, but Theon saw no way for even a reconstructed Iron Fleet to stop them if they were on a ship. Any Ironborn ship trying to board them would be taken. If a ship rammed it, they would simply abandon their ship and take the other ship. Maybe catapults might work, sink their ship from range without getting close, but hitting a target at a distance at sea, with both ships moved up and down by waves… Theon wasn't an expert in sailing or using catapults, but he was, without any boasting, the best archer in Winterfell, maybe the North, and he wouldn't give himself good odds at hitting a target at far ranges under such conditions.

Worse, the Greenlanders weren't Ironborn, but they could sail their ships decently enough, and with Team Ruby, all they needed to do was to reach the Iron Islands, and Father's keep would be pulled down around him as soon as the girls saw it. Theon had told Father in his latest letter what he had seen the girls do, just to ensure that his family knew about Team Ruby.

So, Theon didn't have to worry about his father rebelling against the King.

Of course, if Theon had managed to gain the support of Team Ruby, things would look differently. The Iron Fleet would rule the seas, and the girls would brush away any army trying to stop them on land as easily as Theon could swat a fly. No one would be able to touch the Iron Islands, and no one would be safe from the Iron Fleet. It would be easy to retake the Riverlands, restore Harrenhall, reforge the kingdom of old… But why stop there? With the Iron Fleet and Team Ruby, Theon could take the Iron Throne for himself! He would be the greatest king of the Iron Islands since… He would be the greatest king ever! Covered with glory and surrounded by the riches of the Seven Kingdoms. And the women! The most beautiful women of all the realms would be his! He'd pick his Queen and then take the others as his salt wives!

He smiled and let his imagination run wild a little longer before sighing. It was a great dream, but only that - a dream. Team Ruby hadn't shown the slightest interest in him. Neither his position as the heir to the Iron Islands nor his skill at archery - something none of the girls was skilled at - or his wits had seemed to impress them. And while Theon might not be as experienced as he claimed when he was talking with Robb or the bastard, he was experienced enough with women to know they didn't find him attractive. Of course, if they were from a proper noble family, that wouldn't matter; all he would have to do was to impress their fathers, but since that wasn't the case, Theon’s dream would remain a dream.

It was scant comfort that Robb and the bastard weren't faring any better, both mooning after girls they could never have. Maybe they shouldn't have scorned Theon for going to whores as if there were anything wrong with it…

And, just as he had been thinking of them, they appeared! Theon grinned as he saw Robb and the bastard step out of the keep and start walking towards the training yard, their puppies trailing after them. Puppies the size of full-grown hounds, now. Theon had no doubt that they could rip a man to shreds already - and who knew what terrors they would become when fully grown? If only the huntsman who found them had killed them, instead of being afraid of harming the sigil animal of his Lord and bringing them to Winterfell! Lady Catelyn had had the right of them, back then, but the children had fallen in love with the puppies, and Lord Stark had acquiesced. Ah, well - feeding them and controlling them wasn’t his problem.

Robb looked frustrated, Theon realised as he moved to cut them off, while the bastard looked… not as sad as he usually did. Something must have happened. “Robb! Bastard! Where were you?”

“Theon.” Robb smiled for half a breath at him before scowling. “Father called for a family meeting in the afternoon, when you were in the village.”

Theon raised his eyebrows and looked at the bastard. The bastard frowned back at him.

Robb scowled again. “Yes, Jon was also present.”

“Really?” Theon didn't have to fake his surprise.

The bastard's glare grew harder, but he didn't say anything. Weak.

“Yes.” Robb nodded.

“Then it must have involved Team Ruby,” Theon said. He rolled his eyes at Robb's surprised expression. “Everyone knows Lady Yang, for whatever weird, foreign reason, is sweet on him.” Not sweet enough to be interested in the bastard as anything but a sparring partner, but he either didn't realise that or didn't want to accept it.

“Lady Yang doesn't care about my birth.” The bastard was trying for the cold expression of his father but didn't quite pull it off - Theon could tell that he was fuming.

Whatever, he didn’t matter. Robb did. Theon shrugged with a snort and looked at the heir to Winterfell. “And since you're not smiling like an idiot, you didn't get an engagement with Lady Ruby.”

Now Robb was scowling as well. “That wasn't what the meeting was about!”

“It wasn't?” Then they were fools. Whoever managed to marry Lady Ruby would rule the realm, either openly or behind the throne.

“The King has offered Father to become his Hand. Father has accepted,” Robb explained. “He'll travel with the King back to King's Landing.”

Ah. So, that rumour had been true. Theon had thought so - it was obvious that the King considered Lord Eddard his best and most loyal friend, and the Hand of the King had so much power, if they weren't loyal, the kingdom was in trouble. “And where's the problem?” Being the King's hand would make the Starks more powerful. And that meant Robb's prospects had improved.

“I have to stay in Winterfell. A Stark has to stay here at all times,” Robb said.

“Oh. And Lady Ruby and her friends will go to King's Landing.” Theon nodded. That much was obvious - the King clearly cared more for them than he did for his own children. 

“Yes.” Robb spat the word through clenched teeth.

“With the royal family.”

“Yes.” That came out in a hiss.

“So, there's no engagement then?” Theon twisted the knife. He felt a bit bad at Robb's expression, but why should Robb have more success with the four girls than Theon?

“Not with Team Ruby. But the King and Father agreed on an engagement between Sansa and the Prince.” Robb smiled a little at that.

Theon was surprised. “The King didn't want his son to marry Lady Ruby?” Sansa was a nice if naive girl and the eldest daughter of Lord Eddard, but she couldn't smash holes into walls with her bare hands and break swords on her head. 

Robb shrugged. “Apparently, the Queen insisted, or so Father said he was told by the King.”

Theon shook his head. The Queen was stupid, then - the real prize was Team Ruby. But the King must have realised that as well, so why had he agreed to this? Whatever, it was done. “Well, you still have a chance, then,” he lied. If the Starks hadn’t managed to get an engagement until now, they wouldn't get it once the girls were in King's Landing, surrounded by the most powerful nobles of the Seven Kingdoms.

The bastard nodded with a faint smile. He was taking this far too well, Theon realised. Why wasn't… “Don't tell me they're taking the bastard to King's Landing!”

Both boys were glaring at him.

“I asked Father to let me come with him, and he agreed,” the bastard said with the hint of a smirk.

Theon narrowed his eyes at him - bastards should know their place. But if Lord Eddard had agreed to this… was he really hoping that the bastard would be able to win Lady Yang? Was that pure desperation? Or did they know something Theon didn't? The Starks were closest to Team Ruby, after all…

Theon had to look into this. There might be something he could use to change his own fortune.

Of course, he would be stuck in Winterfell as well, but it wasn't as if he had anything better to do.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and by using hardened steel and interlocking parts - see a) and b) - and polymers, you can achieve the same structural stability at a fracture of the weight.”

Ruby Rose nodded as she looked at the notes she had just written down, then added the a) and b) marks to the sketch of her baby. Well, not her baby, but a kind of proto-baby, yet not, since she had never planned to have a scythe without a gun built into it, but if she had, it probably would have looked like this because she had designed it.

Yang peered over her shoulder, then shook her head. “They don't know what polymers are, Rubes.” 

“I know that,” Ruby told her. “But once they know, they can duplicate the design.”

“You need to at least describe polymers first, dolt,” Weiss added from the bed, where she was scribbling down notes of her own. Well, not scribbling - she had a much better handwriting than Ruby.

“But…” Ruby sighed. “Alright, I'll write a page about how you can mould your own polymer parts.” It wasn’t that difficult with the right tools and the right materials… Which they didn’t have in Westeros.

She looked at Yang, who was grinning at her. “I'll have to write about making the tools…?”

“The tools to make the tools to make the tools.” Yang patted her head, and Ruby shook off her sister's hand. “Otherwise, all your notes would be useless for people here.”

Ruby pouted. Leaving useless notes in exchange for access to a library wouldn't be honest, would it? But… 

“I don't think they can actually make any of the weapons we describe here,” Weiss cut in.

“Yep.” Yang nodded. “So we don't have to worry about our work being used against us.”

Or against others. Which would also be bad.

“The Maesters might accuse us of making up our notes,” Weiss said. “If they can't make sense of them.”

Yang scoffed. “That's their problem.”

“As long as they can examine our weapons, they will realise that we're not trying to con them,” Blake commented from the rafters overhead. A moment later, she rolled over the beam and dropped down, twisting to land on her feet like a two-legged cat.

“We will have to make copies as well,” Weiss said. “And we need to be careful when negotiating. We can't give away everything at the start - we need to save some notes for later favours.”

“Yep.” Yang nodded. “Or to sell,” she added with a wide smile. “If we need money.”

Ruby frowned at her. She knew what Yang meant. “I don't like freeloading, so sue me!” It was bad enough that the Starks had been giving them a room and free food (and even clothes, though that wasn't really a big thing since it was just a dress) without asking for anything in return.

“We’re their guests. Their own customs and honour require them to support us,” Weiss said. “That's not our fault.”

“That doesn't mean we have to exploit them,” Ruby disagreed.

“They are trying to exploit us,” Weiss said with a sniff. “As is everyone else. I expect some marriage offers in the near future, and not just from the Starks.”

Ruby shuddered at the thought. The whole misunderstanding about Yang’s, uh, parentage had had one good side: They had stopped all the not-so-subtle talk about weddings and stuff. But it seemed that wouldn’t last much longer.

“And we'll tell them we're not ready to marry,” Yang said.

“If we are too brusque in our refusal, they'll take offence.” Blake’s looked at Weiss. “You'll need to be very diplomatic about that.”

“I am very much aware of that.” Weiss frowned. “Lady Catelyn has been hinting at it again lately, but so far, she hasn't made a straight offer, so I could deflect her comments.” 

Ruby nodded. “And with the engagement between Sansa and the Prince, we won't have to fear a similar offer from the royal family!”

Weiss rolled her eyes like she usually did whenever she thought Ruby had said something stupid.

“Well, I don't know if I should feel insulted that they think we're not good enough for the Prince or not,” Yang said with a chuckle.

“We're not good enough for the Queen,” Blake said. “She was very vocal about it with the King when he mentioned the Prince being interested in us. I think anyone could have heard her if they had been near the tower.”

Oh. Ruby pressed her lips together. She wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. On the one hand, the Queen hating them (despite Ruby trying her best to be nice to her) was a bad thing. But it also meant that they wouldn't have to turn down a marriage with the Prince and fight their way through the royal army when they took offence.

“There's still Prince Tommen,” Weiss commented.

Ew! Ruby retched. Tommen was like… eight or so. Half her age. And she was the youngest member of her team by two years! Time to change the topic! “Anyway, we need money of our own if we don't want to feel indebted to the Starks. Or the King. We can't just expect them to pay us an allowance just because they think we're noblewomen.” Which they weren't - they were, if not lying, then letting the locals believe a lie.

“The King rules the entire kingdom, and Lord Eddard rules the North. I don't think feeding and clothing us will drain their coffers in a noticeable way,” Weiss objected. “The King probably spends more on his food and drink than we consume.”

“But I would feel indebted if we were freeloading,” Ruby pointed out for the umpteenth time. “And we can't expect them to give us money to travel and buy or borrow books.” Books were a lot more expensive here, as Blake had told her.

“If they like giving us money, why not?” Yang grinned.

“It’s not right!” Ruby insisted.

“Besides, you accepted the King's invitation to King's Landing,” Yang told her. “I think he'd be offended if we didn't stay in the palace.”

Drat. The King probably would be offended if they did that. Ruby sighed again. She couldn't win. And the Prince kept following her and the others around. Maybe that would stop now that he had a fiancée. Sansa was pretty and his age, so Joffrey should be happy.

“Ruby's not wrong, though - we have to consider the impression we give to others and the obligations we acquire very carefully,” Weiss cut in. “If the King thinks we owe him a service, and it's something we won't do, we will have a problem.”

Another problem, Ruby thought. The Queen hated her, the Prince was stalking them… at least the King liked them, even if he was a bit pushy about hearing more about Remnant and Huntresses and Grimm, and Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella were nice kids. And the Prince didn’t think they were assassins any more.

So, things could be worse.

*****

“...and then you twist your wrist just so.”

“I see. Thank you, Ser Barristan.”

Ruby let Crescent Rose’s butt rest on the ground while Ser Barristan showed Weiss how he’d parried her strike. Well, how he had parried her held back and slowed down strike - if she had been serious, she would have struck too fast for him to react, and too hard for him to parry; she would have just cut through his blade and arm and himself. Probably - the old knight was very good with his sword and had surprised her before with his tricks. No more than once each time, though. And he was a good teacher.

Too bad most of his moves didn’t work with her baby. But she could learn how to counter them, even when used by a Huntress using a sword, as Weiss and Blake had demonstrated before. Next time she sparred with Pyrrha, the girl better watch out!

“Thank you for training with us, my ladies.”

And he was very polite and respectful too! He didn’t smirk when talking to them. And he didn’t frown at them. And he didn’t stare at their legs, chests and butts, either, like so many others when they thought Ruby couldn’t see them!

Or, she added to herself with a glance at the Prince, who had been watching their training session from the fence, just stared at her and her friends. The Prince apparently still wanted to stalk them instead of spending time with Sansa. It was really weird - not even the King or Arya were as interested in them as the Prince was. And he wasn’t just watching; he was always asking questions, too!

Like now - he was already walking towards her just because she had taken a short break. Ruby glanced around, but Weiss was still talking with Ser Barristan, and Blake and Yang were sparring, so she couldn’t just act as if she hadn’t noticed the Prince.

“That was quite impressive, Lady Ruby!” He smiled at her.

His bodyguard - sworn sword, she reminded herself - grunted, and his scowl made his burn scars look even worse.

Ruby tried to ignore him; he never seemed happy, especially not around her team. And he was always sneering and scowling as if they had personally hurt him or something. “Thank you, Your Grace, but we just did some training. Ser Barristan showed us a new move.”

“A move for a sword, yes, I saw.” The Prince nodded. “Though you can’t use the move with your scythe, can you?”

“Nope!” She grinned. “Some of the moves I can adapt, but that one I can’t use - even when I wield Crescent Rose with one hand, the technique just doesn’t work out. But it’s nice to know when fighting people who use swords.”

“Of course. Every little bit of knowledge and training helps, right?”

The Prince got it! She nodded happily. “Exactly!”

“Though all the training cannot compensate for superior strength and speed.”

Her smile faltered a little. The Prince kept coming back to that - it must annoy him thoroughly that he didn’t have Aura. Not that they had told him or anyone else about Aura. People would want them to unlock theirs, then unlock others, and soon, everyone, even the worst people, would have Aura.

Ruby wasn’t an expert, but she knew enough to know that that would be a disaster - the White Fang proved that back home; they weren’t Huntresses, but they all had their Auras unlocked, and that alone made them much more dangerous than most bandits. Of course, they didn’t know if they could unlock Aura in Westeros - they had never tried. But people wouldn’t believe them and get angry and feel betrayed if it didn’t work, so best not to talk about it at all. Nothing good would come from it.

But the Prince expected an answer, so she nodded. “Well, sometimes, it does. But you’re generally correct, yes.”

“And training will only take you so far when it comes to becoming stronger.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded again. With Aura, training would take you a very long way, of course. And experience would carry you even further. But the Prince was essentially correct, and agreeing with him was the polite thing.

“I’ve heard about rituals that bestow boons on people. Supposedly, they can grant insight and let you see the future - there’s a priest of R’hllor at the court in King’s Landing who spoke about using magic fires for that,” the Prince went on.

“Oh?” Ruby perked up. She hadn’t heard about anything like that. Magic! And magic rituals! Maybe that was a way home! Or could show them how to get home!

“Yes. So, did you do a magic ritual to become so strong?” The Prince’s smile didn’t change, but his eyes looked more intense.

“Uh… No. We can’t use magic back home. It’s just Dust and family traits.”

“But your dust is magic, isn’t it?”

“No. Dust is… Dust.” Ruby shook her head. “Anyone can use Dust. It’s… like ore.”

“Ah.” 

Fortunately, Weiss had finished talking with Ser Barristan, and Ruby had an excuse to go spar with her.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss Schnee would much prefer to be back in the training yard, crossing blades with Ser Barristan, than sitting in Lady Catelyn's chambers sipping tea with Lady Catelyn, Sansa, Arya, Princess Myrcella and the Queen. She could learn something she didn't know about fencing and sword-fighting from the old Kingsguard and work on adapting it to using it with Myrtenaster. All she could learn here were things she already knew, such as that the Queen was a spiteful woman whose pride far outstripped her intelligence, and she could work on her self-control, which she already had mastered - as proven by the fact that despite ample provocation, she hadn't set lashed out against the Queen, neither verbally nor physically.

“Yes, Your Grace,” she lied, smiling as sweetly as she could, “I'm very happy to hear that your son the Prince and Lady Sansa are now betrothed. They seem well-matched.” Well-matched in that both were children, and she was happy that the Prince was now officially engaged and Team RWBY didn't have to worry about being offered his hand in marriage any more. But she pitied Sansa for marrying into the royal family; she had no doubt that the Queen was the worst mother-in-law possible. In fact, she couldn't help feeling that her own father had finally found a worthy rival, should there ever be a competition for the title of worst parent possible.

The Queen smiled widely, showing perfect teeth, with a hint of a sneer. “I am very happy to hear that, Lady Weiss. There are so many noble ladies who will now be disappointed that their designs on my dear son have been foiled, it is refreshing to hear you and your friends aren't among them.”

Weiss didn't have to fake her laugh. A member of Team RWBY, marrying the Prince? Marrying anyone in Westeros? The notion was truly ludicrous. As if any of her friends, much less Weiss herself, would wish to marry a child - or become the Queen of this barbaric realm! “Unlike many, none of us is delusional, Your Grace.”

The way the Queen's satisfied smile waned a little was a clear indicator that she must have picked up at least a hint of Weiss's true feelings. “Delusional indeed. My precious lion would never marry someone beneath him.”

Weiss smiled widely and nodded. “A sensible policy, Your Grace. Maintaining standards is very important for every family.”

The Queen narrowed her eyes at that - Weiss might have been a bit too smug - but Lady Catelyn cleared her throat before the other woman could say anything. “Yes, we're all very happy with the engagement. Right, Sansa?”

“Oh, yes, Mother!” Sansa was beaming - the verbal sparring must have gone over her head. “Prince Joffrey is such a gallant boy! It's like a dream come true!”

Both the Queen and Lady Catelyn smiled at that - the Queen with an indulgent, patronising expression, Lady Catelyn with a warm and slightly nostalgic - or even sad; Weiss wasn't quite sure - one.

“It will strengthen the realm,” the Queen stated the obvious, “and tie the North closer to the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. Imagine the Prince - and future king - married to someone unsuitable! The entire realm would suffer!”

“Indeed, Your Grace.” Weiss nodded with an honest smile. The Queen might think she was insulting them - and so did Lady Catelyn, judging by her alarmed expression - but Weiss knew very well how unsuited her friends and herself were for the position of Queen of Westeros. She was certain, for example, that If she were Queen, she would have ordered the odious woman sitting across from her banished from court long ago. Not that the Queen was suited for her position, either; it was quite obvious that the reason she had supported - or insisted on, according to Blake - the engagement between Sansa and the Prince wasn't an honest worry about the future of the kingdom, but the petty desire to keep Team RWBY from marrying into the royal family. Probably because none of them would bow to her. Figuratively; they were bowing to the Queen as protocol dictated, of course.

Maybe Weiss should have acted as if she were disappointed by the news, making the Queen believe her plan had worked perfectly… No. That would have been beneath her. She would not stoop to telling such lies. Not if telling the truth was far more satisfying, at least, she amended her thoughts.

“I am looking forward to calling you my good sister, Lady Sansa.” Myrcella beamed at Sansa.

“Thank you, my princess!”

Weiss narrowed her eyes slightly. While Sansa was an open book, Myrcella seemed to be a bit… not lying, not that, but she seemed to feel a little bit guilty. Though Weiss hadn't had much contact with the little princess yet, so she might be mistaken. On the other hand, the notion that a ten-year-old princess could fool her was more than a little preposterous. At least, in Weiss's opinion. It was obvious that the girl, incidentally like Sansa, had led a very sheltered and pampered life. So, what might make her feel so… ambivalent about her brother's engagement? Was she dreading her own arranged marriage? If so, she had good reason to; according to what information Weiss had heard, there had been many truly awful matches in the past.

At least Arya was far easier to get a read on; the girl didn't want to be here and had been told not to pester Weiss with questions about fighting by Lady Catelyn. She was trying not to be obvious about it but failing to hide how bored she was. Interestingly, she hadn't tried to make up an excuse to leave the gathering and was doing her best to act like her sister - well, like her sister if Sansa were scowling whenever she thought no one was looking at her.

Weiss could understand the feeling; she had suffered through many social gatherings where she had to fake interest and hide her true feelings.

*****

Weiss took a deep breath as she watched the Queen leave with Princess Myrcella, Sansa and Arya in tow, ostensibly ‘to do some needlework’. 

“The Queen is pleased with the engagement between our families.”

Weiss turned to look at Lady Catelyn. “Indeed. She said so several times, and quite sincerely.” She wasn't about to say what she really thought, of course.

Lady Catelyn hesitated a moment, but once a servant closed the door, she said: “She also seemed to expect you to be unhappy about it.”

Weiss wanted to sigh. “She may have been under the mistaken assumption that my friends and I were interested in marrying the Prince. Nothing could be further from our minds, though - we aren’t ignorant of the towering difference in status between the Prince and us.”

Lady Catelyn nodded. “Becoming Queen is a great challenge. I can only hope that my daughter is up to the task. Fortunately, she will have years to grow into the role.”

Weiss nodded and hid her pity for the girl. Sansa would have to grow a lot - she knew this better than most.

Lady Catelyn went on: “However, not every such match is as… challenging. I grew up in the South, and I found that things are often much simpler and more accommodating in the North. What might be seen as an insurmountable gap elsewhere is not quite as much of an obstacle here.”

Weiss managed not to scowl. Lady Catelyn wasn’t as subtle as she might think she was - or she was perfectly happy to make her intentions clear. How to reply without insulting her? “Indeed. Yet, compared to our home, the difference is still staggering. People back home rarely marry before reaching twenty and often wait a few years longer.”

“And at which age do they enter betrothals?”

“Betrothals usually only last a few months, maybe a year, before people marry,” Weiss told her.

“Ah. I assume that is because betrothals aren’t a matter for the heads of houses in your home.” Lady Catelyn nodded. 

“Yes.” Weiss had a hard time reading the woman, but it seemed she was pleased.

It looked like Weiss had dodged another bullet. Lady Catelyn was quite persistent - and Team RWBY owed their hosts; the Starks had welcomed them into Winterfell and provided them with food, lodging and clothes - everything they needed after getting stranded in another world. Well, everything the locals could provide. So, as annoying as the not-quite-open offers were, Weiss couldn’t just bluntly refuse them.

Oh, she couldn’t wait to travel to King’s Landing. Dealing with Lord Eddard and his younger children would be far easier than this.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Several years in the White Fang had taught Blake Belladonna how to fit into a crowd so she didn’t catch the attention of the police or anyone else. If you dressed casually but avoided being overdressed or underdressed, neither rushed nor lingered anywhere but walked as if you had an appointment to reach and looked as if you were not paying attention to anything not in your way, people, including the police, tended to dismiss you as not worth their attention. Provided you hid your Faunus traits, of course - many humans, especially the police, considered a Faunus suspicious by default and were always ready and willing to harass them.

The circumstances were different here in Westeros, but the principle was the same - Blake was pretty sure that if she dressed like a servant, hid her ears under a headscarf or something, and walked with her head down carrying a basket full of apples or firewood, she would escape the notice of most people. Most, yet not all - the Kingsguard, especially Ser Barristan, wouldn’t miss her; they took their duty seriously, with the possible exception of Ser Jaime, who was often making light of his tasks. And, of course, Blake wasn’t just another face in a city full of people but an honoured guest in a large but not very densely populated castle. She didn’t doubt that amongst the staff in the castle, almost everyone knew how she looked, and that if she were to disguise herself and end up recognised anyway, people would draw their own conclusions, conclusions that would hinder her own plans and tasks.

So, instead of disguising herself, she stuck to avoiding people while she travelled through the castle, not quite sneaking, in case anyone spotted her, but just casually walking on the ramparts and in usually deserted hallways. And in order to complete her disguise as a harmless guest - as harmless as a Huntress able to crater castle walls could be - she carried a book or at least a scroll with her to fake reading while she walked. No one would expect a loner who walked with her head stuck in a book half of the time to prowl the night like the spy she was. Well, not unless they drew their conclusions from the fact that she taught Bran how to climb without risking life and limb.

She sighed as she walked on a rarely-used path along the outer wall. In hindsight, she shouldn’t have exposed that particular talent, but her time in the White Fang also had taught her that you had to do the right thing and help people even if it cost you. The White Fang had been founded by her parents to help Faunus, not hurt humans, something that the rest of the current members apparently had forgotten, and that was why Blake had, albeit too late for her conscience, finally left. If only she had realised that and listened to her parents before she had joined…

She shook her head and peered over her book as she approached the open part of the outer yard. Since it was between the two walls, it was both relatively narrow - at least compared to the inner yard - and didn’t contain too many buildings, presumably so anyone who took the outer wall wouldn’t have a lot of cover against the archers on the inner wall. A lot of the ground was used to plant herbs and vegetables or to house animals so the smell didn’t disturb the people in the keep - unless they had the fine nose of a Faunus, at least, she amended her thought as she caught a whiff of the pigsty.

Frowning, she changed her path, deciding to circle the inner wall in the other direction. She could do without having her nose clogged up by the stench of manure.

Apparently, she discovered as she rounded the base of the closest tower of the inner wall, so did others - Bran and Arya were talking in the shadow of the rampart there. Blake could have reversed course without them realising she had seen them - they hadn’t noticed her yet - but she decided against it. Both Bran and Arya had been acting a bit distantly lately - since the day Yang had found out about the misunderstanding regarding her parentage, to be exact - and Blake didn’t really think that they had given up on their usual antics. And, for a change, they didn’t have their ravenous beasts with them, so this was a good opportunity to talk to them without risking life and limb.

“Hello,” she said as she approached them, hiding a grin behind her book as the two children jerked, startled.

“Lady Blake!”

“My lady!”

Blake closed her book and put it into the pouch on her belt that usually housed it. “What are you doing here?” Best to be open about it.

“Ah…” Bran bit his lower lip, apparently not able to come up with a cover story on the spot.

“We’re taking a stroll around the inner wall. Like you?” Arya was a bit quicker on her feet.

“Ah. And you decided to take a break here because it was such a long stroll?” Blake smiled.

Arya blushed a little, pouting, but Bran nodded and grinned. “Yes, my lady. Exactly!”

She snorted at his recovered cheek. “So, what kind of mischief are you planning?”

Bran kept grinning, but Arya grimaced. “None!” she said. “We’re not planning any mischief! We just… wanted to talk where others couldn’t overhear us.”

“Like your parents?” Blake nodded. “I know the feeling.”

“Ah.” Arya looked relieved. “Yes, exactly. We just… wanted some privacy.”

“To plot your revenge?” Blake chuckled. “I’m joking.”

Bran chuckled, but Arya sighed. “Mother’s so unfair! It wasn’t my fault that we thought Lady Yang was a bastard! I just believed what I was told!”

“That’s not always a good idea,” Blake said. “People misunderstand things or make mistakes.” And some outright lied and manipulated you. Like Adam, that asshole.

She managed not to grind her teeth at the thought of her former… whatever. 

“Well, so we shouldn’t believe you when you tell us that something’s dangerous?” Bran smiled at her.

She snorted in return. “If you have doubts about something, you should ask for proof - or at least for a reason or explanation. Asking questions is never wrong.”

Arya scoffed. “Mother just wants me to do what she says, even if it’s stupid. And even if I don’t want to do it.”

Ah. That sounded like a typical if slightly precocious - Arya wasn’t a teenager yet - teenage tantrum. “And what do you want to do?” Blake asked.

“I Know what I don’t want to do! I don’t want to become a ‘southern lady’!” Arya blurted out. “I want to become a Huntress!”

Ah. Blake winced. “You don’t have Grimm in this world; you don’t need Huntresses,” she said.

“We have wildings raiders, bandits, slavers from Essos, Ironborns…” Arya scoffed. “We have plenty of dangers people need to be protected from!”

Well, she wasn’t wrong.

“If you don’t want to become a ‘southern lady’, why didn’t you protest when Mother told you that you’d go to King’s landing with Father and the rest of us?” Bran asked.

Arya glared at him. “Because…” She glanced at Blake. “Because I want to see more of Westeros than the North!”

Ah! Blake nodded. It was obvious what she wanted.

“She wants to train with you - with Team Ruby!” Bran said.

So obvious, Bran was aware of it. Children!

“Bran!”

“What?”

“Our training is quite demanding,” Blake said. “It would be best to get more… basic lessons from other people.” She was quite certain that Lady Catelyn wouldn’t be amused if Team RWBY started to train Arya in fighting; their hostess had made her views on that clear.

“But no one will train me! Not really!” Arya protested. “It’s so unfair! Bran, Robb, Jon - everyone gets training, but I don’t. Even though I’m better than Bran!”

“That was one fight and you cheated!”

“I won! That’s all that matters!”

“Well, you won’t win once I get training as a squire!”

Blake sighed. “You want to become a squire?” she asked.

“I want to become a knight, and you need to be a squire first!” Bran nodded. 

Arya scoffed. “Knights are weak. Team Ruby could defeat every knight in Winterfell!”

She wasn’t wrong, of course, but that wouldn’t really help either of them.

“So? Then I’ll become a knight who’s as strong as a Huntsman!” Bran spat.

Arya scoffed again.

“Well, even a Huntress needs to learn the basics, like a squire,” Blake said.

“I know!” Arya pouted. “But no one will teach me!”

Blake didn’t have an answer for that. Or shouldn’t have one. Ruby would offer to train the girl in a heartbeat, of course, regardless of the problems that would cause. But Blake wasn’t Ruby.

On the other hand, Team RWBY was supposed to do the right thing - but what was the right thing here? It was unfair that Bran could follow his dreams and Arya couldn’t. Or that Arya wasn’t allowed to learn how to defend herself and protect others. Blake knew what happened to people who couldn’t fight when they needed to. And how much harm could some training do?

She smiled. “Well, if you can keep it secret, I might be able to give you two a few pointers. Only if you don’t tell anyone, though.”

Both children beamed at her, and Blake suppressed the slight guilt she felt. At least she knew Ruby would support her. And Yang as well.

Oh!

“And only if you don’t bring your dire wolves!” she added with a stern expression.

That had the children whine at her, but Blake remained steadfast - she wouldn’t teach anyone with those beasts around. That would be far too dangerous!

*****

On her way to their chambers to ‘freshen up’ before dinner, Blake passed the empty tower - supposedly used to store food and house people in the long winters - and her ears twitched under her ribbons when she caught voices - familiar voices.

She glanced around, but the whole area was deserted. Sometimes, she thought an enemy army could set up camp inside the castle, and it would take a day until someone noticed. She quickly walked around the tower, then climbed up - not too high, only until she could hear the voices clearly.

“It’s been too long! I thought you had forgotten me!”

“Never! But it’s not as easy to find some privacy as it is at home.”

“We’re in a deserted castle, and the King is drinking more than ever - with those foreign harlots with whom you like to train!”

“The Starks have skilled guards and staff. It wasn’t easy to arrange this - and it would have been impossible without those girls distracting everyone, especially our brother and my ‘brothers’. But I did it.”

“It was about time. We’ll soon be travelling back to King’s Landing, and we won’t have any privacy during that ordeal!”

“Then let’s make the best of this.”

Blake blinked. Those were the Queen and her brother, Ser Jaime, but they talked as if they were the protagonists of ‘Forbidden Love’. She snorted - her imagination was running wild. Those things didn’t really…

She trailed off as her ears caught sounds that told her, clearly, that such things apparently did happen. 

No! This must be… It couldn’t, not really. She bit her lower lip, glanced around to ensure there still wasn’t anyone watching, and quickly climbed up to the narrow window she could spot from below. This was just some weird local thing she misunderstood.

Then she reached the window - which was more of an arrow slit than a real window, though wide enough she would be able to slip through with some effort - and her eyes confirmed that her imagination hadn’t run wild.

The Queen and her twin brother really were in bed together - and together-together, as Nora would say.

*****

“Ewww! The Queen is sleeping with her brother?”

Yang Xiao Long winced - both at the mental image of what Blake had just told them and at Ruby's shrill comment. She shared the sentiment her sister had expressed. Ew. But she knew better than to yell. Fortunately, Blake had insisted on closing the windows and checking if anyone was nearby before revealing what she had observed on her way back to the room.

“Are you certain? It couldn't have been a misunderstanding?” Weiss asked. She sounded almost desperate. “Some kind of, ah, roleplay?”

Yang snorted. She trusted Blake. 

Blake frowned. “Yes. I saw them - I recognised their faces. And everything.” She grimaced. “They were naked on a makeshift bed.”

“But...” Weiss trailed off.

“I think we can exclude the idea that they accidentally mistook each other for their partners,” Yang commented. Ser Jaime was a member of the Kingsguard, anyway - he had sworn an oath to be chaste or something. Or was that just an oath not to marry?

“No…” Weiss sighed, then sat down on her bed and groaned. “That's… a catastrophe!”

“It's disgusting, that's what it is!” Ruby blurted out. “With your own brother? Ewww and double-eww!” She made a retching noise.

“They sounded like they had been doing this for some time,” Blake added. “She was complaining that he hadn't visited her in some time.”

“That's even worse!” Ruby shook her head. “Cheating on your partner would be bad enough - and the King does it every night or so - but with your brother?” She visibly shuddered. “That would be like… me and Yang doing it!”

Yang shuddered at the thought. “Thanks, sis, for that image.”

“Sorry!” Ruby winced. “I just… Ugh. We see Ser Jaime regularly when we train! How can I look at him without imagining him and… Ew!”

“Or when meeting the Queen for tea again,” Yang added.

“Ew!”

“That's not the worst,” Weiss said. “Not by far.”

“Huh?” Ruby looked confused. 

“If the Queen realises - or even if she merely suspects, I assume - that we know about her infidelity, she will likely attempt to silence us,” Weiss said.

Blake nodded. “This secret, if revealed, would ruin her. You don't cheat on the king.”

“You shouldn't cheat on your partner, period,” Ruby said. Then she blinked. “I mean… partner-partner, not partner. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Yang said with a wry smile.

“I believe so,” Weiss said in a very dry tone before she pressed her lips together for a moment. “Anyway, if the Queen suspects that we know, I think she won't shy away from the most drastic measures to deal with us.”

“You mean that she will attempt to have us murdered?” Yang asked. She could see that, actually.

“Or discredit us thoroughly,” Blake added. “If no one would believe us, we cannot expose her secret.”

“But…” Ruby trailed off. “Who would believe us, actually, if we told people? She's the Queen and we're just four foreign girls. And you didn’t have your scroll charged to take pictures. Not that you should have taken pictures of… that, but it would be proof.”

“She's not exactly popular with people,” Yang pointed out. And that was putting it lightly.

“Yes. Most members of the castle staff dislike her,” Blake confirmed. “If we accuse her of infidelity, some might claim to believe us even if they don't actually do, if only to use us against her.”

Yang scoffed. She hated politics.

“The King doesn't like her.” Ruby bit her lower lip. “Do you think they'd divorce if both are cheating on each other? Oh, the poor children!”

“I am fairly sure that the result of this scandal being revealed won't be merely a divorce,” Weiss said. “Incest is illegal in all of the kingdoms back home.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded, then grimaced. “Oh! The King and Lord Tyrion mentioned the Targaryens sleeping with their siblings, I think.”

Yang frowned. “That sounds like it's legal here, though.”

“I believe it was limited to the royal family,” Weiss said.

“Well, we're talking about the Queen here,” Yang pointed out. “She's part of the royal family.”

“If the King is cheating as well, doesn't that make it legal?” Ruby asked.

“I don't think it's legal if the Queen does it with her brother,” Yang said.

“I think the last trial showed us that we cannot draw parallels from our judicial system to Westeros's.” Weiss shook her head. “We need more information to decide what, if anything, we should do about this.”

That was a good idea. But there were some problems with it, in Yang's opinion. “Well, if we ask people if incest and infidelity are legal, they'll wonder why we are asking about that,” she told them. She would rather not have people wonder about the reasons for that kind of question. “And if the Queen hears about it - especially if we ask if there are exceptions for royalty - she will know we know.”

“Quite. We need to get access to a book detailing all the laws of the realm,” Weiss said. “Provided such a thing exists; they might not have codified their laws to such a degree. They might rely on precedents - or simply let the King and his chosen representatives rule every case.”

Yang wasn't an expert, but that sounded terrible to her. “How would that work? How can you judge people if they don't know the law because you never wrote it down?”

“It would work very well for those privileged and protected by the ruler and his proxies,” Blake said with a cynical snort. “Further, if they have codified their laws, we still would need to be able to read it,” she added. “Despite my efforts, I'm still struggling with their script. “

“And this is the King we're talking about. He's the sovereign,” Weiss said. “Unless I am mistaken, he is not bound by law.”

“So… he could do what he wants?” Ruby asked.

“Exactly.” Weiss nodded.

“But he didn't divorce the Queen already, even though he doesn't like her,” Ruby said.

“Probably for political reasons - her father is very rich and very powerful.” Weiss scoffed. “I doubt it is because of their children.”

Well, you probably know about such things, Yang thought. “So… what do we do?”

“Nothing until we know what the consequences would be. Both for the Queen and her brother and for us, in case we are accused of slandering her.” Weiss said.

Ruby nodded. 

Yang agreed. She sighed. “Well, tomorrow's training will be interesting.”

“Ew!”

*****

 

Chapter 9: Research and Developments

‘One thing many sources, both biased against and in favour of the Ruby Order, agree on is that the Four Maidens were extraordinarily kind. Now, in the era during which the Ruby Order appeared, noble women, especially maidens, were supposed to be kind - the obvious counterpart to the knightly ideal of defending the weak and punishing the guilty. The Four Maidens are said to have wept bitter tears about the death in prison of a thief who had attempted to rob them and which they had caught themselves, and to have met insults and even attacks with offers of friendship - conforming to the female ideal, which, as any student of history should know, was rarely if ever more than an ideal. But why would both those willing to disparage the Ruby Order as well as those who praised them focus on this? Evidently, as even casual research into the customs of the society of the era shows, that was an attempt to portray them as conforming to the customs and expectations of the noble culture of the time. The former did it to negate and diminish the Order’s obvious martial prowess and experience, to portray them as at least spiritually weak and unable to make the hard decisions expected from a knight. The latter did it to show that for all their obvious skill at arms, superior even to the mettle of the best knights in the realms, the Four Maidens were still women at heart, not driven by ambition and pride as so many of the male nobles were at the time, and, therefore, not a threat to said nobles and their ambitions.

Of course, both were wrong. For all their documented unwillingness to hurt those weaker than them, the Order never shied away from standing up for those in need, even if that put them against not only the customs but also the law of the time.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Maester Luwin had always been a curious man. He wouldn’t have become a Maester, much less one at such a prestigious post as the Maester in Winterfell, without a desire to know as much as possible about all sorts of topics. And yet, he couldn’t remember anything he had been as curious about as the most unusual guests of Lord Eddard in decades. Team Ruby was an enigma - every single answer he managed to gain for his many, many questions about them and their home seemed to open even more questions.

They spoke the common tongue but couldn't read it - their home used a wholly different script. And they were used to books being so common, they cost less than a good meal - and even peasants could buy them. They read books to entertain themselves. Lady Blake owned a book, with finer paper than any Luwin had seen, and perfectly printed letters, and it was a fictional story of dubious quality. No wonder she saw nothing wrong with carrying it around with her wherever she went despite the risk of damaging or losing it!

Even worse, Lady Blake used to read books during mealtimes! While eating! Just the thought of exposing a tome to the dangers of stains and all sorts of liquids would have sent some of Luwin's fellow Maesters into fits of rage. Luwin himself, far from being a hothead, still couldn't help feeling angry at the lack of respect for books such an action implied.

How rich would a house have to be to let their children grow up so spoilt? It wasn't just books; that attitude extended to clothes as well - their admittedly scandalous clothes were made from the finest fabric Luwin had ever seen, yet, as Lady Weiss had confirmed, they were considered ‘ordinary working clothes’. For hunting and fighting! And Lady Blake was surprised that he didn't give her leave to peruse Lord Eddard's library by herself!

Sometimes, Luwin wondered if the girls were so tight-lipped about their home because they realised just how much poorer Westeros was in comparison. But then they would, often without realising it, let slip more information about their past and origin that revealed a staggering ignorance of things even the least smallfolk would know - and that wasn't limited to customs, which would have been understandable given the obvious differences between Westeros and their home, but also to the most basic skills.

None of them knew how to launder - or make - their own clothes. He would have attributed that to having servants wait on them hand and foot all their lives, but a blind man would have realised that they were not used to servants attending them. How was that possible?

Some of his colleagues would claim magic, yet the four girls adamantly denied that their home used or even knew magic, and, based on observing some of their more obvious attempts to hide information about their origin, he was inclined to believe them - in as much as they might not be aware of magic, or not realise that they were using magic.

For he could think of no other explanation for their superhuman strength and toughness, and their wondrous weapons and other items, than magic. No magic he had ever heard of, not even when he, like so many others upon entering the Order, had devoured every treatise he could find on the subject, but magic all the same. There was no other plausible explanation, especially not for their appearance in Westeros than magic, be it by design or accident. That their requests for information related to this always led to reports about past and almost forgotten magic, unfortunately none of them useful despite his best efforts, certainly supported this deduction.

All in all, Luwin had penned so many letters about them, he might just go all the way and bind them into a book for the Citadel - though he was aware that his fellow Maesters would be sceptical at best, outright scoffing at worst, at his claims, so he would best wait with sending that to Oldtown until Team Ruby had met his peers and demonstrated their powers.

What couldn't wait, however, was informing Lord Eddard about the latest request of Team Ruby that Lady Blake had relayed to him - and about his deductions based on it. Luwin tried not to get involved in the Game of Thrones, but Lord Eddard commanded his loyalty, and this was something the Lord of Winterfell had to hear about at once.

*****

“Maester. You asked to meet me.”

“Yes, my lord.” Luwin nodded. Lord Eddard was, as always, not bothering with gossip or idle talk. “As you may suspect, it concerns your guests. Their most recent request for information, to be precise.”

Seated at his desk in his solar, Lord Eddard tensed but otherwise didn't show any reaction, yet his lady wife put down the scroll she had been perusing and focused on him.

“It was quite a peculiar request,” Luwin went on. “They wished to read a ‘primer’, as they called it, of our laws and customs governing family matters. They meant a summary or overview,” he explained, “apparently something common in their homelands, mayhap to save time when one did not need or want to read an entire book. They were disappointed to hear that such ‘primers’ are unknown in Westeros, and even more so when I had to tell them that our laws were not codified in one book, either, but spread out amongst many edicts or passed on orally and through court records.” Again, common knowledge in Westeros. “I did refer them to some of those tomes.”

“They wanted to learn more about our customs and laws regarding family matters…” Lord Eddard turned to look at Lady Catelyn.

“Marriages. They are looking into how we handle marriages.” Lady Catelyn nodded.

“That was my deduction as well, my lady,” Luwin said. “And why I thought you should know this at once, given recent events.”

“They haven't been interested in such matters before, have they?” Lady Catelyn knew the answer already.

“No, my lady,” Luwin told her. “This is the first time they have shown such interest.”

“I wonder what brought that on…” Lord Eddard shook his head. “Was it the engagement between Sansa and Prince Joffrey?”

“They didn't seem to care about that when they were informed,” Lady Catelyn said. She looked at Luwin. “But then, you told them that there was no information in our library about those ruins they were looking for?”

“Yes, my lady.” Luwin nodded. He had informed Lord Eddard about that before. “I searched diligently yet found no hint that would be helpful. Albeit I mentioned that other places might contain the information they sought.”

Lady Catelyn frowned at that, but Lord Eddard nodded in apparent approval. He had made his opinion about lying to his guests clear.

“Whatever the reason, they are clearly interested in marriages now,” Lady Catelyn said. “Right when you'll be soon be leaving for King's Landing, my lord husband, with the King and our guests, while Robb and I will stay behind.”

“Yes.” Lord Eddard turned to look at Luwin. “Thank you, Maester, for bringing this to us.”

Luwin knew when he was being dismissed so his lord and lady could talk in private. He bowed and left the solar. He didn't envy them - this was a puzzling problem for them to handle.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose jumped back when Yang swung at her and used her Semblance to dodge to the side, then swept Crescent Rose around to catch Weiss from behind with a cut to her legs. Her partner had anticipated her attack, though, and managed to deflect the blow while tumbling over it, then rushed inside Ruby's guard, Myrtenaster flashing faster than ever before, as Ruby's scythe kept moving, exposing her.

Instead of trying to wrench her baby back (which she totally could, though it was hard!), Ruby let the momentum drag her along - Blake was now attacking Yang, wielding both Gambol Shroud's blade and sheath in a whirling frenzy of attacks so Ruby didn't have to worry about an attack from either - and swung the butt end of it toward Weiss just as her partner committed to the attack.

Weiss slid under the blow, aided by her blade guiding Crescent Rose's shaft above her head, and Ruby whirled, coming to a stop with her weapon in a guard position, facing Weiss, who was gracefully rising with her blade at the ready.

“So, it seems…”

Whatever Weiss had been about to say was cut off when Yang dropped down on her, fist extended for a blow to her head. Weiss shrieked in surprise and threw herself to the side, then was sent tumbling head over heels when Yang's blow tore a new crater into the ground.

“I was about to say something!” Weiss complained as she launched a series of attacks that had Yang use Ember Celica to block and deflect them.

Ruby was already moving, letting Crescent Rose twirl around her as she dashed forward, and she felt her baby's blade deflect Gambol Shroud. She looked over her shoulder and caught Blake retreating with her blade. Grinning, Ruby activated her Semblance again and rushed forward, spinning Crescent Rose in a wheel of death that…

… carved holes into the air and nothing else since Blake jumped up, against the wall, then launched herself horizontally over Ruby's baby and slammed her heels into Yang's back. 

Yang was sent reeling, which Weiss quickly exploited with a lunge that rammed Myrtenaster's point into Yang’s side and kept her off-balance, followed by two more lighting quick lunges.

Blake swung Gambol Shroud around, catching Weiss in the side, then followed up with a kick that launched Ruby's partner into the wall, and just when she was moving to slash at the dazed Weiss, all of them finally lined up just how Ruby wanted them to.

Using her Semblance, she dashed forward, barrelling into and through Yang and Blake before smashing Crescent Rose into Weiss.

With all three of her friends on the ground, groaning, Ruby raised Crescent Rose high into the sky. “I win!”

Applause from the spectators watching them almost drowned out Weiss's pouty complaint about Ruby just being lucky (she wasn't! She was good!) and Yang's groaning about having to wash her hair after ploughing a furrow into the ground with her head courtesy of Ruby's last attack.

“Most impressive, Lady Ruby,” Ser Barristan commented.

She beamed at him.

“An excellent showing, indeed!” The Prince smiled. “Wouldn't you say so, Lady Sansa?”

“Of course, my prince.”

Even Ruby could see that Sansa was grimacing rather than smiling, but the Prince nodded and turned back to stare at Ruby and her friends. Ruby suppressed a grimace; she had never been comfortable with being at the centre of attention. She wasn't Pyrrha. Or Yang.

“That was great!” Arya cheered wildly, as did Bran.

Right. They had been promised training by Blake. Ruby smiled at them - and tried not to wince when she caught Ser Jaime talking with his brother at the corner of the training yard. How could he act like everything was normal, nothing wrong, when he was sleeping with his - and his brother's - sister? He was a knight, a Kingsguard, he had sworn oaths (Bran had been quite vocal about what oaths knights had to swear), so… how could he just keep lying to everyone?

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. It was so wrong. And icky. Very icky. Disgusting, as Weiss had said. Ruby wanted to retch, so she went over to the corner where they had their pitchers with (boiled) water. She checked the lid on it, then sniffed at it before taking a swig. 

“So, Lady Ruby, did you wait until your friends were all lined up perfectly to take them all out with one attack, or did you manipulate them into that position?” 

Oh, the Prince had wandered over as well, and she hadn't even noticed! Ruby shouldn't have tried to ignore the whole area where Ser Jaime was. “I was lucky…” she said.

“Damn well, you were!” Yang joined them.

“...but I knew that if I waited long enough, the opportunity would appear,” Ruby finished, rolling her eyes at her sister.

Yang chuckled and drank as well. “But you're right; we should have made sure not to line up like that. Well, another lesson to learn.” She shrugged.

Ruby looked around for the others; Weiss and Blake were talking to Ser Barristan, who had his sword out, demonstrating something. How to angle it better to redirect a blow from her, Ruby realised a moment later. Oh! That was almost cheating!

She looked at Yang. “We have to step up our game.”

“Yes.” Yang grinned.

“Step up your game?” Sansa looked confused.

“Weiss and Blake are catching up, so we need to sharpen our edge,” Yang said.

“You want to add edges to your gauntlets?” The Prince seemed intrigued.

“Not literally,” Yang said. “It means we have to train harder to keep ahead of them.”

Blake rolled her eyes at them, Ruby saw, so she probably had overheard Yang's boast. Yeah, Ruby added to herself when she saw Blake whisper something to Weiss, who then also rolled her eyes at them, definitely overheard Yang.

“Ah.” The Prince nodded. “That makes sense. The Kingsguard trains every day to keep their skills sharp.”

“So do we,” Ruby told him. Even though they had to hold back a lot. They needed to sneak out again at night or so and train for real, using Semblances and everything, but finding a place they couldn't accidentally wreck (or which wouldn't be discovered by others) was hard. 

“Are you going to join us on our hunt?” the Prince asked.

“Ah…” Ruby almost winced. She’d already been on one. It was more a camping trip than a hunt. People drank a lot, ate a lot, put up tents… Not really her scene. “Probably?” She didn't want to refuse outright - the King had invited them - but maybe something else would come up. Like a monster invasion.

The Prince smirked, almost exactly like his uncles - both of them - and nodded. “You are too kind for hunting, Lady Ruby. Unless it’s those Grimm - or thieves.”

“Naw!” Yang grinned and wrapped an arm around Ruby's shoulder. “Hunting animals is boring. Now, monsters? Those we would cut down to size!”

“Ah.” The Prince nodded. “I assume going after animals wouldn't be a challenge. Still, you might enjoy the hunt anyway.” He looked at Sansa. “Many ladies like the outings.”

Arya made a retching grimace, but Sansa was too busy beaming at the Prince to notice.

They made a good couple. Oh, if the Prince had no idea what his mother and uncle were doing! Ruby shuddered. The poor boy would be devastated if he knew! His world would crumble!

Wait… if they went on the hunt, they wouldn’t have to see the Queen! They definitely would attend!

*****

The Woods near Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“More wine, boy! Hunting is thirsty work!”

Ruby sighed as Lancel jumped to serve the king more wine. Everyone drank so much! They had barely had lunch, and people were already drunk. Even Uncle Qrow would be appalled. Oh, how she missed him. If he were here…

Lancel didn’t offer her wine - he had finally gotten the message. Pure boiled water (cooled down) for her, thanks! Or juice. Or honey milk, hot. But out in the field? Water. She took a sip from her bottle and watched the rest of the ‘hunting party’. It was a party, alright - half the men were drunk, and, as Yang put it, the rest were getting there, even though they would be riding through the dense forest soon. Well, those who could ride. Ruby would learn one day, but not today.

She looked around. Yang was telling some tall tale to a bunch of younger knights, with Blake standing next to her and doing her ‘silent ninja listening’ thing. Ruby had had enough of rowdy knights for the day, so she walked toward Weiss. Her partner was sitting at the edge of the inner circle of the King, all classy and composed even though she had been through the same as Ruby. But such parties didn’t bother her, of course - she was used to high society. Not that the court acted like the high society back home, but it was the principle of the thing. “Hey!”

Weiss nodded at her. “Yes?”

“So…” Ruby needed to say something, or she’d look stupid. “What are you doing here?”

Weiss raised her eyebrows, then sighed in that manner of hers when she thought Ruby was being stupid. “Are the men bothering you again with their talk?”

What? “Uh… no. I just wanted… well, some fresh air,” Ruby said. “They’ve been a bit better about all the lewd stuff.” And compared to knowing that the Queen and Ser Jaime were in an incestuous relationship, as Weiss had put it, hearing some crude comments wasn’t that bad. She looked around. “Are you alone?”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “Although I fear that will change soon.” Before Ruby could wonder if that meant she should leave, Weiss went on: “One of the knights, Ser Haron Buckwell, kept pestering me with tales of his exploits. He’s the man over there, trying to get a wineskin from the cook, likely in the hope of getting me drunk enough to consider his crude jokes witty.”

“Ugh.” Ruby made a face. “Why are they all so… fixated on all this… stuff?”

Weiss snorted softly. “You mean sex?”

“Yes. And marriage,” Ruby added.

“Well, the sex is easy - hormones. And marriage is how they do alliances here. There’s also a cultural taboo against killing your relatives - kinslaying, they call it - and so the more people you are related to, the safer and more influential you are. In theory, at least.”

Ruby had known that. “I know. I was just venting.”

“Ah.” Weiss nodded. “I understand the feeling,” she said. “Here he comes.” 

Ruby looked up. Indeed. the knight - Ser Haron - was walking toward them with a large wineskin in his hands. And Weiss was tensing up. Alright, time to be a leader and help out her team member and partner!

She stood up. “Come on, Weiss! Let’s scout ahead for game!” Which meant animals to hunt here - she had learnt that.

Before Weiss could say anything, Ruby pulled her with her, almost activating her Semblance to whoosh past Ser Haron the Creep. But with Weiss in tow, that would have been a bad idea. It wasn’t as if Ruby could take her with her when she used her Semblance. Though that would be very nifty. Weiss couldn’t weigh that much more than her baby, anyway.

She giggled when she thought about swinging Weiss around as if she were Crescent Rose.

“What’s so funny?” Weiss demanded to know when they stopped near the King - they had to tell him they would go scouting or they’d be rude.

“Nothing,” Ruby told her with a grin. “I just had an idea for another combo attack!”

Weiss looked suspicious, but Ruby simply kept smiling.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“Thank you for helping us satisfy our curiosity, Maester Luwin. We’re grateful that you're taking time out of your busy day for us.” Weiss Schnee was honestly grateful - with half the royal court staying inside Winterfell, the man must be terribly busy just handling all the added correspondence in addition to his normal duties as resident Maester. 

She couldn't quite understand how those men handled everything they did - Librarian, archivist, postmaster (which included having to take care of the ravens delivering the mail - those birds were certainly as smart as Weiss's tutors had told her they were), advisor to the resident lord and the local medical authority… As heir to the SDC - maybe former heir now, with Team RWBY missing for so long - Weiss knew how much work it took to keep a large organisation running, and that was with the support of modern technology and instant communication.

“Oh, it's nothing.” He smiled at her in a way that reminded her of Klein. “I am always happy to spread knowledge - it's the primary duty of our order, after all.”

“Nevertheless, we appreciate your efforts.” She nodded firmly.

“Yes,” Blake chimed in - though the effect was a bit diminished since she hadn't looked up from the book in which she had buried her nose since Luwin had handed it over to her.

The Maester didn't seem to mind, though - he kept smiling at the sight. Well, he was obviously as much a booklover as Blake was, so he would understand that she didn't mean any slight. Or so Weiss hoped.

She glanced at Ruby and Yang and suppressed a frown. Ruby was sitting straight and looked eager to learn about all the laws covering marriages, but Weiss had seen her sit the exact same way in lessons without actually paying attention to the professor and doodling new weapon specs instead. And Yang was… fiddling with a device under the table.

“Yang!” Weiss hissed.

Unfortunately, while her friend ignored her, Luwin had noticed. “Lady Yang? Might I ask what you are doing?”

Weiss blinked. That had sounded as if the Maester was honestly interested, quite unlike the sarcastic question most teachers - or tutors and advisors given a briefing - would have asked instead.

“Oh, trying to get this tool to work.” Yang smiled and pulled the contraption up to put it on the table. “It's a multi-tool for maintenance - well, it's supposed to be. The multi-part is still in need of work.” She flipped it open - it looked like one of the toolkits for Huntresses who didn't want or could carry entire maintenance kits with them. Just… more primitive. And obviously not finished.

“Oh, you can swap the tools while keeping a single handle?” Luwin, though, looked very impressed.

“That's the idea, though the tolerances are a bit of a problem.” Yang grinned. “I have to file down every part until it fits, and that's quite a grind.”

Weiss didn't groan, of course, at the atrocious pun. She had better self-control than that.

Ruby, though, did. Loudly. “Yang!”

And Yang chuckled.

Luwin didn't seem to mind either. Then again, he must be the primary teacher for the Stark kids, so he was probably used to worse behaviour. That didn't mean her team had to behave in this way. The Maester was taking time out of his busy schedule to help them, and that deserved more respect and fewer distractions.

She cleared her throat and frowned at Ruby and Yang, then repeated it, louder, when they didn't react.

Ruby had the grace to blush when their eyes met. 

Yang grinned but at least stashed the tool so they could focus on the matter at hand. Which was Westeros’ family laws. With an expert briefing them, they should get the information they needed soon enough, at least.

“Now… shall we get started?” she asked, smiling sweetly. “We don't want to waste Maester Luwin's time.”

“Oh, it's not a waste of time at all - I enjoy learning new things as well.” Luwin laughed. “But let us start with the laws of the First Men, for they form the base of many customs and laws governing families, especially in the North.”

The man really was too kind. Like Klein, who had tolerated so much from when Weiss had been a spoilt little girl.

*****

Weiss stopped smiling as soon as they entered their room and glanced at Blake.

Her friend tilted her head, then checked the windows and doors - and the walls facing the neighbouring rooms before nodding. There were no eavesdroppers, then.

“So… Now we know more,” she said.

“I can't believe they kill you for cheating!” Ruby blurted out.

“They don't kill you for cheating,” Weiss corrected her. “Not legally, at least, since the rule of thumb was implemented.” Which had been after a man had beaten his wife to death for adultery.

“A law is only as good as its enforcement,” Blake said. “As we know from home.” Weiss didn’t rise to the bait - she was fully aware of how things were in her home kingdom. Her father was responsible for a lot of that. “And when a man can beat his wife legally for disobeying, how many will dare to complain to their lord?” Blake went on.

Ruby shuddered. “I didn't think the family laws here would be so… bad.”

Yang nodded. “Yeah. I knew they were bad, but not how bad they are.”

Weiss had to agree. If Atlas had those laws… She shuddered at the thought of what her father would have done to her mother - and her sister and Weiss. He had done enough without such powers. She had no doubt that none of the scant laws in Westeros granting women some minimal protection against abuse - or worse - by their husbands or fathers would have been enforced; her father was very skilled at finding loopholes, exemptions or corrupt officials.

“Do they really think that if we married here, we'd obey our husbands?” Ruby shook her head. “They can't think that, can they?”

“Some might be stupid enough to think so,” Yang said.

“It depends on how seriously they take their oaths. You do swear to obey your husband during the wedding ceremony,” Blake said. “They might expect us to heed that.”

Ruby scoffed with an uncharacteristic scowl. “Another reason for never marrying anyone!” Then she blinked and added: “Not here, at least.”

“Yeah.” Yang agreed. “Though we knew already that marrying anyone here would be stupid.”

That was true. Still… Weiss shook her head. “Leaving those revelations aside for a moment, we still don't know what the punishment for adultery would be in the case of the Queen doing it, much less what the penalty for incest would be.” That wasn’t a topic the Maester had covered, and there hadn’t been a good opportunity to ask about it without risking that he might grow suspicious. And while the rule of thumb actually stated that a man might only strike his wife six times with a rod no thicker than his thumb, they had heard several cases, some involving high nobility and even royal families, that had gone far beyond that punishment - legally. Who knew what extra-legal punishment had been visited upon people? Being put to death for adultery seemed quite possible, especially if the King was the aggravated party since he made the laws. Just as the rule of thumb had been implemented and retroactively applied to a man, the King might create a law on the spot to punish his wife. Men did a lot of heinous things if they felt slighted by a woman. Having the woman forced to join a monastic order, the Silent Sisters, was amongst the lesser punishments they had heard about.

“Well, we know Ser Jaime would be executed,” Yang said. “Or sent to the wall.”

“We don't even know that,” Weiss said. “The punishment for breaking your oaths as a Kingsguard is death, yes - but he is famous or infamous for killing the King’s predecessor as a Kingsguard, and that surely broke his oath, but he wasn't punished for it.” Westeros really needed a codified law! Or at least a solid system of precedents that couldn’t be toppled on a King’s whim! “So… we still don’t know what would happen if we told people about the Queen’s relationship with her brother.”

“Except that we can safely assume that whatever else might happen if we accuse the Queen of adultery, we will make an enemy for life out of her, her brother and probably her family,” Blake said.

“Well, depending on the King’s reaction, that might be a rather short time.” Yang chuckled at her own - and very inappropriate - joke.

“That’s what we want to avoid, Yang!” Ruby scolded her. “Think of her children!”

Yang jerked and then nodded. “Sorry.”

Weiss winced. Indeed, the royal children might lose their mother, and Ruby and Yang knew intimately what that meant. At least her own mother was still alive - even if she made every effort to change that by drinking herself into a stupor every day.

No one said anything for a while, and Weiss contemplated the information they had received today. It had been enlightening in a way - and certainly had shown that they didn’t have a future here. No self-respecting woman could live in such a world.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna slid down the wall, hidden in the shadows that the setting sun cast against the broken tower next to it, and touched the ground without making a sound. The tower had been empty, no sign of a romantic rendezvous to be found. As she had expected - the Queen and Ser Jaime had a busy schedule today - but it would have been sloppy not to check anyway, in case someone else had thought to use the location for discreet meetings. If a third party stumbled upon the incestuous couple…

But it seemed that whoever else had a need for clandestine meetings, be they of a romantic nature or not, had found alternatives - probably locations that offered more ways to leave them than the broken tower; none of the locals was a huntress who could descend the walls as easy as she could climb them.

She looked around, listened for footsteps and other sounds that betrayed one’s presence - it would be embarrassing if she were spotted by someone without noticing them beforehand - and then started walking at a slow pace as if she were out on an evening stroll. She would have taken her book out, but it was rapidly growing too dark for humans to see much, much less read a book, and she wouldn’t want to advertise how much better her eyes were.

With the Queen still seemingly determined to harass them, and with the murder of the thief still not solved, Blake wasn’t about to reveal anything about her team and herself that might be crucial to survive in the next plot.

And she was sure that such a plot was coming. People who murdered their minions were not the kind of enemies who gave up after the first setback. No, they would choose their next stooge more carefully, and plan their attack better. Ruby’s paint trap wouldn’t catch the next thief. 

But Yang’s trap might; Blake’s partner had constructed a simple but effective device that could trap someone’s hand. If the next thief focused too much on the paint trap, they might get their hand caught instead. Sure, they could break free, but it would leave them no less marked than the paint trap. If it worked, of course. Blake reminded herself not to underestimate the local criminals (and nobles). They might not have the same technology and education Team RWBY had, but that didn’t make them stupid. Quite the contrary. They might spot weaknesses and opportunities Blake and her friend could miss because they had a different background and knowledge.

But that worked the other way as well, of course. As long as the locals didn’t know what Team RWBY could do, they would keep making mistakes - and Blake would do what she could to ensure they remained ignorant for as long as possible.

She was just approaching the hall where dinner would be served - another big affair today since the King had gone hunting again and brought back game - when she heard familiar voices.

“...see? You can see the entire area from here, even at night, as long as the moon is bright enough.”

“I see. Though there’s not much to actually see, is there?” 

Those were Sansa and the Prince. On the rampart above Blake. And that meant Sandor Clegane would be with them, and probably the Septa of the castle as well - the locals seemed to think that two teenagers left alone would succumb to their hormones at once.

She heard the Prince chuckle. “At least everything seems not worth my attention when you are nearby.”

“Ah, thank you! That is too kind of you!”

“I am merely honest.”

Blake didn’t have to see the two to know Sansa would be blushing at the corny lines from the Prince. Children in love… She snorted and shook her head. Had she been as stupid?

Well, yes, she had been even more stupid - she had fallen for Adam’s manipulations. Blake clenched her teeth and hissed under her breath. At least the Prince and Sansa were almost the same age. This wasn’t some older man seducing a stupid girl, just two stupid teenagers, or preteens, trying to act as if they were years older.

Which, Blake realised, probably meant the chaperones were a good thing.

But there was no reason to listen to the couple talk, since…

“...and you’ve been spending a lot of time with Team Ruby.”

…this just got interesting. Maybe just gossip, but… knowing how the Prince thought about them would be useful.

“Why wouldn’t I? I am going to be King one day, and a King needs to know about people who could, as my father said, rout entire armies. And I assure you, he is correct.”

“I would never question the King.”

“Of course not.”

Well, the King and Prince weren’t wrong. Still, did that mean the Prince was worried about them attacking his family? Or the realm? Was he afraid of Team RWBY? He didn't act like that, and Blake didn't think the boy was able to hide his fears, but…

“So, you’re, ah, studying them for their skill at arms?”

“You could say so, I suppose, yes.”

“Ah.”

Sansa sounded relieved. She probably had been worried that the Prince had a crush on Ruby. Well, there was nothing to fear here - Ruby wasn’t interested in the Prince.

But the couple was about to descend - they had already set foot on the stairs - so Blake started walking again and entered the hall before they saw her at the foot of the wall. If they saw her waiting, they might feel self-conscious - or suspicious.

The two kids were already awkward enough; no need to make it worse. Especially if the Prince was already afraid of them.

And Blake could smell roasted fish. It would be a shame if someone else got the best pieces before she could pick them while everyone else went after the roasted stag.

*****

Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Standing on a branch shortly below the tree's canopy, Yang Xiao Long looked at the small clearing ahead of them, then back at Blake and raised her eyebrows. “I thought we were to meet Bran and Arya, not Jon.”

Her partner was leaning against the trunk and blushed a little - just some reddish hint on her cheeks. “I didn't tell them to bring anyone else, but they probably needed someone with them to get out of the Castle, and he's their brother.”

In hindsight, Yang should have thought of that when Arya had told her that she and Bran could meet Yang outside the castle. Maybe she should have told Arya they'd wait with lessons until they were travelling south. But sue her, Yang was a bit bored, and training with the Kingsguard was a bit awkward ever since Blake had discovered what Ser Jaime was doing with his sister, the Queen. There wasn't much else to do. She couldn't read any of the books even if she were allowed, and Mikken and his apprentices were swamped with orders to make spare parts for the monstrous ‘wheelhouse’ the royal family would be using to travel, so she couldn't tinker at the smithy either.

And there was no way she was going to a tea party with the Queen again unless she had no choice. Even Weiss loathed it, and she had grown up in high society!

So, training the kids in secret it was.

“Are you sure there's no one else?”

“I didn't hear, see or smell anyone else,” Blake replied.

“Then let's go!” Yang grinned and jumped off. 

She crossed her arms to shield her hair as she crashed through the foliage of the next tree, then grabbed and swung around a branch, landing in a crouch on it. She jumped off a moment before Blake reached her.

Two more jumps brought her to the clearing - and to Jon's attention. But the boy looked at the underbrush on the ground instead of up.

Grinning, Yang descended on him.

To his credit, he did notice her before she hit the ground, but not quickly enough to react, and she heard him shriek when the impact of her boots threw up a small cloud of dust and dirt right next to him.

“Boo!”

Arya and Bran, on the other hand, yelped loudly and stumbled back before they recognised her.

“Never forget to look up,” Blake said as she gracefully dropped down on Jon's other side.

“Gah!” The boy gasped and jerked, and Yang laughed.

Puting, he frowned at her, then at Blake. “Very few people can jump like that, my lady,” he complained.

“But a lot can climb a tree and use a bow and arrow,” Blake pointed out. “First lesson: Pay attention to your surroundings.”

“And it's a free one,” Yang added, smashing her fists together. “Usually, we'd teach that by throwing stuff at you to dodge.”

“Uh…” Jon grimaced.

“Really?” Bran, on the other hand, looked intrigued.

“Yes.” Yang nodded at him, then looked at Blake.

Her partner was frowning at Arya. “I remember asking you not to tell anyone about our agreement.”

Arya blushed but quickly pouted as well, quite like her brother. “Well, you're already training Jon!”

“That's not secret,” Blake pointed out. “Unlike the lessons you asked for, your parents do not mind him sparring with us.”

“Ah… He won't tell on us! Right, Jon?” Arya beamed at him.

Jon, though, looked a little unsure. “I won't lie to Father or Lady Stark, but I won't volunteer the information.”

“Lady Yang and Lady Blake are our guests! You wouldn't reveal their secrets, would you?” Bran grinned. “That wouldn't be honourable!”

Jon blinked - obviously, he hadn't considered that. But he rallied quickly. “Guest right doesn't cover that!”

“How do you know? This isn't endangering anyone,” Bran said. “We're just getting training - and I am already training with arms!”

“And you wouldn't want to leave me helpless, would you? That would endanger me!” Arya added before her brother could reply.

“That's…”

Yang chuckled. “You're worse than Ruby was at your age.” Her little sister had tried similar arguments when she wanted something. She turned to Jon. “Just tell your father that you were training with Blake and me if he asks about today. And that Arya and Bran were watching.” That wasn't a lie - they would be watching Yang and Blake a lot.

Jon obviously wasn't happy, but he nodded.

Yang slapped his shoulder - gently, of course, so he only staggered a little - and grinned. “Great! Now, let Blake and me show you how to punch and slice your enemies!”

“We'll show you how to defend yourself,” Blake said. “And that means we'll first show you how to run away.”

“What?” Arya looked as if she had been stabbed in the back.

“I already know how to run!” Bran protested.

“Oh, but you don't know how to run away properly,” Blake said. She reached into a pouch she had brought and pulled out a few fir cones, juggling them one-handed. “So you can't be hit by your pursuers.”

“Uh…” Arya looked at the cones, then at Bran. “You'll be my shield, Bran!”

“What?”

“You cover me!”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Start running,” Blake said. “And don't stop until you're behind a tree.”

They were slow to react and both got a cone thrown at their head as a result. Then they started running.

Jon chuckled, shaking his head at the sight.

Yang grabbed a cone from Blake and pelted Jon as well. “You too!”

“But…”

“You never know when you will have to run away from enemies you can't beat,” Yang told him while Blake hit both Bran and Arya with another pair of cones.

“To run is not honourable!”

Oh, for! Yang shook her head. “If you can't do anything by fighting except for dying pointlessly, running is the only honourable choice.” And the only smart move, but it was obvious Jon didn't care too much about that.

“And the better you are at running, the longer you'll be able to fight,” Blake added.

Jon still pouted when he finally started running.

*****

About an hour later - Yang's scroll was still turned off so they could save power, but she had gotten the yang of telling time by the sun, if roughly - she called for a halt. Bran and Arya had long since stopped to rest, and Jon looked as if his pride was the only thing keeping him going. “Alright, good effort here,” she told them. “Remember: Don't try to dodge the missile, dodge the archer's aim.” Well, Dad taught it a bit differently, and only about high-velocity bullets, but the principle was the same.

“You can dodge arrows in flight; I saw it,” Jon protested.

“Yeah, we can. But not you,” Yang replied. “And so trying to teach you how to react to an arrow already loosened like we do would be pointless. But if you can spoil their aim or just be a moving target, you're good. Probably. At least you're better off.”

“I want to learn how to fight,” Arya complained.

“And you will,” Yang told her. “Staying alive is the first rule of combat.”

“Sometimes, you have to sacrifice yourself to protect your loved ones,” Jon said.

“Yes.” Bran nodded eagerly.

Yang groaned. What was it with the two boys focusing on that? “Sacrificing yourself is the last resort. That's the exception, not the rule.” She frowned at them. “We're not going to teach you anything if you're just gonna throw your life away at the first opportunity!”

“We wouldn't!” Bran protested.

“We were merely stating that sometimes, fleeing is not an option,” Jon added. “We do not plan to die.”

“Could've fooled me,” Yang muttered. “Anyway, you did well here. For beginners.” She stretched, “So… let's go home!”

“Uh…” Arya rubbed her legs.

“We can rest a bit longer,” Yang said.

“Thank you!”

Yang could do with a little rest as well. She lay down in the grass - one of the patches that hadn't been trampled during the lesson so she wouldn't get her outfit dirty and looked at the cloudy sky above them. With Blake keeping her eyes and ears open, she could even take a nap…

“Ah, Lady Yang…”

Or not. “Yes, Jon?” He probably would never call her ‘Yang’.

“Ah…” He hesitated. 

So, it was probably an embarrassing or delicate question. Or what boys thought were such questions. She raised her eyebrows.

He coughed. “I was wondering about how courtship was done in your home kingdom.”

Oh, great. Not a topic she wanted to talk about. But she owed the boy an honest answer after browbeating him to keep quiet about this - and after having him run for an hour or so. Though not too detailed or too honest - Yang knew that the truth about Remnant’s stance on sex would not go over well with people here. “Well, that depends on the individuals. It’s different for everyone,” she added when he didn’t seem to understand her. “Most people ask each other out. Go on a few dates, see if you click.”

“‘Click’?”

“See if you fit well together, if you like spending time with each other, if you can handle each other’s flaws…” She shrugged. “You know, check if you would be happy together.”

“Ah.” He nodded.

Yang doubted that he really understood. 

“So… you do a sort of try-marriage before you marry for real?” Bran apparently hadn’t been too tired to listen to their talk. And neither was Arya - both seemed to be paying rapt attention.

That was obviously Blake’s fault for slacking in their training. Yang narrowed her eyes at her partner, but she seemed to ignore that.

“Not quite a try-marriage,” Yang said. “Marriage comes much, much later. Dating means spending time together. Doing stuff together.”

“What kind of stuff?” Arya asked.

Damn. “Whatever you like doing,” Yang said. “You don’t have to do everything together, but if you don’t really share any interests, it’s not much of a marriage, is it?”

Now all three looked confused.

How to explain that… Ah! Yang smiled. “You marry someone because you want to spend time together. And why would you spend time together if you don’t want to do anything your partner wants to do?”

“Because they like it?” Arya asked.

Yang stared at her for a moment. Lectured by a kid? 

Blake giggled and once again ignored Yang’s glare.

“Anyway, that’s what you do when dating. Spend time together.”

“We do that here as well,” Jon said.

“Yeah, but you have chaperones. We don’t,” Yang said. Then she blinked. Damn. She hadn’t meant it like that - well, not just like that.

But the way Jon blushed, it certainly had been understood like that.

And Blake was shaking her head.

Ah, well. What was done was done.

*****

 

Chapter 10: On the Kingsroad

‘One peculiar oddity - at least at first sight - that many scholars overlook when they study the material is their stance towards animals. While the notion that they were the first recorded vegetarians is obviously foolish - such a special diet would undoubtedly have been remarked upon by many, and even if they had refused to eat meat, there have been vegetarians in Westeros long before the Ruby Order arrived - several sources agree that they cared about animals as more than sources of food and labour or as pets. The records of House Stark mention that the ancestors of the famous direwolf companions of the Starks, in particular, drew their attention, with Lady Weiss being especially fond of them. However, the same records also mention that none of the Four Maidens knew how to ride a horse, something supported by the surviving accounts from the Night’s Watch. How could a group of nobles as skilled at arms as the four maidens not know how to ride in a time when the horse was the standard means of transportation, especially for the military? One possible answer, and quite a likely one, is, of course, that they hailed from a country where the main means of transportation wasn’t the horse, but boats or, perhaps, sledges drawn by dogs - a country - or civilisation - not unlike the Summer Islands, where knowing how to ride was not nearly as necessary for any nobleman - or noblewoman - wishing to fight as it was in Westeros. In fact, this theory was brought forward before by a colleague of mine, Maester Francis, though he focused on the theory that the homeland of the Ruby Order was sunk following the eruption of an undersea volcano and only used their lack of horsemanship as supporting evidence. However, the lack of any archaeological or geological evidence that such an eruption would have left in the time since the Ruby Order appeared has since then disproven this theory, although some scholars still consider it valid despite all the evidence against it.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Kingsroad, South of Winterfell, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

Ah! The sun in the sky, the wind in his face, his best friend riding at his side and the nagging woman who had made his life miserable for years safely stuck far behind him - Robert Baratheon was a happy man! Almost happy enough to forget that they were travelling back to King’s Landing, the nest of vipers he had gladly left to meet his best and oldest friend.

But it would take quite some time to reach the city - mostly thanks to the monstrous wheelhouse the nag insisted on using, so she was good for something at least - and Robert wouldn’t let this stop him from enjoying the moment.

He turned towards Ned. “Ah, it’s good to be back on the road, right? Takes you back to the days of our youth, huh?”

“Yes, Your Grace,” Ned replied. He was smiling faintly, but that was Ned for you. If he smiled, he meant it. There was not a single bone of deceit in his body. And that was why there was no better choice for Robert's Hand than his best and oldest friend. Ned might not be as skilled as Jon had been when it came to wrangling the court - Robert suppressed the pang of pain that came with remembering the man who had been his father in all but name - but he would never lie to Robert.

He forced himself to chuckle. Jon was dead, and he missed him, but Ned was here. “Don't worry, the Kingsroad isn't as bad as you may have heard. It's just not meant for wheelhouses bigger than a carrack!”

“An army only moves as fast as its slowest part.”

As Jon had taught them when they were boys, which had served them well during the Rebellion. “Yeah. Though if we have to hurry, I'll personally smash the wheelhouse to kindling. Then Cersei will have to ride a horse like everyone else.”

“We would still have the train to deal with,” Ned, always serious, pointed out.

“The wagons can move faster than this,” Robert said. Not much faster, but faster nonetheless. “And I bet a forced march would do some good. Too many here have grown lazy and soft.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” Ned's lips twisted into another familiar smile, and Robert guffawed. 

“Me amongst them, I know!” He patted his belly.

“Indeed, Your Grace.”

Any other noble in Ned's position would have told him a flattering lie about how he was still in the prime of his health - as if Robert was a fool who couldn't use a mirror. Not Ned, though. He was honest to a fault.

And by the Seven Above, Robert needed someone who would talk straight to him, unafraid of offending their King! All those lickspittles and sycophants crowding his court made him sick! How was he supposed to rule a kingdom if whatever he did, he would be praised? How could you trust anyone who wasn't brave enough to tell you when they disagreed with you? A commander who surrounded himself with toadies was doomed; sooner or later, he would make a fatal mistake, either because he was missing information or because he started to believe he was as perfect as his sycophants said he was. Seven Hells, the only good thing about Cersei, except for her father's gold, was that she didn't bother to hide her disdain for him. Robert knew where he stood with her. And how she stood with others, such as their guests.

“Well, we could always follow the example of Lady Ruby and her friends and walk half the way,” Robert said. “It's hard to believe that they can't ride, right?”

“Indeed.” Ned nodded. “Though as fast as they are, they probably never saw the need to ride a horse when they can outpace it both in speed and distance.”

That wasn't that impressive. Infantry, properly trained and supplied, would move faster than cavalry over long distances; any decent commander knew that. And they needed fewer supplies to begin with. And yet… “Maybe. But I think the answer is different,” Robert said.

“They do have horses in their homes, Father. But they don't use them for travel,” Joffrey cut in. His son was riding behind them but close enough to listen to their talk - which he obviously had done.

Robert smiled. That was another reason why this trip had been the best idea he'd had in years: His son and heir was finally coming out from under Cersei's skirts. And it was all thanks to Lady Ruby and her friends. The boy just needed the right motivation to finally grow up. “Do you think they walk everywhere?” Robert wouldn't put it past them.

“I think they use magic,” Joffrey said at once. “Though I have yet to find out what sort of magic.”

“Are you spying on them, my prince?” Ned was frowning.

“That would imply that I am trying to hide my interest from them, Lord Stark.” The boy flashed a grin.

Robert laughed. “Good answer, boy! Just be careful when deciding who you're interested in and how to show it!”

Joffrey looked confused for a moment - well, he was still a boy, not yet a man. Ned, on the other hand, was frowning.

“All of them equally?” Joffrey asked more than stated.

Robert laughed again. “That's a recipe for a painful lesson, boy!”

Joffrey blinked, then blushed. “I didn't… Father! I’ve got a betrothed!” he added with a glance at Ned.

Robert laughed harder.

Ned, though, frowned at both of them before nodding at Joffrey. “My prince, if I may offer some advice.”

“Of course, Lord Stark.”

“Tread carefully around Lady Ruby and her friends. While they obviously are not as prone to anger as many nobles would be, undoubtedly, their ire can still be raised. And, accidentally or not, I doubt we would wish to experience such.”

“Of course not, Lord Stark! I am fully aware of their power.” Joffrey shook his head. “And I remain determined not to offend those who could, as Father said, wreck the entire Red Keep with their bare hands.”

“I wouldn't actually mind seeing that. Would improve the damn place!” Robert blurted out. He was only half-joking. The keep was riddled with secret passages and spies, and everything the damned dragons had squirrelled away during their rule and then forgotten.

“Robert!”

“Father!”

Ah, his friend and his son were too easy to rile up!

“Peace! They wouldn't do it - they wouldn't like hurting all those people.” It was a good thing the four were girls. Boys with their power would be far less careful. Far less kind and modest, as well. Robert knew that - he had been a boy once. 

No, it was a very good thing that Lady Ruby and her friends were girls. Otherwise, a number of fools would have been killed by now. And the odd bastard or two would already be on the way, of course. Cersei might rant about how they dressed, but Robert knew women, and despite their attire, none of the four girls were the kind to spread their legs for a man for a bit of fun.

They hadn't taken a vow of chastity, either, despite some of the imp's comments. Yang made ribald jests with the best of them, and Ruby might be uncomfortable with such jokes, but she had never chided her sister for it. And if they had taken such vows, they would have mentioned it - especially after revealing that girls picked their own husbands in their homelands. Hah! Wouldn't that even shock the Dornish?

Of course, if girls could shatter stone with their bare hands - or their foreheads, as Yang had shown on a dare - who would dare to make them do anything they didn't want? Gods above, they lived the perfect life! They hunted monsters for a living, travelled the world and had no obligations that saw them chained to a nagging wife who hated him and a throne he had never wanted, surrounded by leeches and the stench of King's Landing!

If he had been born in their world… He laughed again, prompting Ned and his son to look at him.

“Your Grace?”

“Nothing.” He was the King. Nothing could change that. He couldn't even step down - Joffrey wasn't ready to rule; he was still too young. And under Cersei's influence. Ned would be a good regent, of course, but he wouldn’t do that to his friend. Robert might be many things - a drunkard, a womaniser, and a failure as a king in so many ways that Jon had never had the heart to tell him - but he wasn’t a coward or traitor.

Bah, this was ruining his good mood! “So, how do you think your guests will like King's Landing?”

“Your guests now, Your Grace,” Ned corrected him.

Robert waved his hand. “Our guests. Go on.”

Ned nodded. “They are used to big cities.”

Always so careful. Robert grinned. “As big as King's Landing?”

“Yes, Father,” Joffrey cut in. “They mentioned bigger cities in their homeland.”

Robert frowned. “Let Ned talk, boy!” he snapped. “You'll get your turn.”

“I don't think they have seen a city like King's Landing, Your Grace,” Ned said after a moment. “Their world is very different from ours.”

Robert snorted. “It has to be, given their power. Can you imagine growing up in their world? Fighting monsters as soon as you are old enough to squire? To prove you’re good enough to be trained?” He laughed. “Can you imagine what their armies must look like, with knights raised like that?”

“It's a terrifying thought,” Ned said.

“Hah!” Robert grinned. “It's exciting! The Age of Heroes, come alive!” He glanced at Joffrey behind them. “You had something to say, boy!”

Joffrey jerked. “Ah, yes, Father!” He nodded. “I… Their cities have tougher walls than King's Landing - or Winterfell.”

“Have to, with monsters that can threaten ‘Huntresses’!” Robert nodded.

“And they are magical. The cities. I mean, they use a lot of magical devices. Lights, stoves, even latrines.” Joffrey shook his head. “They don't have servants doing chores for them, but magic devices.”

“That could merely be the case for students at their school, my prince,” Ned pointed out.

“That might be so, Lord Stark, but of the four girls, only Lady Weiss is used to having servants. And she hails from a different kingdom than the others,” Joffrey said.

“Hah! Looks like in their world, the North is the place where people are soft enough to need servants, huh?” Robert laughed again.

Joffrey laughed as well, but Ned smiled. “As I said, their world is very different, Your Grace.”

“Hah!” Robert slapped the pommel of his saddle. “Good one!”

“Father...”

“Yes, Son?”

“Do you believe they're from another world?”

“Is your mother still clinging to that foolishness of hers?” Robert scoffed. “If they were from our world, we would have met them already. Neither people like them, nor the monsters they fight, would have been confined by land or sea. They would have conquered the world long before any of us were born.”

“They might not want to conquer the world,” Ned said. “Lady Ruby and her friends do not show any such ambition. They certainly have not made any attempt to conquer Winterfell.”

“Oh, the girls aren't conquerors, that I'll grant you, Ned.” Robert nodded. “But their kin? Their peers? Four kingdoms of such people, and all of them lacking the ambition to go forth and conquer their neighbours? Or, if not to conquer, then to explore the world? Or the Grimm they described? Those ‘Nevermores’ can fly and don't need to eat or rest; they could fly to every corner of the world. No, they're not from our world.” He laughed. “So, we better enjoy their company until they leave.”

Ned frowned. “You don't think they will stay in Westeros?”

Robert shook his head. “You have known them for longer than I do, Ned. Can you see them abandoning their families, their homes, and settling down here?” He wouldn’t do that in their place, so why would they? They were free to live the best of lives!

“They might not be able to return to their home, Your Grace. They have not had any luck finding anything about the magic they need at Winterfell.”

“And they might not find anything in King's Landing.” Robert shrugged. “And then they will go to the next place - probably Oldtown.”

“And what if they don't find anything there? What if there is no way for them to return home, Father?”

Robert snorted. “How would they know, until they have searched the entire world? You've been spending a lot of time with them; do you think they'll ever give up their goal?” He knew the girls. They would no more give up their search than Robert would have ever given up on Lyanna, had she lived. And they would no more abandon each other than Robert would abandon Ned. “Sooner or later, they will travel on, looking for their home.” It wasn't as if there was any power in the world able to stop them.

Strangely, both Ned and Joffrey remained silent at that. Ah, well - it was about time to stop for the midday meal, anyway.

*****

The Kingsroad, South of the Neck, Riverlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Finally, no more swamps! No more mosquitos! No more rotting plants stinking up the air!”

Ruby Rose smiled at Weiss's outburst. Her friend had not enjoyed the latest stretch of their trip. Well, neither had Ruby or Blake and Yang, but Weiss had taken it the worst. At least from Team RWBY - the Queen's complaints had been heard by the entire camp. Poor Blake probably hadn't been able to sleep until the queen had fallen silent.

But now, a bit ahead of the King's caravan, standing on green fields and taking deep breaths, that was over. The Queen would have to find something else to complain about. Which she would - she always had something to complain about.

But Ruby wouldn't let that ruin her good mood. She would enjoy the day!

“We're in the Riverlands now. They're ruled by Lady Catelyn's father,” Jon said. They already knew that, of course. But Jon took his duty to be their ‘native guide’ seriously. So seriously, Weiss hadn't been able to bring herself to admit that she had been sarcastic when she had called him that.

Ruby and the others had had a good laugh about that in private, and even Weiss had been a good sport. Though it probably helped that Jon wasn’t looking at Weiss like he was looking at Yang when he thought no one was looking. If Jon had a crush on Weiss, she probably would have scared him to the Wall by now. And, of course, Ghost helped. A lot. Weiss just couldn’t resist a puppy.

“Hoster Tully, our grandfather! But we won't go visit him - I asked,” Bran said. Hunter, his finally named wolf - really, how could you not name your pet for months? - was at his side, looking around with his tail wagging. “Riverrun is not on the way. It would be a detour that would cost us too much time, Father said.”

“Yeah, it probably would.” Ruby had seen the map - or what passed as a map here - and it was quite a distance. Especially on this supposed ‘Kingsroad’, which was more like a better - or worse, in some areas - dirt track.

“Unless you asked the King!” Bran smiled at her. “I’m sure he wouldn't deny you!”

Uh. Ruby frowned at him. Bran might be right about that, but he was also wrong! For suggesting it. “I'm not going to ask to delay the King's return to the capital so we can visit Riverrun, Bran!”

“Why not? I'm sure the King would like it,” Bran replied.

Arya, standing a bit behind him, nodded.

Ruby swallowed her first response. The King had been complaining about King's Landing a lot. But that didn't mean he would be shirking his duty. That would be like goofing off on a Hunting mission! Which, well, you did - you had to keep from becoming all doom and gloom, or you would attract more Grimm - but not when delaying meant more people would be endangered. Or even killed! 

And the King couldn't just go off for weeks on a whim! He had to rule the kingdom! “He is needed in the capital,” she said.

“That doesn’t mean he wants to go there.” Bran grinned.

“But it means we will be going there,” she told him. “Sometimes, you need to do things you don’t like because it’s the right thing to do.”

“Oh!” Yang smiled a bit too sweetly. “My little sister is all grown up! Next, you’ll be saying that too many cookies are bad for you!”

Ruby gasped. “Never!” She was a growing girl (and an active girl) and she needed her cookies!

But they didn’t have cookies here. Well, not chocolate cookies. Oh, how she missed homemade cookies. And home. And Dad. And Uncle Qrow. And her friends at Beacon. And Beacon. And…

“Ruby?”

“Sorry!” She took a deep breath. “I got lost in thought about… cookies!” She forced herself to smile.

“Ah, of course!” Yang’s laughter was also forced, but Bran and Arya should be fooled, and Jon was… probably as well. He was looking at Yang’s chest again.

“Figures!” Weiss was shaking her head at her, but she was smiling in that nice way of hers, not her disapproving way (Ruby knew both smiles very well by now).

“So… do you think we’re far enough from the others?” Ruby asked when they reached a small clearing.

“Hm.” Yang looked around. “Blake?” she yelled.

A moment later, Blake appeared on a high branch of the closest tree. “It’s clear!” Blake yelled back, then disappeared into the foliage again.

Ruby sighed. There was being a catgirl ninja, and there was being too afraid of three adorable puppies. Puppies the size of grown shepherd dogs now, but still puppies. Zwei would love to play with them. Ah, well. “So, this should be a good spot to train in secret. No one is going to catch us here, and if anyone comes for us, Blake will spot them way before they reach us, and we can stop and claim you were just watching us train.”

Arya and Bran nodded, as eager as they had been on the first day of this trip, but Weiss shook her head. “I am sure that Lord Eddard is aware of what we are doing.” 

“Father would have said something if he knew!” Bran protested.

“Yes! He’d never let me get training with a blade!” Arya agreed.

Ruby wasn’t sure - the two kids knew their father best, but Weiss was smart and had spent a lot of time with Lady Catelyn and she was Ruby’s partner, so… “Well, as long as he doesn’t say anything, it doesn’t matter if he knows.”

“Just remember to lie if he asks you,” Yang added with a grin.

“Lady Yang!” Jon looked shocked, but Bran and Arya nodded with wide grins.

“And don’t forget to thank Sansa,” Yang added. “If not for her distracting the Prince, we wouldn’t have been able to sneak away!”

“We didn’t sneak away,” Weiss corrected her. “We told Lord Eddard we would go training and take you with us.”

“Well, it’s still sneaking since we aren’t supposed to train the kids!”

“That’s… It doesn’t work like that!” Weiss frowned.

“Says you!”

“Because it doesn’t work like that!”

“Yang, stop riling up Weiss!” Ruby put her foot down. “Let’s start training!”

They couldn’t stay here too long - they had to catch up to the caravan afterwards, and even though the whole thing was moving very slowly, the longer they took here, the longer they had to walk back - or run, that was good training as well. At least for the Stark kids.

“Yes. Now that, at long last, you have the basics of dodging and running down, we can start with basic attacks and footwork,” Weiss said, drawing Myrtenaster.

“And fisticuffs!” Yang grinned and slammed her fists together. 

“And we'll continue raising your stamina!” Ruby beamed at them and drew Crescent Rose. “We’ve got a lot of things to train and not much time for it, so we’ll have a very intense training session. When we’re done, you’ll wish you were dead!”

All three - even Jon - looked queasy. 

Ruby frowned. That was what Uncle Qrow liked to say, and he knew what he was doing when it came to training - he had trained her, after all!

“Ruby, if they can’t walk when we return, everyone will know what we’ve been doing - including the Queen and the Prince,” Weiss pointed out. “So, please don’t kill them, OK?”

“Save that for our sparring!” Yang added.

“Alright.” Ruby sighed. “Now, let’s get started, Team JAB!”

*****

Crossroads Inn, Riverlands, Westeros, 298 AC

The inn they were staying at showed the differences between Remnant and Westeros rather starkly, in Weiss Schnee's opinion. This was the crossing of multiple major trade routes. From here, the river road led to the capital of the Riverlands, the high road to the Vale of Arryn, and the Kingsroad to the North and further south. It was also near the Trident, the main river leading east - apparently, the rive had once flown directly under the southern part of the inn - and yet, what should be a major trade hub and settlement was barely a village by Remnant's standards.

At least the inn had enough rooms to house a significant part of the King's travelling group, though the owners had to evict a few smallfolk guests for that - something Weiss knew better than to mention to Ruby and the others. It wouldn't go over well with her friends. Weiss wasn't happy with it, either, but that was how it worked in Westeros: Those with rank and status had privileges, and those deemed of lesser status had to give way to those of a higher rank. 

And none outranked the King, of course. Not even the Queen, for which Weiss was grateful every day.

That was actually the only downside of staying in an inn, and sleeping in a real bed, as primitive it might be, in a room instead of a tent, and being able to take a bath in what was seen as comfort in Westeros: They were spending the night in the same building as the Queen, and that meant that dinner was a social event, so to speak.

“Ugh. I never knew how much I loved zippers until we were zapped here. Blake, some help?”

A social event which comes with certain rules, such as dressing appropriately, Weiss thought as she watched Blake lace up Yang's dress.

“Can't we attend in our combat clothes?” Ruby whined. She was sitting on the bed in her underwear, holding up her dress and looking at it as if she was pondering whether she should tear it apart or not.

To think of it, Ruby probably was contemplating that, Weiss realised. If only so she could have an excuse for showing up in combat clothes. Best to nip that in the bud.

“It wouldn't be polite,” Weiss told her with a frown. “You don't show up in armour to dinner.”

“The Kingsguard do!” Ruby protested.

“When they are on duty as guards. Not when they are attending as guests,” Weiss replied.

“We could be guards…”

Serve the King? Or another noble? Perish the thought! “Guards don't eat. And they don't get dessert afterwards.” Weiss sighed. “Just the fact that we're allowed to carry our weapons with us is quite the concession.”

“It's not as if they could stop us,” Yang said with a smirk as she rolled her shoulders and then patted her hips. “I think I’m good, Blake.”

Blake nodded.

“You're the only one not yet dressed, Ruby.” Weiss shook her head. “You don't want to make us late, do you?”

“No…” Ruby pouted.

“Then get up and get dressed! Honestly!” Weiss huffed, watched for a few seconds as her partner mulishly pulled the dress on, then stepped in and took over. “Team RWBY has a reputation to maintain,” she muttered as she adjusted Ruby's dress.

“We already get enough attention - more than enough!”

“And we would get even more if you would show up dressed to fight,” Weiss told her.

“But…” Ruby sighed. “I just don't feel comfortable like this. It makes me feel like a local. Like I should bow and scrape and… As if I should forget about Remnant! I don't want to forget that - I don't want to stay here! I want to go home!”

Oh. Weiss drew a sharp breath and wondered what brought this on. “We are going home,” she told Ruby as firmly as she could, staring into her eyes. “We won't stay here.” She put as much confidence into her words as she could - and forced the doubting voice she sometimes could hear in the back of her head away.

“Yeah, we will get back home!” Yang nodded with a wide smile. She was the genuine article, Weiss knew. Confident and honest. “Nothing can stop us.”

Ruby pressed her lips together, obviously not convinced yet. “It just… it just feels like we won't, sometimes, you know? As if we're not good enough to make it home.”

Oh, Weiss knew the feeling of not being good enough. Her father had done his best - or worst - to fuel it. But she wouldn't let him win. She placed her hands on Ruby's shoulders and leaned in until their heads were almost touching. “We are, Ruby. We are good enough. We will find our way home no matter what.”

Ruby met her eyes and slowly nodded. “Alright. Then let's go to dinner. Dibs on the cake!”

Weiss smiled as Ruby rushed to the door, carrying her folded weapon under one arm. “Don't forget your scroll!” she reminded her.

They wouldn't give a thief a second chance to rob them.

*****

Compared to the hall at Winterfell, or the halls at the keeps they had been staying sometimes during the voyage south, the Inn's common room was smaller. Draftier as well - at least as far as Winterfell was concerned. They knew how to insulate their rooms in the North.

But it was warm enough and, with over a hundred people sitting in the room, stuffy enough that Weiss didn't mind but welcomed the draft. As guests of the King, they were placed pretty close to the fireplace, anyway. Closer than the Queen would have liked, Weiss was certain. If the Queen had her way, Team RWBY would probably be sent to the stables to sleep. Or the dungeons - the noblewoman's attitude had not improved during the trip, quite the contrary. 

Yang had speculated that was because she hadn't had any chance to meet her incestuous lover, but Weiss thought it was more likely that the woman simply couldn't stand any competition. Even - or especially - if the competition was entirely in her imagination. None of Team RWBY had any interest in marrying into the royal family or outshining the Queen in her own court.

If they had, they wouldn't be showing up to dinner in decent but quite simple dresses compared to the silks the Queen and her attendants wore. Since they couldn’t - for lack of local money and access to Remant’s resources - wear dresses made by the finest tailors surpassing the Queen's, decorated with choice pieces of jewellery, they would be wearing their combat clothes and doing their best to play up how different and exotic they were compared to the local nobility.

Weiss knew how the game was played, after all. She was a Schnee. And she didn't lose if she was playing it. Which she wasn't, no matter what the Queen thought or did. She was above that. And above the petty Queen.

No matter how hard it was to stomach the needling slights. But if Weiss lost her grip on her temper, her whole team would follow.

Fortunately, they were seated, due to the location, further away from the Royal couple than they had been at Winterfell, and so she didn’t have to endure petty sniping and struggle with the temptation to return the favour with some choice veiled insults.

“It’s quite refreshing to be seated so far away that we can’t hear my dear sister’s voice, isn’t it?”

Unfortunately, the seating arrangement also had some downsides. Namely, that Lord Tyrion also had been seated in this section.

She nodded at him. “You sound as if you had chosen this arrangement, my lord.”

“Oh, no - although I probably would have, if I had known who would be seated next to me. This was all my dear sister the Queen’s doing. I think it’s meant as an insult.”

“To you or us?” Weiss asked.

“Both, I assume.” He downed his mug and held it out for a servant to refill.

For a moment, Weiss tried to estimate whether Lord Tyrion had drunk more mugs of ale than Ruby had wolved down sweet honey cakes. But she had not paid too much attention to either’s consumption tally. “How efficient of her.”

“She probably considers this a very smart idea.”

“As smart as commenting in that manner on the Queen’s intellect behind her back?” Weiss raised her eyebrows.

“I do the same to her face,” Lord Tyrion took another mouthful of ale. “No doubt one reason why she is not fond of my presence.”

Was he trying to curry favour by disparaging his sister? Weiss wouldn’t dismiss the possibility. The small Lord was very interested in Team RWBY, if not as blatant about it as the Prince. She shrugged nonchalantly. “You would know your sister best, my lord.”

“I should, indeed. And yet, we have been quite distant for years.”

“A shame.” Was she treating Whitley like the Queen treated her brother? No, of course not. Weiss wasn’t the Queen. But she was much closer to her older sister than her little brother - or anyone else in the family.

“Oh, the greater the distance between myself and most of my family, the happier everyone is. I have often wondered if I might be morally obligated to exile myself to Essos so my family would be the happiest ever.”

“It does not behove you to put yourself down like that, my lord,” Weiss told him. He was obviously fishing for compliments. “Although I would not dare claim that I knew your family better than you did, so I feel compelled to agree with your reasoning.”

He laughed. “Well put! But it’s a whimsy anyway. My father might prefer not to see my face, but he would never let me go into exile. That would damage our reputation.”

Weiss smiled blandly. “I know the type.”

“The type?”

“The kind of overbearing parent trying to control your life,” she explained.

“Ah. Unfortunately, my father is not trying as much as he is succeeding. I am sure things would be different in your world - albeit, perhaps, not as different as some are imagining.” Lord Tyrion raised his mug to her.

“Different enough so he could not stop my elder sister from choosing her own future,” Weiss replied. And she would have followed Winter’s example if not for the fact that as the heir, it fell to her to restore the reputation of her family and reform the SDC, which meant her father had some leverage on her. But that was a private matter.

“Well…” Lord Tyrion was interrupted by the musicians entertaining the King finishing their latest piece - a rather conventional performance, in Weiss’s opinion - and the crowd calling out the names of their favourite songs for the musicians to play next.

Or, rather, for the King to decide what they should play next - everyone was looking at him, the musicians first and foremost.

And the King was looking at Team RWBY, Weiss realised with a sinking feeling.

“Lady Ruby! What would you recommend?” The King certainly had no trouble making himself heard across the entire table.

Ruby, looking startled, hastily swallowed the half of her latest cake still in her mouth, then replied: “I am sorry, but they wouldn’t know any of my favourite songs!”

That was a good dodge. Weiss nodded approvingly.

“Could you teach them, my lady?” Lord Tyrion asked as if he were more affected by the alcohol he had imbibed than he actually was.

Ruby looked even more flustered. “Ah… Weiss is the singer, not me!” she blurted out.

“Oh?” Lord Tyrion - and half the table - focused on her, Weiss realised. She sent a frown at her partner; she would get even for this - and chuckled. “Oh, I haven’t sung on a stage in years. It was more of a hobby,” she lied. She wasn’t about to sing for this crowd.

Then she saw the sneering smirk on the Queen’s face.

She stood up. “But I think I can sing one of my favourite songs.”

She had to wait until the drunken cheering stopped - no doubt courtiers taking their cues from the King - and started to sing.

“Mirror, tell me something…”

Seeing the Queen’s expression as the crowd started to fall silent - Weiss had filled concert halls, not taverns, with her performances back home - while she sang was very satisfying. So satisfying, Weiss would have added a few more songs even without the enthusiastic demands from the King and the rest of the audience.

*****

Kingsroad, East of Harrenhall, Riverlands, Westeros, 298 AC

As her friends and the children were training - or, rather, her friends were training the children - Blake Belladonna stood guard, safely hidden, and safely out of reach of the slobbering beasts prowling the ground, in the branches of the tallest tree in the group’s vicinity that allowed a good view of the Kingsroad in the distance - and a decent view of the woods in the other direction, behind which, as Jon had explained, Harrenhall, supposedly the largest castle ever built in Westeros, now the biggest ruin in the kingdom, was found. A ruin that still served as a castle, as Blake understood, and, therefore, presented a hypothetical danger to her team and their guest students.

Hypothetical because Blake couldn’t think of many ways where someone might be able to hurt the children with her team present. In theory, someone could sneak up on them to shoot at them with a bow or crossbow, but that would require them to get very close without being noticed by Yang, Ruby or Weiss. Or the three hell beasts. Weiss could call them puppies as much as she wanted, Blake knew better. They were dangerous monsters, smarter than any dog or wolf had any right to be, and able to rip a grown man to shreds with their jaws.

She shuddered at the thought and looked toward the Kingsroad again. She could see the back end of the King’s caravan passing by - that meant they had about twenty minutes to half an hour left before they had to pack up so they could catch up before the caravan stopped for the day. 

It was all very vague since the caravan didn’t stick to a fixed schedule, sometimes stopping early or late depending on where a suitable location was to make camp. And sometimes because the Queen complained, her wheelhouse broke down again, or both. Not that the exact time mattered since they didn’t have working watches.

That would necessitate recharging their scrolls to coordinate a more complex mission, Blake knew. And that would further cut into their limited Dust supply. The others didn’t worry much about that - Weiss was more generally annoyed at the lack of precise time-keeping in Westeros - but Blake did; her time in the White Fang had taught her not to assume that a mission was a milk run until everyone was back in camp and the camp had moved to a safe location.

And her experiences in Westeros had confirmed that her alertness was more than justified. If the Queen and her brother were willing to break both the law and all oaths they had sworn, what else were they willing to do? And Blake doubted that those two were the only ones amongst people with power in the King’s entourage who did not follow their own laws and customs. No, sooner or later, they would be forced to act, and unless they wanted to openly fight whoever was moving against them, with all the consequences for everyone and Team RWBY’s goals that entailed, they would have to be discreet - and most discreet plans would require careful timing and planning.

Ah, well, maybe they would be lucky and find a way home before that happened. Maybe…

Her ears twitched, and she tensed. 

Voices! Two of them - and close, coming closer. Who would… She drew a sharp breath when she recognised the first voice. Prince Joffrey. And he was with Sansa.

She made a soft scoffing noise. The Prince and his fiancée, looking for them? The Prince had attended their training sessions before, albeit not very frequently, yet never with Sansa. What brought this on?

She could ponder this later; she had to act now.

A few quick jumps brought her to the clearing, where Weiss was demonstrating a sword move on some poor tree that Ruby had debranched with Crescent Rose, and Yang was driving Jon across the clearing with a series of slow - for her - kicks he kept almost dodging.

But all of them stopped when she landed on the last branch, tensing up.

“The Prince and Lady Sansa are headed this way,” Blake said. She tried to ignore the way the three hell beasts were looking up at her with their mouths open and their razor-sharp teeth gleaming in the sun. “They are probably following our trail.”

“Sansa is coming?” Arya whispered to her brother while scowling.

“The Prince is bad enough, but now Sansa?” Bran whispered back.

“Lead them to us before they get lost,” Ruby said. “They’re probably looking for us and might have a message from the King or Lord Eddard.”

That made Bran also grimace, and Jon looked a bit worse as well.

Blake nodded and turned back, jumping from branch to branch again. 

Finding the Prince and Lady Sansa would have been a bit of a challenge if the Prince hadn’t been talking constantly to his fiancée. As things were, Blake’s ears led her directly to him, and after a quick sweep to ensure he wasn’t serving as a distraction and was only accompanied by the Hound, who was scowling as usual, and Sansa's beast, which she had deceptively named Lady, she dropped to the ground right behind them - far away from the direwolf in front.

“Prince Joffrey? Lady Sansa?” she asked, as politely as if she had met them in Winterfell’s courtyard.

The Hound jerked, drawing his sword with a curse, but Blake acted as if she were ignoring him - while she was ready to counter any move he made; the man’s attitude, his barely restrained violence, grated on her nerves. The real threat was the wolf, anyway.

He lowered his sword. “Coulda cut you, crazy girl,” he muttered.

She bared her teeth at him. “No, you couldn’t.”

He tensed up and clenched his teeth, and, for a moment, Blake wondered if he would lose control and attack her, but he scoffed and sheathed his sword again - with more force than needed.

The Prince, though, acted as if he were not fazed at all - and he probably wasn’t; he had hung around them while they trained often enough to expect this. “Lady Blake! We were looking for you and your friends!”

Lady Sansa, who had gasped at Blake’s arrival, nodded. “Yes. Prince Joffrey suggested we should observe your training session.”

As expected. Blake nodded. “Please follow me, then.”

She moved past the couple and the scowling Hound, gave the wolf a berth, and started toward the clearing. She didn’t quite hurry even though having a wolf at her back made her want to and had her skin crawl, and by the time they reached the others, Bran and Arya were sitting at the edge of the clearing, surrounded by their direwolves, and were watching the others spar - or serve as a training dummy, in Jon’s case - while they tried to act as if they hadn’t been training before.

Judging by the smirk on the Prince’s face, he saw through their act, but he didn’t say anything. Blake was sure he was aware of what they were doing and found it amusing to force them to merely watch simply by his presence.

Lady Sansa, on the other hand, didn’t seem to suspect anything - after greeting the others, and awkwardly nodding at Jon, she smiled at her siblings and sat down next to them on the log that had, until a few minutes ago, been a fresh target dummy while her beast joined her siblings on the ground. “Oh, this is interesting!”

“Don’t act as if you are interested, Sansa,” Blake heard Arya whisper. “You’re just here because your prince loves watching Team Ruby.”

“You’re wrong! This is interesting - we can learn a lot here. And a lady is supposed to support her lord’s interests, anyway!” Sansa hissed back.

“Hah! You’d jump in a lake if Joffrey asked you to and claim it was a good idea!”

“It would be a good idea if you were burning!” Sansa scowled as well.

“If I am on fire, I don’t need anyone to tell me to jump into a lake!”

Blake sighed, softly, at the whispered bickering - of the others, only Bran was close enough to overhear the two sisters - and checked that the four beasts were still lying at the foot of the log and not charging across the clearing toward her while the Prince approached Ruby with a wide smile.

That prompted another round of bickering.

“Better watch your betrothed, Sansa!”

“I trust my prince; his interest in Team Ruby is merely intellectual!”

“Hah!”

“You wouldn’t understand!”

“Can you two be silent?” Bran hissed. 

“Shut up, Bran. This doesn’t concern you!”Arya snapped.

“We’re just talking,” Sansa added.

“You’re bickering!” Bran complained.

“So are you!”

“Only because you are!”

Blake sighed again. Kids! She shook her head and stepped back a little, to keep an eye on both the hell beasts and the Hound. Sure, compared to the direwolves, he wasn't a threat, but at least the beasts would not attack the kids - they probably saw them as part of their pack or something like that. She wasn’t so sure about the Hound. Sure, he was sworn to the Prince - at least that was what his title implied - but he didn't strike her as the honourable type. He kept complaining about knights when the topic came up, and how they discredited their honour, but he didn't seem to take this as a reason to act more honourable himself.

Today, he was just standing back and scowling at everyone. As usual, then. She narrowed her eyes slightly when they met his and nodded. At least they knew where they stood.

Jon picked that moment to fail to block the last kick from Yang - more like a nudge, actually, from her; Jon barely was pushed back a yard - and fell down, panting and sweating.

The Prince chuckled at the sight. “You're still insisting on pretending you could be a match for Lady Yang?”

Blake caught Jon's expression, hidden from the Prince's view by facing away, twisting into a scowl before he took a deep breath and turned around. “We're training, my prince,” he said with his usual indifferent mask on again.

“Hopeless. You'd do much better setting your sights on something more on your level. You are not bad with a blade; what about becoming a guard? The gold cloaks are hiring. The pay is good, or so I am told.” Joffrey shrugged with apparent indifference. “I am sure you can handle the scum of Fleabottom more easily than you can handle facing people so far above you.”

Blake pressed her lips together. The Prince was mocking Jon, though his advice had some merit; as far as she knew, the city watch of King's Landing would actually be a way for Jon to make a living. But she also knew Jon would never go for it, certainly not when the Prince suggested it, and she was quite sure the Prince knew that as well.

She had half a mind to ask the Prince to join their training sessions as well - it was obvious that he was jealous of Jon - but that would be problematic for a few reasons, one of them the fact that the Prince had derided Jon's decision to train with Team RWBY often and publicly, so he might consider an invitation to train with them an insult. And if he joined, well… She had a feeling that the prince wouldn't like the kind of training Jon was undergoing at the hands of her team. Yang was a bit too enthusiastic, and both she and Ruby had obviously been trained by rather harsh teachers before they arrived at Beacon.

“Well, I am looking forward to another enlightening performance,” the Prince stated, smiling at Ruby and the rest of them, though his smile twisted into a slight sneer when he looked at Jon; Blake caught it in the corner of her eyes before he walked over to join the other spectators.

Blake returned to the closest tree to keep watch.

*****

Kingsroad, Outside King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Whoa! It's big!”

Yang Xiao Long agreed with Ruby. The capital of Westeros was a big city. Not nearly as big as Vale, of course, but bigger than anything they had seen so far in Westeros. Half a million people, at least according to what they had heard.

“And look at that castle at the end of the city!”

“The Red Keep, my lady. The seat of the King. But don't let its appearance fool you - it's not nearly as appealing as it looks from afar. Quite like the city itself, actually,” Lord Tyrion commented.

“Have a care, Uncle!” the Prince protested. “There is no bigger city in Westeros - and none more impressive, either!”

“Actually, I have it on good authority that Oldtown is larger and more impressive.” Lord Tyrion grinned. “Although I'll admit that the city is the most populous - the nose doesn't lie.”

The Prince scoffed. “What authority would that be? Surely not Father's!”

“Why, my own, as I possess both an impeccable taste and a keen sense of numbers, of course! What better authority could one hope to find than their own?”

Yang snorted softly at the expression on the Prince's face. When it came to insults, the boy could dish it out, but he was much worse at taking it. Though she didn't think too many would dare insult the Prince to his face, so he must not be used to it.

“I have not seen Oldtown, so I couldn't possibly compare the two...” Weiss said.

“Oh, don't let that stop you, my lady! My nephew hasn't seen Oldtown either!”

“...but it certainly is an impressive city,” Weiss finished with a slight frown.

“Yes!” The Prince was beaming at her.

“It is very impressive!” Sansa added with a wide smile that felt a bit forced - and faltered a little when the Prince didn't compliment her.

Yang suppressed a sigh. For a boy raised at court, the Prince certainly didn't act courteously toward his fiancée. Maybe she should give Sansa some advice about how to deal with boyfriends who took you for granted or something? Better not, she decided. It wasn't like Sansa could dump the Prince. She wouldn't want to dump him, either, that much was clear.

Ah, well. They were still kids. Maybe things would work themselves out as they grew older. Yang certainly hoped so; they deserved better than some loveless arranged marriage. It still boggled her mind that they were supposed to marry someone chosen by their parents - and at that age. Who knew what either would be like when they were grown up?

“Well, I think it looks neat,” Ruby said.

“Thank you, my lady.”

“As I said, it looks nicer than it is, my lady.” Lord Tyrion said. “Though maybe we should dismount, nephew. It would not look well if we rode through the gate while our guests walked.”

The Prince looked surprised, Yang noted. As did Sansa. Well, Yang hadn’t thought about the optics of such an entrance, either.

“Don't dismount on our account!” Ruby beamed at them. “We can keep up just fine!”

“Yeah. At this pace, we can go all day,” Yang said.

“You could ride in the wheelhouse,” Sansa offered. “That would be appropriate, wouldn't it?”

Not if I lose my temper and beat up the Queen before we reach the gate if she keeps needling us, Yang thought. 

“Uh… we could ride on a wagon, maybe?” Ruby suggested.

“That would look even worse,” Weiss said. “We’re not goods to be transported.”

“Oh.” Ruby pouted as she considered the issue. “We'll walk in with the wagons then!”

“That might not be the best choice, either,” Lord Tyrion told her. “People might mistake you for… smallfolk.”

Yang snorted. She knew what he meant. ‘Camp followers’, as Blake liked to call it. 

“If that is your concern, Uncle, shouldn’t you keep your distance? Mother told me what kind of women you like to spend time with.” The Prince sniffed.

Lord Tyrion laughed at his barb, but Yang wondered now why the small Lord had chosen this day to spend in their company. Did he want to appear so close to them?

“Let's just keep walking,” she said. She would have added that it didn't matter what people thought, but it did. If people thought they were whores, then that would be a bitch to sort out. Probably involving some broken bones and crushed balls.

Of course, the King could, and likely would, squash any consequences, but it would still cause trouble in the long run. And Weiss would be mad, but that was going to happen every day anyway. Not that Yang could blame the girl. Even after she had started to sing in the evenings, and the Queen had snubbed her even more - and hoo boy, was the Queen jealous of her - Weiss still spent too much time with the bitch.

“It’s still not seemly,” the Prince insisted. “If the people see you walking when we are riding, it makes us appear as if we were poor hosts.”

“Oh, I am sure your mother will get the blame for that.”

“Uncle!”

“Please - do you think Cersei’s dislike of our guests won’t be known by the entire court before the feast today? And by the entire city by tomorrow?” Lord Tyrion chuckled. 

The little lord was really trying to get into their good grades by dissing his sister, wasn’t he? Well, he had grown up with the woman. Yang laughed anyway. Soon, they would be able to search the royal library. Or have it searched, whatever - the King had promised them his help. With a bit of luck, they would be able to return home soon.

Things were finally looking up!

“Ugh.”

What? Yang glanced at Blake. Her partner was making a face. “What’s wrong?”

“The stench gets worse the closer we get,” Blake replied.

“Stench?” Yang sniffed the air. She didn’t smell any… wait! She did!

That was the city? Not some midden off the road ahead?

“Ew!” Ruby made a retching noise, and Lord Tyrion laughed.

Yang felt like retching herself. So much for things looking up!

*****

 

Chapter 11: King's Landing

‘The arrival of the Ruby Order at King’s landing has not been documented as extensively as one would expect. Or, to be more precise, not quite as precisely. For at the time of their arrival, few of the residents of King’s Landing had heard about them, and those who had, and had not dismissed the - for the ignorant certainly unbelievable - tales as some jest or misunderstanding - were not the sort to make their records public (with the notable exception of the Grand Maester of the time, albeit as was pointed out by many other scholars, his testimony cannot be considered unbiased to begin with given his allegiances, and was most certainly written at a later date, and with information he acquired after the fact. However, we can be certain, thanks to the surviving records and the diligent work of the order and the royal archivists throughout the centuries, that the Ruby Order was not impressed by the state of the capital of Westeros. Nothing demonstrates that better than the fact that amongst the writings left by the members of the Ruby Order, no less than two are proposals to add a sophisticated sewage system to the city, although, perhaps unfortunately, given the epidemic a century later, neither proposal was detailed enough to be adapted even if the funding would have been available. However, one has to note that the text was detailed enough to draw quite a few conclusions. First, that the Ruby Order’s homeland had extensive sewage systems and had had them for so long that the Ruby Order was appalled that King’s landing lacked them. Second, that the Ruby Order, for all the brilliance their treatises show, were not experts in architectural matters. Third, that, even within those limits, what details they had noted were very similar to the actual solutions architects came up with when the first sewage system was finally implemented in the capital. And, fourth, that the general lack of hygiene was seen as very offensive by all members of the Order, supporting the theory that cleanliness was a main virtue of their homeland’s religion.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ser Aron Santagar had come out to the courtyard to welcome the King, as had seemingly half the Red Keep’s staff. He scoffed. As master-at-arms, he had to be there, ready to inform the King of the state of his keep - at least the part of it that Aron oversaw - but most of those gathered here were just putting in an appearance to curry favour.

Or they were driven by their curiosity. It was no secret why the King had travelled to the North; he was making Lord Stark his Hand. Unlike other Lord Paramounts, the Warden of the North had not visited the court before - had not visited King's Landing, actually, since the end of the Rebellion - and so people were eager to take the measure of the noble who would be the second-most-powerful man at court.

At least officially; Aron had been master-at-arms for many years and was aware that rank and position alone did not define someone's power, especially not in King's Landing with its constant plotting. Lord Stark would have to navigate those waters carefully to build his own power, though being the King's best friend since childhood would undoubtedly facilitate matters - Aron did not think anyone would risk earning the King's ire by attacking his friend even if said friend wasn't also the Hand of the King, speaking for and with the voice of the King, with only the King himself able to countermand him.

But how would Lord Stark wield that influence? He had a reputation as a most honourable man, but Aron knew how often reputations fell short of the real man - or were the result of others deliberately spreading lies, whether to prop up or tear down someone.

Well, Aron would find out in the coming months. Unlike some of the people gathered here, he had no reason to fear. He did his duty diligently and did not attempt to reach beyond his station - or meddle in the plots of the courtiers. And, at least as far as he knew, he had not made any enemy who was in a position to go after him.

He noticed that some pages had stepped in front of him and cleared his throat, shooing them back. It wouldn't do if the first thing the King saw when returning were a gaggle of children running underfoot.

“Here they come!”

“Oh, do you think the maidens are with the King?”

“They are supposed to watch over the King; of course, they are with him!”

He rolled his eyes. That stupid rumour again! Four beautiful maidens, each with the strength of a hundred men, supposedly had come from the lands beyond the wall to search the wisdom of the King. A tale not even a toddler would believe - at least, if raised in King's Landing; Aron wouldn’t it put beyond some of the smallfolk from the distant borders of the realm to believe in such tales - and yet, it had spread like wildfire in the weeks since the first letters of the King's party had arrived from Winterfell. 

Letters carried by ship, not ravens, of course, which told Aron all he needed to know that there was no truth to the rumours. If only because no maiden would stay so for long near the King, he thought with a snort. The King's appetites were known to everyone in the Red Keep.

He studied the crowd, which was still growing. Varys, the Master of Whispers, had arrived, wearing his silk robes and undoubtedly surrounded by a cloud of perfume. Nearby, The Master of Coin, Lord Littlefinger, dressed in his finest clothes, stood, both men smiling at each other with all the honesty of a Fleabottom whore looking for business.

Aron couldn't help wondering how the new Hand would handle those two and their rivalry. Would he follow Lord Arryn's example and make both work for the King? Or would he be bought by the Spymaster's secrets or the purser's coins? Either way, the balance of power at the court would change.

The crowd parted, making way for another late arrival, though without resentment. Lord Renly had arrived, the Master of Laws ready to welcome his brother home. As usual, Ser Loras Tyrell was at his side. The two were so close, rumour had them share a bed.

Aron frowned at the thought. If Lord Renly weren’t the King's youngest brother - and Lord Paramount of the Stormlands, the ancestral kingdom of the Baratheons - and Ser Loras the son of Lord Mace Tyrell, ruler of the Reach…

“Here they come!”

“The King! The King!”

Shouts announcing the King's arrival interrupted his thoughts, and he straightened. He was the master-at-arms of the Red Keep. What the members of the Small Council did in their bedrooms, or in backroom dealings, was none of his business. He wasn't about to risk his position, and possibly his neck, by meddling in those affairs.

And there came the King. Aron wasn't quite certain, but it seemed as if the King had lost some weight - at least, he hadn’t grown fatter. And he was in a good mood, which was unusual - it was no secret that the King didn't like the Red Keep very much and was happiest when he was hunting or otherwise out of the keep and city.

But Aron focused on the man riding at the King's side. Tall, dark-haired, with a stern expression, and wearing a coat with the direwolf sigil on it - that would be Lord Stark, Warden of the North and the new Hand of the King.

He reminded Aron of Lord Stannis Baratheon, the master of ships, who had still not returned from Dragonstone. Perhaps not quite as cold, despite being from the North, but he seemed to be as dutiful. And unlike Lord Stannis, Lord Stark was actually smiling.

“Your Grace! The Red Keep is yours!” Lord Renly knelt, and Aron and everyone else present followed suit.

“Thank you, Renly!” The King's booming voice rang through the courtyard. “Everyone, this is Lord Eddard Stark, the Hand of the King!”

The new Hand wasn't smiling any more, Aron noted as he looked up. But before he could ponder what that might mean, he noticed that Prince Joffrey had ridden behind the King - and not with the Queen. That was a new development. And the red-haired girl riding next to him would be his betrothed, Lady Sansa Stark, then - that information had arrived via raven, of course.

Quite a match, Aron thought with a smile - both of the children took after their mothers, not their fathers, so… He blinked at the animal trotting next to the girl's horse. That was a wolf!

And not just one - two more followed the animal. Who was as daft as to bring wolves to the Red Keep? The Starks, he answered his own question as he noticed the sigil on the coat of the boy riding next to the wolves. That would be Lord Bran Stark, and, judging by how similar she looked, the girl next to him would be Lady Arya Stark.

He had to hand it to the new Hand - Lord Stark knew how to make an entrance; the animals had set tongues wagging. Some of the children who had slipped closer were trying to disappear to the back of the crowd again.

“Seven Hells! Those aren't wolves!”

Aron glanced at the man who had cursed next to him. Jorin, the kennelmaster. But he was wrong. Aron might not be a kennelmaster, but he could tell a wolf from a dog. “Are you daft?” he whispered. “Those are no dogs!”

“I know! But those aren't wolves either!” Jorin replied. “Those are puppies yet the size of grown wolves! Those must be direwolves! They are supposed to be extinct!”

The sigil animal of House Stark? Aron revised his estimate of the new Hand again; the man must have taken great care to make an impression on the court with such a display. Though what was the reason the wolves arrived with his children, and not himself? A subtle gesture, no doubt, but what did it mean?

“Oh, look at them!”

“The Maidens!”

Aron took a deep breath. Not that foolish rumour again. Who was as daft as to… He blinked again.

Four girls were marching, in line, following the van of the royal party. One of them was carrying the largest scythe he had ever seen. And the most peculiar one. It was far taller than the girl in question, looked to weigh as much as she did, and seemed to have been cobbled together from various parts. He would have dismissed it as some mummer's prop if not for the obvious quality of the construction - and the sharp point he could see. The others were armed as well, if with more practical weapons. The girl next to the scythe-wielder was carrying an elaborate waterdancer's sword, which told Aron that she was from Essos as much as her white hair showed her Valyrian blood. 

“Look at their clothes!”

“How scandalous!”

“Who allowed this?”

“The King, you daft fool!”

Oh, their clothes! Aron drew a sharp breath between his clenched teeth. He had been correct - no maiden would wear skirts that showed their legs like this! Even whores would baulk at that! And the other two were even worse! The blonde with hair that covered her entire back like a lion's mane - Lannister blood, surely - wore smallclothes and half a skirt, golden gauntlets as if she wanted to mock armoured knights, and not much else other than a corset and some scrap of a coat, and the girl next to her wore the pants of a courtier and a shirt that failed to cover her upper body in any decent fashion while carrying… a cleaver? Like a butcher?

And yet, despite the outrageousness of the situation, the King was smiling at them - and waved them over where he was talking with his brother. None of his party seemed to be disturbed by this!

What was going on? Was this some prank? Or…

Aron blinked as the girl with the scythe vanished in a cloud of petals and appeared next to the king.

What the…?

“Listen, everyone!” the King's booming voice rang out again. “These maidens are Lady Ruby Rose, Lady Weiss Schnee, Lady Blake Belladonna and Lady Yang Xiao Long. They are my personal guests while they are looking for a way to return to their world. And since I know what you lot are thinking - you too, Renly, don't deny it! - Ser Barristan will give you a little demonstration.”

Aron watched, confused, as the Kingsguard dismounted and approached the small group, drawing his sword.

The blonde - Lady Yang - grinned and took a step to the side, spreading her arms wide.

“Don't hold back, Ser!” the King commanded.

“I shall not, Your Grace.”

Were they about to fight? Here, now?

Aron was still trying to make sense of what was happening when Ser Barristan raised his blade, holding it with both hands - and, with a step forward, brought it down straight on Lady Yang's head.

Aron gasped with everyone else, horrified - and then gasped again when he realised that the blade had struck but not cut the girl. A perfectly executed swing, with all the force Ser Barristan could muster - as master-at-arms, Aron could tell - and the girl wasn't even scratched!

That was… “Gods above!” he muttered.

He wasn't the only one. Not by far.

*****

Red Keep, King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“I have to confess, Lady Ruby, that when I heard my brother’s claims about your and your friends’ strength, I was a little doubtful. But I stand corrected.”

Ruby Rose (she was a Huntress, not a noblewoman, but she couldn't tell the locals that, or there would be trouble) smiled and nodded. She had been doing that a lot. If she weren't at the feast to celebrate the King's return and going through courses like Nora went through Ren's pancakes, she was sure her cheeks would have cramped up from smiling constantly. “I think you were not the only one, Lord Renly,” she replied before spearing another meatball with her fork and putting it into her mouth. 

Mhh! It was as juicy as the one before. She missed her favourite sauce - those meatballs would go perfectly with hot ketchup! - but they were great anyway. Of course, the King would have the best cooks in his palace. Castle. Keep. Whatever.

“Well, can you blame me? Hearing about supernaturally strong women warriors from another world… most mummers would not dare to put on a show like that.” Lord Renly, the King's much younger (and much more handsome - he had no thick beard) brother, chuckled.

“Did you really think I would joke like that, Renly? Hah!” The King guffawed.

“Well, you did enjoy our reaction, Robert. But I am grateful that you had this demonstration held right away. I shudder to think how many here would have made fools out of them if they had let their misconceptions linger and stew.” Lord Renly laughed.

“Hah! I couldn't do that to Ned - start his time as my Hand by having to replace half the court?” The King laughed loudly.

“I would hope that most of your people would know better than to insult guests of the King,” Lord Eddard said.

Lord Renly laughed again, as did his friend, Ser Loras (a really cute boy about Ruby’s age) even though it was a rather poor joke.

Ruby swallowed the next meatball and spoke up. “Uh… We wouldn't actually kill people for insulting us. Or maim them. We don't want to do that. We train hard so we don't do it accidentally, either.” Ruby had crippled one man without wanting to, she wouldn't do that to another if she could help it. (And she could!) 

“I am sure many nobles will be relieved to hear that,” Lord Renly said.

“Of course, our mercy only goes so far,” Weiss cut in. “We are Huntresses.”

Right. Weiss was concerned that they would sound like pushovers to the locals. And she was right, kinda - the looks they had gotten in the city, and in the Red Keep, had been bad. Ruby nodded. 

“And they are not used to our customs,” the Queen added. “So, please, don't mistake their ignorance for deliberate insults - they don't know any better.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes, and Ruby suppressed a grimace. “Lady Catelyn has taught us your customs. They have been very welcoming.”

“The customs of the North,” the Queen said with a slight scoff.

“There might be a few differences between the customs in the North and the other kingdoms, but no Southern kingdom is the same either,” Lord Eddard said, “Lady Ruby and her friends have been quite gracious guests.”

“Yes, Ned!” The King nodded. “For people who could tear down the Red Keep with their bare hands, you have been very gracious! Only a fool would deny it.”

The Queen huffed at that, and many of the ladies at the table seemed to share her opinion. 

Lord Renly, though, smiled widely. “You must have the patience of a saint, Lady Ruby.”

“Ah…” Ruby smiled, a little embarrassed. “I'm actually not that patient. If it's important, I like to get it done quickly. I hate waiting!” Like, waiting to find a way back home!

Weiss sighed, and the King, Lord Renly and Ser Loras laughed at that while the Queen fumed and glared at her.

Ruby couldn't win. She hoped that they would soon serve dessert - she really needed her sweets!

*****

Their new quarters were much, much bigger than the ones they’d had in Winterfell. Two bedrooms and a living room. No bath, of course - they still had to order a tub and have it filled by servants if they wanted to take a bath, and the Red Keep didn't have hot springs like Winterfell - but they had far more space now! And more privacy!

Ruby sank into one of the seats in the living room and closed her eyes. “I shouldn't have eaten the last cake.”

“You shouldn't have eaten the last three,” Weiss told her.

“The last three dozen,” Yang added.

Ruby snorted without opening her eyes. “Those cakes were so good! What about the fish, Blake?” Her friend had been pretty quiet during the meal. Quieter than usual, at least. When she didn't hear an answer, she opened her eyes and glanced around.

Oh. Blake was staring at the wall and gesturing with one hand - she was signalling them to be quiet. 

No, to act like nothing was wrong (and ignore Blake doing her thing, probably). Ruby watched as Blake slowly moved her hand along the wall, her bow twitching from time to time. “So… what did you think of the King’s brother?” she asked. “He was very friendly. Though not too friendly, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t think he’d hit on his brother’s guests in front of the King,” Yang said.

“I assume that he hasn’t had time yet to talk to the King in private,” Weiss added. “And he might not want to rush into things before he has done so. However, as he isn’t married or engaged yet, despite his position and age, I think we need to be very careful around him.”

“Not even engaged?” Yang frowned. “Isn’t that unusual for a Lord like him?”

“Yes, it is. He’s a Lord Paramount and the brother of the King - one of the most eligible bachelors in the kingdom,” Weiss said.

“Aw…” Ruby pouted. “I thought he was a decent guy who was just friendly and polite.” He hadn’t stared at her chest or legs or butt. Neither had Ser Loras. She would really hate it if either started to talk about engagements. Or betrothals, as they called it here.

“And handsome,” Yang added with a grin.

Ruby rolled her eyes at her. Really, those jokes got old long ago. It wasn’t as if she was going to marry anyone, certainly not here in Westeros. They would be going home, to Dad, Zwei, and the others. To Beacon and Vale, where your husband couldn’t hit you half a dozen times if you disobeyed him or whatever. 

“And he obviously doesn’t like the Queen,” Weiss said. “Also, Ruby, you insulted her again.”

“What? How?” She hadn’t done anything! She had been honest and polite!

“You called her unimportant and beneath your notice.”

“What? I didn’t!”

“You did, and it was great!” Yang chuckled.

Just when Ruby got Weiss to explain what she (supposedly) had done, Blake suddenly vanished.

And not ninja-vanished - she had slipped into the wall! No, she had slipped through a secret door in the wall!

Ruby used her Semblance to rush over to the opening and almost crashed into Blake, who was crouching on the floor. “A secret passage!” Ruby beamed. How cool were their quarters?

“A secret passage used to spy on guests,” Blake said.

Oh, right. That wasn’t cool. Not cool at all.

“Were there any spies listening to us?” Weiss asked with a deep frown.

“I didn’t see any signs of recent use,” Blake told her. “But I saw older footprints. Small ones.”

“Small ones?” Yang asked.

“Kids. Little kids,” Blake said.

“Oh. Little kids are spying on us?” Ruby shook her head. That was even worse! 

“Are you annoyed that we don’t rate a grown-up spy?” Yang grinned.

“No. But… who would use little kids as spies?” Ruby asked. “And send them through secret passages?”

“Half the members of the court, I would assume,” Weiss said. “We’ll have to investigate to narrow it down.”

*****

Red Keep, King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

The Red Keep was quite impressive, from an architectural point of view - Weiss Schnee knew a few acquaintances of her father who would be interested in studying the castle and especially the various towers. However, while Blake certainly seemed to enjoy exploring and mapping the various secret passages, Weiss would have preferred a bit more privacy and security for her quarters. They couldn't even trap the passages properly, or they'd risk harming children since even a simple paint trap would endanger the little spies’ lives - Weiss didn't doubt that whoever was employing the children would kill them so they couldn't betray their identity. And if they survived that, the local excuse for a judicial system would likely see the poor kid maimed or deported unless Team RWBY intervened.

And if they did, it would just end with all the local spymasters using little children as their catspaws in an attempt to exploit the fact that Team RWBY wasn't as callous or brutal as most of the nobles in Westeros when it came to children. So, Weiss and her friends would have to hope that their safest traps would be enough to catch one of the little spies or for Blake to catch them in the act without anyone noticing. 

At least, the Red Keep was on a hill - a cliff - right at the shore, so when the wind blew from the sea, the stench of the city wasn't noticeable, which was definitely the best thing about the castle.

Maybe the second-best - the fact that so many nobles were extending invitations to Team RWBY meant that Weiss wouldn't have to see the Queen outside shared meals in the evenings - which weren't that common, to her relief - for quite some time.

She smiled as she stepped out of the tower and into the courtyard and saw Sansa leave the tower of the Hand with Lady, Hunter and Nymeria. “Lady Sansa.”

“Lady Weiss!” 

They exchanged curtsies, and Weiss had to suppress a giggle when the three adorable wolves surrounded her, sniffing at her clothes. Their breath tickled her bare legs, and she leaned down a little to pet them, then crouched down when Nymeria and Hunter rolled on the ground and presented their bellies for scritching. “Who’s a good boy? You are! And who's a good girl? You are!”

Lady whined a little, and Weiss looked at her, then at Sansa.

The girl frowned. “I just brushed you, Lady!”

Lady whined again, and her ears drooped.

No one with a heart could resist that - and Sansa wasn't heartless. She sighed and nodded, and Lady barked, jumping up and then dropping to the ground as well to roll around and get well-deserved scritches.

“They really like you,” Sansa said.

“I can't fault their taste,” Weiss replied with a smile. “But you have raised Lady well; she's very obedient.”

“She's a lady,” Sansa said. “Composed and proper. That's why I named her.”

Her direwolf certainly seemed more composed and less playful than Hunter and less sly than Nymeria, but that only added to her charm. “Are you taking them for a walk?”

“Yes. Bran and Arya overslept - they must have stayed up too late,” Sansa said.

Was that a subtle hint that she knew that Team RWBY had given the two and Jon another lesson in one of the training salles to whom the King had granted them access? Or just an innocent comment of a girl about her younger siblings?

Weiss nodded. “We're still recovering from travelling,” she said. “I’m certain they'll improve.” Or Ruby would make them train even harder. For a seemingly flighty girl, Team RWBY's leader was a fiend when it came to training.

“They better!” Sansa pouted. “They have a responsibility to care for their wolves!”

Weiss couldn't disagree with that. “Hunter and Nymeria look healthy and happy.”

Sansa sniffed but nodded in apparent agreement. 

Weiss was tempted to ask about Ghost, but Sansa had a slightly complicated relationship with her half-brother. That shouldn't extend to his wolf, but given how close the Starks were to their adorable fluffy pets, that probably couldn't be avoided.

“And what are you up to this morning, Lady Weiss?” Sansa asked.

“I was about to look for the training yard. We're still familiarising ourselves with the Red Keep,” Weiss replied. They hadn't yet trained in public; the King granting them a private training salle had been a clear hint - at least to Weiss and Blake - that they shouldn't show off too much at once, and a good opportunity to train with the Starks in private, but that wouldn't last. Team RWBY wouldn't hide from the locals. That would only foster even more rumours.

It was already apparent that many of the keep’s staff were afraid of them - even now, most of the servants and even the guards traversing the yard gave Weiss a wide berth. It seemed that not even the sight of three puppies frolicking around could overcome this.

“Would you mind if I accompany you, my lady? I wish to learn my way around the keep as well,” Sansa asked.

“Of course not!” Weiss straightened after a last head pat for Hunter, who tried to lick her hand in return for another head pat, and nodded. “This will be your home one day, so it behoves you to be familiar with it.”

Sansa nodded with a smile. “Yes, it will.” 

Her mood had improved since they had arrived in King's Landing, Weiss noted. The girl was more open and happier than at the start of their trip. However, that might be because the Prince hadn't been speeding as much time with Team RWBY as he had on the road. Maybe she should have a word with him about not neglecting his fiancée - he was still a child and might not realise how this might look to Sansa.

On the other hand, it was best not to meddle with the relationship between the crown prince and the daughter of the Hand of the King.

They walked together to the training yard. Well, the lower bailey, where the guards - the gold cloaks - and the Kingsguard trained, and, as Weiss understood, also the guests and other residents of the keep. 

The path led down serpentine stairs that seemed to have been cut into the rock upon which the keep stood - an impressive achievement, though the knowledge that the cliff was riddled with dozens of secret passages and tunnels, Blake was still exploring them every night, slightly diminished it.

Weiss worried a little about the wolves - stairs weren’t really made for them - but none of them seemed to have any trouble, and they arrived in the lower bailey, where Weiss was pleased to see Ser Barristan training with four other members of the Kingsguard - Ser Jaime, to Weiss’s relief, was not amongst them.

“Good Morning, Ser Barristan,” she greeted him with a curtsy, followed by Sansa.

“Lady Weiss. Lady Sansa.” He smiled at them. “May I introduce my brothers from the Kingsguard? You already know Ser Boros Blount. Those are Ser Mandon Moore, Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Preston Greenfield.”

“It’s an honour to meet you, Sers.” Weiss greeted them as well, even though not all of them seemed pleased to meet her - Ser Meryn Trant in particular seemed to be rather annoyed - he even sent glares at the wolves.

But Ser Barristan didn’t comment on it, so it was probably just the man’s usual disposition. “Did you come here to train?” he asked.

“I was merely trying to familiarise myself with the location, but I would not mind a bit of sparring,” she replied. “I think I have that parrying twist down pat now.”

“Then we shall find out,” Ser Barristan replied as he stepped into what looked like a well-used circle covered with sand.

Weiss drew Myrtenaster and joined him in there.

She was aware how the other Kingsguards - those who didn't know her yet - were subtly shifting to watch her attentively without seeming to do so, but she couldn't focus on any of them. Not with Ser Barristan advancing on her.

*****

Red Keep, King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna silently crept through the narrow tunnel deep inside the cliff, hidden in almost complete darkness - she carried a lantern but one that was almost completely covered up, letting only the barest sliver of light illuminate the area around her enough for her eyes to see well enough to move quite fast even over the rougher parts of the ground, where the original builders had either been a bit sloppy or the steps of those who used those tunnels had worn furrows into the stone.

Her ears twitched under her bow, but she only heard the skittering noise of vermin fleeing from her approach, not the steps of humans trying to pass unseen. On the other hand, the smell of the sea was growing stronger, which meant she was getting closer to either a hidden underground pier or a secret passage that led outside near the sea level, at the foot of the cliff. 

Another secret passage, to be precise - she had already found one, though that had led to a small ledge far above the waves, hidden under an overhang. Anyone who used it to leave or enter the keep must have been an excellent climber - or able to fly, though she had trouble imagining how dragons could have landed on that small ledge.

No, it was more likely that the door had been used to dispose of bodies - or people - by throwing them into the sea below, where they would be dashed against the rocks. She would have to look into how many people had slipped at night or simply disappeared, and when that had happened, to know if such things were still going on. They hadn't found the murderer of the thief, after all.

She passed a junction, following her nose toward the sea, and went on until she spotted a wall ahead of her - one that left a small gap, barely enough for a grown man to squeeze through, on one side. She was far more slender and easily slipped through, then found herself facing another such wall, with the gap on the other side. Three more followed - enough to both hide any light and keep the winds out - before she stepped on a small, rocky pier that looked, especially from above, like part of the rocks at the foot of the cliff.

But it was a pier - and recently used as such; in the dim moonlight, her eyes spotted a strand of hemp wedged into a narrow crack, undoubtedly the result of a small boat having been tied up to the rock here.

So… had they taken someone to - or from the keep?

She looked around, noting the lack of decent handholds to climb up - though she would manage it, especially if she used Gambol Shroud - and turned back into the tunnel right before a taller wave reached the top of the rocky pier. She had no intention to get wet here.

Past the walls, she opened her lantern a bit more and carefully searched the ground for any clues or signs of people passing. She didn’t find too many, but it was still obvious that this wasn't a deserted tunnel.

At the junction, she followed the other tunnel, the one she had passed recently. It led, on a curved path, to a small room with a table, comfortable chairs - no cushions, though they would likely not fair well this close to the sea - and a small table with wine and candlewax stains on it. 

Whoever used the room didn't think much of cleaning up after themselves. And - she sniffed the air, catching faint, very faint whiffs of perfume and beeswax - it hadn't been too long ago for the scent and stains to remain. 

If only she had a recording device; planting one here would likely deliver interesting information since this didn't look like someone's love nest where they met a lover. But without such a device, she would be forced to hide a scroll here - and that would be easy to spot and not last long even if they had access to more dust.

Sighing softly, she followed the other tunnel leading from this room. That one curved around itself, taking her up towards the Red Keep proper. It wasn't particularly steep but still quite narrow, and she doubted that many could navigate it without stumbling or falling if they were in a hurry - not unless they had gone down that tunnel so often, it was second nature to them.

Which she would do well to assume; after a few days in the Red Keep, she had overheard too many conversations of minor courtiers and servants that it was quite obvious to her that the castle was filled with plotting nobles and spying servants. She had followed a servant who worked in the kitchen - not a cook; that was obvious - who had passed on gossip in secret to two different nobles. Different gossip, even. And he had been paid quite decently for it.

She reached the top of the winding tunnel, where the ground levelled, and wrinkled her nose with a grimace; the hint of stench she could smell meant that somewhere nearby, there was an opening facing the city at the foot of the hill.

She followed the stench and soon found another secret door, this one leading to a small slit that provided her with an excellent view of the main gate of the keep - and which was set in a small alcove that showed many signs of frequent use. Why would anyone want to observe the main gate? Unless they had no informant in the guards at the gate, or they planned to ambush the guards with crossbows from here, it did not make much sense to her.

But the tunnel led her past the alcove, and soon, she set foot into a tunnel with which she was already familiar. From here, it was just a short trip through two more passages, and she was back in her team's quarters.

Yang was still awake, though Ruby was asleep already - Blake had heard her soft snoring from inside the passage; the acoustics were perfect for spying - and Weiss was curled up, also asleep, next to her.

“They tried to stay awake together,” Yang told her with a grin. “But both had been working a bit too hard today.”

Blake knew what her partner meant. “I just checked one passage. I found a hidden pier. Besides, you're awake as well.”

“Someone has to keep an eye out in case you need help.”

Blake snorted at that. Yang wouldn't be able to notice, much less help her, if anyone attacked her deep below them, in the bowels of the cliff. But she appreciated the thought anyway. “Thanks.”

Yang nodded. “So… where did you find that tunnel?” she pulled up the map they were working on and put it on the table.

Blake stepped up to it and started marking the passages.

*****

Red Keep, King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah, Good Morning, Lady…?”

Blake was certain that the man - the septon; he wore the robes of those priests - greeting her knew exactly who she was; she had overheard too many servants and courtiers gossiping about Team RWBY to believe anyone in the Red Keep hadn’t heard detailed - if often wildly exaggerated - descriptions of each of them. And her clothes were quite distinctive, as they should be.

And the man had called her a lady - she doubted anyone would do that if they weren’t aware of who she was; she knew quite well what people here said about women dressing like her, or her friends. Still, if the man wanted to play games, she would play along - for now. “Blake Belladonna. I’m a member of Team RWBY. And you are?”

“Septon Hernis, my lady.” The man bowed his head.

“Good morning, Septon.” She smiled, if a bit toothily.

“And how may I help you? Do you wish to pray in the sept? If so…”

Did he think she was such a fool as to mistake the castle’s library for its temple? “I wish to peruse the library, Septon,” she cut him off. 

“Ah…” He eyed her with undisguised wariness. “What are you looking for? I am familiar with most tomes stored here and would be happy to look through them to find what you seek, my lady.”

Had that very exaggerated story from Maester Luwin about her reading habits spread as far as this city? She had never ruined a book with food! But she kept smiling - assistance was always useful. “Thank you, you’re too kind. I need any book mentioning magical places or locations.”

“Magical places?”

“Yes.” She wondered if she should explain further but decided against it. She could look or ask for more details once the man had found some tomes.

And she would have to look for a second opinion or source, just in case the Septon proved to be less than diligent. Maybe the resident Maester would be of assistance.

*****

Street of Steel, King's Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Shopping! How I've missed that!” Yang Xiao Long exclaimed as they walked over the cobblestones covering King's Landing's streets.

“We'd need money to actually buy anything,” Weiss commented.

Yang didn't need to look at her friend to know she was frowning. “We're window shopping!”

“This is the Street of Steel. They don't sell glass here, my lady.”

Yang rolled her eyes, both at Jon's insistence of being all formal - they were in public, but not at court - and the misunderstanding. “Window shopping means looking at things for sale but not buying them.”

“Ah.” He was obviously confused but wouldn't ask further.

“It's fun.” She almost added ‘half the fun of shopping but none of the cost’, but remembered that they were supposed to be noblewomen, not normal kids from Patch who couldn't buy whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. Well, except for Weiss.

“It's fun if it's weapons!” Ruby said with a smile, head turning left and right as she looked at the smithies lining the street. Yang was sure that only the promise that the best smithies were further up the street, closer to the great temple - the Great Sept of Baelor, as Jon had explained - kept her from entering every shop here.

“They should sell nose plugs; the stench is unbearable,” Weiss complained.

“It's not that bad,” Yang replied. Weiss turned a death glare on her, but Yang shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“I don't want to get used to it!” she spat. “I want to get home!”

Yang glanced at Jon, who was steadfastly looking forward, up the street. Weiss must be really worked up to have such an outburst in public, Yang would bet on it. Her friend was usually quite set on ‘maintaining information security’, as she claimed her sister would call it. Yang called it keeping secrets.

At least it wasn't as if they had to push their way through a crowd of people blocking the street, but there were far more people haggling with smiths or studying the goods on display than she would have expected.

Then again, this wasn't home - this was Westeros, and the smiths here crafted a lot more than custom weapons and armour. Much of what you'd buy in the general store back home, or an outlet in Vale, would be crafted on orders by a blacksmith here. Still…

Shouting and yelling ahead of them drew her attention. It looked like there was a brawl about to happen between a burly smith and a rather flashily dressed armed guy. Should they intervene? It wasn’t any of their business, but they were here, and if they helped settle things peacefully - or semi-peacefully - the smith might be willing to help them out in turn. Or hear them out when they made their proposal to trade some knowledge or favour for some material and time at the forge.

Blake suddenly whirled and rushed off into a side alley, and Yang was following her before she knew what she was doing - a Huntress didn't leave her partner going off alone in a dangerous area, and Blake wouldn't have reacted like that for nothing. Well, except some really good fish, maybe…

The small child Blake was holding up by one wrist didn't look like a fish at all. Yang snorted as she stepped up to them - and kept out of the range of the kicking and struggling kid. “If you wanted a kid we could have asked for the closest orphanage,” she said.

Blake scoffed. “They tried to pick my pockets.”

“Oh.”

The child - dirty and wearing clothes that were too large for them and barely better than rags - shook their head but didn't say anything.

Yang narrowed her eyes. That was rather weird - she'd expected the kid to proclaim their innocence - or plead for mercy - now that they had been caught.

“Blake! What are you doing?” Ruby appeared in a cloud of scattering petals.

“They tried to pick my pockets,” Blake repeated herself.

“Why did you run off?” Weiss wasn't quite panting, but she looked a little flushed, Yang noticed. Probably more from embarrassment that she had missed Blake and Yang running off than from running. 

Behind her Jon appeared, breathing a bit heavily. “My lady! What did you do?”

“To catch a thief,” Yang said.

The kid shook their head again but still didn't say anything.

“Oh, no!” Ruby gasped. She must be thinking about the trial they had seen.

“A thief?” Weiss frowned. “At their age?”

“Hey, they are staying silent and they dared to try and pickpocket us - that would be impressive for a career criminal,” Yang said.

The kid made some guttural noises in return, and Yang saw Blake tense and clench her teeth.

“Did you understand that?” Weiss asked.

“They have no tongue,” Blake replied. “They can't talk.”

“What?” Yang froze for a moment. Sure, there were probably a few possible explanations for a child to be missing their tongue, and she shouldn’t be biased, but… This was Westeros. 

“I can call the gold cloaks, my lady,” Jon offered. “And you can continue your, ah, shopping trip.”

The kid froze for a moment and wildly shook their head again. They were crying as well.

Ghost padded closer, sniffing at them, and they tried to bend out of the way of the wolf's nose - and teeth.

“No! We can't call the gold cloaks!” Ruby blurted out.

“My lady?” Jon had already been turning to leave and now stopped and turned back.

“It’s… It's attempted theft!” Ruby said. “That's… They're probably just hungry.”

The kid nodded rapidly, but Blake snorted.

Yang took a closer look - they didn't seem to be starving. Which seemed odd for a kid living on the streets and getting by with picking pockets.

“I'd rather not deal with a trial,” Weiss said with a frown.

“I don't want a trial either!” Ruby agreed emphatically. 

Yang nodded, pressing her mouth together. To see a kid sent to the wall - or lose a hand? She could do without that.

Jon gasped and stared at them, mouth open, and the kid cried even harder and tried to talk without a tongue while shaking their head and struggling.

Blake rolled her eyes - at Yang and the others - then pulled the kid in close. “We don't want to see you stealing from us again, you hear?” Without waiting for an answer, she let go of their wrist, and the kid ran away.

“Ah.” Jon seemed relieved, smiling again.

And Yang blinked. “Did you think we’d kill them?”

“No, of course not, my lady!” he said.

Blake snorted again, and Yang felt dumb for missing what Jon - and the kid - must have been fearing.

At least Ruby and Weiss had missed that as well. 

*****

Jon had said that the closer to the top end of the Street of Steel a shop was, the better the smith was supposed to be. This was the house at the end of the street, and it towered over the others. So, this must be the best smith in King’s Landing. Or, Yang added with a silent snort, the best at advertising. Wouldn’t be the first time the biggest shop wasn’t the best.

Well, the stone statues wearing fancy armour certainly were good advertising. 

“Oh, look at that!” And, of course, Ruby would be all over them. Seriously, they had gone through a dozen shops, and she was still enthusiastic. “It’s great armour!”

But her sister was right; that was some fine work. “Let’s hope that means he can craft the tools we need,” Yang said. 

“If he can, I will be happy to point out that we could have saved hours by going directly to this shop as I suggested at the start,” Weiss said with a slight edge to her voice.

“Weiss! That would have meant risking to overpay for something a cheaper smith could have made,” Ruby told her. “We have to be frugal with our money. Well, if we had money.”

“I am sure the King will pay for whatever you need, my lady,” Jon cut in. “You’re his guests.”

“Yeah, but that means we need to be even more careful - we can’t exploit his generosity!” Ruby shook her head.

Yang nodded, though Weiss frowned. “It seems everyone else is exploiting his generosity, at least if the rumours I’ve heard are correct.”

“That doesn’t mean we should do it!” Ruby nodded firmly. “Now let’s see if…” She craned her head. “Whose shop is this?”

“Tobho Mott’s, my lady,” Jon replied. “He’s from Qohor. It’s said he is the only smith in Westeros who can work with Valyrian steel, though I don’t know if that’s true - that he is the only one in the kingdom or that he can work with Valyrian steel.”

“Well, let’s hope we don’t need tools made out of Valyrian steel,” Weiss said. “I think the people would take offence if we asked for a priceless weapon to be melted down for our use.”

“Yeah,” Yang agreed and went to knock.

She only had to knock twice before the door was opened by a young woman. “Good day, my ladies. Are you here to see Master Mott?” she asked and bowed. 

She didn’t seem surprised at all at their appearance, so she either was very good at hiding her reaction or she had observed them beforehand.

“Yes!” Ruby beamed at her. “Is he free? We can come by later if he’s busy. We kinda didn’t know we were coming, so we didn’t call ahead. Oh, I’m Ruby Rose; these are Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long. And this is Jon Snow.”

Weiss groaned behind Yang, but the girl’s expression didn’t change. “Please come in, my ladies. I will fetch Master Mott from the smithy.”

“Oh, can we meet him there?” Yang smiled. “It’s easier to explain what we need in the smithy.” And easier to see what he could do.

“We are smiths too, kind of!” Ruby told her. “We made our own weapons!”

This time, the girl’s eyes widened in surprise. “Please follow me, then, my ladies. The smithy is in the backyard.”

They followed the girl through the house - which looked quite luxurious, though Yang would have to ask Weiss if it was just an act to impress customers or genuine - and into the backyard, where an older man and a boy - or young man - were hammering at anvils.

“Master Mott? These ladies would like to meet you. They said they would prefer to meet you in your smithy.”

The old man turned, putting down a hammer. “Hello. I am Tobho Mott.”

While Ruby introduced them, properly this time, the boy slowed down whatever he was doing - it looked like he was working on a dagger - and stared at them. 

Yang grinned at him, which made him blush and look away.

Jon took a step forward, too, standing next to them.

“So, what do you need, my lady?” Mott asked. The way he looked them over, Yang almost expected him to make a comment about armour.

“We’re looking for tools!” Ruby told him. “High-quality tools! Tools to maintain my baby here! And our other weapons!” She drew Crescent Rose and unfolded the scythe.

This time, both men were staring, Yang noted with a grin. “We’ve made our weapons,” she told them. “And our tools, but that was back home, at our forges, and we haven’t found any smith yet who could make the tools we need.”

Mott stiffened at that. “Can you show me the tools you need?”

“Sure.” Yang reached into her pocket and pulled her travelling set out, then the crude multitool she had cobbled together. “I made this on the road, but you can see the difference.”

Mott nodded, his eyes flicking between the tools and the weapons. He reached out and, after Yang nodded, picked a spanner up. “These are so fine…”

“Our weapons have lots of fiddly bits,” Ruby told him. “Look!” She held up Crescent Rose and then glanced around before heading to the closest table. “Let me show you!”

Yang followed her. She could tell that Mott was a bit doubtful about their claims, but after Ruby showed off how her weapon worked and disassembled and reassembled it twice, and Yang asked a few detailed questions about his forge, he obviously accepted that they were fellow smiths.

Good. That meant they might be able to trade some know-how about weaponcrafting for help with their tools.

She looked around as Mott and Ruby talked about steel quality. Yes, compared to the smithy in Winterfell, this one was far more advanced. But it still fell short of Beacon’s forge. And yet, looking at the finely crafted pieces on the shelves, maybe, if they were lucky, they could forge some tools to make the tools here. It would be a good first step, at least. Maybe they could… She blinked and turned her attention back on Mott. What was that?

“Yes, as noblewomen, and foreigners, of course, you’re not required to join the guild to practice smithing, but they might still be interested in your knowledge, and as every blacksmith in King’s Landing is a member, they have a great deal of influence on the craft.”

That sounded quite innocent, but the way he worded it, and his expression… Yang just knew this was more trouble waiting for them.

*****

 

Chapter 12: The Archmaester

‘Much has been said - and disproven - about the supposedly magical powers of the Four Maidens. I already addressed that; however, not as much has been said about the reaction of our Order to those rumours. However, one would be wrong to assume that the Maesters were a monolithic block. As it is still the case today, albeit not quite as pronounced, the Order back then was composed of many factions - most of them centred on the different Archmaesters - with their pet theories and interests. And, as embarrassing as it is to admit as a member of an Order dedicated to gathering and spreading knowledge and battling superstition and lies, a great many of those Archmaesters flatly dismissed Maester Luwin’s report, some going as far as to call for his removal on the grounds of having grown senile. However, there were two notable exceptions. The first was Archmaester Jurgen, who was intrigued by the sketches and discourse of the Four Maidens’ weapons. The second was Archmaester Marwyn, also known as Marwyn the Mage for his expertise in magic. Unlike Jurgen, Marwyn was said to have immediately set out for King’s Landing upon receiving Maester Luwin’s report, prompting rumours that he had used magic to confirm the information sent from the North. However, despite diligent research, no proof of that claim has ever been found - and since most of the known rituals that would have allowed such a feat require sacrifices that were outlawed by the Order long before the arrival of the Four Maidens, it seems quite obvious that such claims were, as similar claims against the Order of the Ruby, lies fabricated by rivals and enemies of the people involved, like the well-known lies about a conspiracy of Maesters to erase all knowledge about magic from Westeros, which anyone who has visited the Order’s extensive library on the subject, would know to be baseless.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Archmaester Marwyn rapped his staff against the solid wood of the door in front of him twice, then waited. And his frown deepened with each breath that passed. The chambers of the Grand Maester were not that large; even if Pycelle were as feeble as he acted, he would not take this long to answer the door.

It was a power play - or the man was trying to hide the gold the Lannisters were paying him before receiving visitors. Marwyn snorted at the thought, considered knocking once more, if only to annoy the man in turn, but straightened instead when he heard a key rattle in the door's lock. Finally!

“Now, who… Marwyn!” Pycelle gasped at him, eyes wide as if he had never seen him before.

“Pycelle.” Marwyn nodded and deliberately let his gaze travel over the man's figure, from the fur collar of his red velvet robes with golden fastenings - distinctly unlike the grey robes most Maester's favoured - to the decorations on his chain.

“I don't recall receiving a raven announcing your arrival.”

Marwyn chuckled. “Really?” He raised his eyebrows. “Perhaps your memory is going.” As if he would send a note ahead so the fool could prepare for his arrival! “You certainly seem to have forgotten your manners.”

Pycelle tensed for a moment, his rheumy eyes narrowing, before he took a step back. “Please, come in,” he said with all the sincerity of a whore greeting a customer and none of her acting ability. “I should have known those rumours would draw you here.”

“Rumours?” Marwyn scoffed as he stepped into the Grand Maester's quarters. They were much nicer furnished than any he had seen in the Citadel - Tywin must be paying well.

“Rumours spread by ignorant smallfolk,” Pycelle said, huffing as he closed the door behind them and walked past Marwyn to the most ostentatious armchair in the room.

“I shall be certain to pass your opinion about him on to Maester Luwin,” Marwyn shot back as he sat down in the next best chair. “His report was very detailed and quite conclusive.” He leaned forward.

Pycelle scoffed in return. “He's spent too much time in the frozen North, amongst savages and smallfolk, and must have absorbed their superstitions.”

“I'll be certain to pass on your opinion about the new Hand of the King as well,” Marwyn said.

Pycelle rolled his eyes. “Lord Eddard would agree with me.” He grabbed a goblet and filled it with some wine.

“Really?” Marwyn didn't ask for a glass himself. Pycelle was a corrupt fool, but he knew his poisons - and if anything happened to Marwyn, Pycelle would be the one leading the investigation. Marwyn had no doubt that too many of his so-called colleagues would be overjoyed at his demise, now that undeniable proof of magic had finally appeared. Real, tangible, observable magic, not some glimmer inside a glass candle that might or might not reappear in a fortnight! 

“The girls aren't using magic. They denied it themselves.”

Marwyn scoffed once more. “Of course, they would deny it! If they admitted it, they would be branded as witches and sorceresses, and a calamity would soon befall them!” His fellow Archmaesters undoubtedly were already plotting their demise. 

“Again with your unfounded paranoia about a supposed conspiracy?” Pycelle scoffed. 

Marwyn bared his teeth in a slight sneer and didn't dignify the comment with a response.

“They aren't using magic,” Pycelle went on. “If you hadn't rushed to travel here as soon as you heard the first rumour, you would have been able to read the actual reports.”

“I am sure that a woman’s head withstanding a full blow of a Kingsguard’s sword is the most natural event ever observed in the Seven Kingdoms.” Something Maester Luwin had personally witnessed - as had half the royal court, including Pycelle himself, as Marwyn had ascertained before visiting the old man.

Pycelle glared at him. “Just because something cannot be explained by our current knowledge doesn't make it magic.”

Marwyn laughed. “Are you taking refuge in such pitiful semantics? A novice without a single link would craft a better argument - if his opinion had any merit!” He leaned forward. “Regardless of their own claims, those four women wield magic - and they readily admit that they are seeking magic!”

“To return to their home. Not to wield it. King Robert agrees with that assessment.”

“And our king is, of course, an expert on the matter.” Marwyn shook his head. Pycelle was as much of a fool as Marwyn remembered. No - even more so; the fool had let his position go to his head. Not that he had been using his head for anything useful, anyway.

“He has spent more time with the four maidens than any of our order.”

“I don't doubt that,” Marwyn replied. “But that doesn't make him an authority on magic.” Maidens? Hah! Marwyn knew better than to believe those claims. No mere maiden, much less a girl half-grown, could wield magic as skilled as the reports claimed!

Pycelle rolled his eyes. “Your arrogance has not diminished at all with age. You refute the girl's own words, the King's experience, my own observation…”

And why wouldn't he? Of all the Archmaesters, only Marwyn was interested in the subject. “I reject hearsay.”

Pycelle scoffed. “None of their feats match any description of magic we have.”

“They match the legends of the Age of Heroes,” Marwyn retorted. “When people wielded magic to accomplish feats we could not explain, much less duplicate, today.”

“ˆLegends’ distorted by millennia's worth of embellishments and retellings.” Pycelle sighed theatrically. “But go on, talk to them - tell them how they are wrong and are actually using magic! Insult their intelligence!”

Marwyn chuckled. “Of course, I will meet them - they are looking for places with magic, and who better to help them than I? They are offering to share their knowledge with us in exchange, aren't they?” Luwin had been clear about that as well.

Pycelle glared at him, and Marwyn was tempted to ask if his master hadn't sent any instructions about how to treat the four girls yet. It would explain why Pycelle kept denying the truth of his own eyes - the man truly was a slave to Lannister gold. 

But he had annoyed the man enough already. Despite his foolishness, Pycelle was quite entrenched at court, and Marwyn was aware that his own reputation preceded him.

No, Marwyn would not push too far. Not until he had made inroads with ‘Team Ruby’. He nodded at the fool and rose from his seat. “Well, I've announced my arrival as required; I've done my duty to the Order - for now.”

Pycelle glared at him again, but Marwyn did his best to ignore him. He had magic to investigate! Mages to meet! He couldn’t wait, after hearing all the reports and distorted rumours, to finally see the truth with his own eyes!

*****

“Oh, you’re a Maester? Like Luwin? Hi! I’m Ruby. Ruby Rose! And those are my friends - and my sister - Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long!”

“Archmaester,” Marwyn corrected the girl out of reflex as he tried not to gape at the sight in front of him, in the Red Keep's training grounds.

Team Ruby were… girls. Young girls. Barely flowered, as much as he could tell. As tall or taller as Marywn, but that didn't mean anything - he was short. Stocky, and stronger than many thought, but short. Not that he cared; he was past such vain concerns.

“Archmaester, sorry!” Lady Ruby smiled at him. She didn't look like any of the sorcerers or sorceresses he had met in his travels. If this was an act, it would make any mummer weep with envy. If it wasn't… “So, are you a friend of Luwin's? You dress similarly, unlike the Grand Maester.”

“Most Maesters wear grey robes,” he answered, almost absentmindedly, as he glanced at the girls. They were all wearing exotic clothes. He didn't recognise the styles, but they showed so much skin, most of the younger members of the Order, and the older ones who did not value knowledge more than lust, would have been distracted. Even in most parts of Essos, those clothes would have drawn attention. Coupled with the obvious beauty of the girls - even the small scar Lady Weiss had on the side of her face did not detract from that - they would turn heads even in the most depraved cities of Essos or even Slaver Bay. But the scar was important - it proved that despite the reports of their magic turning blows away no matter the strength of the attacker, the girls were not invulnerable. 

“All of them? That sounds boring.”

“He said most, not all of them, Yang!”

Yang Xiao Long. A name that would fit Yi Ti. And yet, her appearance did not match the people from that distant country. Another important detail.

“That works out the same. No individuality!”

Marwyn laughed. “You are not wrong, Lady Yang. Some crave conformity so much, one could call them grey sheep.”

The girl in question laughed at that - and the three others were, as far as he could tell, amused, even though they tried not to show it.

“But I digress. I am a colleague of Maester Luwin, and I have been in correspondence with him.” A technical truth - he had read all of Luwin's reports he had been able to get.

“Ah.” Lady Weiss nodded. “You normally live in the Citadel, don't you?”

Marwyn nodded. Maester Luwin would have talked to them about the Order. “When I am not travelling for my research, I live in the Citadel, yes.”

The girl cocked her head to the side and took the bait. “Your research?”

“Magic.” He smiled. “I am, without false modesty, the leading expert on magic amongst my colleagues. I have travelled much of the known world in research of knowledge.” He bowed his head. “They call me Marwyn the Mage, and I think I can be of assistance to your search.” And find out all you know.

*****

“Oh! You're an expert on magic?” Ruby Rose beamed at the old man. Just what - who - they needed! He certainly looked like a wizard - barely taller than herself, but stocky and wide, not quite as wide as Professor Port, but similarly built. And he was wearing dusty grey robes and carrying a gnarly staff. He just needed a pointy hat to fit every check box!

“You're a mage? Can you transport us home?” Yang leaned forward, an eager grin on her face.

“Maester Luwin's description of the Citadel made it seem as if your order was more focused on theoretical knowledge rather than practical applications when it came to magic,” Weiss added in that polite but doubtful tone of hers.

Though now that she mentioned it, Ruby recalled that as well - the Citadel was supposed to be a library of sorts, with scholars, not wizards.

“That is correct. As much as I might lament it, were I of lesser spirit, my passion for studying magic is not, unfortunately, paired with a matching talent for the practice of magic.” Marwyn nodded. “Nevertheless, I do have some talent, meagre as it might be, which is more than most can boast of. More importantly, though, I am familiar with many kinds of magic and its history, so while I cannot send you home, I think I can help you find your way home.”

“Ah.” That was… Ruby forced herself to smile widely. She really wanted to go home, to her family, their friends, their kingdom, but it wasn't Marwyn's fault that he couldn't snap his fingers and transport them back. And if he knew as much as he claimed, he could surely find another set of ruins like the one that had sent them here! 

“Awfully optimistic.” Yang sounded disappointed.

“And you're helping us out of the goodness of your heart.” Weiss sounded suspicious.

Ruby glanced at both and made a face when Marwyn wasn't watching. No driving away the helpful Archmaester!

Marwyn, at least, wasn't mad at her - he laughed. “Oh, nothing quite as altruistic as that, I assure you! I intend to study whatever phenomenon brought you here and how to duplicate it to send you home - a goal shared between you and me, I believe.”

Of course! Ruby nodded.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded as well, though with a cynical smile.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense.” Yang grinned.

Blake nodded without saying anything, but she didn't seem very relieved - at least, not in Ruby's impression. She would have to ask her friend later what this was about. Once Marwyn wasn't around and they could talk in private without being rude.

“So…” Ruby trailed off for a moment. They probably shouldn't just talk about the ruins they were looking for. Surely not in the middle of the training grounds. “...what have you heard about us?”

Now Weiss was making a face at her, but Yang was grinning, and Blake's lips were twitching, so Ruby felt this was OK.

“That you were transported here from another world, with a broken moon, where what we call magic here is as common as draft animals are here,” Marwyn replied. “That this happened against your will, and without your doing, and you are looking for a place similar to the one you left, hoping to find a way back. And that you do not consider the ability to shrug off blades and arrows as if they were a gentle breeze or use dust that creates fire and water as magical.”

He was well informed. Ruby knew that they hadn’t been as good at keeping their secrets as they should have been, but this was quite a lot.

“It's not magic, no,” Weiss said with a frown. “Both Dust and Semblances have been studied extensively by our scholars. They are as far from magic as any other physical, measurable effect.”

“Magic can be studied and measured,” Marwyn replied with an easy - but also slightly toothy - smile. “I suspect we might be arguing about mere semantics.”

Weiss's frown deepened, and Ruby quickly offered to demonstrate her Semblance to avoid a row.

Really, they didn't gain anything by arguing about magic like that! They needed to keep their eyes on the prize, and that was getting home!

*****

“Ah, finall… Ruby!”

Ruby grinned at Weiss’s expression as she appeared at the tub of warm - not hot, not really - water the servants had left in their room. “First!” Her Semblance ruled!

“You always go first!” Weiss complained. “And now half the tub is covered in petals!”

“They’re fading!” Ruby shot back, dipping her face into the tub. Ah! She needed that after training - and a bit of showing off for the Arcmaester - so hard. She rose and shook her head.

“Ack! Don’t act like a dog!” Weiss snapped. Despite her complaints, she dipped a washcloth into the tub anyway and started cleaning up. “Really, always rushing forward, hogging the warm water…”

“Rushing forward before I’ve checked for poison,” Blake added.

Ruby froze. “You think they could poison the water?”

“Yes.” Blake nodded.

“We don’t know what poison they have here, so best assume the worst,” Weiss said.

Ruby frowned at her. “You just used the tub yourself!”

Weiss pouted but had no comeback for that.

“So… is it just me, or was that Marwyn more than a bit creepy?” Yang asked a bit later, once everyone had cleaned up.

“I’d say… eager, not creepy,” Ruby said. “He didn’t, ah, you know…” How to say that?

“His attention wasn’t sexual, you mean,” Weiss said.

“Yes, that!” Ruby nodded at her with a smile. 

“That doesn’t make his staring any less creepy.” Yang shook her head.

“You were fine with him when you thought he could send us back with a snap of his fingers,” Ruby pointed out.

“Sue me, I thought he was a wizard.” Yang snorted.

“I don’t believe they have wizards in Westeros,” Weiss said. “But Marwyn might very well be the closest to an expert on magic we can find - provided his credentials and claims hold up to scrutiny.”

Blake nodded. “We’ll have to investigate. He is a bit too interested in us to trust easily.”

“Well, we are from another world - Luwin was all eager to learn everything about our world as well,” Yang told her. “And we have Aura and Semblances.”

“They only know mine,” Ruby pointed out. “But yes.” Who wouldn’t be fascinated by visitors from another world? Ruby would be as well if there were people from Westeros at Beacon - well, at least until she found out what they thought about marriage and stuff, of course.

“That’s why we investigate before we extend him the benefit of the doubt,” Weiss said. “If he is honest, this might be our best opportunity to find a way home.”

“He certainly didn’t even try to hide his interests,” Blake added. “But we have to consider the consequences even if he is honest.”

“What do you mean?” Ruby asked.

“If we, with his help, find a way to return home, what then?” Blake asked. “What if he learns how to travel to Remnant? And back?”

“Oh.” Ruby blinked. “He’d… he’d probably try to take as much as possible back with him. If he gets guns and sells them here…” Even the cheap, mass-produced, soulless guns would allow whoever got them to defeat anyone else.

“And what if Grimm return with him?” Blake asked.

Ruby gasped. That would be a catastrophe! Westeros was helpless against Grimm! And so many people were miserable here… “The Grimm would overrun the entire continent!”

“We can’t risk that,” Weiss said in a clipped voice. “Once we have a way home, we need to ensure that everyone who knows about it is aware of the dangers.”

“Do you really think that will be enough?” Blake tilted her head slightly as she looked at them. “Do you think Marwyn, for one, won’t attempt to acquire whatever magic he thinks we have on Remnant?”

Ruby winced. She had met Marwyn today for the first time, but she was pretty sure the man wouldn’t let a Horde of Grimm stop him from pursuing whatever he thought was magic. “But even if we tell him off, he’ll hound us anyway, right?”

“That would be my assessment as well,” Weiss agreed.

“Then we have a problem,” Yang pointed out the obvious.

“One more problem,” Blake corrected her.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah, Lady Weiss!”

Weiss Schnee's polite smile didn't change while she turned her head to look at who had just called out to her while she was on the way to lunch. “Lord Baelish?” She inclined her head slightly as she greeted the Master of Coin. He was dressed in fine silks and jewellery - though a smidgen too ostentatious to pull off the kind of understated display of wealth she was used to from her family's peers in Atlas.

He smiled widely at her. “Are you on the way to lunch?”

It was noon, and she was walking towards the Small Hall; the answer was obvious, and Weiss had no doubt that Lord Baelish knew it already - she was certain that he had waited until she was passing to exit his room. But to point this out would be rude. “In fact, yes, I am,” she replied instead.

“Would you mind some company? I was pouring over accounts and ledgers until my stomach reminded me that it has been hours since I ate.”

She could refuse, but without an excuse, such as already having plans to meet someone, that would be akin to insulting the man - and it wasn't as if Weiss had any reason to do so; she had met the man before, but only in passing, and had not exchanged more than polite greetings so far. Something the man apparently wanted to remedy, and Weiss was quite aware that as a member of the Small Council, what passed as the cabinet for Westeros's government, essentially as their minister of finance, he would have considerable influence at court. She smiled. “I am meeting my friends for lunch, but you are welcome to join us.”

His smile widened, and he bowed to her. “Thank you, my lady! I'll aim not to bore you with talk about my work!”

She laughed politely at his joking reminder that he wouldn't let slip any of the Kingdom's secrets - not that she expected him to, nor wanted to know any - and offered her arm to him so he could escort her. As soon as he slipped his arm through the crook of her elbow, she started walking again, just promptly enough to almost tug him along.

It was more than a little petty, Weiss knew that, but the man reminded her - perhaps unfairly; she didn't know him well enough to tell - of the kind of corporate executives who got along a little too well with her father.

On the other hand, he might also be the closest to a self-made man she had met so far in this world; a minor noble who had reached - and kept, so far - one of the most influential positions at court, although apparently, he had profited from his friendship with the wife of Lord Eddard's predecessor as Hand of the King.

They didn't take long to reach the small hall, passing two guards from Lord Eddard's household as they entered, and Weiss saw that Ruby and Yang were already seated at their usual part of the long table, though Blake was still missing - no, there she was, talking with Bran and Arya in a corner.

“Weiss!” Ruby waved at her. “And hello Lord… Baelish, right?”

If the fact that Weiss's partner had slightly struggled with his name had hurt his ego, Lord Baelish didn't show it. He smiled and bowed with a minor flourish. “The very same, Lady Ruby, Lady Yang. Lady Weiss was so kind as to offer me to join you for lunch. I hope this meets with your approval.”

Did he expect Ruby to contradict her? Or was he merely covering his bases with their team leader? Weiss couldn't tell yet.

“Sure!” Ruby beamed at him. “You're Lady Catelyn's childhood friend, right? She told us about you.”

He nodded, and his smile turned a bit… nostalgic? Weiss wasn't sure as he took a seat across from Ruby. “Yes, my lady. I was fostered at her father's court and grew up with Cat and Lysa - Lady Stark and Lady Arryn, these days. If any of us would have imagined where life would take us, back when we were but children, before King Robet's Rebellion swept the Mad King from the throne…” He sighed.

Ruby nodded with obvious empathy - they all had heard the stories of the Rebellion from the King as well as, less embellished, from Lord Eddard.

“Did you fight in the Rebellion?” Yang asked.

“Alas, no. A foolish mistake - I blame my youth and inexperience, and my temper and ignorance - prevented that.” He sighed again.

He was obviously baiting them to ask for more information, and Weiss saw no problem in obliging him. “That sounds like a painful memory, Lord Baelish,” she prompted him.

“Yes! You don't have to tell us if you don't want to!” Ruby nodded, as did Yang.

“Ah, it's practically ancient history - and I do like to think I have grown past such foolishness.” He smiled, then bowed his head. “Lady Blake.”

“Blake! This is Lord Baelish! He was about to tell us about his tragic past!” Ruby told her.

“Ah.” Blake would have been listening to their conversation from afar, but there was no need to advertise that, and Weiss quickly filled her in.

The arrival of the food, meat and side dishes on large platters, delayed Lord Baelish's story some more, but once everyone had been served, he leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice. “As I was young and foolish, fancied myself as Cat and Lysa's protector - a sort of foster brother, as foolish a notion as any a young boy from a minor house could have when he was friends with the daughters of the ruler of the Riverlands. In any case, when I heard that their father had betrothed them to the heirs of Lord Stark and Lord Arryn, and having met Cats’ betrothed, Lord Brandon Stark, I, in my naivety, challenged him to a duel in a misguided attempt to save Cat from what I considered an unwanted marriage.” He sighed again. “I was a youth with delusions of grandeur facing one of the best swordsmen of his age, and I was very lucky to survive the experience; with one blow, he cut me from shoulder to hip, and while he spared my life upon Cat asking him to, I was left bedridden for weeks while I struggled to recover.”

Ruby gasped. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, in hindsight, it was a harsh but necessary lesson - as a minor noble, trying to interfere with a marriage arranged by Lord Tully, I was reaching far beyond my station. Most men would have killed me for my foolishness despite their betrothed begging them to spare me.” He smiled and sighed softly again before taking a deep swallow from his cup.

Weiss glanced at the others. Ruby shook her head, obviously taken by the man’s story. Yang and Blake looked a bit more sceptical. Of course, the story did fit what they had heard before from others. And yet, it was quite obvious that Lord Baelish, despite his claims of having learned his lesson, still disagreed with the arranged marriage between Lord Brandon and Lady Catelyn.

She nodded as well. “Lord Brandon was later killed by the Mad King.”

“Yes. He strangled himself trying to save his father from being burnt alive.” Lord Baelish shook his head. “And Cat married Lord Eddard, with whom she is, fortunately, happy. Something good, at least, came of the whole affair.”

That, everyone could agree with - that the Starks led a happy marriage was obvious. Especially if you were familiar with unhappy marriages. But just because Lady Catelyn and Lord Eddard were happy together didn’t mean Lady Catelyn and Lord Brandon would have been happy.

Or, Weiss couldn’t help thinking, that Lord Baelish had been purely motivated by the desire to help his childhood friend avoid an unhappy marriage.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna grinned as her ears picked up the sound of furtive footsteps, barely audible even in these tunnels - at least for human ears. Her own had no problem hearing the spy approaching, nor any trouble discerning that they weren’t a grown adult but a child from the way they walked - although she had expected that from the tracks she found.

It seemed her patience had paid off; it had taken several nights of hiding in the darkness of the tunnels beneath the Red Keep, but whoever controlled those children had finally decided to send them after Team RWBY - and directly into Blake’s hands.

If Blake were planning to intercept them, of course. But she wasn’t. Her friends knew not to talk about their secrets, so there was no danger in letting the kid listen - and then track them back to their secret employer.

Her eyes, adjusted to the total darkness in the tunnel here, caught the first glimpse of the candles the child was carrying. It wasn’t a lantern - she could see it flicker - and it fit the traces of wax she had found during her exploration of the tunnels. Whoever employed the children was stingy with equipment.

Wedged in a corner between the stone walls, directly under the tunnel’s ceiling, in a small side corridor, she tensed as the steps grew closer and the light grew in strength. People rarely looked up, but trained spies knew better - at least at home. If she was discovered, she would have to capture the spy, and her plan would have been foiled. 

There was the child! Blake caught a glimpse of a young urchin dressed in… not rags, but certainly not garments that would let them pass as a servant, or the child of a servant, at court, as they passed her spot, hands clutching a small candle and eyes fixed ahead - and carrying a small bag. Whoever commanded the spies wanted them to hide from everyone, then.

Blake waited a few moments, then dropped silently down to the floor and followed the spy at a safe distance. When the steps stopped, so did she - the spy had gone where she had expected, right behind the wall to her team’s quarters. Good. Now, all she had to do was wait until the spy left again and follow them to whoever they reported to.

Then they would finally know who was behind those kids.

*****

Blake had underestimated her still-unknown opponent. Instead of reporting to someone after finally leaving their hiding spot after her friends had gone to bed, the child had dropped off a note in another part of the tunnels. For someone who used children as spies, they were quite professional otherwise or they wouldn’t have used a dead drop like that. Maybe the children didn’t even know who they were working for? 

She pondered this while she waited, once more, in the darkness near the dead drop. If the kid spies didn’t know who they were reporting to, they couldn’t reveal their employer, therefore providing said employer with another layer of secrecy. However, while that would render them safe from being discovered, it would also put them in additional danger of being betrayed since there wouldn’t be any way to foster loyalty with such a setup. 

Back when she had been a member of the White Fang, they had used informants who were purely motivated by payment. But they had never trusted them, and not because they were usually humans but because anyone who was only in it for the money would sell you out as soon as it seemed more profitable than staying loyal. 

And if a spy didn’t even know who they were reporting to, what other motivation than money could they have? Except for hatred for the target, of course, but Blake was quite certain that this didn’t apply here; they hadn’t been around long enough to make the kind of enemy who would spy on them, at considerable risk, for someone else they didn’t even know.

So, if those kids were kept ignorant of their employer, they would be easy to turn. If they were kept ignorant, of course - dead drops were also useful to pass on information without having to meet in person, say, if your schedules clashed.

But it also meant that Blake had to stay hidden for even longer - and she was already tired. Well, she’d stayed awake through worse. She wouldn’t be at her best, but it would be good enough. At least for humans who had no idea that Faunus existed and wouldn’t be wary of their enhanced senses.

So, she picked a nook nearby - far enough not to be seen by anyone approaching, close enough to detect anyone who wasn’t as sneaky as herself - and prepared to spend more time waiting in the darkness and the silence.

*****

Once more, the sound of footsteps alerted her to someone approaching - and once more, they were a child. Narrowing her eyes, she moved a bit away, hiding in the shadows, when the spy passed, then had to quickly follow them when she realised that they were not stopping to read the note they had picked up.

They led her, though without realising it, through quite a chase, halfway through the maze under the keep, until they slipped through a secret door which closed too quickly for Blake to follow - not that she had planned to, of course. Nor needed to - her ears could pick up a mumbling voice even at a distance, and…

The door opened again, and Blake had to scramble back and hide in an alcove before she was spotted by the child. It seemed that they were merely a courier, dropping off the note they collected without delivering a verbal report.

Blake debated following the child but decided against it - whoever had received the note was more important. And yet, when she approached the secret door, her ears didn’t pick up any sound - not steps, not breathing. And when she opened the door, a gap only, she saw nothing but an empty room - a storage room, it seemed. One rarely used.

Then her nostrils widened. She knew that lingering smell of perfume. She had smelt it before, down in the tunnels. 

So, in order to find out who was behind those kids acting as spies - someone who also roamed the tunnels for clandestine meetings with visitors, she reminded herself - she had to find out who used this brand of perfume.

It seemed she would have to shift her activities from night to daytime for a while.

After she had caught up on her sleep, she added, stifling a yawn.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yo!” Yang Xiao Long called out as she stepped through Tobho Mott's backyard and entered his smithy.

“Lady Yang.” The old smith nodded at her and put down the axe head he was working on.

“My lady.” His apprentice, Gendry, waved, and Yang nodded at him as well. The boy cut a fine figure in his apron - he had some serious muscles, and he was tall for his age - but she wasn't here for eye candy.

“Did anyone ever tell you that your guildmaster is a stubborn fool?” she said while Mott cleaned his hands with a wet rag.

Mott laughed. “I think every smith I know did, at one point.”

“Well, he is. I had to threaten to go to the King for a royal charter or whatever you call it before he relented and graciously granted me permission to do some smithing in the city.” Even though Yang had no plans to sell anything she made, and so she wasn't competing with any established smith anyway. “So, you won't be in trouble if you let me use your forge.”

“Good.” Mott nodded with a pretty satisfied smile.

Weiss had ranted about the entire guild system when she had heard about the mess, something about stifling innovation by hobbling competition, but Yang had tuned her out even before Blake had started to talk about the evils of unfettered capitalism, and the whole thing had turned into a row about economics. Bleargh! She'd hated that stuff at school already.

“The guildmaster is rather shortsighted,” Gendry said. “But his loss is your gain, Master.”

Yang grinned. “Yeah.”

Mott didn't smile. “We shall see. Not all techniques are easily adapted, especially the more… advanced ones.”

“It’s not magic,” Yang said. “No matter what the people claim. Just advanced metallurgy.” And some Aura, of course. But she wasn't about to mention that bit - judging from what Mott had hinted at about some Valyrian smithing, the locals might take the ‘put your soul into your work’ stuff a bit too literally here. Especially since they didn't have Aura. “We don't do sacrifices.” Blood magic… Ugh!

Mott nodded again, and Yang hoped he believed her. Team RWBY didn't need more rumours about dark witchcraft or whatever spreading in the city. Sure, the King liked her team and would probably crush anyone accusing them of being witches, but Yang knew better than to think that would keep the gossip and rumours from spreading. Signal had taught her that - Dad couldn’t stop some of the rumours. Hell, the fact that Dad was a teacher had probably caused some to spread rumours.

“And speaking of shortsighted…” Mott frowned at Gendry.

The boy pouted in return. “I'm not going to sell the helmet. It's my first real piece of armour.”

“How do you expect to live if you won't sell your work?” Mott scoffed.

“I am going to sell my work, just not this one.”

Mott turned to Yang. “The Hand of the King took a fancy to the helmet the boy forged, but he won't sell it to him.”

Yang shrugged. “Hey, I wouldn't sell Ember Celica either.” Hell, she'd probably be hard pressed not to sock anyone even suggesting she sell it.

Gendry smiled at that, but Mott frowned. “Are you planning to become a sellsword, then? As the Hand offered? Abandon your craft?”

“No, Master!” Gendry protested.

“Then what use do you have for a helmet? It is only useful for those who fight!”

“But…” The boy trailed off. “It's my first real piece of armour!” he repeated himself.

“And it might be the last one for a long while! If the Hand had bought the helmet, that would have been a great boon for your reputation, boy!”

Yang took pity on Gendry. “Some things are worth more than money. And you never know when you need to fight to defend yourself, right?” Well, at least in Remnant.

Mott stared at her for a moment with a weird expression before he slowly nodded. “A helmet alone won't help you.”

“I'm going to make a sword next,” Gendry said.

Mott huffed. “As long as you sell it like a proper smith!”

Yang chuckled. “What about me? Am I not a proper smith?”

Mott scoffed again. “You're different, Lady Yang.”

She laughed. “Anyway, let's talk about metallurgy! I've got a few things to try, now that I can use a forge without starting a boycott or whatever!”

Both Mott and Gendry quickly dropped their argument and joined her at the table when she spread a few more sketches she had done yesterday. 

“Now, this is a bit delicate, but not too bad…”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“And there will be a grand tournament - the Hand’s Tourney!” the King declared, almost spilling wine from his goblet when he spread his arms. If the Queen had been present in her usual seat, she’d have been hit in the face, too - but she had apparently chosen to take her meal in her own chambers today. Yang didn’t miss her in the least.

“A tourney? Really? With jousting?” Ruby was almost trembling with excitement.

“Of course!” The King chuckled. “It wouldn’t be a tourney without the joust!”

“Oh! That’s going to be great!” Ruby beamed.

Lord Eddard, though, didn’t look very enthusiastic. “It’s a great expense,” he said with a frown.

The King scoffed. “Oh, Ned! It’s a great honour! And the people deserve to have their feasts and excitement! Besides, what’s a few more dragons in debt?”

“How much money will it cost, Father?” The Prince asked - unlike his siblings, he had chosen to eat with the King.

“A hundred thousand dragons, Boy. Well worth the occasion!”

Weiss started coughing. Yang took a second longer to realise how much money that was. A set of good but not exceptional steel armour was three to five dragons - Mott sold his armour for far more - so… She whistled.

“That’s a fortune!” Ruby blurted out. “I didn’t know a festival was that expensive! Do you think the Vytal festival costs as much, Weiss?”

“It doesn’t!” Weiss shook her head. “You could pay tens of thousands of workers for a year with that money!”

“Well, without magic devices, we have to hire labourers,” the Prince said.

“Ninety thousand dragons are just prize money,” Lord Eddard said, then looked as if he regretted saying it.

“Forty thousand for the winner of the joust, twenty thousand for the runner-up, twenty thousand for the winner of the Melee, and ten thousand for the archery champion!” The King laughed. “That’s sure to bring the best knights to the tourney!”

Yang gasped as well this time. That was a fortune! “Twenty thousand for winning the melee?” She leaned forward and grinned at the King.

“Yang! We can’t enter the tourney!” Ruby snapped.

Yang frowned at her. “Why not? Isn’t the melee open to everyone?”

“It would be unfair!” Ruby shook her head. “No one would have a chance against any of us! Even if they all united, we’d beat them! And that’s not fair!”

Well… She was right. But twenty thousand dragons!

“Twenty thousand gold dragons…” Weiss echoed Yang’s thoughts.

“And we’d risk maiming people by accident!” Ruby went on.

“That’s a risk anyone who joins the melee knows, my lady,” Jon spoke up.

Yang was a bit surprised - while Jon was almost always with them at those meals, he rarely spoke up in the King’s presence. So… Ah. She almost snorted - if Team RWBY won the prize, they’d be able to hire retainers. Like Jon. She grinned at him - sneaky boy! - and he blushed in return.

“People die in tourneys, Lady Ruby,” the Prince said. “It’s not play-acting.”

“I have to agree with Lady Ruby.” Lord Eddard nodded. “If one of you took part in the melee, the outcome would be certain from the start.”

“And that wouldn’t be very entertaining.” Ruby nodded firmly and narrowed her eyes at Yang and Weiss.

Yang grinned. “Alright, you’re right. It would be unfair.”

“And the egos of the knights would not take well to such humiliation,” Blake added.

Right. They would make a lot of enemies even if they didn’t maim anyone by accident.

The King laughed. “Ah, I think it would be entertaining to see some of our proud knights be taken down a peg or two - or see them fly through the air. But you’re right; it would not be fair for those knights who travel here for the melee.” He grinned. “But I think it would be a shame if the people missed seeing you fight. So… would you like to fight a small melee amongst yourself? The winner would get, say… twenty thousand gold dragons?”

“That’s too…” Ruby started. “Ow!”

“It would be an honour, Your Grace!” Weiss beamed at him while Rub glared at her and slipped a hand under the table, presumably to rub whatever part of her leg her partner had just kicked.

“Great! This will be a tourney everyone will be talking about for centuries!”

“And that’s about how long we’ll be paying for it, Your Grace.”

Yang was already planning how to fight her three friends.

“Although I have one condition,” the King went on.

Yang looked at him. He was grinning again.

“Yes, Your Grace?” Ruby asked.

“I want you to fight to win. No holding back. An honest fight.”

Oh. Yang blinked. That… complicated things. They wanted to keep their Semblances - with the exception of Ruby’s - a secret.

But… twenty thousand dragons? That was a hell of a lot of money!

*****

 

Chapter 13: The Hand’s Tourney

‘I’ve mentioned before how much esteem knights held in this era - the chivalric ideals were, if seldom upheld when it might have been inconvenient for the various nobles, almost always paid lip service to. And tournaments both benefited from this reverence of knightly valour as well as reinforced the myth of the knight as a noble defender of all that was just and holy. That aside, tournaments also were the highlights of most people’s lives. Even the small, regular events were likely to be the most important festivals in a year - or even a season. The grander affairs, such as the Tourney at Harrenhal, also known as Lord Whent's Great Tournament, were talked about amongst both smallfolk and nobility for years afterwards - and not merely amongst those who had to pay for them. In fact, that tournament would have left its mark at least in contemporary history even without the crucial events that took place there and resulted in Robert’s Rebellion. So, it should not be a surprise that the Hand’s Tourney was bound to draw the attention of the entire realm even before the news of the Ruby Order’s arrival spread. Of course, it should go without saying that many expected the Order to participate - an expectation founded, like so many theses today, on a misunderstanding of the situation due to a lack of information, although, in light of the views and society at the time, a quite understandable misunderstanding.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Brienne Tarth kept her head high and her eyes looking ahead as she walked through the tent city that had sprung up around the site of the Hand's Tourney outside King's Landing. She wanted to let her eyes roam, take in the sight of so many people from all over the Seven Kingdoms, look at all the banners flapping in the soft breeze, but if she did that, she'd also see the people staring at her.

Stare and whisper behind her back - or, if they were particularly cruel or bold, call out to her with a sneer or jeer. She had heard it all before. None of those who mocked her were as witty as they thought they were. And none of them would face her, should she demand satisfaction.

Not that she would. A knight was to be just and brave, to defend the young and innocent. And all women. They were not supposed to fight for petty reasons or out of spite.

Her fingers tightened around the grip of her sword. She was no knight, and would never be, being a woman, but you did not have to be knighted to follow the oaths of chivalry. She would…

“Hey, look at that beauty!”

She tensed, clenching her teeth and kept staring ahead. Brienne the Beauty, they called her when they wanted to be particularly cruel and were too cowardly to show their scorn openly. As if anyone would think they were honest when calling her a beauty - she knew she was ugly, with her broken nose, coarse face and crooked teeth, and her body was strong but not graceful - or womanly. But…

“Come on, girl! I've got money.”

Brienne gasped and whirled around. Call her a whore? That was too far! She wouldn't stand for that slander, and…

She froze when she realised that the drunk man - a knight from the Riverlands, though she could not quite remember which house - had not been calling out to her but to a girl with a wild mane of blonde hair who had just turned and was now approaching him. 

“Did you just call me a whore?”

The girl's tone left no doubt that she had taken offence at the insinuation. 

“I called you what you are!” The knight laughed, put down the wineskin he had been drinking from, and reached out to grab her. 

Brienne quickened her steps and opened her mouth to call out the lout before he forced himself on the girl. “Hold, Ser! You…”

She trailed off, gaping, when she saw the girl slap the knight's grasping hands away and grab him by his neck and belt, then lift him over her head as if he weighed nothing.

A moment later, the man flew through the air, hitting the packed dirt several paces away with enough force to bounce once before coming to a stop with a pained groan.

“Watch your tongue, asshole!” the girl spat, dusting off her hands. “Next time, you'll lose your balls!”

“You! I'll…” The knight tried to stand but bent over with a groan instead - and then vomited on the ground.

The girl snorted, then turned to glare at the knight’s companions. “Anyone else volunteering to help me improve my YangTime?”

Her what? Brienne blinked, feeling as confused as the men looked. Though the threat was clear enough, and they cowered under the girl's gaze.

“Thought so.” She scoffed again and turned away.

And Brienne realised who she was. “Lady Yang Xiao Long!”

The girl - the noblewoman, looked at her. “That's me!”

Brienne smiled and bowed her head. “Brienne Tarth.” She should have recognised the woman at once - she looked exactly like Lord Renly had described her.

“Ah, Lord Renly's friend, right?”

Lord Renly had mentioned her to Team Ruby, as their group was called? Was that why he had sent Brienne a letter telling her to attend the tourney? “I would not presume to call myself his friend; he is my liege,” she replied.

“Right.” Lady Yang nodded.

Brienne couldn't help looking at her clothes. Lord Renly had not embellished her garb either - exotic was an understatement. The woman wore what looked like her smallclothes under a half-skirt, and her leggings didn't reach above her thighs. Though her gauntlets were of the finest quality - much better than Brienne's slightly dented steel armour. 

She tore her gaze away. “Did… Did Lord Renly mention me to you?” she asked without thinking - the woman had already said so.

“Oh, yes. You're one of the few women who can fight in Westeros,” Lady Yang replied. “Arya - Lady Arya Stark - pestered him all evening about you when she heard that.”

“Oh.” Brienne blushed. “I did train with the sword, yes,” she said. A knight was supposed to be humble.

“Nice!” Lady Yang grinned. “Are you gonna fight in the tourney?”

“I am considering it,” Brienne replied. “Are you going to take part?”

“In a special competition.” Lady Yang chuckled. “Wouldn't be quite fair otherwise, because…”

“You whore! Die!”

Brienne drew her sword and whirled, but before she could step into the charging Riverlander's path, Lady Yang had already moved.

The knight was flying upwards and back in the blink of an eye - propelled into the air by a kick from Lady Yang. A kick that, as Brienne realised, had hit the man between his legs with enough force to send him flipping head over heels through the air twice before coming down.

“Now, that's a good YangTime!”

So, that was what it meant. Brienne made a note to remember it.

“So, where are you headed?” Lady Yang asked as if she hadn't demonstrated strength beyond anyone except, perhaps, the Mountain.

“Ah, I was about to look for Lord Renly. I was told he was at the training yard set up here,” Brienne replied.

“Ah? Come on, it's this way! Let's see if we can catch a few good knights training.”

Before she realised it, Brienne was walking through the camp at the side of Lady Yang, who was chatting with her as if they were friends.

*****

“...and have you met the King, by the way? He's great! He created a whole event for us since it'd be unfair if we fought in the grand melee, and none of us can ride well enough to joust. Oh! Are you hungry? Let me fetch some flatbread! Be right back!”

Brienne blinked when Lady Yang grinned and headed over to a food stall. “You mentioned before that it would be unfair if you took part in the melee,” she said when she joined the noblewoman.

“Yeah. We - Team Ruby - would decide the winner amongst ourselves if we took part.” Lady Yang nodded, then smiled at the vendor. “Two flatbreads with beef, please! Ah… this one and that one!” She pointed at two seemingly at random on the grill. As soon as the vendor handed them over, she passed one to Brienne. “Just what you need after a light workout!”

“Thank you, my lady,” Brienne replied, eyeing the bread a moment before taking a bite. It tasted like any other she had had before.

They walked on, Lady Yang quickly devouring the bread. The vendor hadn't asked for payment, Brienne realised. Of course, a woman so close to the King might have taken it as an insult, but… She glanced around. The smallfolk were staring at them - at Lady Yang. Some with what looked like awe, others with fear.

“You are well-known,” she said between two bites.

Lady Yang nodded, then swallowed. “Yep! We made an impression when we helped out with construction.” She grinned widely, but Brienne didn't get whatever joke she had made. It didn't seem to be aimed at her, though.

“You helped with construction?” she asked.

“Yep. It was a decent workout.”

“So, is it true that no blade can hurt you?” She had heard the rumours, but they had seemed far too wild to be trusted,

“Want to take a swing and find out?”

Brienne narrowed her eyes. “Do you wish to spar?”

“Yes, but that wasn't the question.” Lady Yang chuckled. “But you're right. If it's my head against a sword, my head will win!”

Before Brienne could think of a polite way to challenge that boast, the noblewoman turned and pointed ahead. “And here we are! You were right, Lord Renly's here. Ser Loras is training.”

Oh. Brienne straightened and looked around. Being taller than all but a handful of men, she easily spotted Lord Renly in the training area, watching Ser Loras spar with a burly Stormlander knight she dimly remembered having met a few years before.

Lady Yang was headed straight for him, and Brienne took a deep breath as they approached, trying to word a proper greeting that wouldn't result in her making a fool out of her in front of her liege.

“Lord Renly! I brought Lady Brienne!” Yang called out.

And he turned, a smile lighting up his handsome face. “Lady Yang!” Then he saw Brienne, and her heart felt as if it skipped a beat when he smiled at her. “Lady Brienne! You came!”

“You called for me, my lord,” Brienne replied, bowing her head to hide her slight blush. Lord Renly was just… He was so handsome, so gallant - and he treated her like she was… He treated her with respect and kindness.

“Indeed.”

“Oh, you're Lady Brienne Tarth?”

Brienne looked up - then down. A young girl was beaming at her. And next to her… How had she missed the wolf? She tensed, clenching her teeth when the wolf approached her, sniffing at her calves.

“Nymeria! Heel!”

The wolf chuffed once, cocked its head to the side, then returned to the girl's flank.

“Lady Brienne, this is Lady Arya Stark. Arya, yes, this is Lady Brienne,” Lord Renly said. “She's been looking forward to meeting you, Lady Brienne,”

“Yes! I'm going to become a lady knight as well!”

“Girls can't become knights, Arya!” a boy - her slightly younger brother, Brienne realised; he had very similar looks, and they both wore garments with the Stark's direwolf sigil. And he was in the company of another wolf.

Arya huffed. “If the strongest warriors can't be knights just because they're girls that will make a mockery of knighthood!”

“There's more to being a knight than being strong!” Bran shot back.

“Arya! Bran!” Another Stark boy - although older, almost a man grown - said, taking a step forward while a white wolf slunk around behind him. “Behave!”

The two children sulked, but Lord Renly laughed. “They're very passionate about knights. Although Lady Arya is correct - I doubt King Robert would refuse to knight a woman merely because she's no man. Not after getting to know Team Ruby.”

“He better not!” Lady Yang said with a grin as she smashed her gauntlets together. 

Brienne didn't say anything - what could she say, in this company? Lord Renly was the King’s brother and her liege lord. Those were the children of the King’s Hand, the lord paramount of the North. And it was obvious that Lady Yang was held in the highest esteem by the King and his family. But she couldn’t help smiling at the thought that, maybe, her dream of being a knight might not be as impossible as she had been taught and told all her life.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“The Royal Library has been tended to by a man of the Faith since its founding!”

“Tended, not controlled. By what right do you dare to block us from using the library?”

Ruby Rose tried not to wince while Archmaester Marwyn and Septon Hernis argued. This was getting embarrassing!

“I do not block you from using the library, Maester…”

“Archmaester!”

“...but that refers to reading books, not treating the library as your own! I am responsible for taking care of the priceless tomes held here, and I will not neglect my duty and let outsiders mishandle them!”

“A likely excuse! You wish to control what information we can access!”

“I would never! I know the library like the back of my hand! It would be pointless to let you waste hours searching a book when I could find it in a heartbeat!”

“And how are we supposed to know which books we need without studying them?”

Ruby bit her lower lip. They just needed a few books, not the whole library! Did it matter who fetched the books they needed? 

“As an Archmaester, wouldn’t you already know which books you need? The Citadel’s library is famous, after all.”

Ruby cleared her throat. “What if we don’t touch the books and just look at them? You can tell us what each book is about, and we can decide if we need to read it, right?”

Now both men were frowning at her.

“I wouldn’t trust this man to tell me the truth about a book containing knowledge about magic!”

“I have many duties; do you expect me to wait hand and foot on you?”

“Yes! What else are you good for as a librarian?”

“This is not how we handle things at court!”

“Well, how about Lady Ruby goes and asks the King about that?” Marwyn bared his teeth at the other man.

Ruby cringed. To go complain to the King? Like… like going to tattle to the teacher? But… “The King has told us that we could use the library.”

“That implies that you would use it with my help, my lady.”

“Your ‘help’ is more hindrance! Just stay out of the way!”

“How dare you!”

Ruby shook her head. “We really don’t want…”

“We need those books you’re trying to hide!”

“I am not hiding any books - I am protecting them from being mishandled! Those books are centuries old!”

“How dare you insult me by claiming I would mishandle books! I’ve handled more and older books than you ever did!” 

“Enough!” Ruby snapped, slamming Crescent Rose’s butt into the ground before she realised that she had unfolded her scythe. She felt her cheeks heat up when the men turned to look at her again but straightened and raised her chin. “The King’s given us permission to search his library. Archmaester Marwyn has offered us his help, and we’re grateful for that. If you want to help us as well, we would also be grateful - and we would be done with it sooner and out of your hair. But letting you do all the work and picking which books we can read won’t work.” Really, this was getting ridiculous! They just wanted to use the library!

To her surprise, the Septon didn’t protest, and Marwyn didn’t gloat. Both men were staring at her. 

“What?” She asked, wishing she had a mirror. Was there something on her face?

Then she realised that she had cracked the stone beneath her feet with her scythe. 

“Oh. Sorry!” She smiled weakly at the two men. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

Fortunately, neither man called her out on her embarrassing mistake.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Your Grace.”

“Stannis! Finally decided to stop sulking on Dragonstone and return to court in time for the greatest tourney the realm has ever seen?” The King chuckled and, without letting his younger brother say anything in return, turned to Ruby and her friends. “Ladies! This is my second brother, Stannis! Master of Ships - he commands the Royal Fleet when he's around. Stannis, these are Lady Ruby Rose, her sister, Lady Yang Xiao Long, Lady Weiss Schnee and Lady Blake Belladonna! They're the strongest women you've ever met!”

Ruby eyed the man - Lord Stannis, who was frowning at the King (who had been a bit rude, in her opinion). He looked very serious. And annoyed. He reminded her a bit of Professor Goodwitch - she didn't seem to smile a lot either. He looked similar to the King, though he wasn't fat and he had much less hair, both on his head (he was nearly bald) and on his face.

Then he turned to look at Ruby and her friends, and she smiled at him. “Hello, my lord!”

As her friends greeted him, Lord Stannis bowed his head in return, though he still didn't smile. He seemed to be one of the most gruff men she had met so far. Even worse than that shopkeeper back in Patch who was only happy when he made a sale.

“Don't let their looks fool you, Stannis! Each of the ladies could throw you across the throne room, as Lady Yang recently demonstrated on a man who insulted her!”

“Hey! I didn't throw the knight that far!” Yang protested, though she was grinning.

Ruby frowned at being reminded of that incident. The knight had done more than insulting Yang - he had attacked her! With a weapon! How stupid could you be? She hoped he was an exception and that there wouldn't be more such men. That would really suck.

“So I've been told,” Lord Stannis said with a curt nod.

“Do you need a demonstration?” The King laughed and, once again, turned and spoke without giving his brother time to answer. “Lady Ruby, if you were so kind to give us a small demonstration…?”

Oh. Ruby straightened. If the King asked, she better do it. “Of course, Your Grace.” She looked around for a suitable target - she wouldn't lift Lord Stannis; that would embarrass them both and probably hurt his honour or something. She could lift a table, but that would annoy everyone currently eating, and that wouldn't be nice. But lifting the side table wouldn't be really impressive - and risk ruining the cakes placed on it. So… Ah!

She activated her Semblance and disappeared, popping up between Weiss and Yang, then grabbed both their chairs and lifted.

“Hey!”

“Ruby!”

“Sorry!” Ruby held them both above her head and smiled at Lord Stannis. Her friends were the best choice for a demonstration - they wouldn't be annoyed or insulted!

“Let us down, you dolt!” Well, except for Weiss…

She set them down again and glanced at Lord Stannis. He didn't seem very impressed. He was staring at them, but he looked more gruff and glaring than surprised.

“I see.”

The King laughed. “Bah, you're no fun, Stannis! I expected you to tell me how this is obviously a trick. Did you actually believe my letter?”

“I would never presume that Your Grace would lie to me,” Stannis replied, looking offended. Well, more offended.

“Hah!” The King laughed again. “Now come on, take a seat - Boy! More wine! And some for Stannis!”

But instead of joining his brother, Lord Stannis turned around to look at the door behind him. “I have brought a visitor as well.”

As if this had been a cue - it probably had been, Ruby realised - a woman appeared in the entrance and slowly walked toward Lord Stannis. A tall woman, though not as tall as Lady Brienne, with long, red - coppery - hair, and pale skin, wearing a bright red dress and a matching choker with a ruby set in it. And a red cloak!

Ruby beamed - the woman obviously had great taste! And red eyes, she realised. She was very beautiful, too.

“Your Grace, this is Melisandre, a red priestess of R'hllor. She hails from Asshai.”

Melisandre bowed. “Your Grace.” She had a deep and melodic voice. Exotic, Ruby decided.

“Ah!” The King smiled at her. “Welcome at my court, woman. Are you here to spread your faith, like Thoros?”

Melisandre bowed her head. “R'hllor sent me a vision, Your Grace.” She turned to look at Ruby and her friends. “A red comet striking a glacier and melting it down to a wave that swept across the land.”

Ruby felt a shiver run down her spine when the woman met her eyes and smiled. Those red eyes… She expected the woman to say something, but Melisandre only smiled and then bowed again and sat with Lord Stannis.

But for the entire rest of the meal, Melisandre kept glancing at Ruby and her friends. She didn’t say anything, just… sneaked glances. It was a bit unnerving.

*****

“That woman was a bit weird, wasn’t she?” Ruby blurted out as soon as they were back in their room. She didn’t even wait for Blake to check for spies. “She kept glancing at us but didn’t say anything.” Granted, she had been seated a bit too far to make conversation, but still!

Weiss, of course, waited for Blake to check the secret passage and give the all-clear before answering: “She seemed rather interested in us, though that is not entirely uncommon; it’s actually surprising that Lord Stannis didn’t seem to be as interested as his brothers.”

“She’s a priestess of that fire god,” Yang said. 

“R’hllor,” Weiss added.

“Yeah, that one. And she has visions from her god that led her here.” Yang shrugged. “A comet melting a glacier - I don’t think she’s talking about Ruby thawing our ice queen.”

“What?” Ruby stared at her sister.

“Pardon?” Weiss jumped up. “What are you insinuating?”

Yang grinned. “I’m just saying you’ve mellowed out a lot since Ruby became your partner.”

Oh, right. Ruby nodded. “Yes, that’s right!”

Weiss narrowed her eyes at her and at Yang for a moment, then nodded as well. Good!

“You think that this prophecy refers to us fighting the Others,” Blake said.

“It would fit, wouldn’t it?” Yang shrugged. “We arrived, we kicked their butts.”

“We didn’t strike like a comet, and they didn’t melt,” Ruby pointed out.

“Prophecies are usually metaphorical,” Blake told her. “It’s not a literal comet strike. But if the glacier melting were the Others, then I wonder what the wave sweeping across the land is.”

“It sounds far-fetched,” Weiss said. 

“But she is from Asshai - Marwyn said they have witches there who can work magic.” Yang sat down on her bed. “So, she might be able to help us get home.”

Ruby nodded - and the woman had style! - but Weiss looked a little doubtful. “Weiss?”

“She said she received visions from her god,” Weiss said.

“Yes?” Ruby cocked her head sideways.

Weiss frowned. “I am not certain what could be more problematic: that she is using magic and following the orders of an imaginary god or that she is receiving visions from an actual god that involve us.”

Oh. Right, neither sounded like a good thing for Team RWBY.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Weiss! We still haven’t decided when we’ll hold the Battle of the Maidens. Would you mind to opinion on it?”

“Your Grace?” Weiss Schnee smiled widely. It was the least she could do for King, whose library they were still perusing in the hope of finding a way home, and who would be granting a fortune by any measure to her team. And it also granted her an excuse to be late to today’s sewing circle with the Queen and her handmaidens as well as whoever amongst the ladies of the court was the unfortunate recipient of a royal invitation. Maybe she should stop for a snack in the great hall more often. “You are debating whether to hold it before or after the joust, I assume.”

“Yes, my lady.” Lord Tyrion, whose inclusion in the discussion was probably related to him drinking with the King, nodded. “It’s mostly a question of how and when we insult the flower of the realm’s chivalry.”

The King guffawed, and Lord Eddard sighed and said: “While I would not put it so frivolously as Lord Tyrion, I do have to agree that we are faced with a problem. If we hold your contest before the joust, it will overshadow the lists. If we hold it afterwards, some of the more prickly knights might feel that it is considered the main event of the tourney.”

“It is the main event!” The King cut in. “A battle the likes of which none have ever seen - and none will see for a long time after!”

Weiss couldn’t help reconsidering the team’s decision to participate in the battle. Certainly, the gold they would receive - no matter who won, the gold would go to the team - would grant them the financial independence they needed. That was more obvious with every day they spent at court. But she was more than a little concerned about showing off in front of so many people. Even without using more of their already low Dust supply, going all-out, as the King expected, would mean using their Semblances. With the exception of Ruby, they had kept those a secret so far. But the team - Ruby and Yang - had argued that it wouldn’t be honourable to take so much gold without fighting to the best of their abilities. Weiss, with Blake’s support, had only been able to successfully argue that they might need Dust to return home. Really, Ruby and Yang might be spending a bit too much time with the Stark children, in Weiss’s opinion.

But the men at the table expected an answer. “I believe it would be better to hold the battle at the end of the tourney. Some might feel insulted, but others might dismiss us as an afterthought, and it should make the other events run more smoothly.”

“Well said, Lady Weiss!” the Prince smiled at her. “It’s what I argued.”

The King laughed. “Yes, and Ned can’t argue that it’s dishonourable - we do reserve the place of honour for the main event; if some knights are too stupid to understand it, that’s on them!”

Lord Eddard sighed again. “It does seem that there is no solution that will not result in problems.”

“Welcome to ruling the realm, Ned!”

“As long as we pick the least bad solution, that’s not a problem, right, Father?”

“Yes, Boy.”

The trick was finding the least bad solution, of course. But Weiss didn’t see any need to argue that.

“I am looking very much forward to seeing you battling without holding back, Lady Weiss,” the Prince addressed her. “As impressive as your training sessions are, nothing compares to a real battle.”

His smile was a bit too eager for Weiss’s taste. But he was a boy who had never fought in a real battle. He didn’t really understand what it entailed. “We will fight without holding back, but we will still stop before people get hurt.”

He frowned briefly at that. “But how do you determine who has won then?”

“We will yield when we know we’re beaten, of course,” she replied. “Like in the melee, I believe.”

“Few knights yield while they can still fight,” he retorted with a pout.

“That is their prerogative,” she said. “But we’re used to fighting like that. It will be an impressive display, I promise you that.” They would need quite a large safety zone. “But the risks of not stopping when the fight is decided are too great given our power.”

“Even though you can quickly recover from wounds that would kill anyone else?”

Apparently, one of the others had let slip something again, and the Prince had picked it up. Weiss nodded. “We are very hard to hurt, but we are not invulnerable. And,” she added with a smile, “we’re friends. We don’t like to hurt each other.”

“Yes!” The King laughed at that and slapped Lord Eddard on the shoulder. “Friends don’t fight friends - but they do knock them around in the training yard, right, Ned?”

The Prince nodded, although Weiss felt it was a bit reluctantly. He really was naive with regard to fighting. She hoped he would never have to find out what it was like. Then again, a future King who knew nothing about the cost of battles might not be a good thing either… But that was a topic for another day; she had a sewing circle to attend.

*****

“Lady Weiss. Late again,” the Queen greeted her with her usual scowl as Weiss entered her quarters. 

“I am terribly sorry, Your Grace,” Weiss lied with a smile. “I was asked to help plan the tournament by your husband the King.” She didn’t have to add ‘and he outranks you’; the Queen heard it anyway.

But next to the ladies-in-waiting of the Queen already familiar to Weiss, another noblewoman - or a girl; she was very beautiful, but not even her expert makeup and perfectly styled dress could hide that she looked about as old as Ruby - was sitting, apparently with her own lady-in-waiting next to her.

The Queen waited a moment longer than would have been polite before introducing her. “Lady Margaery, this is Lady Weiss. Lady Weiss, Lady Margaery Tyrell.”

“Ah, we finally meet, Lady Weiss!” the girl said as Weiss curtsied. “Although I hoped to meet your friends as well.”

“Lady Ruby, Lady Yang and Lady Blake are, unfortunately, kept away by their various duties,” Weiss replied as she took a seat of her own.

The Queen scoffed rather audibly, which caused Lady Margaery to raise her eyebrows in apparent if brief confusion, though everyone else knew better than to comment on the fact that the Queen had stopped inviting Ruby and the others. Weiss still wasn’t quite certain why she had not been treated the same - she certainly hadn’t kept her own opinion of the Queen a secret, although she had kept a polite facade for appearance’s sake. 

“You’re Ser Loras’s sister, right?” Weiss said. “He mentioned you were travelling here for the tourney.” And she had expected the knight to introduce them.

“Yes.” Lady Margaery smiled earnestly. “I am looking forward to seeing him in the joust. He is the best rider I know, and I hope he will be the tourney’s champion.”

“I wouldn’t know; I hardly know anything about riding or jousting,” Weiss replied. “Although he does cut a very dashing figure when he trains.” Lady Sansa liked to go off about it, too, but Weiss knew better than to mention that - there would be rumours started within the hour about Lady Sansa cheating on her fiancé.

“As his sister, I am obviously biased, but I agree.” Lady Margaery giggled softly. “Whoever he ends up marrying will be very happy, I believe.”

Weiss nodded, her smile growing a slightly bit more polite. “I have no doubt of that.”

“Of course, so would any man you’d marry, my lady.”

“You flatter me,” Weiss replied. That again. Was every noble she met trying to propose a betrothal to her? Lady Maegary was more subtle about it than most, but Weiss could see the signs.

“Unlike whoever ends up marrying Lady Brienne,” another lady-in-waiting cut in with a slight sneer.

“Really?” Weiss frowned at the woman. “Why would you say that?” She was grateful for the interruption, but she wouldn’t let that stop her from telling the woman just what she thought about her odious barb. Lady Brienne might not be a model, but she was an earnest young woman who would make whoever was not as superficial as to care only about appearances very happy. Besides, she was plain, but a bit of advice and some makeup, and maybe some styling help, could go a long way.

“Ah… have you seen her?”

“I consider her a friend, my lady.” Weiss bared her teeth. “And so does Lord Renly.”

Yes, maybe she should ask Lady Brienne if she wanted some advice about cosmetics. 

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

This was very good fried fish! Blake Belladonna took another bite from the snack she had bought from the vendor Bran had recommended and savoured the taste. Indeed, this more than justified the detour she had taken on the way back to the city from the tourney’s training area. She should have bought two, actually. 

She stopped, taking another bite, and looked over her shoulder. If she turned around and headed back, she would probably finish her snack just before reaching the vendor. It would delay her return to the keep even more, but… It was really good fried fish. The best she had eaten in the city so far. “Worth it,” she mumbled past the next bite and turned around.

She took a different route back, though. There had been another row of tents raised today, more people arriving to either compete in the tourney or hawk their wares - and services - to the knights and spectators, and she could take a look at the new lane formed.

She didn’t recognise the sigils on the various banners planted next to the entrances, but she tried to remember them anyway, just in case - you never knew when even seemingly unimportant information could come in handy. Her time in the White Fang had taught her that. 

So… She frowned. She did recognise that sigil. Three dogs - brrr!. That was the sigil of House Clegane; the Prince had shown it to them once, even though his sworn sword never wore it.

Which meant the large tent with the two guards in front who were giving her the evil eye must belong to another Clegane - and she only knew about one, the Hound’s brother. Ser Gregor Clegane, The Mountain That Rides.

She had heard a lot about the man, mainly because everyone seemed to compare Team RWBY’s strength to his, whether they had met the man in question or not. And she hadn’t heard many good things about him, not even from Lord Tyrion, whose father was the knight’s liege. Then again, she knew how someone’s reputation could be deceptive, both for good or ill, and she was aware she shouldn’t judge people based on rumours.

Still, the way those guards were sneering at her wasn’t making her think that the knight’s bad reputation was undeserved; you could tell a lot about someone by checking what kind of people they employed.

Although she would have expected the guards to have done something else than glaring at her by now - and why were they glaring at her, anyway? She had never met them or their lord before. Of course, the Hound didn’t like her or her team, but she knew he positively loathed his brother. Would he still complain to him about her? She didn’t think so.

So why were they glaring at her? If her partner had been here, then she would have sauntered over to the tent’s entrance to ask them what their problem was - and likely start a fight in the process - but Blake wasn’t Yang.

Instead, she continued walking, slowly, and focused on what she could hear from the tent’s interior. The whole camp was a cacophony of noise, which made it hard to listen in to any conversation at a distance. Hard but not impossible.

But she only heard some… groaning?

She stopped and cocked her head. It sounded as if someone was in pain. And given the man’s reputation… She clenched her teeth. Time to act like her partner, then.

She quickly swallowed the rest of her snack and walked over to the tent. Both men tensed when they saw her approach, another bad sign. “You seem to have a problem with me,” she told them without greeting them.

They glanced at each other, then at the flap hiding the tent’s interior from view, before looking back at her. “No,” the one on the right said. “We don’t have a problem, my lady.”

The groaning had stopped. But Blake was committed now. “You were glaring at me as if you wanted to attack me,” she said.

“We mistook you for someone else,” the other guard said. “My lady,” he added belatedly.

“Oh? There’s someone else who looks like me?” Blake channelled a bit more of her partner as she flashed a smile at them. “Who is it? I think I want to meet that person.”

“Ah…” Again, the two glanced at each other, though this time, they were glaring.

And Blake picked up heavy footsteps from the tent. A moment later, the flap was pushed to the side, and a huge man appeared in the entrance. He almost filled the entire space - he was bigger than Adam’s Lieutenant.

Not big enough to hide the empty tent behind him, though. So, he had been the one who had been groaning. And she caught some white film on his lips - he had just drunk some… Not milk, something else. She sniffed the air but couldn’t place the smell.

“Who’re you?” the giant asked. 

“She’s Lady Blake, Ser,” the guard said. “The one…” He cringed and stopped when Clegane growled at him and balled his hands into fists.

Blake had been about to blame the guards for her presence, but this changed things. “I was curious,” she said. “I’ve met your brother and recognised the sigil.”

He sneered, baring yellowish teeth. “You’re the witch who claims to be stronger than I am.”

She frowned in return. “I am no witch.”

“Ser!” the guard tried again. “Lord Tyrion said…”

The giant backhanded the man without looking, catching him in the face and sending him to the ground in a boneless heap with teeth and blood splattering against the tent behind him.

“Are you crazy?” she gasped, taking a step back and reaching for Gambol Shroud's hilt.

He chuckled, his mouth opening into a smile. Definitely crazy.

The other guard had moved behind Clegane's back to reach his fallen partner. “Joff!” He grabbed the man's head, and Blake was bout to call out not to move the man, in case he had spinal injuries, when she caught a glimpse of the man's eyes. 

They were staring at nothing, and his expression was frozen. Dead.

“Joff!”

“You killed him,” she whispered. The rumours had been correct - Clegane was a monster!

Clegane chuckled again - and started laughing at her.

“Joff!”

They had drawn a crowd, though everyone kept their distance, Blake realised.

“He's dead,” she said, loud enough to carry to the crowd. “Ser Gregor murdered him.” 

The giant stopped laughing and glared at her, breathing heavily - she wrinkled her nose at the stench of his breath. “He disobeyed me.”

“That's no reason to murder a man!” she spat. Not even Adam would have done that. 

He scoffed.

She glanced at the crowd. None of them looked like they were about to step in. Very well. “Call the gold cloaks!” she yelled. “There has been a murder!”

For a moment, no one reacted. Then she saw someone turning away and calling out for guards.

And Clegane roared and charged her.

He was fast, very fast, for someone his size, but not fast enough. Not nearly fast enough. She ducked beneath his swing and slid between legs as thick as her torso, drawing Gambol Shroud as she jumped to her feet behind him. “Surrender!” she called out.

He whirled, lashing out with a kick as he turned, and she jumped over his leg, then twisted in the air, flipping over to drive her heels into his face.

Blood flew as he stumbled back, seemingly shocked, and she landed nimbly on her feet. “Surrender!” she repeated herself, pointing her blade at him. ”You are unarmed and unarmoured!”

He grabbed the sword of the fallen guard and charged her again.

Enough was enough. She met his blade with Gambol Shroud, twisting her weapon to parry his swing in that seemingly effortless way Ser Barristan had taught them, then stepped into his reach and kicked him in the stomach.

He stumbled back, then bent over, spitting white vomit and bile on the ground, and Blake clenched her teeth in disgust when the sour smell reached her nostrils. “Whore!” he snarled, looking at her with rolling eyes above his bleeding, broken nose and split lips.

What was it with those insults? Blake scoffed and lunged. It was time to end this before someone else got hurt.

He tried to hit her, but she dodged his first swing by sidestepping it, then jumped over his backswing and hit him in the face with Gambol Shroud's sheath, hard enough to stagger a beowulf.

He was no beowulf - he was already falling when she landed on his back and drove him into the ground, face first.

For a moment, the crowd was silent, staring at her as if she was the monster. Then the yelling started and didn't stop even after the gold cloaks finally arrived to take Clegane into custody.

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Whoo! Go, Jon! Show them how to fight!” Yang Xiao Long cheered loudly and waved when she spotted Jon in his armour - with a new breastplate wrought by Mott's apprentice - standing at the edge of the battleground, between two knights in slightly rusted armour. He saluted her with his sword. 

Then she waved at the armoured figure standing a dozen knights apart from Jon, easy to spot since she towered over almost everyone. “Smash them into the ground, Brienne!” Brienne saluted her as well.

“You’re making a spectacle,” Weiss commented from her left side.

“So? A tourney is meant to be a spectacle!” Yang replied. The people here certainly needed it, what with having no scrolls, no TV, not even ancient radio.

“Just an observation.” Weiss didn’t really sound annoyed, even though the row of noblewomen behind them were tittering. Well, except for Lady Margaery and her friends. 

“Whoo! Go, Jon! Go, Brienne!” Ruby, standing on Weiss’s other side, was also going all-out, as expected. Weiss didn’t say anything to her, though - as Ruby’s partner, she would know it wouldn’t do anything. She beamed at Weiss and Yang. “This is so exciting!”

Yang nodded. Everyone was fired up. Most of the audience was cheering their hearts out. Not the nobles, though. “Certainly more exciting than the archery contest.”

“The archers have shown impressive skills,” Weiss said.

“Yeah, but, you know, bows and arrows just lack a gun’s yang.” Yang grinned when Weiss rolled her eyes, and Ruby giggled.

She glanced to her right side. Blake had been quiet so far. Probably trying not to draw any more attention - the court had made a big fuss about her knocking out that Mountain creep. Some of the nobles seemed to think that Blake arresting the guy was worse than the guy murdering one of his own guards.

Well, the King would hold a trial after the tourney, and the creep would be locked up in the dungeons until then, so Yang wasn’t really worried. Their upcoming team battle would make a much bigger splash, anyway.

A trumpet sounded - the signal to begin! 

In the battleground, the participants turned on their neighbours at once. Jon had to fend off two knights ganging up on him, and only quick footwork saved him from getting brained as he circled around one while giving ground to the other so they would hinder each other.

Brienne was under attack by three - no, two; she had just smashed one down with a quick combination that left the guy unmoving on the ground.

“Cowards!” Yang yelled. “Ganging up on our friends?”

“I believe that is the reason they are ganging up on Jon and Brienne,” Weiss commented.

“What?” Yang didn’t spare her a glance; she was focused on Jon disarming his first opponent - he had watched Ser Barristan as well - but getting hit in the back and sent stumbling. “Coward!” But Jon’s new chestplate held. And might have saved him from a broken back.

“It’s allowed in melee,” Blake said. “But I think Weiss is right - they are going after our friends. Either to get at us or because they think they are a bigger threat than they are because of us.”

“Oh.” That made sense. And Jon recovered. He whirled, deflected another attack with his shield and lunged, striking at the other knight’s shin. His opponent snapped his shield down, and Jon hit him in the face with his shield. 

Yang cheered - she had shown him that move!

“Go, Brienne!” Ruby yelled. “Go, Jon!”

“The ranks are thinning,” Weiss commented. “The easy opponents are already down.”

Jon was facing a knight in fancy armour now. Rich - and experienced. Not as experienced as a Kingsguard, though. And… No, not as talented as Jon. Jon quickly started to drive the man back with a series of sharp, quick blows that had him struggling to cope. His footwork was suffering as well, and… there was an opening! And Jon used it! His sword struck the man’s helmet, and he went down.

Jon placed the tip of his training sword at the man’s gorget, then retreated.

“He yielded,” Blake stated the obvious.

“Good. Even if Jon is eliminated now, that knight’s ransom should be enough to pay his own armour’s ransom and leave a profit,” Weiss added.

Yang snorted.

Brienne, meanwhile, had smashed two more knights down, but now three were ganging up on her again. And those were more skilled than the ones at the start. And they were working together as if they had done that before. 

Yang narrowed her eyes. That was… “That’s cheating!” she spat. “They must have planned that!”

Brienne was surrounded and no matter who she faced, she’d leave an opening. Her armour was sporting new dents, and Yang winced - those would be nasty bruises. She couldn’t keep this up for long.

Brienne had realised that as well. She suddenly charged ahead and tackled the one in front of her. He was smashed into the ground, with her on top. Brienne used the opportunity to land two quick blows with her gauntlets on his head - like Yang would have done! - before rolling off him and to the side. That meant a blow aimed at her back landed on the unconscious knight’s chest, and Brienne reached out and grabbed the blade with her fist before he could draw back.

A quick tug of war later, the man had lost his sword, and Brienne advanced on him. A few blows left his shield battered and out of position, followed by a body blow that sent him staggering back a few steps before he fell to his knees, raising his hands in defeat.

But the attack had left Brienne too open, and the third knight struck her in the legs from behind, and she collapsed. She managed to roll around and avoid another strike, but when she tried to get up, her leg gave out. She managed to parry two more blows, but it was obvious… Oh! Another knight stepped in to face the coward and made short work of him. Yang cheered.

But Brienne was still unable to stand, and her saviour turned to face her, pointing his sword at her. She yielded and Yang booed. “No, Brienne!”

“No, Jon!” Ruby yelled, followed by Arya and Bran, and Yang turned to watch,

Jon was in a bad situation. He had lost his shield and was barely fending off the blows of a taller knight in heavy armour who slowly but surely was pushing him back. Yang looked around, but there were too few knights left and none of them were about to intervene.

Jon was good, but his opponent was better, and Yang winced when he caught a blow to the side that sent him stumbling, then another on the shoulder that made him drop his sword and yield.

“He gave a good showing,” Weiss said. “He was amongst the last ten to stand. Better than expected. Brienne as well.”

“And both will be lucky to stand tomorrow, with all the bruises they collected,” Blake said.

Yang nodded and watched the last four - three - knights standing as they faced each other. 

“Vacuan standoff,” Ruby commented. “Whoever attacks first is likely to get ganged up on.”

“Only if they’re not good enough to pull a surprise attack off,” Yang disagreed.

And as if they had heard her, one of the knights dashed forward, striking at one of his opponents, then whirling and catching the second right when that one tried to flank him, landing a hammer blow on the man’s sword arm.

But his first opponent was fast enough to attack before the knight could turn and struck with a combination of blows that smashed his shield to the side and left him open for a blow to the head. The knight didn’t recover from that and went down after a few more blows to the body, and the audience - including the nobles - cheered as he fell down and yielded.

Yang cheered as well. It wasn’t as exciting or fast as a sparring match at Beacon, but it had been a sight. “Let’s go check on our friends,” she said.

“Yes!” Ruby turned. “Are you coming as well?” she asked Bran and Arya.

“With Lord Eddard’s permission,” Weiss commented with a frown that had all three blush a little and made Yang snicker.

But Lord Eddard nodded, and so all of them were off to congratulate their friends. And to console them if needed - Jon probably was brooding already, thinking he had disappointed his family and friends even though he had been doing very well, especially for a boy his age.

*****

 

Chapter 14: The Battle of the Maidens

‘Some scholars try to cite the fact that the Ruby Order took part in the Hand's Tourney in the Battle of the Maidens, a special competition limited to the four of them, as proof that the tourney was restricted to men. This could not be further from the truth, as it overlooks or straight ignores the participation of Lady Brienne Tarth in the melee, which multiple sources confirm, both sympathetic and hostile to the lady in question or the Ruby Order. It is also clear, mostly thanks to sources from Storm's End's archives, that Lady Brienne was already a trained fighter when she took part in the contest, so the claim that she met the Ruby Order in King's Landing and, inspired by their skill, asked to be trained as a knight by them so she could take part in the tourney, can be dismissed as a factually wrong later addition to the myths surrounding the Order. But if Lady Brienne could fight in the melee - officially, and not disguised as a man, as some of the more fanciful tales add - then why didn't the Four Maidens themselves take part? Some sources claim that they were bribed with a contest of their own, and a sizable fortune, to keep them from humiliating the flower of Westeros's chivalry, preventing unrest amongst the nobility in a time of instability. That theory ignores that while the roots of the Succession were already laid during King Robert's reign, it is generally agreed that his reign was stable, especially after he had crushed the Greyjoy rebellion. Equally unfounded is the theory that King Robert didn't want to risk the Four Maidens’ beauty since they were known to fight without armour, relying on skill at arms to avoid being hurt. The claim that they fought without armour has long since been contested by every serious military scholar of the time and is likely an addition based on tales from a later era when armour started to fade from military use following the proliferation of firearms and colourful uniforms became common. Nevertheless, while there is no irrefutable proof, the most likely explanation lies in political struggles following the arrest of the Mountain that resulted in a compromise to satisfy everyone's honour, though we cannot say for sure who the involved parties were. This is based on several comments in surviving letters of the time that lauded King Robert's cunning in arranging what we would today call an exhibition match.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Margaery Tyrell held her breath when the signal sounded and her brother pushed his horse forward. Loras looked splendid in his shiny new armour, and his form was perfect as he rode down the lane, lance lowered already, aimed at his opponent. Still, she couldn't help worrying - jousting, even with tourney lances, was dangerous.

And Loras's opponent was Ser Jaime Lannister, one of the most famous, and infamous, knights of the realm. He had far more experience than her brother. In a joust, his age - he was more than double Loras's age - wouldn't be much, if any, hindrance. And he cut a dashing, dangerous figure with his white cloak trailing behind, wearing the best armour Lannister gold could buy. He had murdered the last king - and she wouldn't put it beyond him to kill Loras if given the chance to make it look like an accident.

No, she had to have faith in Loras! He was one of the best knights in Westeros! He wouldn't give the Kingslayer such a chance. He would…

She forced herself to watch as the two knights clashed while the spectators yelled, both lances hitting the other's shield and breaking on impact. Loras was leaning to the side as the two passed each other, but quickly straightened, while Ser Jaime appeared unmoved. 

Both saluted each other as they returned to their squires to replace their lances for the next pass. 

“Loras almost had him, Margaery!” Angia said next to her.

Margaery smiled at her and nodded, though both of them knew it wasn't true. Loras had been closer to being unhorsed than Ser Jaime.

People cheered as the two lined up again, and Margaery glanced around, unwilling to stare at her brother. The King was laughing, pointing with his free hand while his goblet was being refilled by his page. No surprise there - King Robert was known to love tourneys. He wouldn't have spent a fortune of gold on this otherwise. Lannister gold, mainly, if Grandmother's sources could be trusted.

The Queen, of course, was cheering for her brother, but Margaery couldn't help thinking it felt put on, almost fake - no, not fake; she wanted her brother to win, but there was more to it. Maybe she wanted Loras to lose even more than she wanted her brother to win? It was something to investigate.

“Go, Ser Loras! Go, Ser Jaime!” Lady Yang yelled, with both hands cupped around her mouth to let her voice carry better across the field. If Margaery had done this, made such a spectacle, Grandmother would have words with her.

The Queen openly scowled at her, even though ‘Team Ruby’ clearly had no favourite in this tourney. Was she jealous of Lady Yang? The woman was far younger than the Queen, and - in Margaery's honest opinion - far more beautiful as well. Her temper was also far more agreeable, and it was obvious that the King was very fond of her and her friends - though they were not sleeping together; Margaery could tell.

“They're starting again!” Angia told her, and Margaery whipped her head around in time to catch Loras spurring his horse onward once more. 

And once more, she held her breath, struggling not to close her eyes as the two knights clashed, and once again, neither knight fell as both lances were reduced to firewood. This time, Loras didn't even sway, and Margaery sighed with relief when both started to return to their squires for the next pass.

“Woohoo!” Lady Yang cheered again, as did her sister and leader of their group, Lady Ruby - the two were the most excited of her friends. Lady Weiss and Lady Blake were more restrained.

They were a conundrum, Margaery had to admit. Probably beyond even Grandmother's ability to unravel. They had the King's favour - at the cost of having the Queen's open disfavour - and they were friendly not only with Lord Renly but also with the King's Hand; spending a lot of time with three of his children. And Margaery had no doubt that Lady Blake causing the Mountain to be arrested for murder would be looked on with favour and interest by the Martells. And, according to Grandmother's sources, all four were far stronger than they appeared, although Margaery didn't know just how strong they were. Rumours claimed Lady Blake had easily beaten the Mountain, though she had heard that he had not been wearing armour and had drunk so much milk of the poppy that a lesser man would have died on the spot.

Nevertheless, the four foreign noblewomen were currently the most influential faction at the court by themselves, so why weren't they trying to solidify their position? Margaery had subtly touched on the subject of a betrothal when she had met Lady Weiss, but the noblewoman had deflected her proposal, and Margaery wasn't aware of any betrothals or proposals currently being considered by any of the girls. Apparently, they had turned down proposals by Lord Robb Stark, the heir to the North, and by Prince Joffrey himself! Margaery knew no family who would not have accepted either betrothal at once - well, except for the Martells who hated the Lannisters and Baratheons, and she would still give better than even odds of them accepting anyway.

It made no sense - Margaery couldn't fathom what game Team Ruby was playing. And that…

The trumpet starting the third pass interrupted her thoughts. She drew a deep breath through her suddenly clenched teeth and stared as Loras rode on. Was he faster than before? Yes, he was - Margaery rode her own prized mare often enough to tell. What was he planning?

The two knights bore down on each other, and Margaery tensed even more. Loras's lance wavered! Was he tired from the other passes? Why would…?

Loras whipped up his lance at the last moment before the two clashed, and it struck his opponent's shield at the perfect angle before breaking. 

Margaery gasped as Ser Jaime was lifted from his saddle and slid to the side, one foot splitting out of the stirrup. Was he…? Yes! Ser Jaime fell off his horse! Loras was the victor! Loras had won the Hand's Tourney!

She cheered as loudly as Lady Yang and Lady Ruby.

*****

Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Margaery had to resist touching the crown on her head as she took another sip from the excellent wine - the best and most expensive arbor gold; she recognised the vintage - at the feast. Loras had crowned her Queen of love and beauty! Oh, how the Queen had glared. Granted, Loras was her brother and knew better than to crown anyone else, but Margaery didn't think she didn't deserve the honour. Not even when comparing herself to Team Ruby. The Four Maidens were exotic and very beautiful, but there was more to a woman's beauty than mere appearance. Poise, grace and wit were as crucial as looks, and, of course, without perfect manners, not even the greatest beauty could truly shine.

“Congratulations, Lady Margaery!”

“Why, thank you, Lady Yang.” Margaery dipped her head with a friendly smile. Case in point. 

“Yes, congratulations! You deserve the honour!” Lady Ruby added.

“Indeed. Ser Loras may be your brother, but he clearly followed the chivalric ideal to be honest and true.” Lady Weiss nodded at her as well.

“I concur.” Lady Blake was as taciturn as Lady Margaery had heard, but her smile seemed as genuine as her friends’.

Team Ruby was either honest about Loras's choice or they were the best liars Margaery had ever met. She wasn't quite certain which was correct, but manners dictated her response. “Thank you!”

Lady Yang turned her head, looking over her shoulder, then frowned.

“Is something wrong, my lady?” Margaery asked.

“Nothing. Well, one of our friends is still brooding, and Lady Brienne has yet to arrive.”

“Ah.” They were talking about Stark's bastard son, then. The boy had fought well at the melee, or so Margaery had been told by Loras - she was no expert - so something must have happened if he wasn't celebrating his success. Had the ransom of those he had defeated been underwhelming? Or had he hoped to win the melee? He was a boy, and he might have overestimated his own prowess. Or… Had he hoped to win the heart of one of the Four Maidens? The boy spent a lot of time in their company, as Margaery had heard, and they were very attractive - and dressed so scandalously, even old men might be driven to foolish expectations. The boy might have deluded himself into thinking that if he won the tourney, it might overshadow the fact that he was a bastard. Or he had hoped to be legitimised as a reward. “Lady Brienne is well, I hope? She was struck hard in the melee - I feared for her health,” Margaery said.

“Oh, she's fine. Bruised as hell, but she's tough.” Lady Yang grinned. “Won't let that keep her down.”

And arbor gold would dull the pain, Margaery thought. At least, the bruises wouldn't harm her appearance - there was not much to be harmed. She harboured no ill will against Lady Brienne, but the kindest one could say about her looks was that she was plain. The worst… well, some of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting had complained about milk curdling in her presence. They were creatures of the Queen, and Lady Brienne was, by association with Team Ruby, placed firmly amongst those the Queen did not favour, but if Margaery was brutally honest, they were not that far off the mark.

Lady Weiss frowned. “Maybe I should check on her before she misses the first course.”

That was interesting. Team Ruby might hold Lady Brienne in higher regard than Margaery had expected if she was willing to fetch her in person. Although it did fit the tales of the Four Maidens’ kindness that Margaery's servants had passed on to her. Or they had a weakness for unfortunate people - Stark's bastard would certainly fit the description as well. Maybe..

“There she is!” Lady Ruby announced. “Oh, she looks nice!”

Margaery turned, a polite smile on her face, and found herself blinking. Lady Brienne had entered the great hall but she wasn't wearing an ill-fitting dress nor enough face paint or powder to weigh down a mule in a desperate attempt to pass as a beautiful woman.

No, Lady Brienne was wearing men's clothing - a very fine doublet and hose, with a touch of Braavos’ style; Margaery could tell - and tailored to fit her body much better than her usual clothes. She would have to inquire which tailor had managed that.

“Lady Brienne! Nice threads!” Lady Yang said as the other woman approached their group.

Lady Brienne looked confused for a moment before she nodded. “Thank you, my lady.”

She was wearing face paint, Margaery realised - though much less, or much more subtly applied than most women at court would choose. It didn't turn her into a striking beauty, but it did hide the bruise on her face and the other blemishes of her skin. It couldn't do anything about her broken nose, of course, or her teeth, but it did help. “Indeed,” Margaery said with a smile. She almost added a comment about how daring it was, though Lady Brienne would probably mistake the compliment for a jest - Margaery had heard how some men mockingly called her ‘Brienne the beauty’.

“Thank you, my lady.” Lady Brienne bowed her head. 

“Lady Brienne! You look very dashing today!” Lord Renly and Loras joined them.

“Thank you, my lord.” Lady Brienne blushed. “You are too kind.”

Margaery knew that Lord Renly was merely honest, of course, and the reasons why. But that was not something she could or wanted to discuss in public. Or with anyone except for her close family.

Instead she made polite conversation and tried to figure out if anyone from Team Ruby harboured similar interests. If they were not receptive to offers of marriage, then maybe there were other ways to forge closer ties with them.

*****

Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss had done good work! Ruby Rose beamed at Lady Brienne. Her partner was the best when it came to makeup and fashion. Well, except for Coco Adel, but she was an upper year Huntress. Weiss was Ruby's partner! And you could barely see where Lady Brienne's bruises were while the hose and the shirt - the doublet, she reminded herself - suited her perfectly. If only she were wearing her sword and shield as well! Maybe Ruby could design a collapsible shield for her that also served as a sheath for her sword… No, they lacked all the materials such a design would need. Although maybe a simpler version, a shield with an integrated sheath? Hmmm… That might work.

Her design work was interrupted by a not-so-soft elbow in her side and a whispered “Ruby!” from her partner.

“Sorry!” she mouthed, smiling embarrassedly. “So! That was a nice tourney, wasn't it?” she added a bit more loudly.

“It's not yet over,” Lord Renly said. “Tomorrow, we will be treated to your fight - the Battle of the Maidens.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded and tried not to wince at the name - ‘Maidens’ sounded so pretentious! (And it was probably incorrect, not that she would ever ask her friends about that!) “But the joust is the main event, right?”

“Normally, yes,” he replied. “Although I would wager that this time, things might turn out differently if my brother the King is to be believed.”

Yang laughed. “Oh, we'll do our best to put on a good show! Just don't complain if we wreck the ring.”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded. They wouldn't be able to easily repair whatever they broke in the match like Professor Goodwitch could thanks to her Semblance.

“Really?” Lady Margaery looked a bit doubtful, though she was polite about it. Unlike a certain Queen.

“You have never seen them spar with the Kingsguard, sister,” Ser Loras said. ”I have, and I am looking forward to seeing them fight in their melee.”

“You're not the only one!” Yang smashed her fist in her palm. “Watching all those contests makes me want to cut loose as well! I've got some pent-up energy to work off, and those twenty thousand gold dragons are calling for me!”

The others - those from Westeros - looked a bit confused but nodded anyway. Well, Yang's sentiments were clear. She had commented several times how she was looking forward to showing off.

Ruby snorted. Yang might be confident to win, but Ruby wouldn't hold back either.

“Don't bet on winning,” Weiss cut in with a toothy smile. “It's been quite a while since we gave our all in a sparring match.”

“Exactly! You must have grown rusty!” Yang replied with a matching smile.

Weiss scoffed in return. “We'll see tomorrow who has grown rusty.”

Ruby looked from her sister to her partner. Sure, she wanted to win as well, but they seemed to take this a bit too seriously. It wasn't as if they wouldn't share the money, anyway.

She glanced at Blake, who hadn't said anything yet. Blake was smiling subtly, but her eyes almost seemed to glint as she said: “Tomorrow should be interesting.”

“So, you have been holding back!” Lord Renly nodded. “My brother was right. And now I am even more curious to find out what you've been holding back. Lady Ruby isn't shy about demonstrating her own talents, so it's something different, right?”

“You will have to wait for our match,” Weiss told him. “I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise.”

“It'll be a blast!” Yang announced with a chuckle.

Ruby giggled at the comment, but Weiss rolled her eyes. “Not if I eliminate you before!” she said.

“I'd like to see you try!”

Ruby was wondering if she should step in - she was team leader, after all - but she noticed the Prince walking toward them. Well, she noticed Clegane, Sandor Clegane, approaching, the man was even taller than Lady Brienne and was the Prince's bodyguard, so the Prince should be with him. Or he with the Prince, whatever. And there was the Prince!

“Good evening, my prince!” she greeted him.

“Good evening, Lady Ruby.” He nodded at her, then at the others. “Uncle Renly. Lady Weiss. Lady Blake. Lady Yang. Lady Margaery. Lady Brienne. Ser Loras. Good evening.”

“Joffrey.” Lord Renly smiled at his nephew, but he looked more… polite than warm. Not for the first time, Ruby remembered - they were family, but they weren’t close. Then again, Lord Stannis and the King didn’t seem very close either. Nor Lord Renly and Lord Stannis. She felt bad for the Baratheons. You should cherish your family - you never knew when you might lose someone.

“Congratulations for your victory, Ser Loras. It was a close bout, and very tense,” the Prince went on.

“Thank you, my prince.” Ser Loras bowed in that graceful manner of his.

The Prince turned to smile at her. “I wanted to wish all of you luck for tomorrow. I am eagerly looking forward to seeing you demonstrate your true power.”

Ruby tried not to wince - they would still hold back some; they didn’t have enough Dust left to waste any of it on a sparring match. So, she felt a bit bad about nodding. “Yes. We usually don’t go all out when sparring.”

“It can be a bit hard on the training area,” Yang added with a fierce grin.

“More destructive than your usual sparring?” Lord Renly raised his eyebrows.

“Oh, yes!” Yang grinned.

“Some people sometimes forget to control themselves,” Weiss said with a glance at Yang, whose grin widened. “Also, we rarely have a training area large enough for a sparring match where we don’t hold back.”

The Prince tilted his head slightly to the side. “Lady Ruby doesn’t seem to have trouble controlling her magical speed when she’s training in the yard.”

“I don’t,” Ruby agreed. She had trained to fight even in enclosed spaces - you never knew when you had to hunt Grimm in a cave or so. “But with more space to use, I can use my Semblance better as well.” She couldn’t really use it to create a whirlwind if others were too close - well, she could, but that would be bad for the audience.

“Usually, the wider the area, the more options you have,” Blake added.

Yang shrugged. “It’s all the same for me. I hit things.”

Ruby frowned at her. With none of them using ammo in the fight, Yang couldn’t use her shotguns to boost her speed, but she wouldn’t have to worry about Ruby sniping her from afar, or Weiss using exotic Dust-enhanced glyphs. That meant she had an advantage. 

But Ruby had a plan for that. She just needed to settle some details.

“Do you require any special preparations?” the Prince went on. “We’ll provide you with anything you might need.”

“Oh, no - we can activate our Semblances as we want,” Ruby said. “We don’t need anything special.”

“Not even Dust?”

“Dust can enhance a Semblance - or any weapon,” Ruby replied. “But it’s not needed.”

“And will you be using Dust tomorrow? I remember hearing about Fire Dust,” the Prince said.

“We have to conserve our Dust charges in case we need them to get home,” Ruby explained. Or in an emergency. Even though she couldn’t think of an emergency they couldn’t handle without Dust. But Marwyn had told them that Dust might be the key to getting them home. Though he also thought Dust was magical, and it wasn’t - Weiss had explained that thoroughly.

“Ah, that’s too bad. I would have loved seeing you wield weapons enhanced with Dust. Though I assume you’d have to do that before the fight starts.”

“You can do it in the middle of the fight as well,” Ruby told him. “If you know how.”

“Dust is very versatile,” Weiss added. “Though you need to know how to use it or you’d risk hurting yourself, or worse, if you manipulate it.”

“Ah, yes - I sneezed when I met Weiss and almost blew us up with some loose Dust!” Ruby giggled at the memory.

“You left a crater in the ground,” Weiss said, rolling her eyes. But she was smiling fondly, so that was OK.

The Prince looked disappointed, but that couldn’t be helped - they really couldn’t waste Dust on a show. “You’ll be amazed at what we can do,” she told him, which made him smile.

Success!

*****

Weiss Schnee wanted to sigh - the Prince's attempts to find out more information about them were almost painfully transparent - but that would have been rude. And the Prince was a child; it wouldn't be nice at all to make fun of him for being curious about them just because he was a bit more obvious about it than the rest. More persistent, too. Still, he would have to wait until tomorrow to learn about their Semblances, like everyone else. They hadn't shown them to anyone, after all.

And she was relieved she had managed to shut down requests to use Dust. They had to conserve their reserves for emergencies. She didn't think Dust would be useful for getting home - it wasn't magical, despite Marwyn's opinion - but she couldn't completely dismiss the possibility that Dust might be needed in some way. Magic might have unique effects on Dust, after all - in fact, as Weiss had theorised with the Archmaester, interaction between Dust and magic might have been the reason for them being transported to this world. 

“Ah, you know how to play the game!” Lord Renly said with a smile. “You're a tease, Lady Ruby.”

Weiss pressed her lips together when Ruby blushed. Her partner and team leader shouldn't be so easily flustered by the simplest flirting. Still, she was two years younger. More innocent as well, at least in this area.

So Weiss nodded and took a small step forward, drawing the group's attention. “Pageantry is important - especially in a tournament.”

Lady Margaery smiled. “You just caused our expectations to rise even higher.”

“Yes, we did,” Weiss said with a smile. She was well aware of that. 

“And you won't be disappointed!” Yang chuckled again.

Weiss was about to comment again when she noticed Blake turning away from the group. What was she looking at? Ah. Lord Baelish was headed their way. Once again, he was dressed in the finest clothes, albeit a little understated compared to Lord Renly's attire. Since he had only a small fief, his wealth was all thanks to his position as Master of Coin, and Weiss was pretty certain that he was skimming off the top, so to speak. But that was expected, as she understood the situation, as long as you didn't take too much. 

He greeted all of them with the utmost politeness and a warm smile, though Lord Renly, once again, was polite at best, and the Prince looked bored - maybe even annoyed for a moment. Neither fact seemed to faze Lord Baelish. “As others have doubtless done so, I offer my congratulations to your victory, Ser Loras.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Oh!” Lord Baelish nodded at Lord Renly. “Since you're here. I have a question about our most infamous prisoner that you as Master of Laws would undoubtedly be able to answer.”

“Yes?” Now Lord Renly sounded wary. And the Hound was tense and looked as if he was about to growl.

Undeterred by either, Lord Baelish continued. “Will you be putting Ser Gregor on trial for his many, many past crimes as well? You might have to delay his trial even longer if you do, of course, since the Princes Martell will want to attend the trial in that case, to see the rapist and murderer of their sister and her children being brought to justice.”

Weiss’s eyes widened, and she heard Ruby gasp. Clegane had murdered - and raped - a noblewoman and her children? A princess, at that? And he had not been put on trial for that? That was shameful indeed!

Blake and Yang looked angry.

“The only crime he has been accused of so far is the killing of his guard,” Lord Renly replied. “No other charges have been brought forward yet.”

Were those just rumours then? They would have to look into this. Lord Eddard would likely know, wouldn’t he?

Lord Baelish shrugged. “They have not yet sent a raven with any demands? Curious. I would have expected them to rush to King's Landing to see justice - if late and only indirectly - be granted to their kin.”

Ruby nodded firmly. “Yes! People need such trials to get closure!”

That was correct. Weiss knew that from losing family and friends in a White Fang attack.

“They haven't brought forth any charges so far,” Lord Renly repeated himself. “Should they do, we'll have to consider that.”

Ser Loras shrugged. “As long as Clegane is put to death, who cares about the exact crime that sees him executed?”

“The Martells, I would think,” Lord Baelish said. “And the kin of all his other victims - provided they are still alive and will hear about this trial in time to attend.” He took a sip of wine from the cup he held in his left hand. “Of course, there’s also the question of who will be willing to face the Mountain in his trial by combat.”

“I would!” Sandor Clegane spat through clenched teeth. “The cunt burnt my face and killed my sister when we were children.”

Weiss froze for a moment. She had known about the origin of the facial scars, and had been appalled that such a crime had never been punished, but she hadn't been aware of such details - nor that Ser Gregor had murdered his own sister as well.

“Oh, no!” Ruby blurted out, looking at Clegane with pity in her eyes.

That would make the man even angrier, Weiss suspected.

“You are his brother, Clegane,” Lord Renly said. “No trial will see a champion turned kinslayer! The very notion would have the Septons protest!”

“Bah!” Clegane growled. “That monster is no kin of mine!”

“I am afraid that the law and the faith disagree,” Lord Renly said.

“But then, who will face Ser Gregor?” Lord Baelish asked again. “Even a Kingsguard might not fare well.”

“Any of us can face him!” Ruby said with a scowl.

“That would certainly ensure that Ser Gregor will not escape justice merely because he is the strongest knight in all of Westeros,” Lord Baelish said. “And it will prevent him from murdering someone else in the process.”

That was undoubtedly true - Blake hadn’t had any trouble subduing the man. And none of Team RWBY would want others to be killed in such trial by combat.

But if one of them fought for the court in such a - barbaric - trial by combat, they would do so knowing that if they won, their opponent would be executed. Who amongst them could face and bear that kind of weight?

Not Ruby, Weiss decided. She wouldn’t let her partner shoulder that burden.

*****

Blake Belladonna didn't regret taking down Ser Gregor. The man had killed his own guard without care and was, by all accounts, a serial rapist and murderer. But she did regret confronting him so openly. If she had realised the attention knocking him out would bring to her and her team, she would have opted for a more subtle course of action. Maybe sneak into his tent, render him unconscious and make it appear as if he had drunk himself into a stupor. On the other hand, that might not have led to his arrest - Ser Gregor's reputation certainly seemed to indicate that he could literally get away with murder. Multiple times.

Part of the reason was the protection by Lord Tywin Lannister, the Warden of the West and the King's father-in-law. But she was sure that the fact that as a noble, he was entitled to a trial by combat where his sheer size and strength would grant him a decisive advantage also played a role.

And, speaking of that… “If there is a trial by combat, I should be facing him - I saw the murder happen, I subdued him and I will testify against him.” This started because of her actions, and so it was her responsibility.

Clegane growled, but she ignored him.

“There might be concerns that as someone who defeated him once already, you becoming the court's champion would mean the outcome of the trial was already determined,” Lord Baelish pointed out.

“That's not actually true,” Lord Renly retorted. “I recall a number of trials where this was the case - one in particular where two feuding knights faced off after one had defeated the other in a tourney. If Lady Blake volunteers for this duty, I doubt she will be refused.”

“I don't doubt you, my lord, but I fear that not everyone will agree. And it doesn't take too much gold to influence opinions even when the truth of the matter is clear as day,” Lord Baelish said.

Yang snorted. “That sounds familiar.”

Blake nodded. It did. Corruption and rumour mongering were the same in Westeros as in Remnant, with just the details differing. “That won't change anything. My offer stands.”

“I salute your bravery, my lady,” Lord Baelish said. “Not many would dare to risk earning House Lannister's ire. Lord Tywin is known for paying back any perceived insults with interest. ‘A Lannister always pays his debts’, as the saying goes.”

“We're Huntresses. We are trained to brave even worse danger to do what's right,” Ruby said in a firm tone.

Blake nodded again. She didn't think backing off now would change anything if what she had heard about the head of House Lannister was correct; he was said to be proud even for a Westerosi nobleman. If her team backed down, they would be seen as weak, and Gregor Clegane would come after her anyway - she doubted that he would be able to bear being defeated by her; he had seemed far too proud, and far too violent, for that. And it would be better to deal with him in a trial than in the shadows - everyone would suspect her anyway, should anything happen to the man. 

Although there were good odds that after tomorrow's ‘Battle of the Maidens’ - a ridiculous name, especially for herself - several people would have to reconsider whatever they thought about Team RWBY. “This is my responsibility,” she said - mostly to make sure Ruby wouldn't believe it fell to her as their team leader to step into the ring.

“I don’t believe Lord Tywin will care that much if Ser Gregor is brought to justice,” Lord Renly said with a frown. “The Ser Gregor is one of his bannermen, but he has distanced himself from the Mountain in the past over his crimes.”

Well, that was what ‘rogue agents’ and ‘plausible deniability’ were for. Another thing that was the same in Westeros.

The Prince chuckled. “If Ser Gregor is found guilty, it would only be fitting if you brought him down, Lady Blake.”

She nodded at him with a polite smile. The boy was a bit too eager to see a man executed, but Ser Gregor had murdered a Queen and her little children once already, according to several sources, so the Prince might feel that an example had to be made in order to discourage everyone from repeating such a vile deed.

“We shouldn’t be talking about such dreadful things,” Lady Margaery spoke up. “My dear brother just won the joust, and Lady Brienne gave a good showing in the melee. And we're about to watch a great event on the morrow. We should be celebrating!”

“Yes! We should enjoy all the food!” Ruby exclaimed.

And Blake should be checking the food for poison. “Indeed,” she said. “I’ll be grabbing a bite to eat.”

“I'm feeling a bit hungry as well,” Yang said and fell in next to her as Blake turned away from the group.

Blake snorted softly. “I don't think anyone is going to attack me in the middle of the feast,” she whispered. And if they did, she could deal with them.

Yang flashed a grin at her in response. “Just because it’s unlikely doesn’t mean it's impossible. And I won't leave my partner alone here with all those nobles.”

Blake could handle those as well. She wasn't the naive girl anymore who had fallen for that bastard. But she appreciated Yang’s support anyway and smiled at her partner. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Blake was about to reply again when her nostrils widened. She knew that whiff of perfume! The spy master behind those child agents was in this room - and she had his scent. Now she just had to narrow it down - and hope that no one else wore the same perfume, though since she hadn't smelt it before, neither at the tourney or here at the feast, she gave herself good odds of finding the man.

“What's wrong?” Yang asked in a low voice.

Blake wrinkled her nose. “Just a stench.”

Her partner's eyes widened for a moment when she realised what Blake meant, followed by a firm nod. “Let's take the scenic route.” 

“Yes.” Blake hooked her arm into Yang's as she had seen noblewomen do when walking together and started to steer them through the crowd, keeping track of the scent. Following it like a dog - ugh - would have been a stupid mistake; people noticed that. But aimlessly walking through the crowd, noting where the scent grew stronger and where it faded? That would take longer, but was far more subtle. 

Soon, she had narrowed down the location to a spot near but not in a corner, where…

…Varys, the official spy master of the realm, was talking to a nobleman.

Blake felt really stupid. Of course, the most obvious suspect for running spies on the Red Keep was the King's own Master of Whispers. How could she have missed that possible suspect?

She chuckled a little and started to steer Yang towards the tables with the food. The others would find that gaffe very amusing, she had no doubt, once she could tell them about it.

Of course, they would still have to do something about the spying - and, perhaps, ask a few pointed questions about why the King’s spy master was using little children as agents.

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

This was it! The big event! The Battle of the Maidens! Yang Xiao Long smiled widely as she took in the field - not that she wasn't already familiar with it; she and the others had helped set it up after the melee. They knew best how wide and sturdy it had to be for a real fight amongst Team RWBY, after all.

And it was wide - they had enlarged the area where the melee had been fought. And limited the spectators to one, slightly narrow part of the circle. It had taken a bit of an effort to get more stands built next to the one for the nobles so the smallfolk could safely watch, but if the alternative was RWBY holding back so the audience wouldn't be in danger, and the King wanted to have his all-out battle…? You built more stands. And the workers had finished setting up the walls as well, scattered in the centre of the area like some unfinished maze. They were made of brick, small and not very high, and wouldn’t stand up to a glancing blow from a Huntress, but they could hide you for a moment, and that could be crucial.

She smashed her gauntlets together. “So… may the best Yang win!”

“You wish!” Weiss replied at once from her left.

“You won't have an easy victory!” Ruby declared. 

She needed to work on her trash talk, Yang found.

Blake merely snorted, softly, and Yang didn't have to glance at her partner to know she'd be smiling slyly. She did it anyway, of course, and flashed her a grin.

Sure, all members of Team RWBY were great Huntresses-in-training, but when it came to fighting other people, Yang had the advantage - her Semblance assured it. And she wasn't quite as handicapped as the others by the lack of Dust. She couldn’t use her shotguns, but none of the others could use Dust either. That meant Yang didn't have to worry about Ruby sniping her or Weiss using Dust-enhanced Glyphs to take her out from outside her range. Or Blake using her pistol, though that pea-shooter would only serve to fuel Yang's Semblance.

Sure, Yang couldn't quite pull off her best moves without the recoil from Ember Celica, which cut down on her mobility some, but it wasn't that hard to compensate for.

“They're waiting for us to enter,” Blake commented.

“Right!” Ruby nodded. “Let's not leave the King waiting. And the others.”

Yang nodded firmly as they started walking across the field to stand in front of the King and the other nobles.

“Team Ruby!” The King stood up and waved at them.

“Your Grace!” Ruby replied, and all of the team bowed.

“Are you ready to do battle?” the King bellowed. 

Next to him, Lord Eddard looked as stony as ever, but the Prince leaned forward with an eager expression. Without TV and games, this was probably the best entertainment he’d ever see. The Queen, though, scowled. Yang wondered why she had attended at all - but she probably felt she would appear weak or something if she stayed home.

“Yes!” Ruby nodded and unfolded Crescent Rose, then swung it around so the scythe rested against her shoulder - and made the crowd gasp at the same time with their first glimpse at a mechashift weapon.

Weiss drew Myrtenaster with a flourish and saluted with her blade. “We are.”

“Yes.” Blake drew Gambol Shroud's blade, leaving the sheath on her back.

Yang smashed her gauntlets together. “Yes!”

The King turned to address the crowd. “This will be the final event of the Hand's Tourney! The Battle of the Maidens! You're about to see the strongest people in the world fight it out - a display of skill and power you've never seen before!”

The crowd - mostly the smallfolk - roared and cheered. The nobles, as usual, were a bit more restrained, especially those close to the Queen, with some exceptions like the Stark children, Lord Renly, Ser Loras and Lady Margaery. Not Lord Baelish, though, she noted. Or Varys. He was acting as if he wasn’t interested in the event at all - which wasn’t very convincing for someone who sent children to spy on them. Lord Stannis and Melisandre were silent as well, but that was probably normal for the King’s brother, and the priestess was staring at Team RWBY as if her life depended on it. As was Marwyn, actually - for once, the Archmaester had forsaken his research in the library and had come to attend the tourney. Well, he’d love the display!

“Alright! Let’s get ready!” Ruby announced, and Team RWBY split up, spreading out until they formed a rough square outside the walled section, with plenty of space between them - and between them and the audience.

“Good luck everyone!” Ruby yelled. “May the best Huntress win!”

“Thank you, sis!”

“I didn’t mean it that way!”

Yang grinned and took up a stance - mostly for show. The others followed suit.

And then the trumpets sounded, and the fight was on!

Yang dashed forward, straight at Ruby, one fist drawn back for a punch, crashing through a wall in the way and sending bricks and dust flying. 

As expected, her sister activated her Semblance and vanished - or almost vanished. Yang threw herself to the side when she caught a few petals in the corner of her eye, then to the ground when Ruby reappeared, swinging her scythe in a diagonal slash that missed her by a foot and cut another wall in half before ripping up the ground.

Yang kept rolling while the crowd cheered and came up in a crouch, blocking another attack from Ruby before countering with a kick that caught her sister in the chest and sent her back - just in time to block an attack from Weiss, who had managed to get close.

Blake tried to use the opportunity to strike at Weiss from behind but her blow was stopped by a Glyph.

“As if I had not expected this!” Weiss gloated - though she gasped when she had to hide behind another Glyph to stop a swipe from Crescent Rose.

The crowd roared.

“Time to get serious!” Yang yelled and charged forward. Weiss threw a third Glyph her way, but Yang slid around it, twisting into a spinning kick as she did which…

…missed Weiss as she dodged by taking a step back. 

Yang kept turning around herself and dropped into a crouch that turned the kick into a sweep when Blake tried to stab her in the side, but her partner jumped over Yang’s leg and Gambol Shroud’s edge slid along Yang’s ribs.

“First Blood!” Blake said with a smile - which shattered when Weiss lunged with her own blade.

Yang twisted, catching Blake as she repositioned herself, but her fist only struck another clone while Blake’s own attack struck her other side. 

Before Yang could follow her, she caught a glimpse of red and darted to the side just in time to dodge Ruby appearing in the middle of them and swinging Crescent Rose around in a wide arc that cut just below Weiss’s glyph.

Once again, the girl managed to evade the blow, though, and Blake used a clone to jump back just out of the scythe’s arc, which ended carving up a part of the ground and leaving a long, shallow trench.

Yang took a few steps back, frowning as she blocked another attack by Ruby, and then had to avoid a couple of Glyphs that tried to box her in with a few acrobatic moves that had the crowd roaring again. 

Both Weiss and Blake were good, but those attacks should have clipped them at least. Had they been holding back? Or… ah! Yang chuckled - her friends had been training for quite some time without using their Semblances and had had to dodge the hard way. That was like training with a handicap! Of course they would be better at dodging!

But it also meant they hadn’t been using their Semblances except for the few times they had gone and trained in isolation. So, they weren’t quite as good with them as they could be.

On the other hand, Yang had been training hard and her Semblance didn’t really affect her moves. Grinning, she dashed forward, headed for Weiss. 

Weiss saw her coming as she parried a series of attacks from Blake, who was using both Gambol Shroud’s blade and her sheath now, and threw another Glyph in front of Yang before creating a series of them to quickly climb into the air, jump by jump.

Yang knew better than to follow her - she’d end up jumping onto a Glyph just as it disappeared - and changed course to go for Blake. She jumped over the crack someone’s attack had left in the ground and kicked a few loose bricks into dust to hide her position from the left side. Ruby dashed past them from the right, though, Crescent Rose flashing, and Yang took a glancing blow in exchange to catching Blake just when her partner used a clone to jump back.

This time, Yang’s fist connected, and Blake ploughed a furrow in the ground as she was sent back a few yards. 

“First real strike!” Yang grinned, then stepped to the side when she saw Weiss diving at her, Myrtenaster aimed straight down.

As expected, Weiss used a Glyph to change course, and so was too slow to create another one to stop Yang or evade when Yang jumped straight up, deflected Myrtenaster and grappled her. “Gotcha!”

Weiss hit her in the face with surprising speed - another trick she had picked up from Ser Barristan - but Yang could take dozens of such hits without flinching and paid her back with interest, landing half a dozen punches on Weiss’s head and upper body before they crashed in the ground and Yang had to roll to the side, out of the shallow crater, to…

…roll directly into Blake’s next attack. She managed to deflect the blade stabbing at her face, but the sheath caught her in the hip. And Weiss would have recovered by now and… Where was Ruby? Yang kicked Blake, catching a clone, then smashed her fist in the ground, sending up a cloud of rocks and dirt to make Blake’s next attack miss, and glanced around. 

She couldn’t see Ruby. No petals, not sneaky little sister dropping from the sky - and she couldn’t bury through the ground, could she? There! At the edge of the area!

Before Yang could figure out why Ruby had withdrawn so far from the centre of the area, Weiss and Blake were both coming for her - maybe she should have cut down on the trash-talk before the match - and Yang was forced to summersault back to avoid both blades and the cleaver, then block the follow-up attacks. 

She caught a few more blows - her Semblance was filling up - and got both back with a few strikes and one kick herself, when she saw Ruby vanishing in a red streak. A red streak that came at them in a wide curve, circling them.

Shit.

Before Yang could disengage from Weiss’s next Glyph-boosted attack, Ruby had closed in and Yang and the other found themselves inside a hurricane. Yang hit the earth, burying both her fists in the ground, but she felt the force of the wind pulling at her - that wouldn’t hold her. 

Blake had lashed Gambol Shroud’s ribbon to a wrecked but still standing wall, but she was flung around as if she was a tethered ragdoll instead, and Weiss…

…hadn’t even tried to stand her ground? Yang saw that the other Huntress was flying through the air a moment before she herself was ripped off the ground and thrown in the air.

My Semblance can take it! she told herself as she was spun around. Maybe.

Though before she was dragged up too high, the hurricane suddenly weakened - and then collapsed.

Yang twisted in the air - she wasn’t part cat like her partner, but Dad had taught her and Ruby how to fall right after he caught them on the roof for the first time - and managed to land pretty well. What had happened?

Then she saw Ruby slowly getting up from the ground, looking a bit dizzy. “Ow! I’m out. Good move, Weiss!”

She was standing at the end of a row of slightly off-set Glyphs circling them like dominoes. Weiss, who was landing gracefully at the other end, must have been creating dozens of those in Ruby’s path, spaced out so she couldn’t evade and smashed straight into - and through - them. Smart.

But Weiss couldn’t quite hide how much that had taken out of her, and Yang grinned while she charged, zig-zagging, across the torn ground towards her. “You took out my sister! Prepare to die!”

Weiss whirled, Myrtenaster flashing, but Yang had her number now. She dropped under the blade’s point and slid over the ground, legs spreading. Weiss tried to jump up, but Yang twisted and pushed herself up with her arms. Her legs closed around Weiss, and Yang twisted again, slamming her into the ground. 

When she managed to grab Weiss’s left hand holding her blade, it was over: Yang hit her in the face once, twice, three times, until Weiss yielded.

Two down! That left…

Blake caught Yang straight in the back when she pulled away from Weiss, and Yang was thrown forward, barely missing Weiss, while she tore up the ground with her limbs.

That was it! Yang jumped to her feet and activated her Semblance. 

The crowd gasped again, yelling when her Aura lit up. “Blake!” she roared as she dashed toward Blake. Her Aura was almost depleted, but her Semblance was up. She was on fire!

Blake fell back, trying to dodge by leaving clones in her wake, but Yang knew her. Better than most. She waved around the clones, the draft from her passing disrupting them, passed straight through some of them, as she closed in, fist cocked back for a strike with all her stored power.

Blake tried to fool her with another clone, but Yang crashed through it without releasing her stored power - and then braked, boots tearing up two more furrows in the ground, when Blake whipped to the side, before pouncing at her partner.

“YOU. ARE…”

She had her. Too close for any more tricks - no matter where Blake jumped after releasing her next clone, Yang would have her. Blake tried to whip up dust and dirt with a kick to conceal herself, but Yang was too close! Too fast!

“GOING…”

She dashed through the thin cloud. And there was the clone! Yang charged in with her shoulder, brushing the clone aside with her shoulder as she hit the retreating real Blake behind her with her fist, releasing her stored power. “DOWN!”

Blake disintegrated in front of her, and Yang’s heart skipped a beat. Had she just killed…?

Something hit her from behind, slashing against her back. Yang whirled and caught another slash in the side - from yards away! Aura Slash! She raised her arms to block the next but was a bit too slow, too spent, and Blake’s slash hit her right in the chest. Yang stumbled back a step, then raised her hand in defeat. 

She panted as she let her arms fall at her side, her Aura nearly broken. “Damn! You used the cover from he dust to create a clone out of my sight and then posed as a clone!” She had played Yang perfectly!

Blake nodded with that faint, proud smile Yang knew so well, then turned to face the stands, raising her blade above her head.

After a moment of silence, the crowd roared.

*****

 

Chapter 15: Interludes I

‘No serious treatise on the Four Maidens could skip the Battle of the Maidens even though not many scholars have actually braved the challenge of going through all the different reports and sort out which were trustworthy eye witnesses and which were blatant exaggerations added after the fact, often years afterwards, when facts had long given way to myths, and political - and sometimes religious reasons - dictated how the accounts were written or ‘corrected’. And, indeed, when we dismiss the obvious religious iconography of the Maidens ascending to Heaven on holy symbols, walking through wildfire unscathed, conjuring whirlwinds out of thin air and appearing in multiple places at the same time, and also dismiss the claim that they used magic - all modern scholars of the field agree on that; and until today, none of the practitioners of magic in the world have managed to duplicate the feats described - what is left is still a display of not only fighting skills without peer, but a fighting style so advanced and acrobatic, it left most of the audience shocked, performed amongst obstacles erected for this battle so they could show off their feats under the best conditions - not unlike some of the shows acrobats perform today, if with a far more martial bent. One has to keep in mind that unlike today, many among the audience were experienced knights and would have been able to judge the Maidens’ skills objectively. For them to be as impressed as to consider the displayed martial abilities supernatural means that they were truly in a class of their own. 

Though what the Ruby Order did is not nearly as important as its reception by the populace, smallfolk and nobles alike. Whether one calls a particular event a riot or a brawl largely depends on semantics, but back then, the answer depended on which part of the various factions at court one belonged to - those who downplayed the scope of the incident to halt criticism of the gold cloaks, and those who wished to exaggerate the impact for their own purposes. Even amongst the smallfolk, however, the impact of the Battle of the Maidens was sometimes divisive, though overall, their display was received favourably by the population of King's Landing.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“And you claim that wasn’t magic? Would you care to revise your opinion now?”

Grand Maester Pycelle ignored Marwyn's puerile gloating. It wasn't important. Not in the face of what he had just seen before him. He had known that Team Ruby was holding back - they had said so themselves, confirming his own sources who had observed their training - but he had never imagined to what extent they had been hiding their power. They hadn't merely been holding back their strength, although they had done so as well, as the torn up landscape gave testimony to, but they had been hiding powers that could only be called magical.

Lady Weiss had been creating glowing sigils out of thin air that could carry a grown person through the air - or stop a charge from a mounted knight, no, from one of those war beasts used in the East! And she had done so effortlessly, lining up dozens of them to both corral her opponents and take to the sky herself.

Lady Ruby had run so fast, she had created a whirlwind that had picked up her friends and thrown them through the air! A whirlwind that Pycelle had felt all the way back on the stands!

Lady Yang had been on fire - literally. She had fought while burning! A living blaze!

And Lady Blake had… multiplied. She had split in two, forming a duplicate of herself, and had repeated that feat several times in close succession. Copies that were, for all purposes alive but, when struck, dissolved into shadows. An army of herself. No wonder she had won that battle.

Pycelle had been aware before the tourney that those four maidens could lay waste to any army Westeros could field. Blades and other weapons bounced off their bodies while they could strike with enough force to easily break stone and metal. No men-at-arms or sellswords, much less peasant levies, would stand long against such foes before breaking. Knights might last a little longer, driven by their pride, but the number of knights who would throw away their lives fighting an invulnerable foe merely because their honour demanded it was far too small to keep even knights from being routed.

But now? Now he knew that things were even worse than he had thought. The four commanded magic of the sort not seen since the Age of Heroes - or not at all. The Rhoynar had been said to control water, and even brought down dragons with it. The Valyrians had sacrificed countless slaves to fuel their dark blood magic rituals. But not even in their prime had they commanded magic as effortlessly as those four girls had done. Pycelle was not as well-versed about magic as Marwyn, but he knew enough - and would have realised so even if he had not merely by observing Marwyn's reaction to the battle - that what he had seen was beyond even the practitioners in Asshai and Qohor.

One of them could wreck King's Landing by herself without trying. Together, they could easily lay waste to the countryside. And judging by what Pycelle had seen, he doubted that even dragons could faze those girls. Lady Yang certainly didn't have to fear dragonfire, and, judging by the lack of concern from the others, neither did they. And between magical sigils that floated in the air, whirlwinds that tore people apart, and the strength to jump over buildings, not even flight would keep a dragon safe.

“Have you been shocked out of your wits, Pycelle?”

Now that was uncalled for! Pycelle glared at Marwyn. “I was merely contemplating what we just saw.”

“Magic. We saw magic. Magic more powerful than anything known to man!” Marwyn’s wide smile looked more than a little mad.

But that didn't mean he was wrong. Pycelle nodded. “Yes.” Then he took a deep breath, doing his best to avoid showing how shaken he still was. “We'll have to report this, of course. With as much detail as we can.”

Marwyn nodded with a very smug expression. “I am looking forward to being vindicated.”

Pycelle snorted. “We're facing a threat unlike anything - at least equal to Aegon's conquest, if not even greater - and you care about being proven right?”

Marwyn chuckled. “If you were an Archamaester, you'd not even bother to ask.”

Pycelle clenched his teeth. He was the Grand Maester. His counsel could decide the fate of the realm. Someone who spent their entire life in the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake had no right to look down on him.

But settling that could wait until they had written their reports. For the Order, since there was no way Pycelle would let Marwyn be the only one reporting this. And for Lord Tywin, of course - the Warden of the West needed to know about this so he could plot his course with the necessary information lest he ran afoul of Team Ruby.

And, Pycelle added with a sinking feeling, so Lord Tywin could move to rein in his daughter the Queen if she persisted in antagonising the Four Maidens. Though after this display, not even the famously stubborn and prideful Queen would continue with her attempts to snub and annoy Team Ruby.

At least he hoped so.

“So, I will head over to offer my congratulations,” Marwyn said as he got up. “I'll head over once I have finished my report and it's ready to be sent.”

Right. The Archmaester was on friendly terms with those… those immensely powerful maidens, Pycelle reminded himself. Marwyn had pledged, or so the story went, to help them find their way home to their world - and Pycelle no longer doubted that they came from another world. Not at all. Such power was not native to this world.

He had to consider this as well - and report it. To both the Citadel and Lord Tywin. If Marwyn succeeded in sending them home… That would undoubtedly be the best possible, and least dangerous, solution to the problem they presented.

Provided Marwyn was prevented from duplicating their powers, of course.

*****

Outside King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Tyrion Lannister kept clapping and smiling while Lady Ruby and her friends walked up to the King even though he wasn't sure if he should flee instead. He had known that the four girls were holding back - Jaime had confirmed it, and even the King had noticed it - but Tyrion had not expected just how much they had been hiding. Not merely their power, though seeing them run through brick walls without noticing would have been bad enough for his peace of mind. 

No, they had revealed new abilities, each of them more terrifying than the other. Lady Ruby could run faster than the wind - she could literally create a storm in her wake to send people flying.

But that paled in comparison to Lady Weiss creating magical discs as easily, and as quickly, as waving her hand - and by the dozens. Tyrion had not studied magic in any depth, but what he had read had been clear about the fact that magic took effort and time - and a sacrifice. Fortunately, he had had the presence of mind to glance at the red priestess Stannis had brought to court when Lady Weiss had first started using her power, and he had caught the sheer shock and terror on the woman's face, before a smile had replaced it.

And Lady Yang! She had been literally on fire, with flames covering her entire body. And it hadn't been a trick of the mind - he had spotted the trampled grass catching fire near her. And yet, she had not burnt - she had used the blaze to fight, daring people to strike her and be consumed by her flames. 

But Lady Blake had not been fazed. And why would she have been fazed when she could not only use her blade to strike from afar, sending magic… not arrows, nor bolts, more like slashes given form, in a way, at her opponent, but could split herself in two - or more parts - to fight. 

Beware the quiet ones, he thought as Lady Blake stepped up to the cheering King. The other members of her group were more boisterous or more outgoing, but Lady Blake was the most dangerous. 

And Tyrion's dear, demented sister had spent the last few months doing everything she could think of to antagonise Team Ruby. He could only hope that she would finally realise how outclassed she was, and stop. She had seemed shocked enough during the battle for such a realisation.

But would it last? Or would she manage to convince herself that fighting those girls wouldn't lead to her ruin as soon as she managed to annoy them enough? He had to talk to Jaime; the last thing his family - or the realm - needed was Cersei doing something stupid out of wounded pride. She was like Father in that regard, although while she had inherited all of Father's pride, most of his intelligence had skipped her.

The smallfolk broke out in loud cheering again when the King declared Lady Blake the champion of the tourney and handed over a golden crown. Lady Blake stared at it for a moment, suddenly looking confused, before she bent her neck and let the King crown her.

The smallfolk cheered their hearts and lungs out. Well, for them, there probably wasn't much of a difference between being at the mercy of their lords and being at the mercy of Team Ruby. But the nobles… Many of them who didn't know Team Ruby as well as Tyrion did just had a rude awakening.

Unfortunately, Tyrion thought as he glanced at his scowling sister, Cersei is obviously not amongst them.

He would have to speak to Jaime and tell him to rein in their sister. And send another letter to Father about this threat to their family. Before things escalated past the point where amends could be made. The girls were far more patient than any other noble he knew, especially given their horrifying power - albeit that might be why they were so patient; no one in Westeros could threaten them - but everyone's patience had limits, and some, such as Clegane, had already found out where some of those limits lay for Team Ruby.

If only Ser Gregor had listened to his order to avoid the four girls. But he hadn't, and Father would blame Tyrion for it, as he usually did, as if it was his fault that the Mountain had thrown a fit and not only killed a guard but then attacked a friend of the King. Tyrion wasn’t the one who had kept that monster around to unleash on their enemies, should the occasion arise. Nor was he the one who had sent it to rape and kill Targaryen royalty.

Maybe he could use the fact that Lady Yang had crushed a knight's balls beyond any hope of recovery and the Maesters were still not sure if he would survive, maybe crippled, to his advantage? No, making a fuss about that would be pointless. Whether the knight lived or died - and many in his place would probably prefer death over living with their manhood crushed - didn’t matter. He had insulted Lady Yang, and then, when she had thrown him to the ground in a - especially in hindsight - remarkable show of mercy and restraint, had attacked her with a sword. The fault was all his. Not that Lady Yang would have been brought to trial even if things had been different; Not only was she a favourite of the King, although not in the usual meaning of the word, but no one with even half their wits would try to bring any of the Four Maidens to justice. Well, except for Lord Stannis, of course.

Between the mess with the Mountain - Tyrion hadn't missed how Team Ruby had reacted to the tale of poor Princess Elia and her children, and everyone knew Father had given the orders to murder them - and Cersei determined to throw her life away for her pride, Tyrion had his work cut out for him if he wanted to save his family from destruction much less establish an alliance with the girls.

Preferably before Father arrived in King's Landing. Tyrion had no illusions how Father's usual manner and methods would be received by Lady Ruby and her friends. And how Father would react to their usual manners. Or lack thereof.

He kept smiling and clapping with the rest of the crowd - including the nobles - in between emptying the wineskin he had brought with him. If he was to survive this, he needed a drink.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Sitting in his office as Master of Coin, Lord Petyr Baelish took a deep breath. And then again. And once more. He had to stay calm. As he had on the way back from the tourney site. Not unfazed, he was not keeping up an appearance like a knight; that would have made people wary of him, but calm and controlled.

No matter that he had just seen four little girls demonstrating power beyond his wildest expectations. Enough power to tear down any enemy - power to reshape the land itself. Literally.

This didn't truly change anything, he reminded himself. He had known before that those four could lay waste to an army. It didn't matter that they could lay waste to two, or ten armies. That kind of power didn't matter since he wasn't going to fight them, anyway.

He was going to use them.

Yes.

He closed his eyes and let his breath out, then drank a glass of wine - arbor gold.

Yes, he was going to use them. They were more powerful than anyone else - more powerful than even the Targaryens when they still rode dragons.

But they were little girls. Inexperienced. Naive. Ignorant, And gullible. He had talked to them often enough to have their measure. They were as easy to manipulate as the King was - no, even more so; the King occasionally displayed cunning and insight. Petyr had experience with getting girls to work for him in his ventures.

Those girls? They knew nothing about Westeros. Not surprisingly, since they had arrived in the frozen North and befriended the Starks, and Lord Eddard was the single most naive lord in all of Westeros. He had filled their heads with silly notions about honour so they knew nothing about how the realm was actually ruled. In a manner, Petyr was thankful to Lord Eddard - any other Lord of his rank would have already bound the girls to himself one way or the other.

But as things were, the girls were not a threat - not to Petyr - but an opportunity. For all their power, they were weak where it counted. They cared far too much about the smallfolk, even the scum from the slums - Petyr's spies had told him about their encounters with beggars, thieves and their ilk. They spent their time with Stark's children and had a soft spot for street urchins, always willing to hand out coin to beggars. And since they were girls, they also cared far too much about men accosting women.

The only time they had truly used their power, had hurt anyone, was when faced with men trying to assault them. Two knights had done so, used to taking women when they could, and two knights had suffered grievously for it. But thieves? Those had been let go without even a lashing.

Their reaction to Petyr’s story about the fate of Lady Elia and her children further proved it. They had no idea about how Westeros worked. About how power was to be used. 

Petyr nodded firmly. Yes, he could use them for his own goals. 

He would use them.

He just needed to present things just right to have them deal with his enemies and obstacles and create more opportunities for him. And he knew how to do that - Lord Eddard was already fooled, and the girls would follow.

Oh, yes. Those girls would work for him. And once they were under his control… Well, they were exotic beauties.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“The dust. It all comes down to the magic dust.” Prince Joffrey Barathen nodded firmly as he paced in his quarters. The dog didn't answer, but he hadn't expected him to - he was Joffrey's sworn sword, a brute, not a mind to be picked when planning how to achieve the power of gods.

“Even when fighting each other, they kept the dust a secret. Even when that would, as they said themselves, handicap some of them more than others. The magic must be in the dust.” 

Joffrey knew that - he had eliminated all other possible explanations. If training hard would grant you such powers, the Kingsguard would be the equal to Team Ruby. And it wasn’t the blood - he had overheard enough of Team Ruby's talk to deduce that while everyone in their world had the potential to be as strong as they were, they had weak peasants as well. They had to ‘activate’ their powers.

And that, unfortunately, this ‘activation’ didn't require a sacrifice like the Valyrian blood magic the Maester had mentioned, or the old magic of the North that Father’s friend had attributed to those ‘Children of the Forest’ and their holy trees. Lady Ruby and her group's shocked reaction had clearly shown that they were not sacrificing people to fuel whatever ritual they used; Joffrey knew they were not faking that. 

If only it were not so - there were more than enough people Joffrey could sacrifice for such a ritual. Thieves, murderers and other criminals, for one. Like the Mountain. Cutting the throat of the strongest knight in Westeros - or gutting him and watching him slowly die, writhing helplessly while his blood fed a ritual - would certainly have granted Joffrey great powers! He licked his lips at the - sadly not real - thought of flexing his new power while the light left the Mountain's eyes. Ah…

But it had to be the dust from their world. It could be used to enhance their power - they had admitted that - and if it could enhance their powers, it could grant them as well. At the very least, it should make you as strong and tough as Team Ruby. It was unknown in Westeros, and they had little of it left, but still enough to work magic - they had said so themselves when they had told Father that they wouldn't use it in their battle.

And what a battle it had been! “Have you ever imagined the likes of Team Ruby, Hound?” he asked. “That much power!”

The dog grunted something, and Joffrey frowned. The dog wasn't even paying attention, just staring at his cup - and why was he drinking so much when the feast was mere hours away? “Hound?”

That made the man look at him, and Joffrey drew a sharp breath at the sight of the man's expression. The dog’s eyes were wide and he was almost snarling! What would…? Oh! Joffrey smirked. “They're terrifying, aren't they? Especially Lady Yang.”

Another muttered curse followed, but Joffrey paid more attention to the dog's body - he was trembling. Despite his strength, he was terrified by the power Team Ruby had revealed. Weak.

Joffrey was not as weak, though. He wasn’t afraid of power - it was his birthright. He couldn't wait to wield that power himself. Father and mother would be so proud - and once Team Ruby left, no one would be able to contest his power! People would bow to him as they did to Team Ruby. People would respect and fear him. And with good cause - he wasn't squeamish like Lady Ruby and her friends. He would crush any threat to the realm. He would make examples of his enemies until everyone bowed to him,

He would be the most powerful King of Westeros, ever!

He only needed the magic dust - and the knowledge of how to use it. Team Ruby guarded that knowledge, but Joffrey was smart. He could read between the lines and figure out how to use dust. He just needed to know a bit more.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Melisandre had practised her craft, had been blessed by R’hllor, for countless years. She had been raised in Asshai, had seen the worst and best Shadowbinders could do. She had touched the R'hllor's might herself, had seen visions in the fire that would have driven lesser minds mad.

And yet, she had never seen the like of what she had observed today. The powers Team Ruby had displayed were beyond what magic could accomplish. Not in scope - she was aware, had even seen, in visions and with her own eyes once, what the Valyrians had managed to achieve with blood magic, and what the girls had done would have paled in comparison. But that had taken a ritual, and countless slaves' lives bled dry to fuel it.

No, it was the speed and ease of use that stood out. None of the magic she was familiar with, neither the might of the Shadowbinders nor the deeds of the most experienced fleshcrafters, came as easily or quickly as the four women's use of their power - or as cheaply.

That was what would have proven, if she had ever doubted her visions, that those four were from another world: Magic always demanded a price. The stronger the power it granted you, the higher the price the caster or their sacrifice paid. And yet, ‘Team Ruby’ - and wasn't that a fateful name? - had worked magic without paying any price. A power truly beyond this world.

“What do you make of them?”

She turned to look at Lord Stannis. He didn't want her to recount what she had seen; he had watched the same fight she had. “They are genuine, my lord. They are from another world. As my vision told.”

He nodded. “So, are the Others dead then? You've found your Azor Ahai?”

He seemed remarkably calm about this, for all that had happened. Melisandre had never outright stated that he was the prince who was promised - certainly not when she had still been searching to confirm her visions’ information - but she had dropped hints about her suspicion. Not merely to flatter him and make him more receptive to her counsel either; he had fit the visions she'd had. Dragonstone, his home, undoubtedly was a place of salt and fire. And yet, the Others had been killed already; R'hllor had shown her that every time she had sought an answer. The lands of eternal winter covered in snow but not frozen under ice, devoid of all life. The Wall standing tall, not broken. The Wildlings fighting and raiding each other, not uniting in a desperate army to flee southward. 

The great threat she had been working to stop all her life, for which she had been seeking Azor Ahai on the Red God's orders, had been dealt with. 

She nodded. “They have died at the hands of Lady Ruby and her friends, my lord.”

“Good.” He nodded, and she caught a faint smile flickering over his face. Otherwise, he didn't show any reaction. She suppressed a snort. Of course, he would not be fazed - he was not the kind of man who desired anything more than what he thought was his due. If he wasn't Azor Ahai, then he wasn't. And if the threat to the world had been defeated, then he would not feel slighted or lessened by the fact that it hadn't been he who had struck the decisive blow. He did his duty, nothing more - but nothing less, either. “And will Team Ruby return to their world, as they claim is their goal?”

Now, that was the question. “I do not know yet, my lord,” she replied - honestly. “The ice has melted, yet the flood has not yet swept through the land.”

He scoffed. “Let's hope you will make sense of your vision before we all are buried under water.”

She didn't bother explaining that it wasn't a literal vision; he knew that as well. “I will look into the fire as many times as I need to determine what R'hllor is telling me, my lord.”

“Do that.” He nodded curtly and, always the dutiful, returned to read through a stack of missives the Onion Knight had brought from Dragonstone. 

Despite his gruff dismissal, she wasn't worried that he’d send her away; his wife was one of the faithful, and Melisandre had proven her visions’ worth. And Lord Stannis was perfectly aware that he needed her help to ensure that the comet that had melted the ice wouldn't melt the Iron Throne.

What she had seen today certainly confirmed that the four maidens had the power to do that - both literally and metaphorically. And Meslisandre had yet to figure out their goals. And whether R’hllor wanted her to help them - or to stop them.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys kept his pleasant smile and demeanour up all the way from the tourney's field until he reached his private quarters. Only when he had closed the door behind him, locked it, and checked the secret passage behind the wall in the back for eavesdroppers, did he allow himself to shudder and collapse into his softest chair with his eyes squeezed shut.

Magic! Foul magic, the likes of it he had never seen, had been demonstrated, and the ignorant masses and the simpleminded fools who fancied themselves nobles had cheered at the display! They didn't know what Varys knew! They didn't know what those women had brazenly revealed today!

He had known they were powerful, but not how powerful they were - and how foul. He should have realised, of course - but he had clung to the hope that they were merely born powerful, like others were born smart. That their strength was due to a legacy thought lost in the Age of Heroes. Or maybe a blessing from one of the gods.

But the fight today - undoubtedly staged to further their goals, though Varys had yet to find out which those goals were; they were apt at misdirection and hiding their thoughts behind a facade of youthful innocence as false as a traitor’s promises. If Varys didn't know better, even he might have believed their claims as the Fat King had. 

But knowing what he did, he could only guess how many lives they had taken, how many people they had mutilated and sacrificed to gain such powers and strength - and such apparent youth - but it had to have been hundreds, maybe thousands, each, who had been drained of their life, maybe their very souls, for this.

Those four women were, without a doubt, the most vile persons he had ever seen - and the most dangerous. Their mere presence could ruin every one of his plans and schemes. One of them could stop all the sellswords he and his allies might hire in Essos. The Golden Company would not last an hour against what he had seen today. Even the Dothraki Hordes, united, wouldn’t be able to defeat them. He had to adjust all his plans and contingencies.

But, most importantly, he had to find out what their goals were. They could have conquered the entire realm, more easily than Aegon the Conqueror had. So, why hadn't they taken the throne for themselves? Why bother with putting up their innocent act? Why did they cater to the fat King's whims? To get access to his library? To get money? Resources? They could take all of that; they had the power. It made no sense!

What were they planning? They were good at hiding their true nature, their real goals. His little birds had been stymied at every occasion - on the streets and in the castle. He didn’t dare send them after those monsters any more; magic could make anyone talk, even those whose tongue had been cut. And he couldn't move against them until he knew what they wanted. 

Or could he? 

They were untouchable on the battlefield, but even the mightiest men - or beasts - could be felled with the right poison. And Varys knew how to administer such a tool without revealing his involvement; he was familiar with everyone and every procedure in the Keep’s kitchen.

And if that failed, there were always the Faceless Men. They would demand a high price, but nothing he couldn't afford. And it was delightfully elegant to set magic-using assassins against those foul witches. The Faceless Men might even consider the apparent immortality of those four abominations an insult against their god…

And it wasn’t as if the witches were invulnerable. They had a weakness - themselves. They put up a united front, but people using foul magic were not the trustworthy or loyal sort. And they had not spared each other today; the four witches had fought with all their might and had hurt each other in their desire to win. They had their pride as well - Varys had paid attention to how they talked amongst themselves.

Varys slowly nodded. He would have to delay his plans in Essos a little longer - he couldn’t risk any of his pawns there against the four witches - but his situation wasn’t hopeless. He had to be very, very cautious, but he had played this game for a long time. He had survived the Mad King; he could do this.

One way or another, those witches would be removed from the game.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Garys trembled as he stepped into the sept proper. What he had seen today… Oh, he had heard the stories, but he would have never imagined this! To see four maidens blessed by the Seven demonstrate their divine power! To bear witness as deeds foretold in the Seven-Pointed Star took place in this day and age! It felt as if he himself had been touched by the Seven, graced with a faint echo of the blessings bestowed upon the Four Maidens.

He took a deep shivering breath and looked around. Didn’t the statues of the Seven look more imposing today? Had they, too, been affected by this? He hastened to the bench directly in front of the Maiden to pray; fortunately, there was still a spot free amongst the others fervently praying. “Oh, blessed Maiden, I thank you for…” he blinked as he heard the prayers from the man next to him.

“...and deliver us from this evil! Banish those witches to the darkness from which they have come! Smite them down before their magic ensnares and corrupts the unwary!”

He gasped. Blasphemy! “How dare you besmirch the Four Maidens’ reputation! They are blessed by the Seven-Who-Are-One!”

“What?” the man - Rufus, a fellow Septon! - snarled at him. “They are witches! Have you not seen their foul, unnatural magics? How their shadows came alive, how they conjured whirlwinds to devastate the country? Their heathen symbols lit up the sky as they burned with unholy fire!”

“Were you blind?” Garys clenched his teeth. “The whirlwind didn’t hurt anyone! The fire - the purifying flames - didn’t burn them because they are pure! Those were not shadows come alive, but manifestations of their souls! And those symbols allowed them to ascend to the sky, to watch over us! Cease your blasphemic rants!”

“‘Blasphemic rants’? How dare you speak in the Seven’s name when you slander their faithful like this!” Rufus bared his teeth at him like an animal.

“Such deeds were foretold! Have you never read the Seven-Pointed Star?” Garys shot back.

“Do not insult the Four Maidens or the Seven will strike you down!” Someone yelled behind him.

“They are the instruments of the Seven, here to protect us!”

Garys nodded. The faithful knew the truth. They would…”

“Do not let witches lure you astray! They will twist and fool you! Stay true to your faith! Follow the Seven, not the four!”

“The Seven protect us! Protect us from the witches and their helpers!”

That… Garys stood. “Silence! This is a sept, a holy place! Not a location to slander those blessed by the gods!”

“If they were blessed by the gods, why haven’t they ever set foot in a sept?” Rufus yelled. “They cannot enter because the gods would smite them down!”

“Blasphemy! They do not need to enter since they are blessed by the Seven - they are always walking in their presence!” Garys shouted back.

“Lies!” Rufus grabbed Garys’s robes, and Gary’s fist lashed out in response, hitting him on his ugly nose.

Rufus stumbled back, letting go of Garys, but before Garys could say anything, another man grabbed him, and then everyone, faithful and blasphemers alike, was fighting.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Gendry grimaced when he saw the gold cloaks arrive at the foot of the steps leading up to the Great Sept. “The watch is here, Master!” he called out.

“They’re late!” Master Mott grunted without looking up from his papers.

Gendry wasn’t fooled by his seeming lack of reaction - when the fighting had spilt out of the Great Sept, Master Mott had hurried to close and bar the door, and had sent him to fill as many buckets with water that Gendry could manage, in case this became a riot.

Though dozens of howling men, and some women, and a great number of septons, all brawling in public was a riot in his opinion - apparently, Mott’s standards were higher based upon his experiences in Qohor. 

Well, Gendry had been born here, not in Qohor. He winced when he saw the gold cloaks starting to break up the brawl - by hitting everyone near them until people stopped fighting and started fleeing. He saw a few people not get up after the gold cloaks passed over them.

“Are they winning? The gold cloaks?” Master Mott asked.

“Yes,” Gendry replied.

“Good. Can’t have such disorder in a city.”

“But… that started in the sept.” Gendry wasn’t an expert - he could read and do his numbers, but he had not really cared about the law except how it applied to smithing - but gold cloaks attacking Septons was not done, was it? The Faith would not stand for that - they were the voice of the Seven. And yet… “Septons were fighting each other!” Shouldn’t the Seven have prevented that?

Motto huffed. “Fools don’t become smart just because they pray.” He shuffled his papers. “Forget them. The Fat Septon will settle things and explain that the King’s will is the will of the Seven. And since the King likes Lady Ruby and her friends, the Seven approve of them as well.”

Gendry frowned. Sure, everyone knew that the High Septon was the King’s man - or the Queen’s, Gendry hadn’t quite sorted out the difference - but… surely he’d not follow the King’s wishes against the will of the Seven? That would be blasphemy! But… “Do you think they’re witches, master?” Lady Yang couldn’t be a witch! She was far too nice and honest for that - she was a great smith! And her sister, Lady Ruby, was a smith as well! “Surely, they are blessed by the Seven!”

Mott made another scoffing noise. “Witches or blessed by the gods, no power like that comes without a price.”

“What price, Master?”

“Nothing good. But let’s not talk about that. We have our own troubles to worry about, boy.”

Gendry frowned. They had troubles? Business was great! The news that the Four Maidens frequented the smithy and taught them their skills had brought plenty of people into the shop. Sure, it was a bit generous to claim that they were taught their secrets, but only a bit. The maidens had shown them their weapons and told them about techniques, only they were too advanced for even Master Mott to copy. “You’ve raised the prices and yet people buy even more than before.” Where was the problem?

“People associate us with the Lady Ruby and her friends,” Mott said. “For good or ill.”

“Oh. That was why you told me to be careful around the Lannisters, right?” It was an open secret that the Queen disliked the Four Maidens.

“Mhhh.” Master Mott nodded. 

“But the King likes them.” And King Robert was far more powerful than the Queen, everyone knew that. Women had to obey their husbands as maidens had to obey their fathers.

“And let’s hope that stays so,” Master Mott said. 

Why wouldn’t it stay? Who - except for the Queen, and probably other noblewomen who were jealous of the Maiden’s power and beauty and grace - wouldn’t like them? They were friendly, kind even to smallfolk bastards like Gendry, who didn’t know their father, and they were blessed by the Seven.

And they could destroy an army as easily as they had destroyed the fighting ring. Gendry didn’t know much, but he knew how strong you had to be to smash bricks like that - or to carve the ground with your blade as if it were a plough.

“So, be on your guard, boy. Don’t trust anyone. And if things ever change for the worse, be ready to leave the city.”

Gendry nodded, but he felt his Master was overly worried. Both Lord Stark and the King’s brother frequented the smithy, in addition to Lady Yang and the others. And they were well-known for their honour. Neither Lord Stannis nor Lord Stark would let the Queen hurt people out of petty jealousy.

And why would anyone want to hurt him, anyway? He was just an apprentice smith.

*****

The Red keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Beware! You are facing Lady Ruby, the Whirlwind of Death! You will die for defying her!”

“And Yang the Burning… uh… Bust?”

“You can’t call her Burning Bust, Bran!”

“Well, it has to fit ‘burning’. Oh! The Firey Fist!”

“That’s… not good either.”

Eddard Stark was reconsidering his decision to keep his children inside the Tower of the Hand today. Hearing them innocently trying to figure out new titles for Lady Ruby’s group was more than a bit unnerving after what he had seen yesterday. But with the Septons seemingly going mad and attacking each other, and whipping up the smallfolk to follow them, it just wasn’t safe. Especially around Team Ruby. Gods, the things they had done!

Despite knowing them longer than anyone else at court, he had still underestimated them. Robert had been right; they had been holding back far more than Ned had thought possible. To think that they had been hiding this kind of power! Ned had thanked the Old Gods with all his heart that Lady Ruby and her friends were as merciful as they were powerful. If Lady Yang had taken offence at being mistaken for a bastard… Ned had heard what she had done to a knight who had called her a whore. The man’s groin had been crushed despite the armor he had been wearing. He was lingering on but not expected to survive despite the Maester’s treatment. And Lady Blake had taken down the Mountain almost effortlessly.

The girls - the Maidens - were kind and merciful, but they had limits, and any man crossed them at his peril. To know that a single misstep could mean your doom… Ned snorted, once. Some of the people at court probably deserved such worries, if only to realise that no matter how powerful you were, there was always someone more powerful. That’s why honour was so important. Otherwise, people were at the mercy of the most powerful.

It was also a good thing that Robert was so close to them. If what Ned had stumbled upon when he had been looking into Jon Arryn’s affairs was true, then they would need the help of Lady Ruby and her friends to prevent a catastrophe. Ned couldn’t think of anyone else who might be able to hold Robert back, should his friend fly into a rage. Literally, in this case.

But whether it was true or not remained to be found. So far, Ned had seen no proof, only clues. But every clue he had found had pointed in the same direction…

He sighed. Compared to this, organising the trial of the Mountain was almost relaxing, even though he disliked how people tried to influence justice for politics. At least Lord Stannis stood firm against that kind of nonsense.

“Lady Blake, the… Flying Blade? She could throw out a magic blade with a cut of her sword.”

“Then it should be ‘Magic Blade’. And it’s called Aura Slash, Bran.”

“Magic Blade sounds stupid.”

“You don’t have a better idea either!”

Yes, listening to his children quarrelling was relaxing compared to his other tasks. If only he had stayed in the North. But Robert had needed him, and Ned was not the kind of man to neglect a friend. Doubly so if his friend was also his King.

*****

Haunted Forest, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“It makes no sense,” Brynden muttered. No matter where and how he looked, he couldn’t make sense of it.

“We know,” Leaf replied. “The Others have fallen, but we don’t know why.”

“We know why,” Brynden said. “Because four girls killed them all.” It had taken him embarrassingly long to figure out that they had told the truth to the Night’s Watch. So much time wasted…

Leaf frowned at him, her wide eyes narrowing. “We don’t know why they appeared and did it. But we know they aren’t from this world. The place where they appeared showed us that.”

Brynden had to take her word for it. He had vast powers - for which he had paid a terrible price - but the Children of the Forest knew and sensed things not even he could perceive. “Four girls, from another world, let loose on this one… How do we save the world from a danger that easily defeated the Others?”

“We don’t know if they are a danger,” Leaf stubbornly replied.

Even if they really only wished to return to their world, they were a danger. Brynden knew what desperation could drive men to do - he knew that from personal experience. The plans he had made, the things he had been ready to do to stop the Long Night… But that was the past. “They are too powerful.” And he couldn’t yet decide what was more dangerous - if they had secret plans to use their power for their own goals, or if they were truly as naive as they presented themselves. Because then they would be used by people who couldn’t be trusted with this power.

Leaf nodded. “We cannot help you in the South.”

He knew that. The Children of the Forest, as few as were left, had been driven out of the South a long time ago. It fell to him to use his powers to find out the truth.

And then to devise a way to get rid of that danger.

*****

The Red keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Queen Cersei Lannister paced in her quarters. She wanted to scream so much, she bit her lower lip to stop herself. The pain was nothing compared to the loss of her dignity. A Queen, a Lannister, didn’t show such weakness! Not even in the face of the most heinous threat!

A threat in the form of four girls - not maidens! They might fool the imbeciles surrounding her family, but Cersei could see through their act; they were wanton women using their wiles to lead the men by their cocks! Men such as the bastard following them like a beaten dog begging for scraps, men such as Stark, who had ordered his lady wife to stay behind in the North while he moved to King’s Landing in the company of four shameless girls. He even brought his bastard with him as if he wished to advertise his plans to the entire kingdom!

And men such as Robert. As if anyone with even just a passing acquaintance would believe that he wasn’t bedding the lot of ‘Team Ruby’ - even Stark had admitted that Robert knew them better than he did. No, Robert was flaunting his affairs, humiliating her in front of everyone! Cersei knew how people were whispering, mocking her, when they thought she wasn’t paying attention. That was all Robert’s fault - and the girls’! Without them, without their unnatural tricks, he would not be able to fool her spies and hide the evidence of his affairs! 

Evidence that humiliated her - and would not be tolerated!

Because those whores were plotting against her. They were all but shouting in Cersei’s ear that they were working with Stark, Stannis and Renly. She saw them plotting in the open at the feasts. And the whole city knew that they met at that foreigner’s smithy - where one of Robert’s bastards worked. That beast had been hiding him under Cersei’s nose!

Even if no one else could see it, Cersei could - they were plotting her downfall. First, they seduced Lord Stark, the Warden of the North. But then they set their sights on the King. And once they had seduced Robert, they started working on the last obstacle between them and the throne; Cersei. She could see the signs, the clues left all over the place. The veiled insults dropped under a pretense of naivety. The barbed remarks by that Valyrian whore - at least her scar ensured she wouldn't be the one who was more beautiful than Cersei. And the blatant move against her family by that near-mute menace when she ambushed the Mountain, the strongest bannerman of her family, to deprive Cersei of him.

And then, with that out of the way and Cersei humiliated every day, they were now moving to get rid of her. That display at the tourney had not been a fight, no real contest - no, it had been a planned performance to awe the foolish and cow those with the brains to realise the danger. They would not hesitate to move even more blatantly against her, Cersei knew. Even her own ladies-in-waiting were getting scared, suddenly finding excuses to leave to visit their families - they feared that those girls would make examples out of them, to isolate Cersei even further.

They would probably try to turn her children, her own flesh and blood, against her as well - and then kill them once they were no longer useful. As the final step before removing Cersei.

As she had heard foretold, years ago when she had been but a child, from the lips of that accursed wood witch. She would be queen, but she would see her children die and would be ruined and replaced by a younger and more beautiful queen.

But she wouldn’t let them! She was a Lannister! She was too proud, too smart, to succumb to them. They thought her beaten, humiliated, forced to wait helplessly while they played with her like a cat played with a mouse?

She was not a mouse! She was a lioness! She would show them! They and their allies would rue the day they moved against Cersei! She would triumph in the end.

A Lannister always paid her debts!

*****

 

Chapter 16: Consequences

‘It goes without saying that the reports according to which the Four Maidens had an affair with Prince Oberyn Nymeros Martell and his paramour Ellaria Sand are baseless inventions of those who wanted to invent closer ties between the Order of the Ruby and Dorne, either to hurt the Four Maidens’ reputation or to enhance Dorne’s reputation depending on if the respective authors were biased for or against Dorne’s culture. If the Four Maidens had actually engaged in such activities with Prince Oberyn and his lover, they could not have kept it secret, and, given the reputation of Dorne and the Martells’ relationship toward the various other realms and noble houses of Westeros at the time, it certainly would have been reported by almost everyone. And yet, we have only unsubstantiated rumours, often spread years after the events, and no confirmed information. As with the various other claims of affairs or even betrothals - often rather pathetic attempts to add importance and legitimacy to the author’s ancestry - it is, therefore, clear that they never took place.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Stannis Baratheon ground his teeth. His brother the King was late again for the meeting of the Small Council. And his fellow members of the council, even Lord Eddard, who, as both the King's Hand and his best friend, was poised best to set Robert straight, didn't seem to take offence at this - as if this wasn't wasting their time as much as it was wasting his. Stannis had work to do! Unlike some of the members, he didn't neglect his duty!

“Well, we can lay the rumour that Robert has taken up training in the morning with the Four Maidens in order to gain their powers to rest, I think,” Renly, never serious, and not quite as witty as he thought himself to be, commented.

Baelish, the sycophant, chuckled in response. However, to Stannis's surprise, Varys didn't make a bland comment in his usual tittering tone. The Master of Whispers merely nodded. And the Grand Maester, who oversaw the Ravens of the Red Keep and would be privy to all messages before even the King, looked a little off as well…

Was that a portent of grave news? They had heard about the betrothal between Princess Daenerys and that Dothraki Khal, Drogo, but nothing new since. If anything changed… Stannis needed to know if he had to order the Royal Fleet to sea to intercept an invasion fleet. The best way to fight those Barbarians was when they were confined to ships - they couldn't use their horses at sea, and Stannis was sure he could sink enough of the ships carrying them for the survivors to be easily dealt with by the banners of whatever part of Westeros they landed.

Lord Eddard might be afraid of the Horde's skill at arms and their vaunted light cavalry tactics, but Stannis put his trust in his sailors; they would not let him or the realm down - he had trained them for over a decade.

But only if they could put to sea in time to do their duty.

Just when he was about to ask the Master of Whispers, the door opened and the King and Ser Barristan entered. Stannis saw at once that Robert was in a good mood - his brother smiled widely. “I see everyone survived the feast! Not that everyone was in danger of drinking too much, of course!” he joked, clapping Stannis on the back as he passed his seat. “Though some certainly could have done with a little indulging!”

Stannis ground his teeth again. Robert's jests were as annoying as Renly's, if in a different way, making light of those who actually worked hard for the betterment of the realm, instead of indulging in their whims!

Robert eased himself into his seat - though Stannis noted that he didn't quite fill it as much as he used to before Stannis withdrew to his seat following Lord Jon's suspicious death - and grabbed a cup of wine. He took a deep swallow. “Ah… I needed that! So…” He looked at Lord Eddard, of course. “What do you have for me, Ned? I'll sign it and then get out of your hair.”

“Your Grace, there are a few urgent and important matters you need to know and which require a decision,” Lord Eddard replied. “First, the matter of the… brawl in the Great Sept,” he said with a glance at Renly.

“My gold cloaks handled it,” Renly said with a shrug. “It was hardly a major affair. We've had drunken brawls that were larger.”

“I don't think Septons fighting each other in public - and inside the Great Sept - is something to be taken lightly,” Baelish said. “There might not have been much rioting, but they could easily have set the sept ablaze in their fervour over whether the Four Maidens are blessed by the gods or sold their souls for their powers.”

Stannis scoffed, both at the attempt to criticise Renly - his brother wouldn't care about Baelish's opinion - and the implication that this was a huge problem. “It is up to the High Septon to keep his house in order,” he said. “As long as it doesn’t endanger the city, let the Septons quarrel as much as they want inside the sept.”

“Stannis advocating a hands-off approach?” Renly gasped theatrically. “Did you truly have a revelation and join the flock of the Red God, as some wagging tongues claim?”

Stannis hadn't. His wife, however, had. But neither was of any importance here. “Religious questions are only the business of the King when they threaten the stability of the realm,” he said.

“I would think that if some fanatics consider four close friends of the King as witches, it does concern the stability of the realm,” Varys spoke up. “Imagine if this would spread and more smallfolk came to share this opinion! If they thought that those girls controlled the King through witchcraft!” He shook his head. “The days of the Faith Militant might be past, but even so, there could be great unrest if this is not addressed.”

“If anyone is as stupid as to accuse the four girls as witches, they have only themselves to blame for what befalls them,” Robert spat. “Besmirching the honour of the four most powerful warriors anyone has ever seen? Hah! I would crush them myself, if not for the fact that Lady Ruby wouldn’t want me to.”

Stannis nodded. The Four Maidens might be able to crush any army any realm in the world might be able to field, but they did not abuse their power. And they were friendly with Robert - Stannis’s brother had a way with making friends which was a boon to the realm.

“I fear that poor knight who mistook Lady Yang for a woman with more questionable morals would disagree with that assessment - if he were still able to voice his thoughts,” Varys said. “I have heard he is not expected to survive the next night.”

Pycelle winced and Lord Eddard frowned, but Robert snorted. “Serves him right! You don't insult and then attack those who can crush you like a bug!”

Stannis nodded again. If you were attacked, you defended yourself. While he hadn't bothered to investigate - he wasn't the Master of Law - what he had heard was quite clear: The knight had insulted Lady Yang, and, when she had chastised him, had proceeded to attack her. Whether he had drawn steel was not quite as clear, but that didn't matter for the law. 

“Well, no one is asking to put Lady Yang to trial for that,” Renly said. 

“And if they did dare, I'd deal with them!” Robert growled. “And, speaking of trials…”

“Can we settle the matter of the Great Sept first?” Lord Eddard spoke up. “So, do we leave that to the High Septon?”

“It's his sept,” Renly said. “And he is responsible for religious matters.”

Robert scoffed, “Just have the fool invite Lady Ruby and her friends into the Great Sept. If their gods disapprove of them, they can do something about it then.”

“That would be an elegant way for the High Septon to avoid taking a stance,” Renly said. “I am sure if someone suggested it to him, he would see the wisdom in it.”

Stannis rolled his eyes. They should let the High Septon handle this himself. But it was none of his business. 

Lord Eddard nodded. “As long as it's not an order.”

“Perish the thought!” Renly chuckled. “I wouldn't dare to try and order the High Septon around.”

Stannis didn't believe him, but that wasn't his business either.

“With that settled, there's the matter of Ser Gregor Clegane's trial,” Lord Eddard said. “We should set a date.”

Varys cleared his throat. “House Martell will want to attend. I fear they would be offended if the murderer of their kin were tried without them.”

Stannis frowned. “Ser Gregor won't be tried for the death of Princess Elia but for the murder of his guard. The Martells have no stake in this case, and there is no reason to delay justice.” Politics should never influence justice.

Renly chuckled, once. “I think they would disagree, brother. And even if they agreed, they still would want to see Clegane's head roll.”

“If it comes to that,” Baelish said.

“Do you doubt that he will be found guilty?” Renly raised his eyebrows. “Or do you think he'll win the trial by combat that he will certainly demand?”

“No. But whoever of the Four Maidens will end up facing him might just crush him like a bug.” Baelish laughed at his feeble - and gauche - jest. Really, quoting the King’s own words was a pathetic display of empty flattery!

Stannis frowned even more deeply, but Robert spoke up before he could tell the Master of Coins that you didn't joke about justice: “We can delay the trial until the Martells arrive - I assume they already know about it?” he looked at Pycelle.

“Yes, Your Grace,” the spineless Grand Maester replied. “I expect a raven from Sunspear any day to announce that they are already on the way to King’s Landing. If the weather remains favourable, they could be here in less than ten days.”

That was about right for the trip at sea, Stannis knew.

“Good. We'll delay the trial then. Maybe seeing the Mountain die will make them happier with us.” Robert snorted. “At the very least, seeing one of the Four Maidens fight will give them pause.”

Renly nodded. “We can say that the Mountain needs more time to recover so he can stand and fight in the trial.”

“Good idea, Renly. That should stop any complaints.”

Stannis ground his teeth again. This was… It wasn't injustice, but it threw a shade on the trial. At least the Dornish ships were fast, so it shouldn't delay the trial overly much.

“And what about Lord Tywin?” Pycelle asked. 

“What about him?” Robert asked gruffly.

“Ser Gregor is his bannerman,” the Grand Maester went on, leaving no doubt whose coin he took. “If the trial is delayed for the Martells, shouldn't Lord Tywin also have the opportunity to attend?”

Renly laughed. “I doubt he wants to be reminded of that.”

“He's in the Rock, isn't he?” Robert didn't wait for an answer from Pycelle. “It would take him over a month to travel to King's Landing. We won't wait for him. There are already far too many Lannisters in the city, anyway. If House Lannister wants to attend the trial, Tywin can pick anyone he wants.”

Stannis agreed with that. Even though if what Lord Eddard and he were investigating was true - and he had no doubt at this point - then Lord Tywin being in King's Landing, far from his home, would certainly help with containing the consequences, justice shouldn't be delayed because of politics.

*****

The Red keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“They want us to visit their Great Sept?” Ruby Rose peered at the message on the table in their room and frowned. “I thought only those who believed in the Seven Gods were allowed to enter it.” And she didn’t believe in them.

“According to the gossip I overheard, they want to see if we will be struck down by the Seven if we set foot into the sept,” Blake explained from her usual spot at the wall next to the window.

“Ah.” Ruby nodded. 

Weiss scoffed. “A clever way to settle their religious dispute. It seems their High Septon is not as stupid as the Queen claims.”

Yang, lying on the bed next to the window, hands folded behind her head, snorted. “If Cersei says one thing, assume the opposite.”

“It's not quite as bad,” Weiss said, “but I can't deny it's a good rule of thumb. Although we haven’t met since the tourney ended, so she might have reconsidered her attitude.”

That would be a good thing. Ruby was tired of the… bitching from the Queen. They had never done anything to her, so why was she so angry at them?

Yang laughed. “Do you honestly think that will happen?”

“No, I don't,” Weiss admitted with a wry smile.

“Whatever!” Ruby spoke up. “We'll have to visit - you've heard about the riots. If this will stop the fighting, then we have to do it.” So far, no one had died, but people had gotten hurt - a lot of them. They had a duty to stop that, if they could.

“What if this is a trap?” Yang asked. “Let us enter and drop some of that ‘Wildfire’ stuff on us, and then claim it was their gods?”

“We should be fine,” Weiss said. “Our Auras should be able to withstand such fire even if we shouldn’t spot the trap in advance.”

“That's a lot more ‘should’ than I feel comfortable with,” Yang replied.

“And I have heard it’s not normal fire, but something really nasty,” Ruby said. Lord Renly had explained that when he had told them what the last king had done. Burning people alive… She shuddered.

Weiss sniffed. “They think we're blessed by their gods, too. They don't have high standards.”

“Just saying,” Yang rolled her shoulders as she sat up. “As you’d say, it isn't good optics if we end up fighting the septons in their most holy sept.”

“If we refused their invitation, it would be even worse,” Weiss shot back. “Rumours about us being evil, unnatural witches would be all over the place.”

Blake nodded in agreement.

“We will do it,” Ruby repeated herself. “But we look out for ambushes and traps.”

“Of course!” Yang grinned at Blake. “Our champion will root out any nefarious ploy they might have!”

Blake snorted in return, but she also nodded at Yang. “We'll do our best.”

“Hell yeah, we will!”

Weiss sighed. “Let's hope they aren’t as foolish as to try such a ploy. Judging by what I heard, the High Septon wouldn't dream of going after the King's wishes, but we might have shocked a lot of people with our fight.”

Yang’s grin grew wider, but Blake nodded. “Yes. We scared a lot of people.” 

Ruby winced. Blake would know - she had been listening to the people in the Red Keep all morning. In hindsight, that should have been obvious - most of the people watching the fight had never seen them before. They didn't know Team RWBY, and so it was only logical that they would be scared. And scared people weren't rational. “So, we really need to show them that we’re not some… evil witches.” It felt really weird to say that. But they were in another world, and Marvyn insisted that magic was real, and he should know. Though he also thought Aura and Semblances were magical, so… She shook her head. That didn’t really matter in this case.

“Yep. Shouldn’t take long - we go in, we go out, we’re done in a minute,” Yang said. “And then we can go to Mott’s and check how he’s doing with the tools.”

Weiss, of course, looked annoyed. “We can’t just rush this! This is an important event - a ceremony of great religious significance. If we appear not to take it seriously, the locals will not trust their test.”

“Well, I don’t take it seriously,” Yang said. “But, fine, let’s stay a bit longer.”

“It won’t hurt us to do this right,” Ruby said. If any visitor left her home after a minute, she would feel hurt and wonder what she had done wrong.

*****

Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

An hour later, when she saw the crowd gathered at the entrance of the Great Sept of Baelor, Ruby had to suppress a wince. The streets - even the pretty wide (for King’s Landing, at least) Street of Steel - were packed!

“Wow! Looks like half the city’s here!” Yang whistled behind her.

“If half the city were here, the crowd would fill a much larger area,” Weiss said. “But I have to admit that this is a bigger crowd than I expected. I think I underestimated how much the locals value their faith.”

Ruby nodded and tried not to fidget. They could do this, anyway. Provided they could reach the entrance - the crowd was pretty packed. Although… “Weiss! Create a path of your glyphs in the air so we can walk to the entrance!”

“That’s… actually a good idea,” Weiss agreed. She raised Myrtenaster, and a series of glyphs hovering in the air appeared, forming a line of stepping stones that led from them to the entrance of the sept.

“Thanks! Come on, team! Let’s go!” Ruby jumped on the closest glyph and started hopping from one glyph to the next.

The crowd gasped and pointed, but Ruby managed to ignore them by focusing on the jumps she had to make - it would be very embarrassing if she mistimed her jump and fell on someone below.

But she didn’t, and she made a perfect landing at the top of the stairs leading to the sept. “Hello!” she greeted the guards and Septons standing there. “We’re here to meet the High Septon! He invited us,” she added after a moment.

Half of them stared at her and her friends with open mouths - hadn’t they paid attention at the tourney? - but others nodded and ran off. And not a minute later, the High Septon arrived. Well, Ruby assumed he was the High Septon since he wore a different robe and was as fat or fatter than the King, and Blake had found out that he was also called the Fat Septon (though that didn’t sound very nice).

“Lady Ruby!” He seemed a bit out of breath. Had he run to the door? “Lady Weiss. Lady Blake. Lady Yang. Welcome to the Great Sept of Baelor. We are honoured that you deigned to visit us!” He bowed his head. “I am the High Septon.”

“He’s laying it on pretty thick, huh?” Yang whispered behind her. Ruby hoped the man didn’t hear her - Weiss was already glaring at her sister.

“Thank you, High Septon,” Ruby replied, bowing her head, as Weiss had told her to when they had been preparing. “We are honoured by your invitation.”

“Be welcome in our sept, then!”

Ruby glanced at Blake, who gave her a tiny nod, before nodding more emphatically herself and following the High Septon inside. 

She knew that she wouldn’t burt into flames or get struck by lightning - though if she were, her Aura could take it, probably - but she still felt a bit relieved when she walked inside without anything weird happening (except for many people gasping and muttering - the inside was packed except for the middle lane leading to the altair).

Yang, of course, smiled widely and struck a quick pose when she stopped next to Ruby, which caused even more whispering.

The High Septon, though, beamed at them. “You walk with the blessings of the Seven, my ladies!” he said in a loud voice, and the crowd muttered and whispered even more.

“Please, have a seat; we shall pray to the Seven so they will bless us all!” He slowly moved his arm to point at the first bench, where four spots had been left clear.

Ruby kept smiling though she was starting to wonder how long this would take.

An hour later, her smile felt as if it had been frozen to her face. The Fat Septon was still praying - he had praised the Father, Mother and Warrior and was now praising the Smith - and loud enough to wake the dead. At least, that kept Yang from dozing off.

Ruby hoped that this was worth it. She glanced at the statue representing the Smith. He was supposed to fix things, if she understood the Fat Septon correctly, but things hadn’t been fixed yet, as far as she could tell.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

As she walked through the Red Keep's yard, Weiss Schnee was reconsidering her opinion about yesterday's visit to the Great Sept of Baelor. While it had, according to what Blake had overheard, convinced a significant number of people who had been hostile to her team that Team RWBY weren’t witches, it had also, apparently, had an effect on those who had already considered them blessed by the gods. Weiss wasn't, despite her friends’ biased opinions, an expert on Westerosi politics and customs, but she knew enough to know that if the Castle staff showed more respect and awe toward them than toward the royal family, then that wasn't an entirely good thing.

The King wouldn't mind - probably, at least - but the Queen would be seething, Weiss was certain. Even more than she usually did, at the very least. It remained to be seen how the Prince would react. 

She descended the serpentine stairs to the training area, once again feeling annoyance at the design well up inside her. The lack of a sewer system - at least, anything that would deserve the name - remained the worst architectural and urban planning deficiency in Westeros's capital, but the fact that they had had centuries to fix those stairs and had not done it, despite the fact that, as they had heard and confirmed in the castle's library, people had fallen down and hurt themselves - fatally, in some cases was in some ways even worse. Creating a sewer system in an existing city would require a massive financial and political effort. Even more so when they lacked the technology to dig the tunnels without risking cave-ins of houses, perhaps even entire streets, and so would have to displace thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. But replacing this deathtrap of stairs, in the seat of the realm's monarch? That shouldn't have taken long or required a lot of effort.

Maybe she should write a text about it. A huntress had no trouble with the stairs, of course - they were trained to fight on much worse ground - but the average person here? Or, worse, the young or elderly? Or, probably more likely, those nobles who had drunk too much at one of the feasts? It wouldn't end up saving more people than installing a proper sewer system would, but it was a lower-hanging fruit, all things considered.

She reached the bottom of the stairs and proceeded to the training area. Ser Barristan and Ser Jaime were already there, together with Ser Arys Oakheart. 

Ser Jaime’s lips twisted into a grin as he saluted her with his sword. “Hail the Blessed Maiden!”

“Good morning, Sers.” Weiss remained polite despite the hint of a mocking undertone - Ser Jaime had taken to such blatant greetings after the Battle of the Maidens, and she hadn't yet figured out why exactly. Although she was leaning towards the idea that he was compensating for a bruised ego; the Battle of the Maidens had overshadowed the rest of the tourney and his own admittedly impressive showing.

“Good morning, my lady.” Ser Barristan, at least, had not changed how he talked and treated her.

Ser Arys, on the other hand, beamed at her before bowing deeply. “My lady!”

“Have you come to spar, my lady?” Ser Jaime asked, cocking his head to the side.

“Yes.” Did he expect her to stop? Her skill with Myrtenaster had noticeably improved thanks to the training with the Kingsguard. Her friends had improved as well. And speaking of them… “The rest of my team should arrive shortly.” They better do, she added in her mind. If Weiss could arrive early despite having had to speak with the Master of Coin so they could store the majority of the tourney prize Blake had won in the King's vault, then her friends had no excuse at all to be late!

As if her partner had read her mind, a red streak turned into Ruby next to her, materialising in a cloud made up of sand kicked up by her braking and red petals from her Semblance. “Made it!” She beamed at them.

An impressive entrance, Weiss had to admit. But the fact that Ruby was carrying half a bread roll in her left hand, which she proceeded to stuff into her mouth, ruined it.

By the time Yang and Blake arrived, Ruby was still chewing.

Fortunately, none of the knights seemed to have taken offence, and the rest of the Kingsguard had been a little late to join the training as well, so there was no grounds for anyone to feel offended.

Not that that stopped Ser Mandon Moore from looking like he was offended but hiding it, although he always looked like that. It was almost comforting that he hadn't changed his attitude towards them either - unlike Ser Preston Greenfield, Ser Meryn Trant and Ser Boros Blount, who, all of them, were far more friendly and respectful than before.

They were overdoing it, in Weiss's opinion. But the training was effective - she managed to improve her parrying a bit more. Now, if her stamina would improve at the same rate…

*****

 “And here’s the vault! As you can see, Lady Weiss, your friend’s money will be perfectly safe here!”

Weiss’s polite smile didn’t waver even though she didn’t believe Lord Baelish. Any of her friends could kick open this door, of course, but she didn’t trust the locks to keep out thieves for too long either - if they had enough time, they could chisel away the wood and then file down the hinges. What were a few bribes to patrolling guards - or the captain of the guard who set the shifts - when you could loot the King’s treasure chamber?

Of course, she didn’t say that out loud. Instead, she smiled. “Thank you, Lord Petyr. This is a great relief for us.”

“Oh, I can imagine! Even for someone as strong as you are, carrying around such a fortune must be a bother,” Lord Petyr said while he made a show out of opening the door. “Only I have access to the key, and I only hand it out to people I trust with my life!”

She couldn’t resist. “So, if someone stole our money, it could only have been you or your closest friends?” She said, raising her eyebrows.

He laughed. “You could say so, I guess - but I can assure you: No thief will ever enter this chamber!”

Unless they had the key - through theft, or by having it handed to them. Weiss was sure that Lord Baelish was skimming from the top; it was an open secret that he had grown rich in King’s Landing since he had been granted the position of Master of Coin. But that was expected in Westeros - another sign of how uncivilised the locals were. Corruption was poison for any government. Unchecked, it could ruin a kingdom’s economy faster than almost anything else. The question was merely how much he was skimming off the top. Judging by his clothes, he either was sticking to the expected level - or smart enough not to flaunt his ill-gotten wealth. Weiss didn’t know.

“And here we go!” Lord Baelish announced as he pulled the door open.

The interior wasn’t very impressive. Not for a Schnee, at least. A lot of chests of various sizes, but arranged somewhat haphazardly - and that in a kingdom without electronic banking where bills and goods had to be paid in hard currency. She took care to look impressed, though.

“Now… let’s see where we can put your chest!” Lord Baelish stepped past the largest chest. “I think behind this one would be best.”

“As long as no one takes it by mistake, any spot is fine,” she said - and looked around, taking a quick count of the chests. None were labelled, and so she didn’t know what was inside them, nor how full they were.

Westeros really needed modern banking and bookkeeping. This was no way to run a kingdom.

“Oh, I assure you that none of my clerks would ever make such a mistake, my lady.”

“Good.” She smiled. “I wouldn’t want to have people killed by our counter-measures for an honest mistake on their part.”

“Counter-measures?” He looked confused.

“To protect our money. I know this is the safest spot in the entire kingdom, but it won’t hurt anyone if we add another layer of security. Except for any thieves, of course.” Weiss put the chest down and straightened.

She wasn’t even lying; Ruby had been busy with another trap. Not a lethal one, of course - at least not directly. Weiss had no doubt that anyone caught stealing in the kingdom’s treasure chamber would be put to death no matter if they had stolen from the King or from Team RWBY.

“Ah, of course. I’ve heard about your devices.”

Of course he had. But if he had, why hadn’t he asked for their help protecting the King’s money? That was an interesting question, actually. Was he so confident in his security that he saw no need to increase it - or did he not want additional security?

But why? If a burglar managed to break into the treasure chamber, he would be held accountable, whether or not it was his fault - at least according to her experience with the resident judicial system, or what the locals mistook for it. Was he intimidated by their display at the tourney and didn't dare to ask for their help? Or was he too proud to ask them? Even if he had a perfect excuse, now that their money was held there as well? She had told him they had counter-measures that could deal with thieves, and he was certainly more than smart enough, and experienced at court politics, to recognise the implied offer.

It made no sense. Was he preparing to steal everything and then run? That would see him pursued to the ends of the world, Weiss thought. The King certainly would consider it an unforgivable slight, and if his Master of Whispers couldn't find the fugitive he likely would find his head on the chopping block.

She didn't have an answer, and with their new fortune depending on the security of this sorry excuse for a vault, maybe she and her friend had to take a look at this.

It wasn't as if they had more pressing issues to deal with - Archmaester Marvyn was still going through the books in the royal library and would take quite a while longer.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna, hidden in the shadows cast by an oversized chimney - apparently built by a baker who believed in planning for expansion from the start - watched the street below with narrowed eyes that had no trouble with the darkness following the sun setting earlier. Compared to Remnant, where even the villages were quite well-lit in the evenings - and not just the walls where guards kept an eye out for Grimm - King's Landing was pitch-black at night, the few lights visible from above belonging to the scarce people and patrols carrying lanterns.

It was perfect for a Faunus who wanted to observe her target without being spotted - there were no other Faunus or guards with low-light vision goggles to worry about. Just regular humans struggling with seeing enough at night not to stumble every second step because they only had primitive lanterns - she had seen one carrying a torch, even! - and no Dust.

Though she was still torn about whether or not this trip was a waste of time. Weiss wanted the Master of Coin shadowed not because she suspected him of embezzlement and corruption - anyone who wasn't naive knew that he was guilty of both, even Ruby had been convinced after about ten minutes of an increasingly pointed rant by Weiss - but whether or not they could trust him with their money.

Blake didn't think the man had the guts to steal from them. He seemed to be too cowardly to risk the dire consequences he’d suffer if he were caught. He certainly had mentioned often enough how he had ‘learned his lesson’ after challenging Lord Eddard's older brother to a duel over Lady Catelyn, which had been his childhood friend and Lord Brandon's betrothed at the time. On the other hand, cultivating a reputation for eschewing violence - or for cowardice, as the locals here would call it - would be a good way to make most of the King's court underestimate you…

And the way Lord Baelish was walking through the dark alleys of King's Landing at night, often avoiding the main streets for back alleys and side alleys, and more as detours instead of shortcuts, didn't really fit with a coward - or someone afraid of being attacked by robbers or other criminals.

Maybe Weiss was on to something - it certainly looked to Blake like some skullduggery was afoot.

She jumped over the next alley, easily and silently landing on the roof of the neighbouring building, and followed Lord Baelish as he made his way through another seedy back alley before stopping in front of a solid-looking door.

Her ears twitched as she heard him knock twice, then once more after a short pause, and then didn't hear a sound as the door was opened - those were some well-oiled hinges. She didn't hear a greeting either, but whoever had opened the door certainly had recognised Lord Baelish since he entered without a moment’s hesitation.

Frowning at the question why a member of the King's Small Council would sneak into a building through the backdoor, she quickly moved over the slanted roof to take a look at the building's front door.

Oh. She felt her cheeks blush for a moment when she realised what the sign and the decorations showed - it was a brothel. That would explain why the Master of Coin didn't want to be seen entering it, of course - and yet, was he such a frequent customer that the brothel's staff recognised him by the way he knocked? Just how much money did he spend here?

She bit her lower lip, pondering whether she should violate the man's privacy by investigating further. Then she nodded firmly. Yes, she should - while she hadn't been involved in those operations, she had heard other White Fang members who had been talk about what went on in such venues, and how the most honourable of Remnant's society might show their true - and often terrible - character when visiting.

She checked for any witnesses - jumping and being spotted because you were silhouetted against the moon was a rookie mistake - then leapt over the narrow gap between the brothel and the building on which she was perched, once more landing on the shingles with nary a noise. With a bit of luck, she should be able to find her target by peering through the windows or catching the sound of his voice. If that didn't work… Well, even if she were dressed in a way that would let her pass as a customer, and if the brothel allowed female customers, she wouldn't be able to search for another customer while posing as one, despite what some of her books said, so it had better work.

She moved to the edge of the roof and lowered herself down until she could peer through the window below. 

Oh. That wasn't Lord Baelish. Definitely not.

He wasn't in the next room she checked, either. Or the one after that. Or the last room on this side. 

And her cheeks felt so warm, even the oldest Atlas guard robot would be able to spot her with their heat sensors. The people of Westeros might not be as technologically advanced as the people on Remnant, but they most certainly were creative. Maybe…

Her ears twitched under her bow. That was Lord Baelish’s voice! She cocked her head to the side, then quickly followed the sound of him talking about…

… the profits from his business? She blinked, then carefully lowered herself down over the edge of the roof once more to peer through the window below.

Yes. Lord Baelish was not engaged in carnal activities. This wasn’t a bedroom or boudoir, either, but an office in which he was looking over ledgers and telling a man standing in front of his desk to improve profits. Profits from this brothel.

Lord Baelish was a… a pimp.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Here comes the Prince and his lover,” Blake whispered when she spotted Prince Oberyn headed towards her, a slightly drunk courtier almost stumbling as he gave way. The Prince was tall and slender and moved with the kind of grace that marked him as an experienced fighter. He was also handsome, she noted - in short, he matched the descriptions she had heard. Whether he also lived up to his reputation she couldn’t say yet.

“Ah! You must be the famous Team Ruby!” He beamed at them, and the woman on his arm smiled, bowing her head. “I am Prince Oberyn Martell and this is my paramour, Ellaria Sands.”

“Hi!” Ruby smiled widely at the two. “You’re right, we’re Team RWBY - and we’re kinda famous, now, yes. I’m Ruby Rose, this is my partner, Weiss Schnee, this is my sister Yang Xiao Long, and her partner, Blake Belladonna. And this is Lady Brienne Tarth and this Jon Snow! Pleased to meetcha!”

Blake bowed her head together with her friends.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, but the tales do not do your beauty justice, my ladies,” Oberyn went on. “I’ve travelled far and cannot recall many who would be your match.”

Blake glanced at his lover; it was very forward for the prince to flirt like that, with her holding his arm, but she didn’t seem to be angry at him, so maybe that was just the Dornish way of being friendly?

“Indeed,” Ellaria said and made a point of slowly looking them over with a sly smile. 

Maybe that wasn’t just Dornish politeness, Blake amended her thoughts - it could just be confidence that Oberyn wouldn’t cheat on her, but she had seen that look on many nobles here, aimed at her and her friends. Ellaria was attractive, although it was a subtle thing, not some blinding beauty - there was a sensual vibe to her, a confidence like… Coco Adel’s.

Ruby blushed. “Oh, uh… thanks? I mean, thanks! You’re very attractive as well, I mean, both of you - although I mean that in a purely aesthetic sense, you know? It’s not like I - or anyone of my friends, well, of Team RWBY, at least - are looking for, you know…”

Weiss took a step forward and half a step to the side, towards Ruby. She wasn’t quite blocking her, but the gesture was clear. “We’re flattered, Prince Oberyn,” she said with a curt nod. “Although, as you have undoubtedly heard, we’re from another world, with different customs.”

Prince Oberyn didn’t seem to be offended - he laughed. “Oh, I am not looking for a betrothal. I leave such proposals to my brother, the Prince of Dorne.” He wrapped his arm around Ellaria’s waist and pulled her closer. “But if you feel daring and wish to experience Dornish hospitality abroad…” His smile and wink left no doubt what he was suggesting.

Blake saw Weiss’s cheeks flush a little, but her friend held her composure. Unlike Ruby, whose face turned red like the setting sun while she opened and closed her mouth without saying anything - though Blake’s ears caught her swallowing.

Lady Brienne and Jon were obviously shocked by the blatant offer, but Blake had expected that.

“Oh, you sound like you know how to party!” Yang grinned in return.

Blake suppressed a frown; she had expected that reaction as well. She kept a polite smile on her face herself; it never paid to insult nobility. Though Yang should know better than to flirt back, she thought with a frown - people in Westeros, especially nobles, got ideas in situations like this.

Oberyn’s grin widened. “We do - and I am always ready to prove that I have honestly earned my reputation.”

“As a womaniser?” Jon blurted out. “My prince,” he added a bit too late to be properly respectful.

Lady Brienne was tense, but Blake couldn’t tell if she was outraged or embarrassed - or a bit of both.

“As a lover,” Oberyn replied with a smile. “A lover with an open mind, goodman,” he added with a wink.

Oh! Did Oberyn just flirt with Jon as well? Blake felt her cheeks flush at the thought. That was like in one of her favourite Ninja books!

“Indeed,” Ellaria breathed more than said, winking at Yang, who blinked in response.

Blake wanted to roll her eyes at her partner, who was, not for the first time, realising a bit too late that she might have bitten off more than she could chew. Perhaps it was time to change the subject. “We’ve been told you are here to attend the trial of Ser Gregor Clegane, my prince.”

Oberyn’s smile faded instantly, replaced by a more serious expression. “Correct. As soon as we heard that our sister’s murderer was facing a trial, I set sail. Doran would also have come, but he caught a sudden illness that prevented him from travelling.”

“Oh!” Ruby frowned. “Can you pass on our wishes for a speedy recovery to him?”

“I will, though I would bet that knowing that the monster who raped and murdered our kin will finally be brought to justice will help him more than anything else.”

That was a very dark outlook.

“We’ve heard you not only brought him down so he could be arrested, but you will also face him again, should he demand trial by combat, Lady Blake,” Ellaria said.

Blake nodded. She wouldn’t let any of her friends do this; it was her responsibility.

Ellaria glanced at Oberyn, who frowned slightly at her while she smiled.

Blake wondered what that was about. But before she could think of how to find out, Oberyn spoke up again: “I must confess, when I heard that a woman had brought low the Mountain and is expected to fight him in the upcoming trial, I would never have guessed it were you, Lady Blake. You look far too beautiful to match the brute's strength in open combat.”

Blake narrowed her eyes, both at the insult to Lady Brienne and the implied doubt about her skills. His slightly patronising tone wasn't welcome either. “You would not think that if you had seen our fight at the tourney, my prince. Or sparred with us.”

“Yeah!” Yang grinned and smashed her fist into the palm of her hand.

“The ‘Battle of the Maidens’ is the talk of the city,” Oberyn said, still smiling a little arrogantly. “Although it seems everyone in the audience saw a different fight, judging by their descriptions.”

“Well, when we go all out, we tend to be a bit too fast to follow for most people,” Yang said with a chuckle. “Though some of our moves should have been seen by everyone.”

Blake nodded. Such as Weiss's glyphs, or Ruby's whirlwind attack. Or her clones. Oberyn probably simply didn't trust the accounts he’d heard.

Ellaria nodded. “Most people agreed on those parts, yes.” Once again, she raised her eyebrows at Oberyn, who frowned for a moment. 

Blake looked straight at him. “Appearances can be deceiving. Every member of Team RWBY is not only far stronger than Ser Clegane, but quicker and tougher as well.” The entire city was aware of that by now. Or should be.

“I'd demonstrate, but I don't want to smash the floor - it's hard on the repair crew.”

“It was an accident, Yang!” Ruby complained with a pout. “I didn't mean to smash a hole into the floor!”

Yang laughed, but Oberyn still looked doubtful. 

Blake was about to tell him to spar with them if he doubted them, but she caught Sandor walking in their direction - and since he had taken to avoiding Team RWBY after the tourney had ended, that meant Prince Joffrey was headed their way and his sworn sword had to follow or break his oath.

He wasn’t coming alone, she realised a moment later - he was walking next to Lord Baelish the pimp. 

She suppressed a shudder. To think the realm's Master of Coin ran brothels like some criminals - as a criminal, probably; she was aware of how brothels were run from her time in the White Fang when they had had to make some examples out of those who exploited Faunus girls with few or no options left.

But she couldn't dwell on that. Not right now. Blake wasn’t an expert on the politics of Westeros; Weiss knew much more about that. But Blake knew that calling the relationship between the royal family and the Martells ‘strained’ would be an understatement.

This wasn’t good. Not at all. At least, they were under guest rights, so it couldn't be too bad.

*****

“You doubt Lady Blake's power? She arrested the Mountain herself!”

Yang Xiao Long almost chuckled at Prince Joffrey’s obviously fake surprise.

“So I've heard,” Prince Oberyn replied. He looked far less jovial when talking to either Prince Joffrey or Lord Baelish, Yang noted. Well, they weren't pretty girls. On the other hand, Oberyn had flirted with Jon as well, or tried to - Jon must have been spooked by the first comment since he had been quite silent for most of the talk. As had Brienne, actually, Yang realised. “But it wouldn't be the first time, not by far, that a story grew in the telling.”

“Well, not this one, I can assure you, Prince Oberyn!” Baelish cut in with a wide smile.

Yang clenched her teeth for a moment, her smile straining a little. Sure, Weiss and Blake had been quite convincing when they had told her that they shouldn't act rashly without knowing the full picture and especially any other shady business that might be run by the creep, but it was hard not to rip into him and tell him exactly what she thought about his known business. 

“Team Ruby demonstrated their powers quite convincingly. In fact, I think some might take issue with Lady Blake fighting as the court's champion in a possible trial by combat since the outcome would be obvious from the start,” the creep went on. “Then again, some might also consider her decision to volunteer all the proof needed to condemn the man - I heard some people, Septons even, consider them not merely blessed by the Seven, but their messengers.”

Yang snorted. “Well, we're not messengers from any god,” she said. “We'd know otherwise.”

Prince Joffrey nodded. “Their impressive powers aren't the result of a blessing by the gods - they're from another world.”

Yang could tell at once that Oberyn didn't believe that. As much as she liked showing off, she was getting sick of having to demonstrate that they weren't lying to everyone they met.

“Yes!” Ruby nodded. “We were transported to this world by accident and we're looking for a way back. But so far, they haven't found anything helpful in the palace library.” She pouted, then smiled. “But they're still going through the books - it's quite a big library.”

“For Westeros, maybe,” Yang heard Blake whisper and grinned. Her partner was a bit of a snob when it came to books. It was a cute trait, actually - she was so practical in most areas otherwise.

“Anyway, we're not giving up!” Ruby nodded firmly. 

“A laudable stance,” Oberyn said. “And seeing how much of an impression you've made at court, I will have to adjust my opinion, I think.”

So, he could learn! Yang grinned again. “Being flexible is a good thing!”

Oberyn's eyebrows rose and his smile twisted a little. “I heartily agree with that,” he said, winking at her.

She matched his smile - she hadn't intended to use a double-entendre, but like Hell she was admitting that, or backing down.

“And we're always looking forward to demonstrating it,” Ellaria added.

Whoa, she was laying it on a bit thick. Both of them were, actually - Oberyn really lived up to his womanising reputation, and Ellaria was the most forward woman Yang had met yet in Westeros. And she would be in the top five even if Yang included Remnant. It was getting a bit warm in here, too.

“So, you won't object to me fighting for the court, Prince Oberyn?” Blake spoke up, saving Yang from having to answer straight away.

Oberyn smiled at her. “I would like to see you spar before making a final judgement. Or another opportunity to verify your physical superiority.”

Sheesh, he switched from Yang to Blake in a heartbeat.

“I'd suggest sparring,” Lord Baelish said.

“Yes!” Ruby nodded. “You’re using a spear, right? So I've been told. That would be interesting; I use a scythe. Not quite the same, but still similar in some ways. We should spar! And you don't have to worry about getting hurt - we're good at holding back.”

“Oh, yes.” Prince Joffrey spoke up, smiling widely. “If Lady Blake had wanted to, she would have killed the Mountain on the spot. Or she could have left him broken, dying in agony, as Lady Yang did when a knight attacked her.”

Yang froze. “What? What do you mean?”

The Prince looked confused, but he was still smiling. “The knight who insulted and attacked you, Lady Yang. You crushed his manhood and broke his hips with a single kick. He finally died yesterday, a fitting punishment for his offence.”

Yang blinked. She had killed that fool? And he had ‘died in agony’ as the Prince had just said? But… Oh, no!

“Yang?”

That was Ruby’s voice. Yang glanced around. Everyone was staring at her. Ruby, Weiss and Blake with concern and growing horror, Prince Joffrey with open confusion, Brienne and Jon with shock, Oberyn and Ellaria with surprise…

“My lady?”

This was… She couldn’t… She shook her head and turned away, quickly heading for the exit.

“Yang!” Ruby appeared in front of her.

Yang clenched her teeth and drew a sharp breath. Keep calm! “Not here. Later. I need some fresh air.”

“But…”

“Later!” she hissed and pushed past Ruby.

She could handle her sister right now. She couldn’t handle anything right now.

She made her way to the door, barely noticing how the people gave way, and left the hall. 

Outside, she took a few deep breaths in the cool - but not very fresh - air.

Fuck! She had killed that fool! She hadn’t meant to… She hadn’t known… Damn! She should have known. She had kicked him with far too much force, and he hadn’t even been a threat!

Shaking her head and cursing herself, she walked away, barely managing not to run. She needed space!

*****

A few minutes later, Yang was on top of the wall, facing the sea. She took a deep breath. The air was fresh and cool here, she could feel a light breeze on her skin as she closed her eyes and blinked away the tears.

Fuck.

She’d fucked up. Killed a man. Accidentally. By mistake. Without being threatened in any form.

Because she had been stupid and angry, and had lost control.

She clenched her teeth. Hard. She was an idiot! A killer! A…

She heard a step behind her and whirled, eyes open. Oh.

Blake was there, about two yards away, leaning against the battlement and looking at her.

Yang pressed her lips together. She wanted to tell her partner to get lost, but… Blake had deliberately taken that last step without her usual grace and announced her presence. 

Blake stepped up to her, then turned to face the sea as well, her arms on the top of the battlement next to Yang. “Ruby’s concerned.”

Yang felt even more guilt. She’d killed a man and hurt her sister. She snorted without humour at the sheer weirdness of her thought, then rubbed her eyes as she turned toward the sea again, leaning against the stone. “I’m an idiot.”

Blake made a sceptic noise. “If you’re an idiot, I’m worse.”

“I killed a man - left him to die in agony - because I didn’t think. Didn’t control myself.”

“That was one mistake. I was in the White Fang, fighting for them, for years without realising what was happening. What I was doing,” Blake said.

“You didn’t know better. I did,” Yang told her.

“I should have known better. All the facts were known to me.”

Yang clenched her teeth again. “It’s not the same.”

“Yeah. You hit a wannabe-rapist harder when he attacked you after you already had smacked him down. I attacked humans to make them fear Faunus.”

Yang glared at her. “It’s not a competition! I fucked up!” 

Her partner shrugged. “Everyone fucked up. I did. You did. Weiss did. I’m sure Ruby did as well.”

“That doesn’t make it better.” Yang had killed a guy.

“No, but we can try to be better.”

As Blake had done since she left the White Fang. But… “You didn’t kill anyone,” Yang said.

“I don’t think so. But I don’t know. I didn’t pull my punches.” Blake shrugged.

“You fought people with Aura,” Yang pointed out. 

“I fought people who should have had Aura. But they weren’t really trained that well.” Blake turned to face her. “I won’t tell you that the guy probably would have raped another woman if she had been in your place. Or that he probably had raped women before.”

You just did, Yang thought. And it wasn’t an excuse.

“But he did attack you. Even after you had demonstrated that you were much stronger,” Blake went on. “He could have fled. Or just stayed down. Or just not attacked you. But he decided to attack you instead, because his pride was hurt.”

That wasn’t an excuse either! But… “You know a lot about this,” Yang said, narrowing her eyes.

“Prince Joffrey explained what had happened. He seemed well-informed.”

“If he were older, he’d probably stalk us,” Yang joked, then frowned when she saw Blake flinch a little. Hit another sore spot? She really was on a roll here. 

“Yes,” Blake said, turning her head to meet Yang’s eyes. “Anyway, you made a mistake. But you didn’t want to kill that man.”

“I did it, though.” The man had died, slowly, painfully, and she hadn’t even known. Because she hadn’t thought. Because she was stupid.

“And you won’t make the same mistake again, will you?”

“Of course not!” Yang blurted out. She was stupid, but not braindead.

Blake smiled softly. “Good.”

Nothing was good. Yang had killed someone.

But… she didn’t feel like smashing her head against the next wall in frustration and guilt any more. She scoffed and stared out at the dark sea again.

Blake did the same, and neither said anything for a while.

*****

 

Chapter 17: The Trial

‘Popular history maintains that the Four Maidens fought for justice whenever they were called upon. That is, at least to a significant part, a myth propagated by the modern incarnation of the Ruby Order, which was founded on said myth. No serious student of history would believe those claims - first of all, because what we consider just has changed quite significantly in the centuries since the Four Maidens visited Westeros. And while we have multiple sources that confirm that the Four Maidens’ views of justice differed, sometimes quite strongly, from the common view at the time, assuming that they shared the modern values many associate with them would be a mistake. The modern judicial system developed over time and keeps evolving as society changes. And while it is true that the few stances of the Ruby Order in that field that can be confirmed with reliable certainty do mirror some of what today are seen as the basic rights and duties that shape our society, one has to keep in mind that most laws and customs have to adhere to similar basic principles for a working society. Nevertheless, even with the strict standards applied to those sources, the Ruby Order’s views of justice were very progressive compared to the norms of their time.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ellaria Sands had a smile on her face when she walked up on Team Ruby, her arm hooked into Oberyn's. A friendly smile, not a seductive smile. Maybe a bit flirty, but nothing more - she had a reputation to uphold, after all. But nothing more because despite their very daring clothes - they either showed more skin than even most Dornish women would show in public or were so tight, they seemed glued to the girl's curves, such as there were - the girls were obviously not looking for a lover or an affair. At least, it was obvious to her - Oberyn disagreed.

“A very good morning to you, my ladies!” he said, bowing in the manner of a Braavosi courtier. “You make the sun pale in comparison today.”

Ellaria mirrored him with her own bow as if they were standing in the palace of the Sealord instead of a training ground in the Red Keep.

“Ah… good morning, my prince!” Lady Ruby replied. “And, ah, thanks!” she added, with a nervous smile and her hand rubbing the back of her head.

“We're flattered,” Lady Weiss added with a much more polite smile. 

The girl was not only older than the leader of her group, but also far more used to this dance, Ellaria noted. 

Lady Blake nodded, as did Lady Yang, the latter looking a bit subdued, in Ellaria's opinion. Coupled with the fact that she had all but fled the feast last night, when Prince Joffrey had told her she'd killed a thug who had accosted her, it didn't take much to come to the conclusion that the news had profoundly shaken her. It must have been the first time she had killed.

The girls are more sheltered than they looked, Ellaria thought. And they were girls - the rumour that they were ancient crones using vile magic to hide their true appearances was obviously a fabrication made up by their enemies to damage their reputation. Probably by the Queen herself; the entire court knew that she loathed Team Ruby, jealous of their friendship with the King and envious of their beauty, She wasn't shy about it, either - to the point that people were starting to wonder if things might escalate and to worry about being caught in the conflict. One of the Queen's handmaidens apparently had left abruptly after the tourney, and some of the people with whom Ellaria had chatted last night had been speculating that the lady had abandoned her Queen out of fear - the first of more.

“So, you train daily?” Oberyn asked, making a show of looking over the training yard - which belonged to the Kingsguard, Ellaria realised.

“Yes!” Lady Ruby nodded, smiling widely.

“We are supposed to, at least,” Lady Weiss added with raised eyebrows.

Lady Ruby pouted, which made her look even younger. “Sometimes, things come up.”

“Or they stay in bed.”

“That happened one time! One time!” Lady Ruby puffed her cheeks up, which made her look adorable - and younger than Ellaria’s eldest.

“You’re our leader; it shouldn't happen even just once.” Weiss sniffed.

Lady Ruby huffed. “I'll hold you to that when I have to wake you up at dawn!”

Ellaria laughed with everyone else when Lady Weiss didn't seem to have an answer to that. Yes, Lady Ruby's father had chosen the companions for his heir with great care. Lady Weiss obviously had been tasked to teach her how to handle other nobles and navigate a court. Lady Yang, half-sister of a concubine or second wife, legitimate but not the first in the line of succession according to her sources, was her guard, meant to draw attention and be obvious - the sword of her sister. And Lady Blake was the dagger. As dangerous, or more so, but more restrained - in public. All of them older than their charge, more experienced, yet not so much older that Lady Ruby would feel excluded or isolated. 

And unless Ellaria had completely misjudged the girls, Lady Ruby would not only be well-trained as heiress but also have loyal friends and companions when she was old enough to rule. Her lands were blessed with a good lord.

“So…” Oberyn, always less patient, looked around again. “I remember you offering to spar with me. Since no one else seems to be using it, shall we?”

Lady Ruby nodded several times. “That's why we're here so early, before the Kingsguard arrives. But we'll have to warm up first. And, uh, you probably should wear some armour,” she added with a wince and a glance at her sister.

“It is merely sparring; armour would slow me down too much - you're not wearing armour either, after all,” Oberyn replied. His ego wouldn't take well to fighting unarmoured girls while wearing armour himself, either, Ellaria knew.

“Uh, we're always armoured.” Ruby winced again. “That's where Ser Barristan usually comes in, to demonstrate.”

Ellaria had heard about that last night as well. Ser Barristan's reputation spoke for itself, and yet… The Kingsguard served the King above all. If the King demanded that he'd play along, he would do it - his brothers had done much worse in the past at their King's command. 

“So… stab me in the face,” Lady Ruby told Oberyn. “As hard as you can. With your spear.”

“Pardon?” Oberyn blurted out, and Ellaria gasped. They couldn't be serious.

“I said stab me in the face,” Lady Ruby repeated herself. “It's the best way to show you that we don't need armour and that you can't really hurt us.”

Ellaria remembered hearing about such demonstrations, but she had dismissed them as exaggerations. She had never heard of magic that would render someone invulnerable. Of course, she wasn't an expert, but Oberyn looked baffled as well.

“My lady, I would never do that!” He shook his head. “To ruin your face would be unforgivable!” he added, recovering some of his usual roguish charm.

“Oh, fuck this!” Lady Yang suddenly spat. “Watch this!” She turned and walked to the wall behind them.

“Yang!”

“Yang, what are you…”

Before her friends could stop her, Lady Yang craned her neck, then rammed her head face-first into the stone wall. Hard enough to startle a crow that had been watching them from the top of the battlement to fly into the air.

Ellaria gasped again. That noise! The girl must have broken…

…the wall? She blinked and stared at the slight crater left in the stone, and the shards and splinters on the ground as Lady Yang turned with a snort, her face untouched.

She walked up to Oberyn with narrowed eyes. “Are you gonna get on with the program and stab Ruby in the face now?” She asked, staring right up into Oberyn's face. “If you still think this is a trick or whatever, I'll break the tip of your spear with my face.”

Oberyn stared at her, then glanced at the other girls and Ellaria.

She forced herself to smile as if she hadn't been shocked by the events and nodded. “Please do, my love, or we might be waiting and arguing all morning.”

“Very well.” Oberyn nodded, then twirled his spear before leveling it at Lady Ruby. “Ready?”

“Yes.”

Oberyn hesitated a moment, but then he struck - and he didn't hold back, aiming straight for the girl’s forehead. The tip of his spear hit her, but half-bounced, half-slid off without leaving the slightest mark on her skin.

“Great!” Lady Ruby beamed. “Now, let's spar!” She jumped an impossible distance back and unfolded an equally impossible scythe in the blink of an eye.

If not for her shock - the tales about their magic and powers were all true! - Ellaria would have laughed at Oberyn’s expression.

But her lover recovered quickly, nodded, and stepped up with a smile only Ellaria recognised as forced.

Then the sparring began.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, the tales were true. All of them,” Ellaria said once they were back in their quarters.

“So it seems,” Oberyn said.

She raised her eyebrows at him. “They demonstrated all their ‘Semblances’.” And you never managed to even scratch any of them, she added silently.

“Yes. That doesn't mean they are truly immune to any harm,” Oberyn said with a slight pout.

She knew what he meant: Poison. “It would have to be ingested,” she said.

“Of course.” He snorted and ran a finger over the tip of his spear. “Even resharpened, this won't pierce their skin. Nor would any dagger.”

“Not that we have any reason to make enemies out of them,” she went on. “Not when they are about to bring one of your sister's murderers to justice.” The Mountain would stand no chance; they knew that now. His fate was sealed.

He nodded. “And with my reputation, I would be the main suspect if they were poisoned.”

Oh, yes. Ellaria pressed her lips together. Anyone who wished the girls ill would see the opportunity as well. “Best keep antidotes ready, then.”

He nodded and sat down in the seat in the corner with a sullen expression, his spear resting across his thighs.

She suppressed a sigh and joined him, pushing the spear's shaft away and letting it drop to the floor so she could slide into his lap. “Are you still planning to seduce them?”

“No. Doran would be very cross with me if I did that,” he said with a twisted smile. “Unless I managed to marry the girl afterwards.” He laughed at the very thought of that.

She laughed as well. However, she couldn't help feeling concerned. For as long as she had known him, she had known that Oberyn hadn't had any intention to marry her - he hadn't had any desire to marry anyone, and his brother couldn't force him. But the girls’ power changed that. For such a prize, even her lover would marry. 

And how could she resent him for that? Those girls represented a power equal to the dragons of the former royal family. Maybe even greater.

And they were aligned with the Fat King, who had laughed at the death of Oberyn's kin.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose was still in high spirits when they returned to their room. That had been a nice sparring session! First, with Oberyn, then with the Kingsguard. And Oberyn was very good! “Did you see how he moved his spear? He really knows how to wield it! I need to learn how to do that with my baby!” she blurted out when she sat down on the bed and stretched.

Weiss was frowning at her, she realised. But why?

Blake smirked. 

And Yang shook her head. “Not the best way to phrase it, sis.”

Ruby frowned. What were they…? Oh! She blushed. “I didn't mean it that way!” She pouted at the giggling Yang. Not too much, though. Her sister cracking jokes was a good thing; she had been very down after hearing that she had killed a creep. Even if it had been an accident and the guy had attacked her, that was not something you could shrug off easily. Or should shrug off easily.

But she'd have to keep watching that her big sister wouldn't start drinking like Uncle Qrow. That would be… very bad. Uncle Qrow was great, but he drank too much. And not to have fun, like some of the students at Beacon did.

He said he drank so he wouldn't think or something. Ruby wasn't an expert - she wasn't even a good team leader yet - but she knew that she couldn't let Yang do the same.

“Anyway, it was a good sparring session,” she said.

Everyone agreed with that.

“Even if you sliced that poor bird in half,” Weiss said.

Ruby frowned. “It should have known better than to fly so close!” That wasn't her fault.

“It wasn't close.” Weiss shook her head. “You swung your scythe too far.”

“I needed the momentum,” Ruby said. You couldn’t power through Yang’s guard otherwise. “Anyway. It was nice. And Obyeryn didn't hit on us as much as he did last night.” That had been uncomfortable. He was old enough to be her dad! And Ellaria was old enough to be her mom! They shouldn’t hit on Ruby’s team!

“They did show more restraint today,” Blake agreed.

Weiss scoffed. “They still hit on us.”

Blake shrugged. “They were flirting, but I don’t think they were serious.”

“I’ve been hit on harder by students at Signal,” Yang said with a snort and a smirk.

Ruby frowned a little. Yang was trying to act normal, but Ruby could tell that she was still worked up. The smirk was just a bit off, and she sounded a bit forced - a shade too loud.

“Well, they’re from Dorne,” Weiss said. “You know their reputation - and Prince Oberyn is widely known as a womaniser.”

That didn’t mean he is a womaniser, Ruby thought. Though he acted like one. But… “You can’t assume they’re correct about Dorne, though. They have some weird views here. Like…” She trailed off and bit her lower lip. Dang! She had almost stepped into it! She glanced at Yang and winced.

Yang snorted again, but without any humour. “Yeah. Wear a combat outfit and they think you’re a prostitute.”

Ruby was so dumb! She shouldn’t have let her mouth run free like that and remind Yang of that incident! How could she fix it? She should apologise!

Blake spoke up before Ruby could find the right words. “The locals do have some strict views about how to act and dress. But they’re hypocrites about them. The brothels in the city are thriving.”

“Well, they’re run by the Master of Coin,” Yang said. “Who would want to go against him?”

“I don’t think that’s widely known - we would have heard about it otherwise,” Weiss said. “He is from a very low-ranking noble family, and he must have made a lot of enemies during his time in one of the highest and most profitable offices in the kingdom. I doubt he would stay in office if he were known as a brothel owner; the nobles already look down on merchants and business owners and consider it shameful if a noble engages in trade. No wonder Braavos dominates the banking business and trade; Westeros actively disincentives economic growth!”

That meant… something negative. Ruby nodded; that was dumb.

“On the other hand, the King might consider him his new best friend if he knew,” Yang commented with another snort that sounded a bit too sharp.

“I doubt that,” Weiss disagreed in the clipped tone she used when she was annoyed. 

Time to step in. “Well, we can’t ask him what he thinks without exposing Baelish,” Ruby said. “But would that be bad?”

Weiss narrowed her eyes at her. “Forcing the council member responsible for the realm’s finances out of office?”

“Yes?” Ruby didn’t wince and cringe. “If he’s a bad person?” Pimps were bad persons.

“We don’t know enough to judge the situation,” Weiss replied. “Not yet. And if we were to expose him, people would assume we were plotting to take over his position - or supported whoever wanted to replace him.”

“What?” Ruby frowned. “Why would they think that?”

“Because that’s what they would be doing in our place,” Weiss said.

“That’s what they know,” Blake added. “Everyone at court - with the possible exception of Ser Barristan and maybe others from the Kingsguard - is always plotting.”

That sounded like a terrible way to live to Ruby.

“Like the King’s spymaster,” Yang said. “There’s no way he doesn’t know about Baelish’s brothels - not with so many children acting as his spies in the walls and on the streets. But he hasn’t exposed him yet.”

“He might be paid off,” Weiss said. 

“Or he’s using this to blackmail Baelish,” Blake added. “Or saving it so he can release it if he suddenly needs to get rid of Baelish.”

That sounded even worse! “Is everyone here playing a sick game?” Ruby asked. And she had thought having to fend off marriage proposals from everyone was bad!

“Yes. It’s called politics,” Yang said.

“That’s overly simplifying it. Politics is not a sick game - but too many politicians treat it as such,” Weiss said.

“Can we get back to deciding what to do about Baelish?” Ruby asked.

“We’ll look into his businesses,” Blake said. “If he’s abusing his employees, we’ll put a stop to it.”

Ruby nodded. They wouldn’t let him abuse people. Not on her watch.

“And it goes without saying that we’ll have to reconsider everything he told us,” Weiss said. “Or that he won’t steal our money.”

“Technically Blake’s,” Yang said with a grin. An honest grin, Ruby noted.

“You know what I mean!” Weiss complained.

They were right, though. “We need to increase our security again,” Ruby said.

“We already did what we could to deter thieves,” Weiss said.

Ruby knew that. But there had to be something else they could do. She was sick of being unable to do something when everyone else was plotting. And they had to prepare for the trial too!

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

While she had her glass refilled by a servant - she was watching her intake, but another glass of this exquisite vintage wouldn't affect her wits - Weiss Schnee fixed her most polite smile on her face as she spotted Baelish approaching her. She was aware that those sitting in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones, but for all the pain and misery her father had brought upon Remnant by his policies leading the SDC, he hadn't stooped as low as to engage in prostitution. Of course, she was also aware that the only reason he hadn't was that to be known as a pimp would have ruined his reputation in Atlas's high society. If it were acceptable amongst his peers, he would have jumped with both feet into the business, probably as another way to exploit the SDC employees, both as staff and customers in company-run brothels, so he could maximise his profits and avoid dealing with outsiders. It would allow him to further tighten his grip on those who were slaves in all but name.

It also said something about Weiss’s education as heiress that she was able to run the numbers of such a disgusting business, and nothing good.

“Good evening, Lady Weiss.” Baelish bowed his head and smiled at her. “Are you enjoying the feast?”

“I am,” she lied. At best, it was a distraction from the current troubles of her team. Yang was still struggling with her unfortunate killing of that rapist, the upcoming trial not helping matters, and Archmaester Marvyn still hadn't found anything promising in the royal library. She had just left her friends to refill her glass and wasn't in any mood to deal with this… flesh peddler.

“I am happy to hear that. I am very busy handling the aftermath of the tourney, but I wouldn't have missed this for anything.” He toasted her with his own glass. “The King certainly hasn't shied away from paying for the very best.”

She made an agreeing but noncommittal noise as she took a sip of her own glass. Was that a compliment for the vintage - or a veiled insult aimed at her team by implying that they had been bought? She leaned towards the former, if only because there was no reason for Baelish to insult Team RWBY. And he would have to have a very low opinion of Weiss and her friends - and a very high one of himself - if he thought they would miss such an insult. Of Weiss herself in particular - she had no doubt that her exchanges with the Queen were well-known by now, especially since she hadn't been invited to the Queen's soirees since the tournament.

And, speaking of the Queen, Weiss noted that one of her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Lyra, hadn't been seen since the tourney, either. Had the noblewoman grown tired of the Queen's childish grudge? Or, more concerning, had whatever the Queen was planning - nobles at court were always planning and plotting - spooked her into leaving? Weiss would have to keep a closer eye on the woman.

“At least, the upcoming trial won’t strain the royal coffers,” Baelish joked. “Well, as long as Lord Tywin doesn't take offence at one of his bannermen facing justice. The King owes him a fortune, and Lord Tywin is known to carry grudges forever.”

“You would know that better than I do, having never met the man,” she replied.

“Oh, Tywin Lannister's reputation precedes him; many in King's Landing have never forgotten nor forgiven how his soldiers sacked the city after entering under false pretenses. Of course, since most of the victims were smallfolk, their murderers won't ever face a trial.”

Weiss cocked her head to the side and acted as if this were news to her. “Lord Tywin hasn't disciplined them? I heard he ran his House with an iron fist.” Lord Tyrion had used a slightly obscene term, but the sentiment was the same.

“Oh, he does - which is why so many believe he deliberately let his soldiers off the leash. On the other hand, it's well-known that during sacks, discipline is quickly lost.” Baelish shrugged. “Not that anyone will openly question him; his family is too powerful. Why, his daughter is the queen, his grandsons princes, and his son a Kingsguard! Who would dare to risk their ire?”

“Prince Martell, I believe,” Weiss answered his rhetorical question.

He chuckled. “Oh, yes, but he might be the only one who would.”

“I think Lord Eddard would as well, if there is good reason to question Lord Tywin,” she added. “He doesn’t strike me as a man who would let fear of retaliation keep him from doing his duty.”

“Oh, I think he's quite a bit more willing to bend the rules compared to Lord Stannis. The King's brother would likely kill himself if he considered it his duty. I believe Lord Stark would never go as far as to risk his family. Are you familiar with ‘The Rains of Castamere’, my lady? Lord Tywin had it written and performed to celebrate the deliberate drowning of House Reynes, bannermen of his who had dared to oppose him. None of them was spared, nobles and servants alike. Not even children.”

Weiss scowled for a moment - she had listened to the song. And verified the events behind it. Then she nodded. “That seems to be a theme here.”

Baleish looked confused for a moment before he smiled. “I fear so. But I am but the Master of Coin, not the Master of Law - or the King himself. Granting justice is not within my power.”

Weiss made another vaguely agreeing noise. Baelish must be aware of the Queen's hostility. Why did he seem to want to make them even more biased against House Lannister? What were his goals with that?

They would have to look into that as well. The pile of tasks they had to do kept growing.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Hello!”

“Greetings, Lord Eddard.”

“Good morning, Lord Eddard.”

“Yo!”

The King’s Hand looked very tired, Weiss noted when they entered his office. Still, he rose and bowed his head to them. “Good morning, my ladies.”

“Hello!”

“Hi!”

Arya and Bran greeted them as well - they had been playing with what looked like carved figurines in a corner of the office.

Good morning, my ladies!” Lady Sansa curtsied, one hand holding her needlepoint kit.

For a moment, Weiss felt both envious and sad. Father would have never tolerated her or her siblings playing in his office - not unless he wanted to put up a front as a loving family man for a naive visitor. But that wasn’t the fault of the kids, so she smiled at them.

And beamed at the puppies. They were as fluffy and adorable as ever, and had even grown some more - if not for her Aura-enhanced strength, she would have been buried under them when they came to greet her. Which, in hindsight, would have been worth it.

But they were here for an important discussion - several, actually - so she straightened her skirt after petting the furballs, schooled her features, ignored the grins in Ruby and Yang’s faces - Blake was at the window, acting as if she were checking for spies while avoiding the wolves - and cleared her throat. “Lord Eddard, thank you for receiving us. We have a few questions.”

She saw him tense for a moment before he nodded and turned to his children. “Sansa, Arya, Bran. Please go to your rooms.”

Weiss wanted to blurt out that the kids could stay, but this was better discussed in private.

Once the kids had left, Lord Eddard nodded. “What were your questions?”

To the point as always, Weiss noted.

“Well…” Ruby glanced at Blake. “We have a few questions about the realm’s finances. And the treasure chamber.”

Weiss nodded. They had to be subtle about this. They couldn’t just expose, much less accuse, Baelish. Not without knowing more about the whale situation. “There are rumours that the realm is heavily indebted to House Lannister and the Iron Bank.”

“That is true.” Lord Eddard winced. “It’s quite a large sum.”

Weiss nodded. “But how large is it in relation to the kingdom’s earnings?”

The puzzled frown on Lord Eddard’s face didn’t fill her with confidence that she’d like the answer.

“I would have to ask the Master of Coin about that; Lord Baelish handles that. He is quite skilled at handling money.”

Yes, Weiss didn’t like that answer. “And who checks his books?”

“He has trusted clerks for that.”

Weiss suppressed a wince. So much for independent auditors. She could offer to take a look… No, that would be premature. Best see if they could take a look at the official books unofficially. Making copies of the records might be worth using a scroll. “Thank you. We have another question, though it’s a little delicate.” That was putting it mildly. She glanced at Ruby.

“Yes?” Lord Eddard tensed again.

“What’s the deal about brothels?” Ruby blurted out.

Weiss closed her eyes while Lord Eddard stared at the rapidly blushing Ruby. That could have gone better. “We noticed that there are several brothels in the city, and we wonder about their legal status.”

“Ah…” Lord Eddard looked embarrassed as well. “That is… They are tolerated. Their business is not outlawed, but it’s not… honourable.”

So, that confirmed that if running a business was already considered beneath a noble, engaging in that particular trade would be seen as much, much worse. So, why would Baelish risk everything he had earned to engage in that business? Was it that profitable? Or was there something else behind this? Was Baelish blackmailing selected customers of his brothel? But he would risk exposing himself that way…

She would have to discuss this with the others once they were in a place without spies listening in. For now, she had a few more questions about this particular local custom.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Hanging upside down, Blake Belladonna peered through the window on the upper floor of the brothel. Baelish hadn’t gone out of the Red Keep today to check his business, instead staying in his official office. Blake had considered sneaking into his office, but she didn’t think he was as careless as leaving incriminating evidence there for any spy to find.

And with him doing his actual work, it meant his office in his brothel was empty - and the odds of finding any proof of his, so far solely suspected, crimes were much better there. Or would be, if his office were actually empty instead of being occupied by the man he had been giving orders to the first time she had followed him to this place.

This must be the strawman he was using to run the brothel, she realised as she watched him do paperwork at the desk with apparent familiarity. Officially, the brothel would belong to this man. Most employees would probably think he was the true owner as well - Blake didn’t think Baelish would trust a brothel’s staff to keep such a secret for him. Even if he treated them well, it would take only one angry employee to ruin him.

And, judging by what she had seen in the other rooms, when they weren’t occupied by a customer, Baelish didn’t treat his employees that well - although she was ignorant of what was normal for such business in King’s Landing, so he might be a model employer by local standards. Still, women crying in private and men drinking heavily might be normal for a business here - she had seen merchants hit their staff as well, and in supposedly respectable trades - but it certainly wasn’t the sign of a model employer.

Still, she had seen - well, heard of - worse such business as well, and that had been in Remnant. Not that that excused what Baelish was doing - what they knew so far. She was about to pull up and check another window or two on the way back to the Red Keep when the door was opened and a man entered.

Her ears twitched as she listened.

“Mors!”

“What is it, Tarber? I am busy!” 

The man, obviously named Mors, was, consciously or not, imitating how Baelish had treated him, Blake realised with some faint amusement.

“There was another of those urchins hanging around the place.”

Urchins? Blake frowned. If they were hurting children - or doing something worse - she would have to intervene.

“A mute one?”

“Couldn’t catch’em to check, Mors. They were watching me before I spotted them and gave me the slip.”

Mors grunted. “Were you drunk?”

“No!” Taber replied a bit too vehemently, and too hastily, in Blake’s opinion. 

But Mors nodded. “Then it was one of them. Slippery bastards.” He grunted again. “Tell the men to cast a wider net. Can’t have spies watching our business. Customers wouldn’t like it if anyone knew them.”

“Yes, Mors!”

Mute spies… Blake frowned as she pulled up and sneaked across the roof again. Mute urchins acting as spies. Like the one she had caught trying to pick her pockets. Was it the same child? But the brothel manager had talked as if there were more of them. Once is coincidence, twice is…

She pressed her lips together as she jumped off the brothel’s roof across the narrow street below. If someone was mutilating kids to use as spies, she would put an end to that sick practice.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ser Gregor Clegane, you stand accused of having killed your guard, Joff of Lannisport, in a fit of rage, and of having attacked Lady Blake Belladonna when she called for the guards to arrest you. What do you say to this?”

The King sounded… annoyed to be here, Blake thought. Certainly not eager, unlike the Prince who was leaning forward on his seat. Or his Sworn Sword - Sandor glared daggers at his brother. And Prince Oberyn mirrored Prince Joffrey’s pose and eager expression as he stared at the accused.

She could understand Prince Oberyn’s attitude; Ser Gregor had brutally raped and murdered his sister and massacred her children. And Ser Gregor had disfigured Sandor and murdered their sister, at least according to Sandor. But Prince Joffrey? He had also been very enthusiastic about the death of the wanna-be rapist who had insulted and attacked Yang.

“I demand a trial by combat!” Ser Gregor, wearing chains thick enough to hold a horse, and dressed in clothes that hadn’t been changed since Blake had taken him down two weeks ago, spat. Literally - she could see some spittle hit the floor. And the sheer hatred and rage in his eyes when he looked at her…

She narrowed her eyes and slightly raised her chin. “As his accuser, I stand ready to face him.”

“Well, that simplifies things,” the King said. “We don’t have to go through the whole thing and can go straight to the fight.”

“As if anyone had expected anything else,” Yang whispered next to Blake.

“He didn’t have to call for the trial by combat straight away,” Weiss commented in a low voice on her other side. “He could have waited for the result of the formal trial before calling for a trial by combat.”

Blake didn’t think Ser Gregor could have waited. Even if he hadn’t spent two weeks in a cold, damp cell, which wouldn’t have helped anyone’s mood, the man just seemed to be too angry for any restraint or patience. And unlike someone else she knew who was too often driven by his anger and hatred, Ser Gregor lacked the self-control to keep his temper in check in crucial situations.

“So, let’s move this to the yard!” the King stood and started walking towards the doors. Everyone but the Kingsguard waited for him to leave first, of course, before stepping out themselves. That allowed Blake to keep an eye on Ser Gregor until he was led away. If he tried to flee, she could stop him. It would be his best chance to escape, she knew.

But she doubted he realised it. He seemed fixated on her - even when he was led outside, behind her, she could almost feel his glare on her.

*****

“Looks like the tourney wasn’t enough for half the city.”

Blake softly snorted. Yang was wrong - the crowd watching the trial filled the courtyard, but it was hardly half the city. And yet, she was also right in a way; Blake was certain that for many in the audience, this was entertainment. Just like the court dramas back home, she thought. But with more action. And more blood.

Lord Eddard and Lord Renly had taken precautions, of course. Ser Gregor wasn’t allowed to suit up and arm himself in private, but had to don his armour at the edge of the circle in which they would fight, and he wouldn’t be handed his weapon - he had chosen a sword that was about the size of Yatsuhashi's Fulcrum, and she wondered if he could wield it as well as the second-year student back at Beacon - until the start of the fight. Even so, Blake couldn’t help wondering how confident the Kingsguard standing between Sir Gregor and the King were.

Well, they didn’t have to worry; if Ser Gregor tried to attack anyone, Ruby would intervene - she had her scythe out and her eyes glued to the man. Blake had no doubt that her friend would stop any such attempt in its tracks before he could take more than a single step.

But, to Blake’s slight surprise, the man didn’t attempt to flee - or to attack anyone. He seemed fixated on fighting her.

Well, she’d oblige him. She drew Gambol Shroud as she stepped into the circle and bowed to the king. While the High Septon led a prayer for divine justice, Ser Gregor seemed to tremble with fury, barely able to control himself. He was baring his teeth and grinding them so hard, Blake almost expected a few to crack, but he managed to restrain himself until the Septon finished. 

So much hate… She was glad about it. It made this farce easier. Not easy, just easier. If he were desperate, afraid, if he showed that he was aware that he stood no chance, then killing him would feel more difficult even if she told herself, once again, that he was a rapist and child murderer who had shown no remorse at all.

But as soon as the King gave the signal, Ser Gregor roared and charged her, his huge sword raised high, spittle flying from his lips as he bared his yellowish teeth in a grimace.

He might as well have been moving at a leisurely pace. Blake waited until he reached her, then dodged to the right, whirling around him. She didn't even bother to leave a clone in her place. Before he realised it, she was behind him and Gambol Shroud’s ribbon was wrapped around his legs. A quick jump on his back with both feet left him falling forward, and Blake launched herself forward a moment later, vaulting over his upper back and shoulders with Gambol Shroud and its sheath crossed in front of her chest.

The moment she was passing directly over his head, she struck, spreading her arms in a lightning-quick movement, and Ser Gregor’s body and head hit the ground separately in a brief shower of blood while she landed a few yards ahead of him, her weapon already sheathed again. 

She didn’t bother looking behind her at the corpse - her ears would pick up any movement, not that she had missed - and bowed to the King. “Justice has been served, Your Grace.”

While the crowd cheered as if she were an actress giving a show, she didn’t miss several people making warding gestures with their fingers - aimed at her.

And she didn’t miss how both princes, as well as Sandor Clegane, looked disappointed, either.

Too bad for them; Blake wouldn’t play with her victim. She was better than that.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long looked at the corpse as blood formed a pool around the stump of its neck, then at Blake bowing to the King. Her partner looked cool and composed - as if she had just finished a not particularly challenging task at Beacon instead of killing someone. As if this had just been routine.

But Blake was a bit too calm. Stood a bit too straight. And didn't look back at the corpse, her attention focused on the King.

The audience was still cheering - most of them - but Yang saw several people who looked disturbed. Not by the death, she thought, but how easy and quickly Blake had finished things. The Kingsguard members present, with the exception of Ser Barristan, certainly looked taken aback at least a little.

Well, if they were surprised, then they hadn't paid attention during their spars. Granted, Team RWBY was usually holding back, focusing on techniques and details, but they had seen at the tourney what happened when they went all-out. That was on them, and not a problem for Yang.

Unlike her own team. Ruby was standing straight, trying to look unfazed, but Yang could see through her facade, how she was holding Crescent Rose so tightly, her knuckles were turning white.

“Don't look at the corpse,” Weiss, standing between them, whispered. 

She looked a bit paler than usual as well, Yang noted. Tense, but somehow more fragile as well.

“I'm team leader,” Ruby replied. “I should have done this instead of Blake.”

“Don't be stupid!” Weiss hissed before Yang could say the same - she really was off her game, she realised. “Blake made it clear that she wanted to do this.”

“To spare anyone else,” Ruby shot back.

Weiss’s eyes widened, and Yang smiled ruefully. Her friend seemed to have underestimated her sister. Ruby wasn't an airhead, even if sometimes, she had her moments.

But this wasn’t the time or place to hold this discussion. “Later,” Yang said - Blake was glancing at them, and the way her eyes were narrowing slightly, she wasn't happy about their discussion either. At least no one else would have overheard them, not with the audience's excited murmurs drowning out everything else.

She turned to look at the corpse again when two servants started to drag it away with the help of a horse. The man - a rapist and a child murderer, she told herself again - had died quickly. He hadn't been left to slowly die from internal injuries or infection. And Blake had known what she was doing.

But that didn't make it easy or OK either. They would talk about this. Blake had been there for her when she had realised what she had done, and Yang would do the same for her partner.

But first, they had to talk to the others.

*****

“You shouldn’t have had to kill him!” Ruby blurted out as soon as they were in their room.

Yang saw Blake growing stiff and tense at once. “He would have killed anyone else. I started it when I arrested him, so I finished it,” her partner said.

“He couldn't have killed me!” Ruby shot back. “I'm team leader - it is my job to look out for you all!”

“That doesn't include killing for us,” Yang said.

Blake glanced at her, then nodded. “It was my decision, not yours. I was the accuser, so it was my responsibility.”

Ruby bit her lower lip.

“Only because this farce of a judicial system mandates that the trial could only end by you either retracting the accusations or killing him,” Weiss said.

“You could have picked a champion,” Ruby pointed out.

Yang raised her eyebrows at her sister.

Blake nodded. “I could have. I didn't.” She shook her head. “It was my responsibility, Ruby. Not yours.”

Ruby frowned, looking from Blake to Weiss and then to Yang.

Yang nodded at her. “We're Huntresses, Sis. This is part of what we do.”

“And we won't leave that to you, team leader or not. We're in this together,” Weiss added with a frown. “So, stop complaining, dolt!”

Yang felt tempted to make a comment about team spirit, but this wasn't the time or topic for it. She nodded curtly instead, followed by Blake.

Ruby deflated and sat down on the bed. “I don't like it!” she complained.

“You don't have to like it. You just have to accept it,” Weiss told her, sitting down next to her.

Yang nodded again.

Ruby nodded slowly, then suddenly narrowed her eyes at Yang and the others. “That goes for you as well, though.”

What did she…? Oh. Yang frowned at her, and even more so when Ruby flashed a toothy grin at her.

“You will accept it if it’s my turn to make such a decision,” Ruby said. 

It was clear she wouldn’t budge on that, Yang realised.

Fuck.

*****

After Ruby and Weiss had gone off to train the Stark kids (and to pet their wolves; Weiss wasn’t fooling anyone, least of all Yang), Yang looked at Blake lying on the bed. She was supposed to catch up on sleep so she could spend more time at night doing ‘surveillance’, but Yang didn’t think her partner would be sleeping much, if at all, today. She had her eyes closed and was breathing regularly, but she was just… Her body wasn’t relaxed, not really. Yang knew how Blake looked when she was asleep - she tended to smile just a tiny bit when her face muscles relaxed, and sometimes, she moved in her sleep just a bit, trying unconsciously to find a more comfortable position. Not unlike a cat, not that Yang would ever say that.

So, Yang shouldn’t feel bad for not heading out, or not being quiet, so Blake could sleep. Not at all - this was what partners did. Blake had been here for Yang, and so Yang would be here for her. “So… wanna talk about it?” Smooth, Yang, she berated herself. Just use the worst line ever.

“About me killing the Mountain?” Blake replied without opening her eyes.

“Yes.”

“I did it so he wouldn’t kill someone else in the trial and get off to murder more people,” Blake said.

“Yeah.” Yang walked over and sat down on the bed - on Blake’s side, not on her own side.

Blake opened her eyes and turned to her side, raising her eyebrows as she looked at Yang. “I knew what I was doing. It was my decision.”

“Yeah, we went over that already,” Yang replied. “And Ruby took it to heart.”

Blake winced. “I’m sorry. I should have handled this differently.”

Yang snorted. “You think you could have done anything to make Ruby Rose be fine with her team suffering while she’s OK? Have you met my sister?”

Blake giggled, then drew a sharp breath and shook her head. “No, I guess not.”

“Damn right,” Yang said.

“I didn’t think you’d be so… accepting.”

“I hate it. She’s my little sister. I kinda raised her.” As much as you could if you were two years older. Almost got her killed, too, but that wasn’t something to bring up now. “But I know I can’t stop her.” Even if she wished she could.

Blake nodded without saying a word.

“So… I don’t need to go into all the reasons why killing the guy was right,” Yang went on after a moment. “You already did that.”

“Yes.”

“And it’s about as helpful as it was for me, I guess.”

A quick sad smile flashed over her partner’s face. “Yes.”

Yang nodded. “Thought so. It eats at you, right?”

Blake hesitated, then nodded again. “Some of the older members of the White Fang said it got easier over time.”

Yang slowly nodded again. Blake rarely told anything about her time in the organisation.

“But… some who claimed that were… drinking more than others,” Blake said.

Yang winced. “I know the type.” Uncle Qrow was such a drunk.

“And those for whom it did get easier…” Blake winced. “I don’t want to be like them.”

Yang winced. She could imagine that. “You won’t be,” she said, reaching out to pat Blake’s knee.

Blake stared at her. “How can you be sure? We probably have killed people in the North and didn’t even notice.”

Yeah, Yang had realised that as well. Everyone probably had, but they hadn’t talked about it before. “We feel bad about it.” Bad enough to not want to think about it. “If we stop feeling bad about it, then we can worry.”

“That’d be already past the point when we should have worried.” Blake looked away, and Yang saw her jaw muscles twitch as she clenched her teeth. That would be another sad memory from her time in the White Fang.

“Yeah.” Yang really wanted to know what had happened there to do this to her partner, but she wouldn’t push the issue. Blake would tell her when she was ready. “So… good talk?” She forced herself to grin.

Blake’s smile looked as honest as her grin. “Yes.”

Yang nodded once again, then leaned back, resting her head on Blake’s thigh. “Nap time then.”

“Yes.”

*****

“Lady Yang.” Jon smiled in his earnest but also shy way at Yang when she walked into the training yard. None of the others were around - Yang had seen Arya and Bran, both covered in sand and looking exhausted, entering the Tower of the Hand on the way here. It looked like Ruby and Weiss hadn’t been very gentle today. 

Of course, they hadn’t been gentle! Yang berated herself. Not after what they had seen today. But… She looked around.

“Lady Ruby and Lady Weiss mentioned going to buy ‘comfort food’,” Jon answered her question before she could ask it.

He looked confused, so Yang explained: “Food you eat to feel better.”

He still looked confused. “That’s… good food?”

She chuckled. “Sorry, it’s a word from our world. It means food you usually don’t eat too much because it’s unhealthy, but so good, so when you feel like treating yourself, you buy a lot of it.”

“Unhealthy food?” He grimaced. “Why would you eat that?”

Yang blinked. Oh. “No spoilt food. Unhealthy food - like, candy, chocolate, cakes, cookies… too much sugar and fat, basically, not enough nutrients.”

He shook his head. “But that’s what keeps you healthy! Without fat and sugar, you grow sick and die in Winter!”

Yang winced. Right. Westeros - at least the North - had a different view of healthy food. “Well, it’s different back home. Getting enough food is usually not a problem.” Not in the cities, and if you got cut off from supplies in the countryside, you usually were killed by Grimm before you could starve. “Anyway, they just want to cheer up by getting a treat.”

“They mentioned buying fish dishes as well,” Jon said.

“That’s comfort food for Blake.” And Yang knew that Jon hadn’t missed her partner’s weakness for seafood.

“Ah.” Jon frowned. “Why would Lady Blake need to feel better? She won a great victory today.”

Yang glared at him. “A great victory? The man had no chance to beat her.”

“Because the gods ruled it.”

Yang swallowed what she wanted to say about any gods that made her partner kill for them. People here took their religion seriously. “That doesn’t mean it’s something to be happy about.”

“But… a murderer was brought to justice thanks to her.” Jon shook his head. “Isn’t that something to be proud of?”

“Ask your father if he’s proud when he cuts off some criminal’s head,” Yang told him with a frown. “Before you try it out yourself.”

“I will, my lady.” Jon bowed his head.

Yang rolled her eyes. The boy was overly formal, which meant he was annoyed or angry with her. Well, that was his problem. Still… “We don’t take killing lightly,” she said. “It’s not… normal for us.”

“But you’re so strong!”

“That’s it,” she said. “Because we are so strong, because we can kill so easily…” Far too easily, as Yang wished she didn’t know from personal experience. “...we can’t kill easily.” She blinked, then groaned. “That didn’t make sense, I know. But… OK, it’s like this: The stronger you are, the more careful you have to be. Because if you make a mistake, the consequences will be much worse.”

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“Yes. Power is a responsibility, not a privilege,” she quoted a teacher from Signal.

Jon nodded. “It’s a duty.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Close enough, at least.

“But if you wield your strength in the course of justice, then that’s following your duty, right?”

Yan suppressed a sigh. She came here to blow off some steam, not to get all philosophical. Well, she had quoted one teacher, she might as well quote another. “And what is justice?”

He blinked. 

Hah! Don’t have an answer for that, huh? “Think about it!” she said. “After our sparring match.”

He blinked. “Our sparring match? I just…”

She interrupted him with a faked strike to his face that had him dodge to the side and draw his sword before he realised what he had done, then kept up the pressure so he couldn’t get cold feet.

She needed to blow off some steam.

*****

 

Chapter 18: Plots and Politics

‘For many today, used to the rule of law, the idea that not so long ago, a ruler’s whims were above reproach and laws could be changed - or ignored - as long as you were sufficiently powerful is an anathema. And yet, in the time of Lady Ruby and her friends, that was the case in all of Westeros; any law was only enforced as long as and as far as the local ruler decided to. Even precedents and rulings that had been followed for centuries were not exempt, although to ignore such rules required more power than most nobles, even the King himself, had without dragons. In the same vein, those who sought protection by the law were also forced to gain enough power and influence to ensure the law would be enforced in their case. It should be no surprise to those familiar with the political situation in Westeros prior to the Succession that four powerful foreign warriors, unbound by family alliances yet favoured by King Robert above even his own family, were enough to upset carefully woven webs of alliances and tacit agreements. However, the claim that without them, the Succession could have been prevented, lacks any basis. The rifts that caused the Succession were already present between the factions.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Oberyn Martell gazed out of the window of their quarters at the city below as the sun was setting in the west, idly moving his cup to slosh the remaining wine in it around a little.

The Mountain had fallen. One of the murderers of his sister and his niece and nephew had died. Not at his hand, and far too quickly and cleanly for his taste, but Oberyn was not as petty, nor as prideful, as to suffer more than slight annoyance and frustration over that. Lesser men might feel as if they had been cheated out of their vengeance, but not him. More prickly and stubborn men might also think that justice wasn't served since the Mountain hadn't been killed for the murder of dear Elia, Aegon and Rhaenys or any of his other, numerous crimes, but for killing one of his own men in a fit of rage, but Oberyn was too pragmatic for that. Unlike, say, Stannis Baratheon, who was a stickler for procedure. The man would probably execute himself if he ever committed a crime.

Of course, had Stannis been king, all those responsible for Elia's murder would have been tried and executed as soon as he was crowned. Or, more likely, would have had tragic accidents before any trial could have been convened, so they couldn't contradict Tywin when he'd claim to have been completely shocked by their unexpected actions.

He gripped the cup harder. Yes, the Mountain had fallen, but he was only one of the murderers of Oberyn's kin. Amory Lorch still lived. As did Tywin Lannister.

Oberyn clenched his teeth. That this monster still lived, his daughter married to the King and his grandchildren in line to the throne, stuck in his craw and made his gut ache with frustration. 

He downed the rest of his wine and put the cup away. Blood called for blood. How could his dead kin find any peace as long as their murderers walked unscathed? 

“Are you still planning to seduce the Maidens?”

He turned to smile at his paramour. She was looking particularly attractive in her new dress. “I already told you, I am not planning to seduce them.”

She raised her eyebrows, and he shrugged and smiled as he stood and walked over to her. He slipped an arm around her waist and placed a quick kiss on her lips. “But I wouldn't push them away if they felt like a tumble.” What man worth his salt would?

She slipped out of his grasp and checked her face paint with a small silver mirror. “You like playing with fire.”

He shrugged again and sat down, legs spread, one elbow propping up his head, on the chair in the centre of the room. “So do you.”

She smiled before turning serious. “Would you try to play with a dragon as well?”

He frowned. “They're no dragons. They might be as powerful as a dragon - or more - but they're girls.”

“Exactly.” She nodded. “Girls with the power of a dragon.”

“That's what makes the dance interesting,” he said with a grin. 

She shook her head. “They're girls. Their leader has likely just barely flowered, and the others are at best a year or two older.”

“Yes? They’re old enough to pick a lover.” And powerful enough to refuse anyone. Who could put pressure on a group of girls who could tear your castle down around you with their bare hands?

“They're the same age as your older daughters, my love. And you know how girls their age are.”

He blinked. What did that have… “Oh.” 

She nodded. “Imagine that… incident back in Sunspear, but with your daughters wielding such power. Lady Yang killed a man by accident - by crushing his balls in a bout of anger. And you saw Lady Blake kill the Mountain.”

He nodded with a grimace. If they lost their temper like his daughters were sometimes wont to, they wouldn't throw a tantrum - they would throw people around. If he bedded one of them and she felt offended, or if one of the others grew jealous of her friend or of him… “Doran would be happy if I were forced to marry one of them.”

“Only until he realises that they would be less pliable and likely to listen to him than your own daughters.”

He nodded again. Yes. The girls weren't from Westeros. Only a fool would assume that they would follow local customs if they disagreed with it. Or local laws. “It would be like marrying a dragon.” Hoping every day that you wouldn't set the beast off to turn against you.

She nodded with a slightly rueful smile. “But you'd still bed them.”

“Would you scorn someone who could crush you like a grape?” he asked her.

“That's a question many women have to ask themselves every day.”

He blinked. That was… weirdly fitting, actually. Oberyn nodded.

And couldn't help wondering what Lady Ruby and her group would think about this.

It was a rather sobering thought.

*****

The fat King seemed determined to eat and drink himself into a stupor, Oberyn noted. Although he seemed to be in a better mood these days than what had been reported by his sources in the past. Still, odds were, should the King keep this up, he'd die from his excesses, robbing Oberyn of his vengeance - the man had laughed at the corpses of his kin, after all. 

At least the Lannisters at court were not in a good mood. The Queen seemed to have a scowl permanently stuck on her face, the Imp was trying to match the King drink for drink - attempting to ingrain himself into the King's good graces, no doubt - and the Kingslayer kept glancing between his sister the Queen and Lady Ruby and her friends as if he couldn't decide who bore watching more. And the Crown Prince was pouting when he wasn’t sneaking glances at the Four Maidens.

Seated, as befitted his rank, at the same table, Oberyn smiled at the sight. That cursed House deserved every possible misery one cold heap upon their heads and then some for all their sins.

And yet, he couldn't dwell on that pleasant thought. His paramour had raised a few disturbing questions about Team Ruby. Looking at them, it was obvious, if somewhat in hindsight, how much they didn't fit here. They were dressed in exotic garments, far more revealing than anyone in Westeros would wear, without displaying any sign of embarrassment, yet blushed at even mild flirting. They paid attention to the serving wenches - and not in the lecherous ways the King and other men did, nor the jealous glares of the Queen. Not that they had any reason to feel envious, being such exotic beauties themselves, of course - though their beauty hid lethal danger, he reminded himself. 

But most of all, he noted how young they were. Stubborn and proud, yet inexperienced in many areas - both public and private, he was certain - they were young women whose attitudes betrayed both their age and resulting lack of maturity and the stark differences between the customs of their homeland and those of Westeros. They might refuse to talk about their home, at least to those not in their inner circle, but thanks to what they had let slip, and especially the reactions of Lady Ruby and her sister to certain topics, it was quite clear to Oberyn that the longer they stayed in Westeros, the greater was the risk that a violent conflict would break out. Even Lady Weiss and Lady Blake, while better at hiding their emotions, weren’t experienced enough to fool someone who had grown up at Sunspear. Even now, Lady Blake was looking with mild interest at the Prince who complimented her - again - for her fight in the trial, yet Oberyn could see how tense she was - her ever-present bow was sometimes moving slightly, betraying how twitchy she was. And Lady Weiss seemed…

“You are playing with fire, Prince Oberyn,” the Imp interrupted his assessment.

He turned to look at the youngest Lannister and supposed heir of his father. “Aren't we all, Lord Lannister?” he replied, raising his eyebrows.

The Imp chuckled. “In a sense, I assume. But not all of us are staring at a blazing fire and planning how to jump into it.” He nodded at the girls opposite them.

Did he think Oberyn was trying to seduce the Four Maidens? Or did he want Oberyn to think he did, therefore underestimating him? Oberyn couldn't tell.

Ellaria leaned forward, smiling at the Imp. “I believe many are planning what you imply, my lord. However, not everyone is as foolish as to actually risk making an attempt.” 

“Oh?” The Imp cocked his head to the side. “Both your reputations seemed to indicate otherwise.”

Oberyn laughed. “Reputations are often overblown, as you should know better than anyone else.” They had drawn attention from Lady Ruby's friends, he noted, but they were a bit too far to overhear their talk. Of course, if they could read lips…

“Why, whatever do you mean, Prince Oberyn?” the Imp asked, holding out his cup to be refilled. “I can assure you that I earned my reputation honestly - through hard drinking and harder fucking.”

“And your father earned his through ruthless violence,” Oberyn replied, showing his teeth. “And yet, I wonder how his reputation will hold up as times change.”

The Imp snorted. “My father is many things - ruthless, cruel and cold - but he is not a fool.”

Had the Lannisters already come to an arrangement with Team Ruby? Or was this merely empty if subtle boasting, an attempt to claim closer relations to the Four Maidens than they were in truth? Oberyn shrugged. “Those who would leap into a blaze are fools - but so are those who do not watch the blaze so they can avoid being burnt, should it suddenly flare up.”

“Indeed.” The Imp nodded. “But you aren’t a fool either, and neither am I. So, I wonder - will you risk your life or your reputation when dealing with Team Ruby?”

“What’s life without a little risk?” Oberyn smiled widely again. He ignored his paramour gripping his arm a bit tightly. He couldn't show weakness to the Imp.

Not that he had the intention to actually seduce one of those girls. Ellaria was right - they might appear close, but nothing turned friends into sworn enemies than jealousy over a lover. Oberyn had been at the heart of such affairs before - jealousy and spite often made for a great night between the sheets - but he was not such a fool as to risk being caught between girls who could wreck castles with their bare hands and kill - or unman - grown men by accident without noticing.

“I don’t think there’s anything little about them, Prince Oberyn. They could shatter the realm if they wanted to. It’s only their good nature and their honour that holds them back. And neither tends to fare well in this city.” The imp downed his cup and then turned away to address his brother.

Oberyn nodded. The Imp might not see it, but he had made a good point, one worth acknowledging.

Sooner or later, the girls would lose their temper and lash out. That was inevitable. But as long as Oberyn could ensure that he wasn’t between them and whatever fool would earn their ire, it was also an opportunity to finally get his revenge.

The Imp was correct - those four could shatter the realm. Shattering a house or two would be nothing in comparison.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose’s smile slipped a little as she walked through the Red Keep. Too many servants bowed far too deeply when they met her. She wasn’t some messenger from the gods or the avatar of the Maiden or whatever - she was just Ruby, Huntress-in-training and the leader of Team RWBY! She was here by accident, not because of the gods! And she wanted to go home, not… do whatever these people expected her to do!

She almost used her Semblance to dash to the door and into the courtyard, but the last time she had done that, people had fought over the petals she had left behind - even though they had faded quickly! One had even eaten them! (And that had been really, really weird! And yucky!)

Ruby grimaced at the thought as she stepped into the yard. The locals here were weird, even those who liked Team RWBY. Or especially those - Prince Oberyn and his girlfriend - his ‘paramour’, as they called her - kept flirting with Ruby and her friends. Yang might say they weren’t serious (any more), but it was still icky - they were old enough to be her parents! That would be like… Uncle Qrow hitting on Weiss or Blake.

She shuddered and turned left to head to the royal library. Movement above her caught her attention, but it was just a bird landing on the roof of the building. She smiled and waved at it. “Keep your distance, OK? I don’t want to hurt you by mistake!”

The raven froze for a moment, then stared at her. Well, ravens were supposed to be smart.

She stepped into the royal library. “Hello?”

“Ah, Lady Ruby!” Septon Hernis quickly appeared from between two shelves and bowed deeply. “You honour us with your presence, my lady!”

Ruby winced (it was fine; he wasn’t looking at her but at the floor) and shook her head. “I’m just checking up on the, ah, books, you know.”

“We’re working with all our might to find what you seek for your task, my lady!”

Ruby felt her smile slip. “Yeah… good. Thank you.” In hindsight, she’d have almost preferred if Hernis had stayed annoyed at her as he had been before their visit to the Great Sept. Dealing with people who disliked her was much less embarrassing than dealing with all that bowing and scraping, as Blake called it. She wasn’t a noblewoman, anyway. Just a Huntress. She was supposed to protect people, not lord it over them.

“We have some interesting notes from a Valyrian explorer who claims to have visited the Shadow Lands to translate,” Marwyn said, nodding at her from his usual table in the back.

“Though they seem to cover the people’s magic, not the land’s,” Pycelle added. 

Ruby smiled at both. Team RWBY was really lucky that the Grand Maester had found the time to help their search as well. Marwyn now had a fellow Maester to help him!

“That is a misunderstanding of the idioms, Pycelle! The magic of the people by custom of the time includes the magic of the land since both were entwined,” Marwyn said.

“That is a hypothesis; we don’t have any primary sources that could support that.”

“We have a wealth of secondary treatises that confirm that, and we have translated works that cover the history of Valyria that also mention those views,” Marwyn retorted.

“Those are translations, and we don’t know the biases and limits under which the translators worked! You can’t just assume something - we have to look at the evidence impartially and logically, Marwyn!”

“I am doing that, Pycelle!”

Well, they were working together - that was how academics worked, right? Ruby cleared her throat and forced herself to smile at them. “I’m happy to hear that. I’ll tell the others - we need to talk about this as soon as you’ve finished the book.” Whenever that would be.

“Of course, my lady! I shall send word as soon as we finish!” And Hernis bowed again, deep enough she feared he’d fall over.

At least Marwyn and Pycelle just smiled and nodded at her - eerily in sync - and went back to bickering. Or academic discussion, as Weiss called it.

Still, Ruby didn’t want to stay here and bother them - and who wouldn’t be bothered with Hernis treating her like some demi-goddess? - so she said her goodbyes and left again.

And now she had nothing to do until lunch. Drat!

She blinked. Yang was at Mott's smithy, Blake was busy doing her spying, but Weiss had said she was going to the Starks to pet their wolves and talk to Lord Eddard. Well, she hadn't said she wanted to pet their wolves, but everyone knew she wanted to. And the Starks were nice, so Ruby could join Weiss there. She just had to…

“Lady Ruby?”

Ruby turned. Who was..? Oh. “Lady Margaery. Good morning!” She smiled.

“Good morning.” The other girl nodded her head.

Ruby nodded back. “Are you going to the library?” It was a dumb question. They were practically standing in front of the entrance, so where else would Lady Margaery be going?

“I was just taking a stroll through the yard.”

“Oh?” Ruby cocked her head to the side. Well, that explained it as well. The weather was nice, and the Red Keep was probably safer to take a stroll in than the city. Although there were a lot of spies in the Keep..

“Yes. What a coincidence to meet you here.”

“Ah!” Ruby nodded. “I just checked how Marwyn, Pycelle and Hernis are doing.” She blushed. “I mean, how Archmaester Marwyn, Grand Maester Pycelle…” (Archmaester was apparently higher in their order; Grand Maester was a court rank.) “...and Septon Hernis are doing. They're helping us with our research.” Well, they were doing the research since none of her team could read most of the books in the library, so it was more that Team RWBY was helping them when they could, but there was no need to go into that kind of detail!

Lady Margaery seemed surprised. “They're helping you with your research?”

Ruby had just said that, hadn't she? “Yes,” she repeated herself. “We're looking for magical places - ruins, probably - that can send us home.”

“I see.” Lady Margaery tilted her head with a polite smile. “And they offered their help? That is very generous of them.”

“Yes!” Ruby beamed. “They're very nice.” Especially Pycelle. Marwyn was interested in magic, so he was learning new things through this, but Pycelle just wanted to help them get home. And Hernis, well… he helped them because he thought the gods wanted him to, but that wasn't Team RWBY's fault.

“Indeed.” 

Lady Margaery looked a bit like Weiss when she wanted to say something impolite but didn't, and Ruby wondered if she should ask her if something was wrong.

“Would you walk with me for a bit, Lady Ruby? Or are you in a hurry?”

Ruby shook her head. “No, no, I'm not in a hurry.”

“Very well.” Lady Margaery offered her the crook of her arm.

Ruby slipped her arm through it - that was the proper response, though she wasn't sure if there were more rules about it - and smiled.

“So, you are looking for magical places?”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. “Ruins, probably - like the ones that sent us here.”

“I heard that the Seven Who Are One have sent you here, to help and guide us.”

Drat. Ruby felt her cheeks heat up. She almost blurted out what she thought about that, but that would have been impolite. “Ah, I don't know about that. If the gods had called us here, wouldn't they have told us what we need to do?” Why would you move someone to another world and not tell them what they're supposed to do?

“The gods work in mysterious ways. Often, their aims only become clear in hindsight.”

Now, that sounded weird. And kinda wrong. “Well, then we're not yet at that point. But I think it was just an accident.” If the gods were real and could reach Remnant, wouldn't they have appeared before? Ruby wasn't the most faithful? Devout? Whatever! But she would have remembered a religion with seven gods that were one on Remnant. Maybe. She hadnˆt paid too much attention. She probably should ask Weiss. Or Blake - Blake probably knew more about Faunus religions. Then again, if the Seven were Faunus gods, wouldn't there be Faunus here in Westeros?

“An accident?” Lady Margaery raised her eyebrows.

“Yes. Accidents happen.” Ruby nodded. 

“And you're looking into ways to make such an accident happen?”

“Yes.” She got it!

“I see,” Lady Margaery said, but she looked a bit confused. Not much, though - she was as cool as ever. Although…

Ruby smiled. “Are you in a hurry, my lady?”

“Not particularly, no. Why?”

“Want to go pet a puppy?”

*****

“Who is a good boy? You are! You are!” Weiss Schnee whispered as she petted Hunter’s fluffy belly. Lady whined a little, trying to push her brother out of the way, and so Weiss switched to petting her with one hand and rubbing Hunter’s belly with the other. They were so adorable!

“Aw! Hi, Weiss! Hi, Arya! Hi Bran!”

Weiss froze for a moment, then schooled her features and slowly turned to look at her team leader with all the dignity worthy of her position. “Yes, Ruby?” Wasn’t she supposed to check the library today? Oh, they weren’t alone! She suppressed the glare Ruby deserved for surprising her with a guest and smiled at Lady Margaery. “Good morning, my lady.”

“Good morning, Lady Weiss.” Margaery seemed to be a bit off today - she looked nervous.

“Oh! Hi, Nymeria!” Ruby had dashed over to the third fluffball, who had been watching from her spot at Arya’s feet, and started petting her. “Lady Margaery wanted to pet your wolves!” she told the children.

The noblewoman didn’t seem to agree with that, but she didn’t contradict Ruby’s claim, so she probably just was a bit embarrassed by Ruby dragging her inside the Tower of the Hand as if it belonged to her.

“Oh, sure! They love being petted!” Bran blurted out. “Especially Hunter. And Lady.”

Smiling at the noblewoman, Weiss nodded. “Oh, yes. Come! They’re waiting.”

Lady Margaery looked even more nervous when she slowly stepped closer, and Weiss nudged Lady. “Come on, Lady! Show Lady Margaery how nice you are!”

“And how big you are…” Lady Margaery muttered as Lady chuffed and stood up, shaking her head before rubbing her flank against the noblewoman.

“They’re direwolves!” Bran said, beaming. “They’re going to grow even bigger!”

“Remarkable,” Lady Margaery said. She started petting Lady, but she was much too hesitant.

“You need to pet them more forcefully,” Weiss told her. “Don’t worry, they like it!”

“Yes, Lady loves the attention. Good morning, my ladies.”

Ah, Lady Sansa had joined them.

“Good morning, my ladies.” And Prince Joffrey was with her. “Indeed. For such strong animals, they are remarkably playful. They could easily rip apart a grown man - or an ox once they are fully grown!” he added with a wide smile.

“They’d only do that if we order them to!” Arya added.

“That’s very reassuring, my lady,” Lady Margaery replied as she stepped away from Lady, who quickly joined Lady Sansa to beg a treat.

“Indeed. None shall live to lay a hand on my betrothed or on her kin with such guards around,” the Prince declared. “You have to take them hunting soon - imagine what prey they can take down!”

Lady Sansa nodded. “I will ask Father if we can attend the next hunt, then.”

“He can’t refuse you, can he?” The Prince scowled. “Not if you’re invited.”

“I would think not,” Lady Sansa said.

“That should be a very memorable occasion,” Lady Margaery said. “Though I fear that there won’t be much left for us if such big wolves run down a stag.”

“They won’t feed if we tell them not to,” Arya said with a frown.

“They’re smarter than dogs,” Bran added with a nod.

“Nymeria is the smartest!” Arya claimed.

“Hunter is smarter!”

“Of course you’d say that!”

“Don’t argue!” Lady Sansa hissed at her younger siblings.

“Don’t butt in!”

“We’re not arguing!”

Nymeria and Hunter both barked, drowning out everyone until Lord Eddard arrived to stop the ruckus.

Fortunately, he didn’t blame Weiss and her friends for it, though Weiss did feel a bit guilty when the children were scolded. She had indulged in her desire to pet the puppies as well, after all, so it wasn’t as if it was entirely the fault of the children. She wasn’t the only one, either - Lady Margaery excused herself, claiming the need to write to her family. A transparent excuse to leave the tower, in Weiss’s opinion.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Greetings, Lord Tyrion,” Weiss Schnee said as a servant ushered her into the noble's quarters. They were almost as big as her team's, she noted - of course, Lord Tyrion had been living here for years and wasn't merely a visitor but the brother of the Queen and the heir of the Lord of the Westerlands - although there was some doubt that he would actually be allowed to inherit according to many. Still, she felt a bit annoyed at the differences. 

“Lady Weiss! Be welcome in my humble abode.” He bowed and gestured at the table, where two chairs were facing each other, one noticeably higher and with a footstool placed at its feet.

Weiss nodded. She had expected, as usual when visiting nobles, to be seated in some armchair, or on a couch, with maybe a side table for the snacks and refreshments served by servants. This seemed… not like a business meeting at home, but more like two men meeting for a talk over a drink, perhaps? She wasn't quite certain if she was reading the social clues correctly when it concerned such details. Of course, she also knew that many business deals had been brokered during such supposedly casual meetings.

Of course, she still took her seat - she was Weiss Schnee. Her family didn't follow trends; they set them. She politely pretended not to watch while Tyrion literally climbed onto his own chair across the table, then realised that this arrangement put their heads at equal height.

In her experience, nobles would do small talk before addressing the topic of such a meeting, but with Lord Tyrion having decided on such an unorthodox approach, she decided to respond in kind. “You wished to speak to me, my lord.”

He snorted, then snipped his finger, and a servant started filling their glasses. “I did.” He took a sip from his glass. “I talk best with my throat wet,” he commented with a lopsided smile.

She tilted her head slightly in return. “I found it most advantageous not to dull my wits with wine.”

He snorted again. “As expected.”

A servant offered her a cup of tea, and she nodded, letting them place the cup down on the table. She had no intention to actually drink from it, though - not without Blake giving the all-clear. Lord Tyrion might not be close to the Queen - Weiss was very well aware what the Queen said about him in private talks, and unless the two siblings were playing a game that went on for years, she was not find of him at all - but his servants showed some similarities to the Queen's, likely because both came from the Westerlands, and that made it more likely that the Queen could find some leverage over one or more of them. 

And if you had leverage… Weiss knew from personal experience that few servants would be able to resist such influence; too many of her secrets had been revealed to her father that way, and she wouldn't put it past the Queen to use such an opportunity to strike at Weiss and frame her own brother.

She lifted her cup to her lips anyway and faked taking a sip - it wouldn't do to appear either timid or impolite - and waited for the Lord to come to the point. 

He chuckled, once, “If I had invited Lady Ruby, she would already be talking my ear off.” 

Both servants present left after a gesture from the nobleman.

“You didn't invite Ruby. You invited me,” Weiss replied.

“I did, yes.” He chuckled again. “And with good reason.”

She raised her eyebrows. What did he mean? Was he about to offer a betrothal? Rumours claimed that all noble houses of sufficient rank had refused to have a daughter marry him, and that his father would not betroth his nominal heir to any girl from a lower house. Team RWBY would offer an alternative, and Lord Tyrion had sussed out that on Remnant, you chose your partner yourself; you didn't let your parents decide for you - or you weren't supposed to. Or was he trying to split her team? Turn her against her friends? “Yes?” she put the cup down.

“You are Lady Ruby’s hand.” Lord Tyrion said it as a statement, not a question.

Weiss frowned slightly. “I do not act as her hand.”

“Not in a formal sense. But you’re her most trusted advisor. If you speak, she listens. And if she listens, the others follow.”

He sounded confident, but that could be an act. Someone growing up as a member of the highest nobility would know how to put on an act. “Ruby listens to any sound argument.” That was, well, a little exaggerated. Maybe more than a little. But essentially true.

“And you know how to make a sound argument best amongst your group.”

Weiss frowned a bit more. Was that a veiled insult of the rest of her team? “I think you misjudge my friends, my lord.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that Lady Blake or Lake Yang were lackwits. Only a fool would underestimate either. However, you are the one who treats the most with the members of the court - those who aren’t the King or the Kingsguard, at least. You regularly match barbs with my dear sister, for example.”

That was correct, though Weiss was growing a bit tired of the apodictic way the nobleman stated his opinion. “All of my friends could match barbs with the Queen - and have, at various opportunities.”

“Without losing their temper when Cersei keeps at it?” He took another swallow from his glass before refilling it.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded firmly. Blake wouldn’t lose her cool at all when faced with petty insults. And Yang… had had a harsh lesson about not thinking before acting.

“Then it seems I underestimated your friends, indeed.” He smiled, showing his teeth. 

Ruby and Yang would both roll their eyes at this point. Weiss felt like it. And she felt like asking him to come to the point. But that would undermine her choice to wait him out. So she nodded and waited.

He snorted again. “That’s another reason I wanted to talk to you, Lady Weiss. You know how to play the game.”

“I might know it. That doesn’t mean I am playing it,” she told him.

“Everyone at court is playing it. Some just don’t realise it.”

Ah. “From a certain point of view, you might be correct.” She had to give him that. “Yet you seem to assume that everyone is playing the same game.”

“Like offering betrothals? Or trying to seduce you? I hope you won’t feel slighted when I do neither; I prefer to pursue people who are more receptive to my charms.”

“Not at all,” she replied. “The constant proposals quickly became a bother.”

“Oh, Cersei was utterly blindsided by your reaction to the betrothal between my nephew and Lady Sansa.”

She tilted her head at the nonsequitur. “We noticed.”

“She can’t fathom that people aren’t like her. And she’s too stubborn and proud to admit any mistake.”

“I bow to your far more vast knowledge of this subject.” If he thought she would chime in with catty remarks that could be turned against her or undermine her team, he was mistaken.

He laughed. “As I said, you play the game well, Lady Weiss.”

She slowly tilted her head and stared at him. “You said I know how to play the game,” she corrected him.

“I did, yes.”

She resisted the urge to check the time; her scroll was turned off anyway, and they didn’t have mechanical clocks in Westeros as far as she knew. 

“What do you want, my lady?”

Her first impulse was to turn the question back at him - he was the one who had invited her. She didn’t indulge that urge. She was tired of those games. Instead, she told him the truth: “I want to go home with my friends.”

“And all the riches of Westeros won’t be able to change your mind.”

“Yes.”

He nodded and refilled his glass again. “Your home must be a paradise if you’re choosing to return home over ruling this country.”

She shrugged. “Many people would choose their home even over an objectively better alternative.” Ruling Westeros? As if anyone would want to live in this barbarian country without any decent infrastructure or technology, much less rule it!

“And yet, you almost never talk about it.” His mismatched eyes narrowed slightly.

“Talking about our home makes the longing worse.” She smiled at him.

“Understandable.”

He still hadn’t told her why he wanted to see her. She really wanted to ask him - to tell him to get to the point already! - but she had her pride. So, she kept smiling politely and waited.

He sighed, and she smiled. Then he narrowed his eyes again and met hers. “What will it take to make you spare the rest of my family, should a member do something stupid?”

She blinked. So, that was what he was worried about? She shook her head. “Nothing. We do not blame people for the sins of others, be they kin or not.”

He didn’t seem to be as relieved as she had expected at hearing her assurance. Did he really think Team RWBY was as bad as, say, his father? Or anyone else like him?

Maybe she should also add that Team RWBy was not going to kill people for insulting or attacking them. Although… she really didn’t want anyone to think that they could attack her friends without suffering the consequences of their actions.

Decisions, decisions.

*****

“...and so he finally, after dancing around the topic for an annoyingly long time, asked us not to judge his family for the actions of his sister - and, at least that was my impression, of his father.”

Blake Belladonna nodded as Weiss reported what had happened in her meeting with Lord Tyrion.

“But we wouldn't do that anyway!” Ruby blurted out.

“I know!” Weiss scoffed. “But, apparently, Lord Tyrion didn't. As a matter of fact, I am still not certain that he believed me when I explained our stance to him. Judging the children for the sins of their parents - or cousins, grandparents, etc. - seems to be widely accepted in Westeros.”

“Even if it weren't, Lord Tyrion's father had an entire house killed,” Blake reminded them. “And had a song about it commissioned.”

“That's sick,” Yang said with a scowl.

“Yes. But it also ensured that few others would dare to challenge him.” Weiss pressed her lips together. “By spreading it - by owning it - he used it to build up his reputation.”

Blake nodded again. The White Fang had done the same - or attempted to do it, at least - by attacking targets that would ensure the maximum amount of publicity. But having a reputation for attacking civilians and killing them was, at best, a double-edged blade. It scared people, but it also made them hate you - and both fear and hatred could drive people to fight you with all they got. Adam never understood that. He had never wanted to understand it since if he had, he would have had to change his policies - and that would have meant admitting that he had made a mistake.

“Well, he knows now that we aren't going to attack him for whatever the Queen does,” Yang said. “So, problem solved.”

Weiss shook her head. “Even presuming that he believes us, the Queen is merely the most obvious issue. As I said, I had the impression that he was also worried about his father. Not the least because Lord Tywin might consider the death of Ser Gregor an attack on him - or his power.”

“So, does he think his father will travel here?” Ruby asked. “If he's worried about him offending us. He can't really do that from the other side of the continent.”

“He could,” Blake pointed out. “He could work through intermediaries and strawmen to strike at us. Usually, people in his position don't get their hands dirty by personally engaging someone.”

“I believe that we can expect Lord Tywin to travel to King's Landing,” Weiss said. “As well as many other nobles. Our demonstration at the tourney will have impressed their relatives and agents in the city, and they will want to meet us to take our measure, as Lord Eddard would describe it.”

“You mean to offer betrothals to us,” Ruby said with a scowl and leaned back on her bed until she was staring at the ceiling. “I am so sick of that! Why don't they get that we're not interested?”

Blake shrugged. Many people, both humans and Faunus, were stuck in their ways. Changing people's opinions was hard - much harder than riling them up to fight someone.

“Because they don't understand us,” Yang said with a grin. “If they did, they'd try to bribe you with weapons, sis.”

Ruby scoffed as Yang chuckled at her own joke. “They don't have very interesting weapons here. Well, except for the blades made from Valyrian steel. But they are apparently priceless.”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “Not even Lord Tywin, widely considered the richest noble in Westeros, was able to buy one after his ancestral blade was lost 300 years ago.”

“And even if they offered such a blade, they would expect you to marry their heir or something,” Yang added.

Ruby pouted. “I don't want to own one. I just want to examine it. See if there's anything that would make Crescent Rose better.”

Of course she would! Blake smiled slightly as the others chuckled. 

“Anyway, I am glad that you settled that misunderstanding, Weiss,” Ruby went on. “We can't have people think we would go crazy and attack families.”

Everyone agreed with that. But Blake also knew that they couldn't be seen as too soft, or one of the sick bastards making up the high nobility here would think they were weak and start something.

She had a few suspects in mind already. The Queen, of course, but Lord Baelish was looking more suspicious the more she found out about him. And if Lord Tyrion didn't trust them, he might consider striking first. And only a fool would trust a spymaster employing children as agents.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake was getting too familiar with this brothel. She didn’t just know many of the employees of both genders on sight, she had started to recognise regular clients as well, even though she had not yet set foot inside the building - she had stuck to spying through windows and shutters, usually hanging from the edge of the roof. She would have thought that a brothel which charged as much money as this one would be better at protecting the privacy of their clients, especially those with more… exotic desires.

Granted, being a Faunus and a Huntress provided her with unique advantages none of the humans in this world had, mainly excellent night vision and other senses and Aura-enhanced strength and endurance. No human would have been able to make the leap to the brothel’s roof, nor would they have been able to spy as effectively as she did. And without cameras and other recording devices, any attempt to prove someone was a client would reveal her as a spy as well, which would deter many local spies from actually doing that. Still, closing the shutters to completely block her line of sight instead of leaving gaps for light to pass through should have been obvious.

“...oh, you are so great, my lord! No one compares to you!”

“Hah! Flatterer! I bet you say that to everyone!”

“Yes. But I mean it when I say it to you!”

Blake rolled her eyes. No need to visually check that room - she recognised the voice. That was a rich merchant, a regular. From what she had overheard from the staff, he was well-liked for tipping generously.

She moved to the spot above the next room, her ears twitching under her ribbon. 

Only groaning here, with the occasional curse word. No hint of anything going wrong.

With Lord Baelish stuck in his office again - apparently, the tourney had strained the royal treasury a bit more than expected, probably because of the prize for the Battle of the Maidens, and the Master of Coin was busy keeping the realm afloat - the odds of catching anything incriminating were low to begin with. And…

Her eyes widened. Those were cries for help! She rushed over the roof, sliding the last yard down the slope, one hand grabbing the edge to stop herself from falling while she went over, and swung around, the other hand going for Gambol Shroud as she…

…saw a client getting manhandled out of the door by two of the bouncers while a girl was crying on the bed inside the room, holding her eye.

She didn’t see or smell blood, so it was probably a bruise. Still… She pressed her lips together and climbed up on the roof again, then moved to the back of the building. The bouncers would throw the guy out the back, not the front.

And there he was, sprawling in the alley, his clothes thrown out as well, almost as an afterthought, cursing the prostitute and the bouncers - and everyone else while he pulled his pants on.

He didn’t look rich or like a noble, Blake noticed. Would the bouncers have done the same if the woman had been assaulted by a noble? She didn’t know. Maybe she should…

Her eyes narrowed as she spotted a small figure two roofs away, clinging to a chimney. Another spy. Another child spy, she realised when she caught them moving forward to look at the cursing former client.

The brothel was a bust tonight, but this had promise.

She quickly pulled back into the shadows cast by the sloped roof, then dashed down the roof to jump over the alley to the next roof. A few such leaps brought her behind the spy - who definitely was a child. But how to test her horrible suspicion? She couldn’t capture the child without revealing herself and warning his employer.

She would have to shadow the spy.

*****

Flea Bottom, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

As she retreated from the shabby house where the little spy apparently lived - together with a dozen, at least, of other children - Blake felt sick. Sick and angry. Tailing the child had been easy; they might have been working as a spy, but they were still a child and never looked up even though they had been spying on the brothel from a roof themselves.

Finding this safehouse had not been a challenge, but keeping her temper once she realised that the house was eerily quiet for containing so many children, that none of them spoke a single word and rarely made any noise at all? That had been difficult. 

Blake had managed, though she needed to blow some steam, and soon.

There was only one explanation for the eerie silence: All of the children were mute. Mutilated - their tongues cut.

Their master had a lot to answer for. Blake just didn’t know, not yet, how she would demand those answers.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Yang!”

“Lady Yang!”

“Blessed Maiden!”

“My lady!”

“Sorry, can’t stay and chat - important Maiden business!” Yang Xiao Long wished she had Ruby’s Semblance as she dodged half a dozen people and all but ran to Mott’s shop. When she found the door locked, she had a brief urge to punch a hole into it. What shop locked its door during the day? Right, things were different here. 

Fortunately, Gendry must have been close since the door opened right away, and she slipped in just before another man reached her.

She let out a breath of relief while Gendry relocked the door. “Those people are crazy!”

Gendry stared at her for a moment before he shrugged, but he looked embarrassed. “They are just strong in their faith. You are one of the Four Maidens blessed by the Seven, my lady.”

Yang narrowed her eyes at the big lug - he was almost as big as the King, though not fat at all - but Gendry had turned away and was walking towards the forge in the back. She was tempted to make a comment about how crazy it was to think Yang of all people was blessed by the gods of this land, but she knew - boy, did she know, after the riot and their hours-long visit to the sept! - how seriously people here took their religion. They were willing to kill people over it. That no one had died so far was a miracle.

She blinked at her own unintended pun, shook her head and entered the forge. “Yo!”

“Lady Yang.” Mott nodded at her. He was working on a sword, she noticed.

She took a closer look - she could go over the latest version of her maintenance tools later. “That looks like it contains more gold than steel.”

Gendry half-stifled a chuckle, but Mott snorted. “It will cut as well as any other blade I made from steel. The inlays do not diminish it.”

“Except for the added weight,” Yang said. Gold was heavier than steel, and you needed more material than with a pure steel blade to begin with if you didn’t want to compromise its strength.

Mott shrugged again. “The client insisted.”

“And the customer is king, right?” Yang grinned.

Gendry looked confused. “That’s not for the King, though, I thought.”

Mott chuckled. “We’ve got a similar saying in Qohor. It’s probably not common in countries with an actual king.”

Yang nodded. “Yeah, probably.” Oops. Had he already known that they didn’t have a king back home? Well, it didn’t really matter. “So… any progress with mechashift?”

Now he scowled at her. “If I had not seen your weapons shift, I would believe you had been lying to me.”

“Yeah, it’s hard to forge such a weapon with the steel here, but if anyone can manage it, it’d be you.”

He snorted at her compliment. “I would need to sell far more blades like this to afford more such attempts.”

She hoped he was kidding; she hadn’t thought a primitive mechashift weapon would be that expensive. “Well, you could recoup it easily - just find a stupid noble willing to pay a fortune for a curiosity.”

“I am sure the sept would pay what price you asked to have such a weapon, Master,” Gendry cut in.

“The Fat Septon would expect it as a gift to honour his gods,” Mott said with a scowl. “And if I refused, a few remarks would see this house pillaged and us two dead.”

“Surely not, Master! The Seven would not allow that!”

Yeah, right. Once again, Yang swallowed what she thought about that argument. She had another, anyway. “Would he really? I think everyone in the street knows you’re our friend.”

Mott was still frowning. “And once you leave?”

Oh. Right. She nodded with a slight wince. “Yeah, that would be bad, probably.” Actually, now that she thought about it… What would happen to their friends here if Team RWBY left? Would the Queen be as petty as to go after them? She snorted. Of course, the Queen would go after them! She would have to discuss that with the others.

“The Hand of the King likes your work, Master,” Gendry pointed out. “Surely, even if the Seven would not step in, the High Septon would not dare to go against him - people say he is closer to the King than the King’s brothers.”

Well, they were right. Yang nodded. The King didn’t hate his brothers, but when he made fun of them, his jokes were a bit cruel; he never went that far when he made fun of Lord Eddard.

Mott shook her head. “Men in power - and women, too - have ways to work around such things, boy. If the Queen wanted you dead, the only way to save yourself would be to flee to Essos.”

Gendry frowned. “But the Seven have ruled; who would dare to go against their will?”

“There are always people who think they know better than the gods, boy.”

Yang nodded in agreement.

Gendry frowned at that for a few seconds. “Is that why you said I should, once I finish my apprenticeship, travel to Essos to learn more about our craft?”

Mott scoffed. “Boy, without travelling and learning new things, you won’t ever surpass me.”

Yang knew an evasive answer when she heard one; Ruby had tried the same when she had been younger. “Is there any trouble?” she asked.

“No,” Mott said.

But Gendry looked pretty mulish. Like Ruby, when you told her she couldn’t have more cookies. Or the Prince when Team RWBY refused to show off what they could do with Dust. “If there’s anything we can do to help…”

Mott shook his head. “There’s no problem.”

Yang also knew a lie when someone told it to her. Well, most of the time. Probably. But definitely here. “Who wants to hurt Gendry?” The lug was like a teddy bear. A teddy bear the size of a young Ursa, with muscles like an ox, but almost as nice and honest as Ruby.

Mott frowned at her. “We’ve drawn too much attention from the Court. Too many important visitors. People can get the wrong impression from that.”

Yang frowned back. “What kind of wrong impression? Don’t tell me that this is about another marriage proposal!”

Mott blinked, then laughed while Gendry blushed. “No, no!” Mott said. He hesitated a moment. “They could mistake Gendry for someone else.”

Gendry looked as confused as Yang felt. Mistake an apprentice smith for someone else? Someone connected to the Court? That made no sense at all! Why… She stared at the boy and blinked. He was tall and muscular. And that hair. Add some wrinkles and a lot of fat…

Oh.

Mott nodded.

“What do you mean, Master?” Gendry asked. He wouldn’t get it - he probably had never seen the King up close, or at all.

Yeah, Yang would also have to talk with her friends about that.

*****

 

Chapter 19: Family Matters

‘Popular culture usually assumes that the Ruby Order was aligned with noble houses - most commonly, for obvious reasons, House Stark, though cases have been made for almost all of the other leading houses of the period, often in direct contradiction of the records we have, and sometimes utterly nonsensical, such as the claim that they were aligned with House Greyjoy, based on nothing more than Lady Blake’s supposed preference for seafood. However, if we take a closer, more discerning look at the reliable records, then we find, especially when taking into account the well-known bias toward noble houses when it comes to records, that they often associated with smallfolk, a policy which explains the reverence many in King’s Landing showed for them, especially since no supernatural, much less divine, feats attributed to them have been conclusively proven, so religious reasons alone would not have explained this. No, it was their obvious and - as we can deduce from multiple sources - honest desire and willingness to help people no matter their social standing that saw the Ruby Order become entwined with the Faith, which was, at the same time, undergoing a change of dogma.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

As Tobho Mott had expected, as soon as Lady Yang had left, Gendry addressed him. “What is going on, Master? Why would someone mistake me for someone else? And for whom?” he added, blinking. “You and Lady Yang know…”

Tobho scowled. Gendry was a simple boy, but he wasn't dumb. Tobho should have been more subtle - but then Lady Yang might not have understood the issue. There was nothing for it; he had tried and failed, and now he was cornered. Since Lady Yang would inform her friends, Tobho would have to expect another visit from Team Ruby, and he had no doubt that Lady Ruby would tell the boy everything anyway; he had known the girls long enough by now to have taken their measure. Lady Ruby and her friends had different customs, but they valued family and would not leave Gendry ignorant of his own. In fact, judging by Lady Yang's reaction, they would not take well to any attempt of Tobho's to keep the secret from the boy. And Tobho could ill-afford to lose their protection - or the appearance of their protection. Too many would jump at the chance to get to or use him. He was well and truly trapped.

Sighing, he gestured to the closest chair. “Sit down, boy.”

Gendry looked mulish but sat down without hesitation. He was a good apprentice, and his trust in Tobho obviously hadn't been broken. Though how much longer that would remain the case… “They could mistake you for the King's bastard, boy.”

He gaped at Tobho. “The King's…” His mouth snapped shut as he understood. He wasn’t stupid, after all. “The King's…?”

Tobho nodded. 

“So, that was why the King’s Hand visited,” Gendry whispered. “Not because of my work.”

“He came because of you, but he bought the helmet because of your work,” Tobho corrected the boy; it wouldn't do to make him doubt himself. 

“But…” Gendry shook his head. “But I'm a bastard. Why would anyone care about me? Enough to threaten someone?”

Tobho snorted. “Because striking at you is easier than striking at the King? Because they might fear you having ambitions above your station? Because you're friends with Team Ruby?”

“But no one cares about me!” Gendry repeated himself. “The King… my father…”

He wasn't wrong about the King; Tobho didn't care much for gossip, but it was an open secret that the King had over a dozen bastards and hadn't recognised more than two, maybe three. “Team Ruby cares.”

Gendry opened his mouth, presumably to protest, then closed it again, and Tobho smirked. “They care about everyone,” the boy finally said. “That's why the Seven have chosen them.”

Tobho scoffed again - the gods hadn't chosen the girls. And if they had, they had a strange sense of humour. Why would you pick someone as your champion who didn’t follow you, if you were a god? “They might care about everyone, but they know you and visit regularly.”

“But…”

Tobho went on: “By their own words, you're a friend of theirs. And they don't say that about everyone.” Even though they were a bit free with that title.

“But they say the same about you, master. They visit your shop,” Gendry protested.

“Yes.” And damn them for it! If they had never visited, Tobho would still be the best smith in the city, but he would only have to worry about his fellow guild members, not nobility.

And he would still be ignorant of the heights his art could reach. Ignorant of the wonders he could craft. Ready to retire in a few years, when Gendry had learned enough to take over. Never spending days trying to improve his craftsmanship so he could attempt to match the quality of those weapons, pondering hours each day how to duplicate their technology with his limited means…

Damn them!

“I’m a bastard,” Gendry said with a frown. “What ambitions could I have that would threaten anyone?”

“It's not what ambitions you have, or could have, but what others fear you'll have, boy.” Tobho reached out to pat his shoulders.

*****

“Oh, Yang was right! You look like a younger king! Hey, Gendry! Hi, Tobho!”

Tobho stood and bowed his head when Lady Ruby appeared in his smithy, trailing petals - she must have jumped down from the roof. “Hello, Lady Ruby.” He glanced at the door to his house. “I'll go open the door for the others.” He would prefer them to use the door instead of jumping over his house.

“Hello, my lady,” he heard Gendry say behind him as he left the forge.

He had just reached the door to the street when he heard knocking and Lady Yang's voice. “Yo, we're back!”

“Yang! You can't just yell!”

“I just did!”

He opened the door and bowed his head. “My ladies.” All three followers of Lady Ruby were there. Not Snow, though, who usually followed them around.

“Master Mott.” Lady Weiss smoothly addressed him.

“I’m back!” Lady Yang waved, and Lady Blake nodded.

“I welcome you to my home.” He didn't offer bread and salt, but a bit of formality never hurt when addressing the most powerful nobles in the realm. Even though they were foreigners - especially if they were foreigners.

“Thank you for your hospitality.” Lady Weiss bowed her head in return, and he led them inside and then to the forge.

“...and that's how the two parts interlock to form the backstop of the receiver. It's a bit redundant, but as a Huntress, you need redundancy since you are hunting Grimm and if you get stranded in the wilderness and your weapon breaks, that's bad.”

Lady Yang chuckled at her sister's antics. “We're not here to show off your scythe again, Ruby!”

“I was just showing him a mechashift mechanism!”

Lady Weiss cleared her throat. “We're here to discuss what Yang discovered today.”

“Because we won't let anyone hurt you because of us!” Lady Ruby added.

The others nodded emphatically. 

“Thank you, my lady,” Gendry said. 

Tobho nodded. While he knew the four girls were hiding secrets, he had no reason to doubt their intentions - their reputation spoke for itself. Gendry was right that they cared for his apprentice and himself.

“So… why didn't you ever tell Gendry who his father was?”

Lady Yang's deep frown as she leaned in to talk to him also reminded him that they were also quite passionate about certain matters - and that he didn’t know all of those matters yet. Hiding a boy's parentage from him was, apparently, something they cared about.

And yet, his conscience was more or less clear about this. “What good would it have done?” he said with a shrug. “A slip of the tongue could have ruined him. And all boys slip when they are in the company of wine and women.”

Lady Yang frowned, as did Lady Ruby. “Gendry's not a boy any more, though,” she said, hands on her hips and scythe on her back.

“My lady! I understand the reasons,” Gendry cut in. “Being a bastard of the King is… dangerous.”

Lady Ruby huffed. “That doesn't mean you should not be told about the King. He's your father! You're family!”

Tobho felt his stomach drop a little. That was dangerous talk. Very dangerous talk. You did not say that an unrecognised bastard was someone's family - feuds had started over less, and without any royalty involved. If Lady Ruby and her friends felt so strongly about this…

“Does the King even know about you?” Lady Yang asked.

“I don't know,” Gendry replied.

Everyone turned to look at Tobho.

He sighed. “I do not believe so.” At least, he didn’t think Lord Jon Arryn, Lord Stannis Baratheon and Lord Eddard Stark would have all visited to look at Gendry if the King knew about him.

“That's even worse!” Lady Ruby blinked. “Well, it would have been worse if the King had known about you and ignored you, but it's also worse that he didn't even know about you!”

“Why wouldn't he know? Lord Eddard knows, doesn't he?” Lady Weiss asked.

Tobho bit his lower lip for a moment. “I believe he suspects.” A safe answer. Trying to second-guess the high nobility was a fool’s game.

“Then he would have told the King! He knows how important family is!” Lady Ruby insisted.

“What if he’s not certain?” Blake asked.

“Well, he knew the King when he was Gendry’s age, so he’d know.”

“Maybe I am not the King’s bastard?” Gendry sounded hopeful.

“Too bad we don’t have DNA testing here,” Lady Weiss said.

“DNA testing?” Gendry asked, sparing Tobho to pose the same question.

“Back home, in our world, it’s a test to see if you are related,” Lady Ruby said.

“If the father doesn’t want to pay alimony for his child and claims they’re not his, the court can make a test and then make him pay,” Lady Yang added.

Tobho’s eyes widened at the implications of what he had heard. Not only could they test for cuckolding - something that was, in hindsight, not really a surprise given the girls’ powers; magic could do many things - but in their world, bastards didn’t have to be recognised to have a claim on their father’s money - the mother could force the father to pay. And the girls treated this as normal, so Tobho didn’t think that a woman demanding this would risk being forced to recant their claim - or be murdered.

Truly, their world was very different to this one.

“But we don’t have such tests here,” Lady Weiss pointed out. “So, how would anyone prove that they’re the offspring of someone?”

“Testimonies, mainly. And, of course, if the child looks like their father…” Tobho shrugged again.

“They don’t fight a trial of combat, though, right?” Lady Ruby asked. “Killing the father would kinda defeat the whole trial.”

“No.” Smallfolk didn’t have the right to a trial by combat anyway, and the nobility had other ways to settle such disputes.

“Anyway, it’s pretty clear we need to tell the King about this!” Lady Ruby declared.

“But if Lord Eddard hasn’t told him, then there has to be a reason for it,” Lady Weiss pointed out.

“That doesn’t mean it’s a good reason - you know how stupid they are about bastards,” Lady Ruby said.

“Revealing Gendry’s parentage could expose him to danger,” Lady Blake spoke up. “You fear for his life, don’t you?”

Tobho nodded. “I was told that suspected bastards of the King were in danger.” By Lord Jon Arynn himself.

“No problem. Then we have to tell the King in secret!” Lady Ruby stood. “We can’t keep that from him - he deserves to know about his family.”

“They don’t consider bastards family unless recognised, and even then it’s… a rather flimsy relationship,” Lady Weiss said. “A bastard could become legitimised, but that’s very rare according to what I heard, and, in the case of sons, generally limited to cases where all the legitimate sons had died and they needed an heir.”

Tobho nodded. That was how things were.

Lady Ruby frowned. “He still needs to know - if you want him to know, Gendry,” she added, looking at the boy.

“Ah…” Gendry winced.

“People at court already know about you,” Lady Blake said. 

“And if you are not recognised, they might lose interest, while if you are recognised, you will receive protection,” Lady Weiss said.

“And if you don’t, we can protect you,” Lady Ruby announced.

Lady Weiss nodded. “We have some influence - at court and, apparently, among the common people.”

That was putting it mildly, Tobho knew. But he also knew that they were not planning to stay in King’s Landing - or Westeros. “For how long?” he asked.

“For how long it’s needed,” Lady Ruby said, nodding firmly while the others exchanged glances.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ruby! You can’t just commit to protect people forever!”

Ruby Rose turned to look at Weiss as Yang closed the door to their room. She was about to answer when she remembered that they had to check for spies first. 

Blake gave the all-clear sign from where she had checked the secret passage.

Ruby shook her head. “We can’t leave people who need us without protection. We’re Huntresses.” Huntresses in training, but that made no difference here.

“We can’t protect everyone who needs us - it’s physically impossible,” Weiss said with a frown.

“But we can protect those we know,” Ruby shot back. “Just because we can’t protect everybody doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect anybody!”

Weiss pouted but had no argument against that. Or shouldn’t have. “And what when we return home?”

“Just because we can’t protect people forever doesn’t mean we shouldn’t protect them while we can,” Ruby told her.

“But what if we are the reason someone needs our protection?” Weiss asked.

Ruby frowned. “What do you mean?”

Weiss looked at her. “If they’re in danger because they know us, for example. Do you want to return home if that means leaving someone who depends on us?”

That was… an unfair question. Huntresses didn’t leave people who needed them. But they couldn’t stay here - they had to return. Dad, Uncle Qrow, Zwei, Blake and Weiss’s families, their friends - they couldn’t leave them either. Still… Ruby wouldn’t want to return if it meant her friends here would suffer.

But there was a solution. “We just need to make sure they are safe.”

“As safe as you can be in Westeros,” Yang said with a snort.

“They don’t have Grimm here, at least,” Blake pointed out.

“They had ice zombies,” Yang told her.

“And we killed them,” Ruby cut in. “Anyway, we have to tell the King. He deserves to know about a possible child of his.” And he better not decide to neglect Gendry (if Gendry was his son)! “And we need to find out who would strike at Gendry,” she added. If they could deal with the danger, they could leave since Gendry would be safe.

Problem solved!

She looked at her friends. Yang nodded with a wide smile. Blake nodded with a wry smile and Weiss… nodded with a pout.

Well, good enough! 

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah! Ruby! Come, sit down - this deer is to die for! Tender as a… fawn's backside.”

“Thanks, Your Grace!” Ruby smiled at the King as she marched up to his table. Behind her, Yang snickered, probably at whatever word the King had been about to say. Probably something sexual (Ruby wasn't some naive maiden who had no idea about that stuff! She knew how things worked, and she knew how people cursed!)

And the deer was great. Much better than the food at Beacon - the cook here could roast meat better than Dad, even. She suppressed the brief pain (and guilt) at thinking of home as she sat down and dug in.

And she ignored Weiss's frown - her table manners were perfect according to the King, and he was the highest authority here! Heh, Weiss herself had told them they should try to fit in if possible, and this was easy!

Besides, Yang was doing the same. And Blake would probably do the same if it were fish - well, not really, but Blake would wish to do the same to fish. And Ruby suspected that Weiss would really like to let go of her Atlas-High-Society-manners at least once, if only to see how it felt. One day, she'd make her admit it!

“I personally killed it,” the King told her “We were hunting a wild boar, but it escaped us - it was a magnificent beast, almost as big as a horse! Could have fed the entire keep, I say!”

“Only if you would decide to fast, Your Grace,” Ser Jaime commented with a smirk. “Otherwise, it would have only fed yourself.”

The King guffawed. He was in a good mood, then. Which was good. Ruby was pretty sure she could brighten his mood if he felt down, well, most of the time she had a good chance, but this was better. Still, she couldn't blurt it out - not with so many people listening.

So, when they finished with the main course and dessert was served - she got a whole honey cake for herself! - she leaned forward. “Oh, Your Grace…”

The King turned his head to her and swallowed about half a cake. “Yes?”

She looked away from his beard - part of the cake's icing had fallen on it next to a bit of roast sauce… Not that she'd admit to Weiss, but maybe her friend wasn't totally wrong about manners here. But that could wait. She swallowed her own bite of cake and cleared her throat. “We've got something to discuss with you, Your Grace. In private. Just you and us, I mean. No one else. No servants or guards.”

“Oh?” He blinked, then grinned. “It's important, I guess.”

She nodded. Then she saw that everyone at the table was looking and listening to them - most had stopped talking. Drat.

Lord Eddard was frowning. “While I trust Team Ruby with my life, requiring to meet you without anyone else seems a very odd request - especially for an important matter.”

“Surely the Kingsguard can be trusted.” Ser Barristan sounded even slightly annoyed. Which was a lot for him - he was usually very stoic.

“Uh…” Ruby winced. “It’s not that! It's… a very personal thing. For the King's ears only.”

The King smiled, but everyone was staring even more. And people were whispering. And Weiss was frowning. Ruby was just being honest!

“Well, where can we talk without anyone listening in?” the King asked. “I am pretty sure even my bedroom isn't really private,” he added with a chuckle.

Ruby didn't blush. She knew a joke. And she had thought about that - they couldn't let people know how good Blake was at spotting spies. “The middle of the training yard,” she said. “No one can sneak up on us there!”

“And the Kingsguard can keep an eye on us,” Weiss added.

Ser Barristan nodded at that, but Lord Eddard was still frowning. Well, he had to get used to this - this was about the King's family! If he had told the King about this, this wouldn't be necessary! Well, if he hadn't told the King, then this wouldn't be necessary if he had told the King… or something like that. There was the chance the King already knew about Gendry and didn't care for him. In that case, Ruby would have a few words with him! You didn't abandon your family!

“Well, if it's important, we shouldn't waste time!” The king announced as he got up. “Let's get to the training yard!”

It took them some time to reach the training yard in the growing darkness - Ruby heard someone fall down the stairs behind them, but that was their problem; this was supposed to be private! - but that was a good thing; Blake said some people might be able to read lips, and the darkness would hinder them. It also took a few more minutes until all the spectators - with the exception of Lord Eddard and Prince Joffrey, who had insisted on tagging along as soon as he head heard about it - to leave the training yard; only the Kingsguard stayed, and even they were staying out of earshot (for a human). And, she noted, the ravens seemed to have learned their lesson and were staying away as well - at least the one she saw on the closest roof. Not that it mattered. Focus, Ruby! she told herself. This is important!

“So…” The King grinned. “What's this all about?”

Ruby really hoped he didn't already know about Gendry; Team RWBY would look really silly in that case. She cleared her throat, looked around - Blake nodded; they were in the clear - and said in a low voice: “We've found a young man who might be your son, Your Grace,” she said. “His name is Gendry, and he's an apprentice to the best smith in King's Landing. He kinda looks like you, just younger and, uh, not as heavy. And he doesn't know his father, and, well…” She shrugged. “We thought we should ask if he is your son.”

The King blinked. “Oh. Who's his mother?”

Ruby blushed. “We, ah, don't know. We didn't ask - it’s kinda personal.” She straightened. “But! We also know that Mott - that's the smith - said that he, Gendry, might be in danger if people think he's your son. So, we think you should know.” It was clear now that he hadn't heard about Gendry.

“In danger… Cersei is at it again, huh?” The King scoffed.

Ruby blinked. “You think the Queen would threaten him?” That would be… probably what the Queen would do, actually. She was kinda like that.

The King snorted. “She has threatened my daughter, Mya Stone.”

Ruby scowled. That was… She had known the Queen was bad, but this was worse than she had thought! Unlike Team RWBY, Gendry couldn’t hurt the Queen at all - not that her team would attack the Queen either, anyway. Whatever, one thing was clear. “We won't let her harm Gendry!”

The King nodded.

Ruby glanced at Weiss, but her friend was nodding as well.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss Schnee knew that her team leader was more mature and serious than her age - and her attitude - would indicate. She was the leader of Team RWBY for a reason. However, sometimes, Ruby’s age really showed. Like now.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she said - not for the first time - as they approached Mott’s shop.

“Why? It’s working perfectly!” Yang asked, and Weiss didn’t have to look at her to know she was grinning widely.

“We got out of the Keep and into the city without anyone being the wiser!” Ruby said. “It’s working!”

“That’s not the point!” Weiss shot back. “It’s… the way it works.” She looked over her shoulder at Ser Barristan. Surely, the knight would chime in here - he had to feel undignified dressed as a common sellsword. A very suspicious-looking sellsword, more like a thief than a mercenary guard, at that. 

Not that Team RWBY looked any better - they all wore cloaks that hid their features and figures as well as their weapons.

But the knight stoically kept silent, watching the alleys and roofs as they walked.

“It’s working wonderfully! I haven’t felt so alive since Greyjoy’s Rebellion!” The King, dressed like a merchant, was obviously amused as he barely tried to lower his voice. If he were carrying his hammer instead of Ruby, he probably would swing it around. “We need to do this more often - sneak out of the Keep, in disguise, and visit the town like common men-at-arms! No flatterers hounding me, no false compliments ruining my ale, just simple men and simple drinks!”

Weiss shot another look at Ser Barristan, but he still didn’t react. Well, if the King actually went through with this and the Kingsguard would have to dress up like this regularly - and have to protect the King in whatever tavern full of dubious mercenaries he wanted to visit without revealing his identity - it would be on his head!

“Who would have thought there was another secret passage to my chambers?”

Anyone who ever explored the system of tunnels and passages in the keep, Weiss thought, then berated herself for it. Someone had taken great pains to hide the second passage. As Blake had discovered, it was much younger than the known one. And narrow enough that the King had had trouble fitting through it - but quite roomy for, say, a child who had been mutilated so they couldn’t speak. 

Weiss still couldn’t understand why Varys would do this to dozens of children. Even if you ignored the terrible cruelty needed to rip out a child’s tongue - or anyone’s tongue - it made no sense. Certainly, back home, there were tales of mute servants who couldn’t pass on their employers’ secrets - usually found in not quite factual historical movies or Blake’s books. But here, the children could read and write - that was how they reported what they spied on - so if one could make them talk, one could make them write as well. It made no sense at all! Not unless there was some magic ritual that required such a sacrifice to silence someone. Marwyn hadn’t known one but hadn’t excluded the possibility that one might exist either.

She shook her head - she could worry about the King’s spymaster using such magic later; they had arrived at the shop, which was, as expected, closed. Not that that would stop either Ruby or Yang. 

Blake gave them the ‘all clear’ sign - no one was watching them. 

“Be right back!” Ruby chirped and vanished in a cloud of petals that zipped on top of the roof, then vanished behind it.

It took a few minutes of waiting and hoping no patrol came by to ask what they were doing here - Weiss was well-aware how suspicious they looked - before a sleepy-looking Gendry, dressed in a loose shirt and hastily drawn trousers, opened the door and let them in.

“Well, you have my looks!” the King blurted out as soon as the door closed behind them.

Gendry blinked.

“Who was your mother, boy?”

“Ah…” Gendry blinked again.

“He’s the King!” Ruby beamed at him. “He wanted to see you, so we brought him here, but we came in disguise so no one would know about the visit!”

“That’s right, boy!” The King nodded, throwing his cloak back. 

“Your Grace!” Gendry bowed - well, fell to his knee. Knees.

“None of that, boy! Stand and look at me. Who was your mother?”

“Ah… I only remember her blonde hair. I was told she was a tavern worker named Bess.”

It was obvious to Weiss that the King didn’t remember the name. But he nodded and muttered: “Blonde Bess? Aye.” Then he walked around Gendry. “Yeah, you look like me, doesn’t he, Ser Barristan?”

Gendry gasped again as Ser Barristand nodded. “Yes, Your Grace. A spitting image of you in your youth - just as you looked at the Trident.”

“Aye!” The King laughed. “My hair, my face, my eyes, and the body I once had. Can you swing a hammer, too, boy?”

“Ah… I am a smith, Your Grace. Apprentice smith.”

“Not that kind of hammer! Ruby!”

“Here!” Ruby drew the King’s warhammer out from under her cloak and handed it to Gendry.

He wasn’t surprised by the weight, of course - he probably had crafted such weapons already. Though Weiss could tell he hadn’t been trained in their use as he swung it around.

But the King nodded again. “Yeah, that’s my blood in your veins, boy! You’re my son - Gendry Storm!”

“Storm…” Gendry whispered.

“Yes!” Ruby cheered, raising her fist.

Then Weiss saw Blake turn her head towards the stairs behind them. “Didn’t you wake your master?”

“Oh…”

“Oops!”

Both Ruby and Gendry had the same sheepish expression on their face.

“What is going on? Gendry! Who is in my house?”

And there was Mott, at the top of the stairs, armed with a short sword with a slightly curved blade.

“Hi, Master Mott!” Ruby beamed, although it was a little forced, Weiss could tell from long experience, at him. “The King wanted to see his son!”

“The King? What are you…?” Mott trailed off as he descended and saw - and recognised - the King. “Your Grace!” He quickly bowed.

“We came in disguise!” Yang explained with a wide grin.

Judging by Mott’s expression, he wasn’t enamored of their plan - Weiss could sympathise - but he wasn’t about to contradict the King.

“And you were right; Gendry’s my son!” the King announced, smiling widely. He quickly grew serious, though. “And that means there’s a problem here.”

“Your Grace…” Gendry began.

“Not your fault, boy. It’s my wife’s. She loathes my bastards. It’s her damn Lannister pride.” The King scowled. “So, you’re not safe here.”

“But you can protect him!” Ruby protested. “You’re the King!”

The King scoffed. “I am King, and a damn fat lot of good that will do when Cersei is involved.” He looked at Mott. “But you were already aware of that, weren’t you?”

Mott nodded with apparent reluctance. “Yes, Your Grace. I was told about the possible danger.”

“By whom?”

“By your former Hand, Your Grace.”

“Jon? Jon knew about Gendry? And he didn’t tell me?” The King frowned. “Why would he keep that from me?”

Weiss and her friends didn’t know either. But she had a feeling that they would have to find out. After all…

“Lord Stark visited as well, Your Grace.” 

…Gendry took her words out of her mouth.

The King’s mood worsened even more. “Ned? Ned knew about you? And he didn’t tell me either?”

“Uh… apparently?” Ruby smiled weakly.

“I’ll have words with him!” the King declared.

Weiss narrowed her eyes at Ruby. She had told her so!

*****

Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna didn't like spying on her friends. It was annoying enough if she accidentally overheard something private thanks to her excellent hearing - she really didn't need to know about certain incidents in Yang and Ruby's childhood, much less in detail. But deliberately use her better senses and training to spy? And on friends and not the likes of Lord Baelish or Varys? That was not something of which she could be proud. Both the King and Lord Eddard were friends, generous friends - they had welcomed Blake's team and gone out of their way to help them with their goal to return home without asking for anything in return. It felt like betrayal to go behind their backs to spy on them.

And yet, sometimes needs must, as the saying went. The King and Lord Eddard were amongst the most powerful people at court - in the entire realm, actually - and while she'd consider both of them friends, and estimated that they returned the feeling, they had been born and grown up in Westeros, in a society with very different values and views compared to Remnant's main cultures.

Their views of bastards were one of the most obvious differences. The way they treated children born out of wedlock would never be tolerated in Remnant. Of course, the way most common people - smallfolk - were treated in Westeros would never fly either. And while she wasn’t a fan of Atlas's harsh judicial system - and that was putting it mildly - compared to Westeros's laws, Atlas came off looking like a paradise. General Ironwood, for example, for all his power, was bound by the law, as bent and strained it might be in some situations. 

The nobility in Westeros, on the other hand, wasn't. Power was everything. Feuding was a fact of life. If the King and Lord Eddard had a falling out, that might lead to violence - even a war. And Team RWBY would be caught in it, if only to protect the kids and other innocents affected by such a conflict, should it turn to violence.

So, they had to know what was going on, what was happening between the King and Lord Eddard, in order to be ready to intervene if possible - and to have the knowledge necessary to make informed decisions. The longer they stayed at court, the more obvious it became that they could not afford to stumble around without having the whole picture.

And if that allowed them to prevent a falling out between the two men, or to mend a potential rift before it was too late, then both the King and Lord Eddard would benefit. Not to mention that Blake's presence would prevent others from spying on them, preserving their privacy.

But no matter how many arguments she went over in her head, Blake still felt guilty and ashamed while she silently moved through the secret passage leading up to the Solar in the Tower of the Hand. And more than a little nervous, knowing that three dire wolves, each of them as large as a pony, were lying in wait inside the tower, separated from her by walls that were rather thin in some places.

But her presence wasn’t betrayed by the beasts’ howls, and she didn't detect any other spy inside the walls as she reached her destination. Releasing a relieved breath, she checked that she could hear well enough - she could hear the scratching of Lord Eddar's quill over parchment - and settled in to wait for the King's arrival. It wouldn't be too long; last night, they had had to argue to keep the King from rushing to Lord Eddard as soon as they returned from Mott's shop.

Blake wondered if the King's temper had cooled somewhat since then.

*****

About half an hour later, Blake had her answer.

“Good morning, Your Grace. Ser Barristan.”

“Ned! What’s this I hear about you not telling me about my son?” 

The King sounded a little winded from climbing the stairs in a hurry, but Blake hadn’t heard him sit down. So, he hadn’t really calmed down.

“Pardon, Your Grace? What’s this about Joffrey?”

“Not Joffrey! Gendry!”

“Gendry…”

“Yes, Gendry Storm - the apprentice smith that looks just like me when I was young - when we were both fostered by Jon! Seven hells, Ned, don’t tell me you didn’t know right away he was one of mine!”

“The thought did cross my mind, Your Grace.”

“You and Jon both met him - and neither of you told me? Did you think I wouldn’t care? You know about Mya Stone!”

“Yes, I do, Your Grace.”

“Stop it with ‘Your Grace’! This isn’t about the King’s business - this is about why you didn’t tell me as a friend!”

Lord Eddard sighed. “Robert, a King’s bastard is the King’s business.”

“Is he? If he were, Ned, why didn’t you tell me about it and nag me to do something about it, like you usually do, huh?”

Lord Eddard hesitated to answer, which was answer enough, in Blake’s opinion.

And, obviously, in the King’s as well. 

“What is going on, Ned? It’s not like you to weasel around like the rest of the court! What aren’t you telling me?”

That was a good question. Was Lord Eddard ‘managing’ the King, as Weiss called it? Blake’s ears twitched as she heard Lord Eddard sigh.

“It’s… delicate. And dangerous. I don’t want to talk to you without proof of what I suspect.”

“You were investigating? And Jon was as well?”

“Yes, Robert. And I haven’t finished the investigation.”

“And you don’t want to tell me what you suspect until you have proof. Undeniable proof.”

“Yes. Too many lives depend on it, Robert.”

What was Lord Eddard talking about? Blake wondered. She didn’t think a royal bastard would be so important. Or…

“Lives…” The King gasped. “You think someone’s murdering my children! Cersei! She threatened to kill Mya, should I bring her to court - so I didn’t. But you think she has murdered other bastards of mine? Children I didn’t even know I had?”

Blake bit her lower lip as she heard the King slam his fists down on Lord Eddard’s table. If Gendry was in danger from the Queen, then it would stand to reason that she would be willing to go after other bastards. And she would have had years - more than a decade, at least - to do it.

“I’m still looking for proof that there is a crime, Robert. Please, don’t be hasty! If I am wrong, the consequences would be dire.”

“If she’s been killing my children, bastards or not, then I’ll… I’ll…” The King heaved and huffed.

“We don’t know what she did, Robert. So far, all I have, all we have, are suspicions. And if we want to avoid a war, we need proof. Undeniable proof. Tywin won’t accept anything else without calling his banners.”

“Bah! That cunt will call his banners even if Cersei murders a child in front of the Great Sept!”

That was quite an unfortunate wording, in Blake’s opinion, considering that Mott’s shop was close to the Sept. That Tywin was infamous for having the children of Prince Rhaegar killed during the sack of King’s Landing, and that the King hadn’t punished him for it, also threw some shade on it.

“Please, Robert. This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you without proof.”

“Alright. You’re not the first to tell me to wait.”

“Someone else knows about this?” Lord Eddard sounded surprised - and concerned.

“Team Ruby. They took me to see Gendry once they realised he was my son.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. And you know how they are - family is as important to them as it’s to you, Ned, and they don’t care whether it’s a bastard or not.” 

Of course, they didn’t care because it didn’t matter whether your parents were married or not!

“I see. I have to talk to them, then.”

“You want their help with your investigation?”

“If they want to help, yes.”

“To track down the murderer of my children? Of course they will help, Ned!”

Blake nodded. The King was right about that. If someone was murdering children, they would bring them to justice. Just as they would deal with Varys or whoever was mutilating children.

*****

Blake was on her way back to their quarters, deep beneath the bowels of the Red Keep - the upper tunnel leading to the Tower of the Hand was a bit too used for her taste; she would not risk being spotted, certainly not today - and so she was taking a route that took her almost down to the sea level. She could smell the sea already - salt and rotting fish. 

She blinked, then sniffed the air. Salt, rotting fish - and blood? Grimacing, she followed the weak scent. In a side tunnel, she found stains of dried blood on the ground. And the shape of them… something had been dragged over the ground here. Or someone who had been bleeding. And the traces led to one of the openings above the sea.

She touched the blood. Dry, but not too dry. Even counting the humidity from being close to the sea, this wasn’t older than a day, maybe two - she wasn’t an expert. But she was pretty sure that someone had disposed of a corpse here - a victim of a violent murder. Why else would anyone come down here with such a burden if not to hide it?

But who could…? Her eyes narrowed as she spotted something a bit further ahead. Something glinted in the dim light of her lantern; if she were a human, she would have missed it.

It was a ring - an expensive-looking ring with a blue stone set in it. And a ring sized for fingers like hers. Either a man with small hands, or a woman.

She put the ring into her pocket. The others needed to hear about this - and Lord Eddard’s investigation.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yes, that is a ring made in Pentos. I recognise the style - it started out imitating Lys’s jewellery, but developed into its unique style, though most people in Westeros would still mix them up.”

Yang Xiao Long, leaning against the table on which Tobho was examining the ring Blake had found, nodded. “It looks new.”

“It is freshly made - it has been polished as you’d expect from a master goldsmith, but it lacks the smoothness and wear from having it worn for long,” he said.

“Can you tell how old it is?” she asked.

“A month or two, if it was worn every day since then.”

Yang nodded. The ring showed the sigil of House Lantell - a cadet branch of the Lannisters - and Weiss remembered that Lady Lira, the missing lady-in-waiting of the Queen, hadn’t worn such a ring before she had disappeared. She was sure that she would have noticed the blue stone. But Weiss also was sure that Lady Lyra would have worn the ring daily to show it off. And the blood on it was fresh. Relatively fresh, according to Blake. Yang wanted to wince a bit - her partner definitely wouldn’t need to study hard for when they would be taught to read tracks and analyse the remains of Grimm attacks at Beacon, but the reasons for that were not very nice.

But Lady Lyra had vanished right after the tournament. If she had been killed - and her corpse dropped into the sea - a few days ago at the latest, then what had she done in the meantime? And why had she been killed? The time would be enough to reach the continent east of Westeros - the city of Pentos was closest, it seemed - and return, provided the winds were favourable. At least according to Prince Oberyn, who had travelled there.

So, Lady Lira left King’s Landing, travelled to Pentos, and returned as quickly as she could - only to be killed here before anyone at court saw her? That was very suspicious. “Thank you,” she said. “And, ah… please don’t tell anyone? We’re in the middle of investigating… things.”

Tobho frowned deeply but nodded. 

She didn’t know if he had recognised the sigil, but he probably suspected something like that. And she also suspected that he still wasn’t happy about them dragging the King to his shop so he could meet Gendry. Well, he’d have to deal - sure, Gendry was in danger, but that didn’t mean you had the right to keep him from knowing and meeting his father! You could deal with danger. Dealing with a missing parent was a lot harder.

“Thank you. How’s Gendry doing?” she asked.

“The boy’s out buying new clothes.”

Right, the King had given him a generous allowance - probably felt guilty for missing that he had a kid. She grinned. “Good for him! He needs better clothes!”

Tobho scowled again. “He’s an apprentice smith. If he throws money around, people will notice. At best, people will try to fleece him. At worst, they’ll kill him - either to rob him, or because someone else noticed him.”

“I don’t think Gendry will throw money around,” Yang said. The boy seemed far too serious for that. More serious than most she knew, at least. Though he wasn’t nearly as gloomy as Jon was - and he’d had a far harder life, growing up without any parent or money. Jon had been raised by Ned, at least.

Tobho grunted, which might have been grudging agreement or just a complaint. 

Either way, Yang was done here. She had to tell her friends what she had learned today.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Another evening, another feast. Or whatever the saying was. Not that Yang was complaining, actually. After another day without any progress in finding a way home, she could do with good food and booze. And so could her friends. It really was getting tiresome.

Blake was running herself ragged trying to find more clues about the murdered lady-in-waiting, potential murdered bastards, Baelish the pimp’s businesses and Varys’s spies. Yang wanted to help her, but this wasn’t Vale - she couldn’t really ask around in shady taverns without making a spectacle. People had been swarming her, asking for her blessing, the one time she had tried. At least she could keep an eye on Gendry if she stuck to Tobho's shop. Not that the Queen had made a move on him so far, anyway. And Lord Eddard hadn’t come to them yet to talk about his investigation, and they couldn’t ask him without revealing that Blake had spied on him.

Weiss was getting more and more frustrated dealing with the court. Yang wasn’t allowed to help her there. At least everyone else had said so, even Blake! Yang totally could control herself and not lash out. And, yeah, this wasn’t Signal or Beacon, but she had dealt with hazing and bullying before. Attempted hazing and bullying, actually - it wasn’t as if she’d let anyone haze or bully her.

Fortunately, Yang could help Ruby. She wasn’t some socialite like Weiss, but the King didn’t like socialites anyway; he had said that often enough. He liked feasting, fighting and fucking, and Yang was down for the former two. Not the last one, of course - Yang had standards. But the King liked her stories, and he always had good drinks - well, good beer and good wine. They didn’t really do drinks here, and Yang didn’t know enough about mixing to change that. Her attempt to recreate some of her favourite cocktails hadn’t been very successful…

Hah. Eyes on the prize, Yang! she reminded herself as they entered the hall. This wasn’t some party in Vale with students who at worst wanted to get into her pants; this was a feast with nobles, and all of them wanted to control Team RWBY.

“Team Ruby! Come, sit down!” the King called out. “The hunt has gone well! Ned’s children brought down a deer with their wolves! You should have seen it - magnificent! They ran it down in no time, better than any of my hounds! You should be proud of them, Ned!”

“Your hounds might have been a bit slower, but they wouldn’t have eaten the entire deer after bringing it down, Your Grace.”

The King laughed. “Wolves have to eat, Ned! Yours as well! If they hadn’t eaten the deer, we would have fed one to them anyway! Now dig in!”

Yang was already spearing pieces of meat with a knife and putting them down on her plate. If the King was eating, you didn’t have to wait either. That was one thing she liked here - they didn’t have overly complicated table manners. No one was giving her the evil eye for enjoying her food.

They were giving her the evil eye for other reasons, of course, but that only made her smirk and push her chest out a bit more. Suck on that, Queeny!

The King was still gushing about the hunt. Yang didn’t really listen to his tales - it wasn’t as if deer could fight back. Certainly not when you hunted them like the people here did, with a pack of dogs - or wolves in the Starks’ case - and a lot of helpers to drive it toward you.

Though he was right; the deer was delicious. Best one she’d eaten so far in King’s Landing. So good, even Weiss didn’t complain about the lack of food safety, and Blake wasn’t looking for fish.

“Oh, and you have to try this wine - Arbor gold, latest vintage!” the King announced, raising his glass to be filled by his page. “Smoother than anything else; it runs down your throat straight to your bladder!” He laughed at his own joke before downing the glass.

As the page went to fill the others’ glasses, the King suddenly started coughing. Yang grimaced when drops of wine went flying over the table. That was disg… She blinked. Arbor gold was a white wine. The drops were red!

Next to her, Blake jumped up. “The King’s bleeding!”

And coughing. As everyone jumped up and the Kingsguard rushed forward, the King slid off the chair to the ground, holding his gut as he coughed. 

Ruby vanished in a cloud of petals, reappearing next to him. “Oh no! He’s spraying blood all over the floor!”

Yang winced as she jumped over the table and Lord Tyrion to land next to Ruby. Yes, the King was… That was a lot of blood. She wasn’t a doctor, but… “He’s dying.” 

“Maester! Pycelle!”

The Grand Maester arrived, panting, and all but fell to his knees next to the writhing King. “That’s… Oh, no.”

“What poison is it?” Lord Stannis snapped. “Get an antidote!”

“It’s not… I don’t have an antidote for this; it’s destroying his lungs.” Pycelle shook his head.

Yang gasped.

“Robert!”

“It’s eating his lungs? He’ll die!” Ruby blurted out.

The King was still coughing up blood.

Ruby stared at him, then at Yang. “He’s dying!”

Yang nodded.

“We can’t let him die!”

Oh, no! Yang knew what she meant. They had decided not to try to awaken anyone’s Aura in Westeros. The consequences would be too grave if it were to spread. And it would. But… Yang knew Ruby couldn’t watch the King die. Hell, Yang couldn’t watch him die.

“Alright! I’ll do it!” she snapped, kneeling down and placing her hand on the King’s chest, above his heart, holding his thrashing body down at the same time.

“What are you doing?”

“Lady Yang!”

She ignored the yelling, trusting her friends to keep her from being disturbed, and focused her Aura. If she could activate the King’s Aura, it should keep him alive. All she had to do was to force her own Aura into him.

She clenched her teeth as she concentrated her aura in her palm.

“It’s… It’s glowing!”

“By the Seven!”

“The Seven’s Blessing!”

She drew a sharp breath as she forced her Aura into the King. Just as she had before. Push it in, and his own would activate in return. Like using jumper cables to start an engine, as Dad had explained it to her when he had activated her own.

She sensed her Aura entering him. Saw it, as the glow grew dimmer. Felt herself grow weaker as she spent so much of her own Aura.

But the King’s own Aura didn’t manifest. It should - she had done everything right - but it didn't. He kept writhing under her hand, kept coughing - it was not more a trickle of blood than a spray - and groaning.

And then he stopped. And she felt his heartbeat stop as well.

“It… It didn’t work,” she whispered.

“Robert…” Lord Eddard whispered.

“The King… the King is dead!” someone said.

“The King’s dead!” another repeated it.

“You killed him!” a familiar voice yelled.

*****

 

Chapter 20: The Investigation

‘Much has been written about the assassination of King Robert Baratheon, both by contemporary authors as well as historians. Some works were clearly fictional, such as the various writings that claimed that this was a punishment by the Gods for a sinful life, penned centuries later during the Schism to support the reforms championed by the High Septon of the time. And amongst the slightly more factual reports, most focus not on the details of the actual assassination but its consequences. It is, therefore, quite obvious that this event has to be covered in a thorough manner lest popular myths keep being perpetuated by popular but mistaken assumptions. First, as unbelievable it might seem for the discerning student of history, one has to clearly state that the King’s death is a fact - the myth that the King had faked his death with the help of the Ruby Order to spend the rest of his life as a sellsword in Essos was started decades later by a merchant in Pentos who claimed to be a descendant of the King and would have faded in the mists of history if not for a play based on the story that gained unexpected popularity and spawned several novels and other adaptions in Westeros.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“You killed him!”

Pycelle froze as the sharp, shrill yelling cut through the hall, silencing the crowd for a brief moment. That was the Queen! He took a deep breath, ready to defend himself - there had been nothing he could have done! He was the Grand Maester, treating the King was his responsibility, but he couldn't work miracles! - when he noticed that the Queen wasn't accusing him.

His relief vanished at once, though, when he realised that she was pointing at Lady Yang. Oh, no!

“What? No!” Lady Ruby blurted out. “Yang tried to save him!”

“The blessings of the Seven were rejected!” some fool yelled in the back of the crowd.

“No! He was coughing, but alive, then you touched him and killed him with your witchcraft!” the Queen spat. “Guards! Arrest her!”

Pycelle gasped again. She must have lost her wits! Some women lost their minds at the death of their husbands. But the Queen had loathed the King…

No one moved. He wasn't surprised - The Battle of the Maidens was still fresh in everyone's memory. And no one would have forgotten the execution of Ser Gregor Clegane either.

“I gave you an order! Arrest her for murdering the King!”

“You can't!”

“They're the Blessed Maidens!”

Lady Yang slowly rose from where she had knelt next to the king, head still bowed, face hidden by her blonde mane. “What did you say?” she whispered in the sudden silence. 

“Yang…” Lady Ruby whispered.

“What did you say?” Lady Yang repeated, louder, turning to face the Queen.

Pycelle flinched. Her eyes were glittering with tears - but her hair was starting to shine.

The Queen flinched as well, Pycelle saw her throat move as she swallowed, but then she raised her chin, a familiar mask of arrogance and disdain appearing on her face. 

No!

The Queen opened her mouth, drawing breath for an - undoubtedly - repeat of her accusation, but before she could utter a single word, Lady Yang started walking towards her, and for the third time this evening, Pycelle felt his stomach sink. 

Lady Yang's hair was burning. Her eyes had turned red - and her tears had turned to steam.

“What. Did. You. Say?” she slowly spoke as she approached the Queen.

The crowd nearby fell back, panic visible on many faces, leaving the Queen standing alone in the face of this advance. Even her ladies-in-waiting had fallen back.

But the Queen stood her ground. She was afraid - Pycelle caught how she clenched her fists so tightly, the knuckles of her hands were turning white, and how her facial muscles twitched as she clenched her teeth. But she didn't move a single step back. Too proud. Too damn proud. Or too stupid.

Once more, the Queen opened her mouth, and once again, Lady Yang, trembling with anger, literally burning with rage - Pycelle could feel the heat - cut her off. “I did everything I could to save the King. I shared my soul with him. And you dare to accuse me of having killed him? You damn stupid…”

“YANG! NO!” Lady Ruby appeared between them, facing her sister - who had pulled her burning fist back.

“Ruby…” Lady Yang spoke through clenched teeth.

“No!” Lady Ruby shook her head, arms spread, shielding the Queen with her own body. “Please!”

For a moment, Pycelle feared that Lady Yang would push her sister away and strike the Queen down. She didn't waver, didn't react.

But then she closed her eyes, her arm fell down at her side, and she all but fell into Lady Ruby's arms.

Her lips moved, but Pycelle couldn't hear what she was saying, only Lady Ruby's response.

“I know, Yang. I know.”

Then Lady Blake was there, helping Lady Yang as well, and Lady Weiss stepped up to glare at the Queen before addressing her ladies-in-waiting. “The Queen is obviously mad with grief at the King's death. Take her to her chambers so she won't embarrass herself in public!”

Pycelle wasn't surprised that the noblewomen obeyed, surging to surround the Queen. He was surprised that the Queen let herself be led away, though. Maybe she had realised how close to death she had just come? Ser Jaime followed her as well, officially to guard her, but Pycelle assumed that he would attempt to calm down his sister.

“Father…”

Pycelle whipped his head around. Prince Joffrey was staring at the King, the crowd having parted for him as well. He was trembling, taking hesitant steps - smearing the blood the King had spewed in his last moments - as he approached his father's body.

“What happened?”

Lord Eddard stepped up to him. “My prince… It was poison. Lady Yang tried to save him, but…”

“It didn't work,” Lady Ruby cut in. Lady Yang had collapsed, it seemed, held up by Lady Blake as her sister walked over to the prince. “She tried her best, exhausted herself, but…” She shook her head, tears glittering in her eyes. “I'm so sorry.” She hesitantly reached out to touch the prince's shoulder.

The prince swallowed, shivering, then straightened, taking deep breaths and blinking. “I see.” He swallowed again. “I see,” he repeated himself, his eyes fixed on the corpse. 

“My Prince…” Lord Eddard trailed off, looking around. Most avoided his gaze, Pycelle noticed, until he looked at Sandor Clegane. “Take him to his quarters. This isn't a sight for a boy.”

Clegane approached, but the Prince raised his chin, eerily similar to his mother's manner, and said: “I am not a boy any more - I’m the King.”

His eyes still hadn’t left the corpse, and he hadn't noticed that he was standing in a pool of his blood.

Clegane stopped, and Lord Eddard looked confused for a moment before turning to the crowd. “Clear the hall! This is unseemly!”

The crowd seemed unwilling to move, but the order had prompted the Kingsguard into action - late, but welcome - and none were willing to stand up to them.

Soon, the only ones left in the entire hall, except for the Kingsguard, were the Prince, Lord Eddard, Team Ruby - although Lady Yang was held in Lady Blake's arms, unconscious or asleep - Lord Stannis, Lord Renly, Varys, Lord Baelish, Prince Oberyn, Lord Tyrion and Pycelle himself. And the Red Priestess.

And when everyone looked at him, Pycelle couldn't help but wish he had taken his meal in his own quarters today. They were clearly expecting answers, and he only had speculation to give.

And a letter to write to inform Lord Tywin about the proceedings, he reminded himself.

But first… He took a deep breath and addressed Prince Oberyn. “Do you recognise the poison, my prince?”

Prince Oberyn shook his head and knelt down next to a pool of blood, using a dagger to pick at a bloody piece of what Pycelle was sure was lung tissue. “I've never seen this before. I know poisons that will lead to your stomach and bowels filling with blood, but coughing out your lungs?”

Pycelle nodded. He hadn't heard of such a poison either. But… “I've heard that some of the men dying while trying to loot Old Valyria suffered the same fate. Or perhaps some of the fools trying to explore the jungles of Sothoryos.”

“Poisonous vapours?” Prince Oberyn speculated.

“How would it have affected the King, but no one else?” Pycelle asked. “I would suspect a disease, but it acted far too quickly for that. Although there is another possibility…” He pressed his lips together as he trailed off.

Prince Oberyn nodded. “Magic.”

Pycelle clenched his teeth. As much as it galled him, he would have to ask Marwyn for help. Unless… He glanced at the priestess. He wasn't the only one, either.

But the woman remained cool and unfazed. “If it was magic, it was no curse I am familiar with. But I would need to examine the body closely to determine that.” 

Pycelle wanted to groan, but that wouldn't be appropriate in the presence of a dead king. He'd have to work with Marvyn and Melisandre…

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose bit her lower lip while Blake put the sleeping (Just sleeping! Exhausted, but not hurt!) Yang gently down on their bed. She really wanted to talk, but they couldn't speak until Blake had checked for spies.

Blake put a pillow under Yang's head, covered her with a blanket, and finally checked the secret door and secret passage behind it, then nodded at Ruby and Weiss.

“The King's dead!” Ruby blurted out. “We couldn't save him!” Dead, so soon after meeting his son for the first time! Gendry had barley met his father and now lost him forever! 

“Yang couldn't activate his Aura,” Blake said with a tight nod. She was tense, but not about to bawl either.

“But she did everything right!” Ruby shook her head. Another family destroyed - Gendry had lost his mother years ago. She forced herself to focus on something else. She was the leader of Team RWBY, she couldn’t start crying now. This was important! “I saw it - we all saw it. She pushed her Aura into him. And he was still breathing when she did it!”

“He could have been too far hurt to live,” Blake said.

Ruby shook her head harder. “No! He should have… gotten better, at least a bit.” Showed a reaction - twitched, at least!

“Yes,” Weiss agreed. “There was no reaction at all. It seems people in Westeros cannot activate their Auras. That fits what we already suspected, since if they were capable of activating their Aura, someone should have managed by now. They certainly have had more than enough opportunities during their history.” Weiss was cool and collected. Focused.

Just as Ruby had to be. Focus on her team and the situation. She nodded. This wasn't Yang's fault. She had done everything she could. The King had been beyond their help. Beyond anyone's help - the Grand Maester hadn't been able to do anything, hadn't even recognised the poison. And neither had Prince Oberyn. So… “Do you think it was a curse?”

“They're looking into this,” Weiss replied. 

She didn't sound optimistic, Ruby thought. Of course, none of them had any idea about magic, but the Grand Maester, who should know something (if only from working with Marwyn), hadn't looked confident. “How do we protect people against magic?”

“We can't,” Weiss said. 

Blake pressed her lips together and glanced at the still-sleeping Yang. “The only way that comes to mind is stopping whoever is using it.”

But how would…? Oh. That's what she meant. “We don't know anything about magic; how would we find anyone planning to curse someone?”

“Or one of us?” Weiss shook her head, and Ruby could see that she was so angry, her jaw muscles twitched slightly. “We lack the means and knowledge to identify and stop such threats. We can only hope that our Aura will protect us.”

Yeah. Ruby nodded. “I hope it was poison.” They were protected - somewhat, at least - against that thanks to Blake and their Auras. Unless it was some super-special-ultra-deadly magic poison.

She glanced at Yang. Even normal poison would be dangerous if their Auras were depleted. Yang’s wasn't completely depleted, but she would be vulnerable for a while yet. 

Ruby pressed her lips together. “We can't exhaust ourselves in the future. We'd be too vulnerable.”

“I agree,” Weiss said, and Blake nodded. “But we have more things to worry about than magic curses or poison.”

“Or magic poison,” Ruby pointed out.

Weiss narrowed her eyes at her. “Thank you for adding yet another reason for having nightmares, Ruby.”

Ruby winced and smiled weakly.

“Closing our eyes and ignoring the reality of our situation won't help us at all,” Blake commented.

“I am aware of that,” Weiss said with a frown. “However, while we shouldn't ignore the potential threat from magic, we can't do much about it, at least at the moment, and we are facing more pressing potential problems.”

“What are those problems?” In Ruby's opinion, having the King - who had been their friend - murdered by poison, magic or magic poison in front of you while you couldn’t do anything - Huntresses were meant to protect people! - was a pretty serious problem.

“The succession.”

Ruby frowned. The succession? What…?

“You think that someone will contest Prince Joffrey's claim?” Blake asked.

Ah! But… “He's the crown prince,” Ruby pointed out. That made him the next king. Unless they changed the rules, but who had the power to do that, except for the king?

“He's also a child,” Weiss replied. “There will be a regent for the next few years. And while I assume the King wanted Lord Eddard to take the position, and should have left instructions to that effect, being both regent and future father-in-law of the prince would be seen as a very powerful position by any other noble houses.”

“He's an honest man,” Ruby said. Of all the nobles she had met, he was probably the only one who hadn't schemed or plotted. At least, she hadn't seen him do it.

Weiss snorted, but she didn't look or sound amused. “That will only make his rivals consider him either weak or an even more dangerous plotter.”

Ruby would have asked if she wasn't projecting - the few stories about her family and home she had told hadn't been very nice - but… Ruby had met lots of nobles at court, and all of them had had some agenda, and most had an offer for her and her friends. Still… “Going against the prince and the regent would be treason.”

“Exactly,” Weiss said with a grim expression. “And if anyone is planning that, they will assume we will take sides. They will want to either persuade us to join them or get rid of us.”

“But who would want to do that?” Ruby asked her. “You're the one who knows them best.”

Weiss grimaced, another bad sign. “Anyone who is seriously trying to make a pass at the throne would have to break up the alliance centred on the royal family. Prince Joffrey is the grandson of Lord Tywin and engaged to Lady Sansa. That's three Houses - Baratheon, Lannister and Stark. And through Lady Catelyn, the Starks have ties to House Tully and Arryn.”

That sounded difficult. Of course, Lord Tyrion and the Queen didn't get along, and they were siblings, but it was still a tall order. And that meant… “They will want to get us on their side.” 

“Yes,” Weiss said.

Blake nodded.

More marriage proposals. Great.

At least, they could stop any coup by not joining anyone wanting to launch a coup. They couldn’t save the King, but they could save his family. It wouldn’t bring their friend back, but it was something.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

The King’s death had shaken everyone up - the servants were whispering more than usual when they saw Team RWBY, Ruby noted, and the whole keep felt… subdued. Breakfast had been a quiet affair, with far fewer people in the hall than usual, and lunch had been the same. Which had been a good thing since there had been much less food than usual. And none of the cakes Ruby liked. Was everyone eating in their rooms? They didn't have kitchens there to cook!

She blinked. Oh, of course, the cooks wouldn’t have much work until people knew if the King’s food had been poisoned and who had done it! Especially nobles with lots of rivals! No wonder they had seen so few nobles eating today!

The Queen - was she Queen any more? The King was dead. - hadn’t shown herself outside her chambers today. Ruby didn’t think she was mad with grief - mad, for sure, though - but maybe she was afraid for her own safety; Blake had heard that Ser Jaime had stayed with her ever since they had left the hall, though that might… Ew! Ruby didn’t want to think about the other reason Ser Jaime might be staying with his sister. Bleargh! And the children… they must be suffering. Ruby knew all about losing a parent. She could talk to them, help… No. The Queen would make a scene, and that would make everything worse.

She took a deep breath as they stepped out of the building. Like the hall, the courtyard was also almost empty. One man was working on a cart that had broken down, and a raven was watching, probably hoping it could steal something to eat from the food inside the cart. Silly bird! Ruby shook her head at it as they passed it.

She glanced at Yang as her team climbed the stairs leading to the Grand Maester’s quarters. Yang wasn’t exhausted any more, but she wasn’t ‘fine’ no matter how often she claimed she was. Seeing the King die had been terrible, feeling him die while you poured your soul into him? That was much worse! She and Yang and the others would have a talk about it later. 

“Ah, there you are!”

“Welcome, my ladies.”

“Greetings, Lady Ruby.”

“Ah! Are you feeling better, Lady Yang?”

Marwyn, the Grand Maester, that intense priestess and Prince Oberyn greeted them. They must have been working hard all day; the Maesters certainly looked tired, and Prince Oberyn looked not quite as handsome and elegant as he usually did. Lady - Priestess - Melisandre, though, looked as elegant as ever and not tired at all. With so many people and Team RWBY, the room was pretty crowded.

“So…” Ruby smiled hopefully. “You sent for us?” That would mean there was something Team RWBY could do. Something she could focus on.

“Yes, my lady.” The Grand Maester nodded. “We have a few questions about… last evening.”

Well, what else would they want to know? “Ask away!” she said.

“It’s actually for Lady Yang,” he went on.

“Shoot!” Yang told him with a wide but fake grin.

“You said you shared your soul with the King. What did you mean by that?” the Grand Maester asked.

Ah. They had expected that question.

“I tried to share my soul with him so he would resist the… whatever it was,” Yang said. “But it didn’t work. We think it only works in our world.”

Ruby nodded.

“Oh.” The Maesters exchanged glances.

“I told you it was magic! Soul magic!”

“That’s not magic!”

“What else would you call it? Divine intervention?”

“Yes!”

They were arguing again! Ruby grimaced, cleared her throat, and when the two didn’t react, spoke up: “So, did you find out what, ah, killed the King?”

“We found acid in the body’s lungs,” Oberyn said.

“But… how could acid get into his lungs?” Ruby blurted out. The King would have noticed that, wouldn’t he?

Prince Oberyn grinned, flashing his teeth. “I believe it was created inside the King’s lungs by combining two different substances, both of which were harmless by themselves.”

“And I think that’s mere speculation,” the Grand Maester interrupted. “You said yourself that it was merely a concept that you’d heard about during your studies.”

“It still is the best explanation for the fact that the King was the only victim - even though many ate and drank the same as he did, myself included,” Prince Oberyn said with a smile. “In fact, I made a point of eating from the same dishes as the King.”

“So you wouldn’t be suspected should he be poisoned,” Marwyn said.

“And so I would be able to detect poison.”

“Well, that wasn’t very successful, was it?”

Prince Oberyn nodded. “Alas, you are correct. Just as I am correct with my suspicion.”

Ruby frowned - she didn’t like that attitude.

“So, a binary poison killed the King?” Weiss spoke up.

“A binary poison?” Prince Oberyn cocked his head to the side.

“That’s what we call what you described: a poison that is created shortly before deployment by mixing two harmless substances. It means it can be safely stored until it is used,” she explained. “Though usually not inside the victim.”

“Ah, yes. Depending on how long the substances could remain in a body before being expelled or rendered inert, the first substance could have been slipped into the King’s drink days or even a week ago.”

Ruby nodded. “Finding out what was poisoned by the culprit will be difficult.”

“Lord Stannis and Lord Renly are personally interrogating the cooks and servants. I think we’ll soon hear who was involved,” the Grand Maester said.

Ruby blinked. “That will take a long time.” The castle’s kitchen had lots of people working there. And an interrogation took time.

Prince Oberyn shrugged. “Once the first one talks, they usually deliver more suspects. And everyone talks sooner or later.”

“Torture isn’t a reliable interrogation method,” Blake said. “People will say anything to stop the pain.”

Torture? But they… Oh, no! Ruby gasped. “You’re torturing people?”

“The King was murdered. We can’t let the culprit escape, my lady,” the Grand Maester said.

“But…” Ruby shook her head. That was… barbaric, as Weiss liked to say. You didn’t torture people! “We have to stop that!”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss Schnee hadn't visited the Black Cells, the third level of the Red Keep's dungeons, before. Blake, of course, had, and likely through various entrances that even the gaolers didn't know, but showing off that knowledge might raise suspicions - Weiss had no illusions that the Queen's accusations had fallen on deaf ears; enough people would believe her, or fake believing her to score points.

So, they couldn't have Blake lead them directly to the Black Cells’ torture chamber - even Ruby had accepted that. Although if the Head Gaoler hadn't agreed to lead them down, things probably would have become quite… messy. Fortunately, the man in charge of the dungeons was quite cooperative.

Though, as evidenced by the stench assaulting Weiss's nostrils - a nauseating mix of faeces, sweat and urine - they could have just followed their noses. She wondered how Blake could stand this; her friend's nose was far more sensitive than Weiss's own.

“Ew! They keep people down here?” Ruby made a gagging noise.

“Criminals, my lady.”

“But… how could you tell?” Ruby asked.

“Err… the lords are interrogating them to find out.”

The man was either a dullard or a very good actor. Since one didn't need to be very smart to run a dungeon like this, Weiss couldn't tell whether the man was as dull as he appeared or was faking it to avoid rousing Ruby's anger.

As they kept walking down the stairs, led by the gaoler with a lantern that barely managed to illuminate their immediate surroundings, Weiss suddenly heard Blake gasp - and a quick glance showed that her friend was tense and stiff.

That wasn't a good sign. Weiss braced herself for the worst.

They reached a sturdy-looking wooden door with massive metal bands covering much of its surface. The gaoler fumbled with his keys before opening it - he was more rattled than he tried to appear, then, since he must have opened this door countless times before.

As soon as the door swung open, Weiss heard a scream.

“Please… I didn't see anything! No! Please!”

Weiss whirled, raising a hand - but Ruby had already disappeared into a cloud of petals. Cursing, Weiss ran after her.

“STOP!”

Weiss clenched her teeth and sped up - she was tempted to use a glyph to boost herself forward, but she was too close and the passage too narrow.

“Lady Ruby! You are interrupting our interrogation!”

“Please, Stannis - it's obvious that Lady Ruby is not used to such a sight, necessary as it is.”

Weiss rounded the last corner and came to a stop next to her friends - in the entrance to an actual torture chamber. Lord Eddard, Lord Stannis, Lord Renly, Ser Barristan - and Prince Joffrey? - were there, as well as half a dozen men. They surrounded a man she recognised as one of the palace cooks who was hanging from his bound wrists, his feet dangling above the floor, and even in the flickering light of the torches and lanterns, she could see the marks left on his chest and back by the whip one of the three gaolers present held.

“Shit!” Yang muttered next to her.

Weiss agreed. This was a sick display.

“You can't just torture people!” Ruby blurted out, shaking her head. A moment later, Crescent Rose unfolded in her hand.

“My lady… I am innocent, I swear!” the prisoner - the cook - stammered. “I didn't poison the King! I didn’t!”

Ruby's arm flashed, and the man dropped to the ground - or would have, had she not caught it.

“Lady Ruby! You can't stop the interrogation!” the Prince yelled, jumping up from his seat. Why was a child here?

“That's not an interrogation - that's torture!” Ruby protested.

“I'm innocent, I swear!” the cook whimpered.

“Innocent? My father was poisoned through food you cooked!” the Prince screamed. “Whether you poisoned him or let it happen, you are guilty beyond any doubt! You failed in your most important duty!” His chest heaved as he glared at the prisoner. “You'll pay for this with your life! Being executed will be a mercy after your suffering!”

Weiss drew a sharp breath. The prince was losing it, mad with grief and anger - why had anyone allowed him to attend this… this scene?

“My prince!” Ruby blurted out.

Weiss took a step forward. “My lords! What is going on? Why do you let a child attend a torture session?” What were they thinking?

Lord Eddard flinched, but before he could say anything, the Prince spoke up again: “My father was murdered! How could I be King if I shy away from ensuring that justice shall be meted out to those responsible for his death?”

“We're still in the process of determining who among the suspects are the ones responsible,” Lord Renly commented.

“Through torture?” Ruby asked, staring at the three - four - nobles. And Ser Barristan, who was avoiding everyone’s eyes, Weiss found.

Lord Eddard nodded. “As distasteful as it is, we need to find Robert's murderer. Before he strikes again. And the Prince is correct - the poison must have come through the kitchen, which is this man's responsibility. The page who served him was innocent.”

“Yes!” the Prince cried out, and Lord Stannis nodded.

Weiss stared at them, then looked at Ruby. 

Her friend was shaking her head. “You can't torture people!”

“They will confess to any crime to stop the pain,” Blake said in a flat voice. “Such confessions are worthless.”

“The page didn’t confess to a crime - he proved to be innocent,” Lord Renly pointed out.

And Lord Stannis glared at Blake. “The law is clear about this.”

“Then the law is wrong!” Ruby retorted, moving the prisoner behind her. “Lord Eddard! This is not just!”

Lord Eddard shook his head. “As Stannis said, the law is clear about this. And the Prince is correct that these men failed their duty to the King.”

“That doesn’t mean they deserve to be tortured! Do you expect them to stop an assassin?” Ruby shook her head, and Weiss saw tears in her eyes. “They aren’t guards!”

“That doesn’t excuse them. They were responsible for the food,” Lord Stannis replied.

“Do you even know that it was the food which was poisoned? It could have been the wine,” Weiss spoke up. 

“That would still be their responsibility,” Lord Stannis said.

“And they will pay for it!” the Prince hissed.

“Mistakes shouldn’t get people tortured!” Ruby snapped.

Lord Renly stepped in front of Ruby. “What about we pause the interrogation? Tempers have risen - we all have lost a beloved brother, father and friend - and I think it would behoove us to get some fresh air before we take steps that cannot be taken back. Also, a day longer in the Black Cells might motivate the suspects to talk without torture.” He smiled widely, though Weiss could see that he was far tenser than he tried to appear.

The Prince opened his mouth, but, against Weiss’s expectations, he closed it without saying anything.

Even so… spending the night in a cold, wet, and filthy dungeon was torture, in Weiss’s opinion. But if they pressed too far here… She looked at Ruby. “That sounds… acceptable.”

Ruby’s lips formed a thin line, and, for a moment, Weis feared their leader would not compromise, but then she released her breath and slowly nodded. “But we take him to the Maester to be treated. You don’t leave wounded people in a cell!” she spat.

The nobles looked at each other. You didn’t have to be a genius to realise what their expressions meant.

“You’ve got wounded prisoners in the cells?” Ruby blurted out. “How many did you torture already?”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yes… yes… yes…

Blake Belladonna shook her head, her teeth clenched, as she remembered the Prince’s whispered words before Ruby had burst into the torture chamber, and the expression on his face, hidden by the shadows from everyone but her own eyes, that she had seen.

She had seen that expression before, on Adam’s face. To see it on a boy’s face… She shuddered. Granted, the boy had just lost his father, but still, it was wrong.

As wrong as torturing people. Damn it - they were barbarians here! Even Lord Eddard had sat there while people were tortured just for having worked on food for the King!

But she couldn’t dwell on this - she had a mission. Ruby and Weiss checked with the healers, and Yang had gone to grab Gendry, in case someone went after him, while Blake had to find out what was going on in the castle. They needed to know what everyone was planning and plotting.

Ahead of her was the secret passage to the Queen’s quarters. But she couldn’t use that since one of Varys’s child agents was already using it. That meant she would have to use the second one, which had been half-closed off by a crumbling tunnel. But there was no helping it - Queen - former Queen - had stayed inside her quarters since the King’s death, and by Blake’s estimate, almost every member of House Lannister, as well as their retainers present at court, had gathered there. And the Prince hadn’t left her quarters either since he had gone to visit her after the torture session had ended. In addition to that, none of the Keep’s servants had been called in - everything was handled by her personal servants, as Blake had overheard when listening to two servants gossiping.

So, she had to sneak in and check out what the Queen was doing. Was she still trying to get RWBY arrested? And, more importantly - it wasn’t as if anyone could arrest them, anyway, and the guards knew it - was she trying to frame the team or did she honestly think they had killed the king? Both were equally plausible, in Blake’s opinion. The queen was crazy enough to think that Blake’s team had killed the King, but Blake also had no doubt that she wouldn’t shy away from murder.

Given how the law treated suspects here, especially when it involved the murder of a king, the odious woman had tried to get Yang tortured! Blake wouldn’t let her get away with that.

She reached the half-collapsed part and checked for tracks and traces. If anyone had been here since her last visit, she would have to reconsider her plan; the chances of this being or becoming a trap were too high. And being caught or exposed while spying on the Queen would be very, very bad right now, with everyone wondering who killed the King - and a not insignificant part of the court either believing or pretending to believe that Team RWBY was responsible. Not just the nobles, either, but the servants too, though most of the smallfolk who thought that also seemed to believe that that had been the gods’ will… And others were afraid of poison that not even the gods could stop or something.

But she didn’t find any trace of someone else having passed through and so used a few clones to quickly pass the narrow gap left by the collapsed stone, then went on to climb a small shaft that led up to the queen’s and king’s quarters.

Soon, her ears picked up voices.

“...Cersei! I’ve told you many times - we cannot arrest them!”

That was Ser Jaime. And he sounded exasperated. So, even her own brother - and lover - was fed up with the Queen.

“Why not? They murdered the King!”

“If they had wanted to murder the King, they wouldn’t have had to resort to poison. Or expose themselves like Lady Yang did. They would have just needed to watch like everyone else.”

“That’s exactly why they used poison! So people would think it wasn’t them! You can’t let them fool you with their act - they want to murder our family! They plan to take over the kingdom! They will kill my children! Our family! And then myself!”

Yes, the Queen was crazy. It seemed she hadn’t murdered the King, though - unless this was an act for her brother.

“If they want to kill us, we cannot stop them, Cersei. You have seen how powerful they are.”

“I have seen how the blonde beast collapsed! How they had to carry her out! They aren’t invincible! Don’t let them fool you!”

“I have seen them fight - I have faced them in the ring. They cannot be stopped!”

“That’s what you think, but you’re wrong! They can’t kill everyone!”

“They don’t want to kill anyone. They don’t have the stomach for it - Joffrey told you how they broke up the interrogation of the cooks and servants.”

“To protect their helpers! They are afraid that their helpers would betray them!”

“Cersei, please - you can’t believe that Team Ruby wants to kill you and our family.”

“They want to! They will kill the children, Jaime! And then they will kill me so that they can be queens! They have fooled everyone, but they cannot fool me!”

“If they wanted to replace you, why would they have killed the king? He loved them!”

“Do you think they would have wanted to marry him? That fat, disgusting monster? Even those sluts have better taste than that!”

“So, you think they want to marry Joffrey?”

Blake rolled her eyes. Her team had rejected that idea before - and to the Queen’s face!

“Of course! And as soon as they have a child from him, they’ll kill him, then Tommen and Myrcella, and then they’ll kill me!”

“Replacing Lady Sansa will pit them against Stark.”

“Not if one of them marries his son!”

Again with the marriages. Those people were obsessed!

“That won’t put his blood on the throne, Cersei.”

“It doesn’t matter! He already betrayed us - he acts as if he’s still the Hand! Even though I told him that I will make Father the Hand of the King!”

The Queen wanted to make Lord Tywin the Hand? Blake frowned. Could she do that? Last Blake knew, the court still had no official regent - the late King apparently hadn’t left a last will, nor any instructions. According to Weiss, that would favour the Queen becoming regent, but things were not really ironclad in Westeros. But Lord Eddard hadn’t struck her as interested in becoming regent - he hadn’t wanted to become Hand and only agreed out of loyalty to his friend the King. If he opposed the Queen… Well, anyone could see she would make a bad regent, being completely crazy.

“And did Father accept?”

“Why would he refuse? He was the Mad King’s hand!”

Not that someone who tortured people was that much better. 

“Cersei…”

“Are you afraid of those sluts?”

“Anyone sane would be afraid, Cersei.”

“Does that mean you will abandon me to them? Abandon our family?”

“Of course not! I won’t ever leave you, Cersei.”

“Jaime… ”

Blake winced at the sounds that followed. She listened for a bit, but the couple wasn’t talking any more, and so she continued to the Prince’s quarters.

*****

“...and I will have the murderer of my father found, Hound! And they will suffer for their crime like no one before! They will beg for death, but I will refuse them!”

“I think the four girls will have to say something about that.”

“They won’t! Lady Ruby opposed torturing suspects; she won’t oppose the king’s punishment for the guilty! And I will be king!”

“Once you’re of age.”

“Mother won’t deny me this!”

Blake grimaced. That wasn’t good either. Not as bad as she had feared after listening to the mad Queen, but she wouldn’t call the Prince a well-adjusted boy, either. 

Adam had argued similarly, she remembered. ‘We will only kill those who deserve it - those who have tortured and killed our own.” Had he believed that, then? Or had he already lied to her, knowing she wouldn’t have agreed with indiscriminately killing, hoping she would agree later?

It didn’t matter. She had to tell the rest of her team what she had found out. And check on the other nobles. But she was alone and could only do so much. Ironic, given her Semblance.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, Lord Tywin is coming to King's Landing.”

“We don’t know that yet, Weiss - only that the Queen wants him to become the Hand of the King.”

“We have to assume he is coming, Ruby. Especially since her authority to hand the position to him is being questioned as we speak.” 

Yang Xiao Long, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, opposite Blake, who was standing watch at the secret passage, raised her eyebrows. “Hand him the Hand position?”

Weiss pouted at her. “A mere slip of the tongue.”

Yang chuckled. She was going to get her laughs wherever she could. She had to. First, accidentally killing that knight without even noticing, then failing to save the King despite literally giving everything and exhausting her Aura, and finally almost punching the Queen's head off in rage, as if she hadn't learnt anything from her mistakes. “It's going to be weeks until he arrives. Things will have settled down by then.” They better will, she added to herself.

“But will they?” Ruby asked. Yang could see she was biting her lower lip. “The King died without leaving a will. The Queen claims she is regent.”

“The Queen claims a lot of things,” Yang said with a scoff. “No one likes her or her family. Not even her own brother.” Well, her younger brother. Her twin liked her far too much. “When she tried to get me arrested, no one moved. Not even Ser Jaime.”

“They didn't want to fight us. They know they'd lose,” Ruby said. “But what about orders that don't pit them against us?”

Yang shrugged. “No one likes the Lannisters. Prince Oberyn's family hate them for murdering his sister and her children.”

“They probably blame the Baratheons as well,” Blake cut in.

That was true, but… “That still means they won't support her.”

“Maybe. But in politics, enemies allying for their own reasons is not too rare,” Weiss said. “Yes, the Lannisters don’t have many friends, but there is no truly united block facing them. Lord Stannis and Lord Renly don't get along that well - Lord Renly is close to House Tyrell, and Lord Stannis apparently fought them during the Rebellion and is married to a rival house in their kingdom. The Martells, as you mentioned, are no friends of either Baratheons or Lannisters. The Starks have ties to the Tullies and Arryns, but neither House has a strong presence at court. And while no one likes House Lannister, they are rich, and that grants them a lot of influence. The crown owes them millions of dragons.”

Yang knew that that was a lot of money. But Prince Joffrey was the grandson of Lord Tywin, so it might be kept in the family. Still… “Do you think they have a chance to buy enough allies and influence to make the Queen the regent?”

“By law, she is, isn't she?” Ruby said.

“Opinions differ,” Weiss said. “But everything seems on hold while they search for the King’s murderer. If one of the leading Houses was involved, that could change the entire situation.”

“Who could have done it?” Ruby asked.

“There are too many suspects,” Blake said. “Anyone with the gold and contacts in Essos could have bought this poison. And many nobles will have bought such poisons the first time they realised how strong we are.”

“Do they fear us that much?” Ruby asked, looking shocked.

“They fear our power,” Weiss told her. “We could decide who becomes regent or Hand - if we wished to.”

Yang nodded. “Or if someone forces our hand.” Weiss glowered at her, and she beamed back. “But enough about how many suspects are around. What about the most likely suspects?”

“That's still a long list,” Weiss said. “The Queen loathed the King. The Martells probably hated him, and Prince Oberyn is infamous for his knowledge about poisons.”

And famous for a few other reasons as well, Yang thought.

“Varys is originally from Essos,” Blake added. “He would have contacts there. We know he meets people in the tunnels below the Keep.”

“But what motive would he have to murder the King? We can’t assume that just because he employs mutilated children - and might mutilate them - he will go after the King,” Weiss pointed out.

Yang snorted, though she wasn’t really amused. “Yeah. No one here blinks at torture. Even Lord Eddard saw nothing wrong with torturing the servants.” And wasn’t that sick? Anyone could be a suspect through no fault of their own! Even Ruby had been arrested once, and that had been after fighting off a robbery by that bastard Torchwick!

Blake nodded in agreement. “And Prince Joffrey doesn’t think it’s bad either.”

Yang grimaced. According to her partner, the Prince was planning to have the murderer of the King tortured to death. Slowly.

“What about Baelish?” Ruby asked.

“Ruby, I just said we can’t assume that someone is a murderer just because they are responsible for other evil acts,” Weiss told her.

“I know!” Ruby frowned at her. “But he is corrupt.”

“We haven’t been able to prove that.” Weiss insisted.

“We know he is running at least one brothel, and he’s gotten very rich in a few years in his position,” Ruby said. “That can’t have been legal. So, he has something to hide. People are willing to kill for secrets that could destroy them.”

“But the King? What would he gain?” Weiss shook her head. “I doubt that he is involved. Blake would have found out something if he were - she’s been shadowing him regularly.”

Blake didn’t seem to share Weiss’s confidence, in Yang’s impression. She pushed off the wall and rolled her shoulders - she was still a bit stiff from last night. “So, we have a couple of suspects, but we only know one thing for sure: We can’t trust anyone.” Not even Ser Barristan, depending on who became regent.

“We can trust Jon!” Ruby protested. “And Gendry.” 

“And the kids. But none of them are exactly movers and shakers at court, sis,” Yang told her.

“And everyone will be looking at us - or to us - to see which faction we’ll support,” Weiss said.

“Let them look - and guess!” Yang grinned.

“We won’t side with anyone,” Ruby said, frowning. “We’re not here to meddle with the succession. Or support a coup.”

Yang nodded.

But Weiss kept frowning. “Not taking sides will be seen as a statement as well.”

Yang scoffed. “If anyone is trying to use us, we’ll have to teach them that that’s a bad idea.” She smashed her fist into her palm and flashed her teeth.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lord Stannis, Lord Renly and Lord Eddard want to talk to us?” Yang blinked as she sat up on her bed. “Privately?”

Ruby nodded. “So they said - well, Lord Eddard said it when he came to fetch Arya, Bran and Jon from our training session today.”

Yang frowned. “He doesn’t usually fetch his kids in person.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Weiss confirmed. “If this was supposed to be discreet, it failed - tongues will have been set wagging merely by seeing him come to talk to Ruby. The entire court is on edge, and as the Hand, Lord Eddard will be watched by everyone. The same goes for the King’s brothers, the Queen and her own brothers. And the Prince, of course.” 

Blake nodded. “People have commented on the fact that he supposedly has been spending so much time with his mother and uncle.”

Yang hadn’t noticed that. But she wasn’t keeping her ears open as Blake was. She was actually trying not to hear too much about the whole issue - it was too frustrating. Hard enough to deal with the fact that she had failed to save the King. Hadn’t been good enough to save him. Weiss and Blake could talk about how Aura didn’t work the same here as in Remnant, but it still felt like her Aura, her soul, hadn’t been enough. 

She clenched her teeth. She’d deal with it. She had to. But once she could spare the time, not in the middle of this crisis, when everyone seemed to wonder when the next death would happen. Or when the first fight between the various groups would break out. “So, we’re going to sneak to the Hand’s office through that secret passage you know?”

Blake frowned, and Weiss shook her head. “I don’t think revealing that we could spy on the Hand would be received well by Lord Eddard.”

“And we might need to spy on him again,” Blake added. She didn’t seem happy about it - Yang could tell from the way she tensed - but she was right.

“They want to meet us outside the castle,” Ruby said.

“Oh? Cloak and dagger?” Yang grinned, even though she wasn’t really amused.

“Lord Renly has rented a room in a discreet inn, or so Lord Eddard said,” Ruby explained. “They have a backdoor open for us.”

Weiss nodded. “That should work. Of course, their trust in the staff’s discretion might be misplaced, but they won’t be able to blame us.”

“Bet someone will do it anyway!” Ruby grumbled.

Yang nodded. “Anyway, what do you think this is about?”

“They must have found the murderer and want us to help arrest them!” Ruby replied immediately.

“I think that is likely, yes,” Weiss agreed.

Blake nodded.

Yang agreed as well. The three noblemen had spent almost every hour since the King’s death investigating the death. Still… Yang grimaced when she had a nasty thought. “But if they ask for us, they must think they can’t arrest the murderer without us.”

Weiss nodded. “And that would indicate that the culprit is a very powerful noble.”

“They think the Queen did it?” Ruby said what Yang was thinking.

“Probably. The question is, do they have proof?” Weiss asked. “Arresting the Queen for the murder of her husband would end her attempt to become regent for Prince Joffrey and replace Lord Eddard with her father. Especially if our involvement will make it seem as if the faith supports it.”

Yang scowled. She was all for arresting the killer. It wouldn’t bring the King back, but bringing his murderer to justice would help a little, at least. But only if it actually was the murderer. “They better have proof,” she said. 

Ruby nodded with a firm expression. “We’re not gonna let them torture anyone to get ‘proof’.”

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

The inn was a nice one, and the back door actually led to the stables in the back, first, so sneaking in was child’s play - even for Weiss, who hadn’t learned to sneak past Dad past curfew, as Yang and Ruby had back home. Well, Yang assumed Weiss hadn’t done such things.

And it was more discreet than using Weiss’s glyphs to get up to the window, or climbing down from the roof. But the servant who had opened the back door for them hadn’t been fooled by their cloaks and hoods, Yang was sure. Especially since Ruby usually wore a hood anyway, even if she had changed it for this.

But that was Lord Eddard’s problem. Or Lord Renly’s, since he had organised this. At least Yang hoped so.

A trip upstairs and a knock later, they were inside a very nice room - for Westeros - and exchanging greetings with all three nobles. And only them, Yang noted. No servants. No guards. No witnesses.

“So… you wanted to talk to us privately. We’re here,” Ruby said, nodding in an obvious attempt to look all-business and not nervous.

“Yes, Lady Ruby.” Lord Eddard glanced at Lord Stannis, then at Lord Renly. 

Lord Stannis frowned a bit more than he already had, and Lord Renly smiled at Lord Eddard and refilled his cup with what looked like red wine. Sighing, Lord Eddard turned to face them. “We have called you to this meeting to discuss a heinous crime that will shake the realm’s foundations once it is exposed. It might even lead to war.”

“There will be war for certain,” Lord Renly commented.

Lord Stannis nodded.

As they had expected then. Or not - Yang caught Weiss and Blake tense up.

“You mentioned that the crime has yet to be exposed. You’re not talking about the assassination of the King, then, I suppose,” Weiss said.

Blake nodded in agreement.

Once again, Lord Eddard glanced at Lord Stannis, who grumbled in return while Lord Renly smirked. “Yes. Although we are almost certain that the two crimes are connected, we’re still tracking down the assassin. No, we’re talking about something else.” He hesitated for a moment. “We have proof that the Queen has not only committed adultery but that her children are bastards.”

Damn. Yang hadn’t expected that. Nor had her friends - Weiss and Blake looked grim, and Ruby looked as if she was going to be sick.

*****

 

Chapter 21: The Spark

‘While any student of history is aware of how frequently dishonourable actions were taken in the past, often with the flimsiest of excuses or none at all, and, therefore, would not succumb to the unfortunately quite popular if romanticised view that life during the time of the Ruby Order was a time when nobility valued their honour more than their life - and ignoring how many conflicts were started over claims that someone’s honour was insulted - one must be cautious not to fall in the trap of assuming that everyone back in those times considered honour a pretense. Just as with the Faith, many nobles, but even more so the smallfolk, truly believed in the courtly ideals espoused by the bards of the time. And even the most cynical and hypocritical nobles would be aware that few if any could afford a dishonourable reputation if they valued their power or their lives. So even those who, despite evidence to the contrary from primary sources opposed to the Ruby Order, assume that the Four Maidens were only pretending to hold to their high ideals, must admit that the Ruby Order, four girls in a foreign kingdom relying on their wits, skill at arms and friendship with influential people, would not have acted in the manner a few scholars with evident biases claim they did. It is, therefore, clear that their actions were taken not out of self-interest but genuine ideals. Ideals which, as we know, tended to clash with the customs of the time on the most unexpected occasions.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Renly Baratheon had watched the four girls closely when Lord Eddard had revealed Cersei's crimes, and their reactions were telling. Especially Lady Ruby's. The leader of Team Ruby looked sick at the revelation that Cersei's children were bastards. And yet, in their world, bastards were not scorned - the way the four cared about Lord Eddard's and Robert's bastards proved that. So, why would she react with disgust to this information? They hadn't cared that Robert had committed adultery to father his latest bastard, so that wasn't a problem either, and Lord Eddard, on Renly's advice, had not told them about the incest yet since that would have sounded too far-fetched to convince them.

But the most obvious conclusion was that Lady Ruby had reacted like this because she had already known about the incest, yet had been ignorant that it had resulted in three children. And wasn’t that interesting? And troublesome. It meant that they were more involved in the game of thrones than Renly had suspected.

He glanced at Lord Eddard and Stannis, wondering if either had caught this.

Lord Eddard winced. “I am sorry to tell you this. I know it must be a shock.”

Stannis, as expected, merely watched with his usual stony expression.

Lady Ruby grimaced as she nodded.

Lady Weiss, on the other hand, narrowed her eyes. “What exactly is your proof?” she asked.

Lord Eddard quickly began to explain. “All Baratheons have had dark hair, like Robert, even when they married people with blond hair. We have found that in the records. And all of Robert's bastards whom we found have had dark hair as well. And yet, all three of Cersei's children have blond hair.”

“And none of them share any of Robert's features,” Renly added. “They look like the Lannisters they are.” The facts were obvious, once you knew them. It was actually embarrassing that he had to have been told by Stannis, though knowing Lord Jon had told Renly's brother and Lord Eddard had practically stumbled on the issue lessened the blow to Renly's self-image. Loras would still tease him once he knew, of course.

“That's your evidence?” Lady Weiss kept frowning.

“Yes?” Lord Eddard blinked. “It's compelling.”

Apparently, the four girls had different standards for evidence. Renly had been aware of that already - their reaction to the interrogation of the smallfolk who had been involved with Robert's last meal had shown that clearly - but he hadn't expected that they would reject the proof here.

“I can confirm it,” Stannis said in his gravelly tone. “Do you doubt our word?”

Lady Weiss shook her head. “We don’t doubt that the facts you gathered are true. But that's not proof that all of the Queen's children are bastards, much less the product of incest.”

“How can you deny that?” Lord Eddard was frowning. “Jon's last words were ‘the seed is strong’, and we've been told that he was murdered because he investigated the whole affair.”

Renly envied the man's hold on his temper. Stannis was already grinding his teeth to dust in frustration, and Renly himself only refrained from blurting out his own reaction because any of the four girls could kill him and his entire banners by herself. You didn't anger such power, not if you could help it. Unless, of course, you were as honest as Lord Eddard, or as stubborn as Stannis. Renly had had to make a significant effort to convince both that they couldn't reveal what they had found out without checking where Team Ruby stood.

“Genetics are more complex than that,” Lady Weiss said. She blinked, then added: “It means that what traits you inherit from your parents depends on many, many factors. Hair colour alone is not sufficient proof that someone is or isn't related to someone else. Blood testing could, in certain circumstances, prove that someone couldn't be related, but not that someone is related. Only DNA-testing could conclusively prove or disprove someone's ancestry, and Westeros doesn't have access to that technology.”

Renly hadn't understood everything - she might as well have been speaking gibberish at the end - but he had caught the gist of it. “You can prove someone's parentage.” That was of enormous importance.

“People back home can,” Lady Ruby said. “We can't do it. We're not… our versions of Maesters. And we wouldn't have the tools for it even if we knew how to do it.”

That was disappointing. It would have greatly simplified matters if Team Ruby could have proved the incest spawns’ parentage - their word carried great weight amongst the smallfolk and the Faith, and they were too powerful to bow to any threat. On the other hand, if they accused the Queen of incest, Cersei would be lucky to make it halfway to the city gate before she would be torn from her high horse and beaten to death. 

“What are you talking about? The evidence doesn't lie!” Stannis blurted out. “No Baratheon ever had light hair! Not even when their mothers were Targaryens!”

“You had ancestors with light hair?” Lady Weiss asked.

“Yes,” Renly replied before Stannis could accidentally or intentionally insult her. “House Baratheon is descended from Orys Baratheon, a general of Aegon the Conqueror.” And his alleged bastard half-brother, but saying that near a Baratheon could start a fight to the death. Even as a Baratheon.

“Then Robert could have children with light hair,” Lady Weiss said.

“Three children with light hair and none with dark hair?” Lord Eddard sounded unconvinced, and Stannis was still grinding his teeth.

“It seems improbable,” Renly ventured forth.

“But not impossible,” Lady Weiss retorted, shaking her head. “And you can’t convict people on probable cause; you need proof beyond reasonable doubt.”

The girls were not convinced. And Stannis was about to lose his temper, Renly could tell from long experience. It was time to roll the dice. He leaned forward and stared at Lady Ruby. “You already knew that she committed incest with her twin brother.”

Everyone was startled - Lord Eddard and even Stannis were staring at him, as were the four girls. But they also looked guilty, something Renly's co-conspirators noticed as well.

“You knew?” Stannis growled.

“How? And why didn't you inform Robert?” Lord Eddard asked, visibly shocked.

Lady Ruby grimaced again but then straightened and stared - no, glared; Renly felt a slight shiver run down his spine, and he wasn't her target - at Lord Eddard. “They would have been killed for it!” she said.

Lord Eddard gaped in obvious surprise at her. By the Seven, the man had known those girls longer than anyone else at Court, and he was surprised by this? Renly hadn't spent nearly as much time with them, but he knew that they disliked killing anyone! The fact that Cersei was still alive proved it!

“You would protect an adulteress who committed incest from the law?” Stannis had jumped up from his seat and was all but shouting at them.

Renly eyed the door - it was thick, and it blocked sounds, but everything had limits - before looking at Team Ruby again.

Lady Ruby met Stannis's ire without flinching. “If the law would see them executed, yes!” She nodded emphatically before lifting her chin up again. “That's not justice! That's barbaric!”

For once, Stannis looked shocked. “You… condone incest?”

“What? No!” Lady Ruby made a gagging noise.

“We do not condone incest, my lord,” Lady Weiss spoke up. “But we do not condone killing people for it, either.”

“The punishment for adultery or incest doesn't have to be death,” Renly was quick to point out. Of course, if someone combined both crimes…

Lady Yang scoffed. “You think the King would have let them live?”

Robert wouldn't have. He would have flown into a rage and killed both himself. Or he would have tried to - Renly wasn't sure if he would have prevailed against Ser Jaime. But the situation had changed. “That's no longer a concern, though,” he pointed out. His brother was dead. Murdered, most likely by Cersei, though Renly wouldn't dismiss the possibility that Lord Oberyn had done it. He wasn't called the Red Viper for nothing.

“And how would it look if we accused them now, after the Queen accused us of murdering the King?” Lady Weiss shook her head. “Even those who doubt her accusations would have trouble believing us.”

Renly wasn't so sure about that - their support amongst the Faith was strong, although the failure to save Robert might have shaken it somewhat. Still, she wasn't wrong. If the Queen had slept with someone else, it would be more believable - people knew she loathed Robert. But with her own brother? That was too far-fetched for any but the most naive - or the most cynical.

“You would hide the truth merely because you fear how it would be received?” Stannis scoffed. “I have misjudged you gravely, then! You don't care about justice at all!”

Cursing internally at his stubborn fool of a brother, Renly opened his mouth to smooth the tempers, but froze when he saw the expression on Lady Ruby's face.

“How dare you!” the slip of a girl spat. A few steps, each making the floor tremble a little, carried her in front of Stannis, and she raised her index finger in his face, almost touching his nose. “You torture people just for being suspects! You kill them for stealing or cheating on their spouses! That's not justice! That's the opposite of justice! And you dare to accuse us because we don't support this… this injustice?”

For a moment, Renly feared that his brother would lose his temper and strike the girl. Or reply with an insult that couldn't be taken back. But while it might have cost him a tooth or two from clenching his jaw so hard, Renly almost heard the grinding of bones, Stannis managed to control himself. “If the law isn't applied to everyone, there can be no justice.”

And when Lady Ruby scowled but didn't strike his brother down, Renly dared to release the breath he had been holding. 

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose wanted to slap Lord Stannis. Acting all so high and mighty and talking about justice as if he weren't fine with torturing and killing people! Sure, what the Queen and her brother were doing made Ruby gag just thinking of it, but they didn't deserve that! “An unjust law is not just!” She blinked. “I mean, you can't have justice with unjust laws!” That was better. “And killing someone for incest is not just!”

Lord Stannis gaped at her, and Lord Renly leaned forward and spoke up: “How would you punish them, then, my lady?”

That was an unfair question - she wasn't a judge or lawyer! And he knew that! Narrowing her eyes at him, she replied: “I'd make them pay a fine. Or send them to a prison for a while.”

Lord Renly smiled. “What about sending Ser Jaime to the Wall and Queen Cersei to the Silent Sisters?”

That sounded reasonable. Wait - it was a life sentence! 

But it’s Cersei. She deserves it, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind. Ruby ignored the voice. 

“And what about her children?” Ruby asked. They would lose their mother after they had lost their father. And no one deserved that. Ruby knew that. The Prince was already badly affected by the death of his father - she almost winced thinking of what Blake had told them - and to lose his mother like that? And Tommen and Myrcella were even younger.

“They are abominations born of incest,” Lord Stannis bared his teeth.

They still needed their parents… wait! “You want to punish them as well?” He couldn't! “You don't even know if they are incest children, and even if they were, that’s not their fault! You can't punish children for what their parents did!”

Even Lord Eddard winced at that, Ruby noticed.

“And I reiterate that you have no conclusive proof that the three children are the result of incest in the first place,” Weiss added. “Hair colour is not proof of ancestry.”

Ruby flashed a quick smile at her partner.

“The evidence is there!” Lord Stannis growled. “Just looking at them proves it! They show no sign of Baratheon blood!”

“That might be unusual, but it does not disprove their parentage,” Weiss retorted.

And they had gone over that before. “We won’t let you punish children just because you don't like their looks!” Ruby said.

“Does that mean you will interfere in a trial?” Lord Eddard asked. “Lord Stannis is right, now that we know the truth, we cannot ignore it.”

He had been quiet for quite some time, Ruby noted. And he looked uncomfortable - well, a little bit, at least, but for him, that was a lot. “Interfere?” she asked.

“Would you use force to stop a trial?” Lord Eddard asked.

“A trial against whom?” Ruby asked. “Ser Jaime and the Queen, or the children?”

“Ser Jaime and the Queen,” Lord Renly said, glancing at the other two men.

That was… well, not a fair question. The two had done it. And kept doing it, as poor Blake reported. Ruby suppressed a shudder. So, interfering to stop a trial would be wrong, kinda. But… “Are you going to kill them if they're found guilty?” she asked. See how he liked being asked the difficult questions!

“And who would be the judge?” Weiss added.

Again, Lord Renly glanced at the other two men before answering. “Since Robert has been murdered but no regent has been chosen yet, Lord Eddard, as the King's Hand, would be the judge.”

Ruby and everyone else looked at Lord Eddard. If he was the judge… Well, if he said he wouldn't have them killed, they could trust him. Probably - he was fine with torture.

Lord Eddard didn't answer, though. Instead, he asked: “Will you fight for the court if Ser Jaime demands a trial by combat as is his right? You are the only witnesses we know who can be called to testify.”

That was… Ruby didn't look at her friends. As they had found out when preparing for the Mountain’s trial, a trial by combat could only end with the accuser withdrawing their accusation or the death of one of the fighters. And anyone on her team could easily kill him.

“I am the witness,” Blake said. “So, I would be the accuser and the one who would fight.”

Ruby glared at her. Blake had already killed the Mountain! That was bad enough! She didn't have to do this as well!

“The accuser doesn't have to fight themselves; the court can choose a champion,” Weiss said.

Ruby didn't want Blake to kill someone else. She would do it. But should Ser Jaime die for what he had done with his sister, anyway? That wouldn't be right! But Ser Jaime was one of the best knights; anyone except a member of Team RWBY would risk death fighting him. 

“If you are willing, I think Ser Jaime might forego his right to trial by combat and accept being sent to the Wall,” Lord Renly said with a smile.

But would he? Or would they be forced to kill him? Could they risk that? But the alternative would be letting someone else risk their life…

What should they do? No. Ruby was the leader of Team RWBY. 

What should she do?

She bit her lower lip. She couldn’t let anyone else risk their life because she didn’t want to fight. A Huntress fought so others were safe. She nodded sharply. “I will be the court’s champion - but I’ll also be the children’s champion if anyone accuses them.”

“Ruby!”

“I will be the champion!”

“No!”

She turned her head to frown at her friends. “We talked about that. This is my decision.”

Turning back to look at the three men, she caught Lord Renly smiling, Lord Eddard looking relieved - a little bit, at least - and Lord Stannis scowling.

Tough! She had made her choice. The matter was settled.

“So, it is decided then - we will arrest the Queen and Ser Jaime and put them on trial for adultery, oathbreaking and incest,” Lord Eddard said.

“Oathbreaking?” Ruby asked.

“The Kingsguard is supposed to stay chaste,” Lord Eddard explained.

“Ah.” Ruby nodded with a wince. That sounded… very harsh.

“Are you planning to arrest the two immediately?” Weiss asked.

“As soon as we have made the necessary preparations to do so without provoking bloodshed,” Lord Renly said. “We can hardly expect them to go quietly unless faced with overwhelming force.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes at him. She wasn’t as knowledgeable about that stuff as Weiss was, but she knew what he meant. “You want us to do the arresting!”

“Your presence would certainly contribute to making things go smoothly,” Lord Renly said. “Especially considering the number of Lannister guards in the keep. For while they are well-paid and won’t want to risk Lord Tywin’s ire, they are also aware that they cannot stand against you.”

“If you’re planning to remove all Lannister guards, you will have to replace them,” Weiss said. “Are you ready for that?”

“We have gathered people ever since we heard about the… affair,” Lord Renly said. “As Master of Laws, I could send in the gold cloaks, but their loyalty is not beyond any doubt, alas. However, we have kept our efforts quite discreet so as not to provoke a reaction from the Queen and her family.”

“Speaking of her family…” Weiss was frowning. “How do you think the Prince will react to the arrest and trial of his mother the Queen? He will be King in a few years, with all the power that entails.”

Yeah, those glances that the three men were exchanging weren’t a good sign, Ruby knew.

“I think the Prince will accept their guilt after it has been established in a trial and with your testimony, my lady,” Lord Eddard said after a moment. “It will be years before he can take the throne, so even if he might not react well to the affair, he will have the time to change his views.”

Yeah, right. Ruby squinted at him. He didn’t look like he believed that himself. Losing your mother hurt. Especially as a child. Still, that was his decision. Or Lord Stannis’s - the man looked as if he’d kill himself as long as justice was done.

She glanced at her friends. They didn’t look very confident either. “Are you sure?” Ruby asked.

“Who can be sure of the future?” Lord Renly shrugged. “And removing the Queen’s influence on the boy can only be good for him.”

Ruby clenched her teeth. How could he say that? Sure, the Queen was a… very unpleasant, mean, arrogant and petty person, but she did love her children and feared for them. Blake had confirmed that.

“We can only hope so,” Weiss said with a slow nod.

Ruby stared at her. How could she… Oh! She would be speaking from experience. 

“Then it’s settled.” Lord Renly sounded pleased. “We’ll send for you tomorrow, after breakfast.”

“What about the Kingsguard?” Yang asked. “They’re sworn to protect the royal family, aren’t they?”

“They will stand down on the order of the King’s Hand,” Lord Renly said. “But if they aren’t, I am sure you can stop them from interfering without doing them permanent harm, can’t you?”

Sure, they could do that - her team had learned how to hold back, and they were very familiar with the Kingsguard from all the sparring they did with them. But this sounded almost like… not bullying, but… Like they were used for a plot.

But they had agreed, so… Ruby nodded, even though she didn’t like it.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“I don’t like this,” Yang said as soon as Blake had given the all-clear back in their room. “They’re treating us like their minions. Like their goons.”

“I don’t like it either,” Weiss said. “But I don’t see a better alternative.”

Ruby nodded. That was the problem. “What can we do? If we don’t do anything, they’ll have their guards fight it out.” And a lot of people would die because RWBY did nothing.

“It would be a bloody coup,” Blake said. “But this is a bloodless coup. With the Queen and her brother arrested, Lord Eddard will remain unchallenged in his position as the King’s Hand, and he, Lord Stannis and Lord Renly will pick a regent.”

“Should we let them kill each other instead?” Ruby asked. “Many people will die just because they obey their lord. We can’t let that happen!”

“Something I am certain Lord Renly at least had in mind when they asked to meet us,” Weiss said.

“Rotten bastard,” Yang muttered.

That was very manipulative, but… Ruby shook her head. “We still can’t let them fight it out.”

“If we want to avoid loss of life, then the only alternative to supporting the arrest of the Queen and her brother would be to prevent the arrest and intimidate Lord Eddard and the others to back off,” Weiss said. “And I doubt I have to explain why that would make the situation even worse - you all know what the Queen is like.”

Ruby nodded. The Queen would be the worst.

“She tried to get us arrested for the murder of the King,” Yang growled. “Why are we staying here again?” She held up her hand before Ruby could answer. “I know, we need to find out if there’s anything about magical ruins or magic in general in the royal library. And I know we can’t just leave now that people depend on us. I just don’t like it.”

Ruby deflated a bit. “Yeah, I get it.” She wasn’t happy either. But they really couldn’t just leave. That would put Gendry, Jon and probably Arya and Bran in danger as well. And if there was a violent coup… Ruby had heard about the rebellion. The city had been devastated.

“But we also cannot take over the kingdom, and that is a real danger if people start to rely on us,” Weiss said. “If we’re the only thing that keeps those rivalries and plots from starting a war…”

Ruby grimaced as she felt her stomach drop. “We can’t stay here! We can’t abandon our home! Dad is waiting for us! He must be terribly worried! And our friends! And Zwei! And… I want to go home!”

“We all want to go home, Ruby,” Yang said. “We just need to find a way to get home without setting the kingdom here on fire.”

“We need to find a way home first,” Blake said.

“And we can’t be blamed if the locals set their own kingdom on fire,” Weiss said.

She was right, but… “But we can’t let the smallfolk suffer,” Ruby said. These people trusted RWBY to protect and keep them safe.

“We can’t protect everyone,” Weiss said.

“But we still need to try,” Ruby replied. “Even if it’s hard. We can’t just do nothing.”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Weiss Schnee schooled her features as her friends and she walked behind Lord Eddard, Lord Renly and Lord Stannis through the courtyard, with two dozen guards - of House Stark and House Baratheon; Lord Renly had not picked any gold cloaks for this, which didn’t say good things about the guards’ loyalties - behind them. She wasn’t convinced that this was a good thing, but as she had told the others, all the alternatives were worse.

The servants out and about at this time of the day, before most had had breakfast, quickly hurried out of their way, and Weiss could see the fear in their eyes as they realised what was happening. They had been aware of the growing tension since the King’s murder, and it was obvious that they were afraid that it was about to escalate into violence.

Weiss wanted to reassure them, but smiling would send the wrong message. It was bad enough that most nobles would see them as either tools or puppet masters of Lord Eddard and the King’s brothers after this; she didn’t want to be seen as being happy about the upcoming events.

Even the ravens seemed to have picked up that something important and potentially dangerous was about to happen; she could see a particularly curious bird fly from roof to roof to keep them in sight.

The guards wearing Lannister colours who were guarding the drawbridge to Maegor’s Holdfast, where the Royal Quarters were located, had noticed them as well, and Weiss saw them form up, weapons held at their sides but clearly ready for a fight. 

The Lannister guards hadn’t known about this, Blake had confirmed last night that the secret hadn’t leaked, but with the current tensions, they would be ready to protect the royal family - or, Weiss was certain, prepared to strike at the Lannister’s rivals. Westeros’s history certainly proved that too many conflicts had ended in violence or outright civil war.

But they weren’t ready for Team RWBY. And they knew it.

As the group reached the gate, Lord Eddard raised his badge of office. “As the King’s Hand, I demand to enter.”

“Pardon, m’lord,” the apparent leader of the guards said, his nervousness obvious, “but her Grace gave the order not to be disturbed by anyone.”

“My orders supersede hers,” Lord Eddard said. “Stand aside.”

“You stand no chance of stopping us, anyway,” Lord Renly added. “We could go through the wall, if needed, though going through you would be far easier and quicker.”

“We can probably go through the wall more quickly than through them,” Yang said. “If we don’t want to hurt them too much.”

She was serious, Weiss knew, but the guards took this as a threat - she could see how they eyed each other and Team RWBY, and how their leader licked his lips, sweatdrops starting to run down his face.

“Trying to prevent the King’s Hand from doing his duty is treason,” Lord Stannis spat. “Are you traitors?”

The guards’ leader swallowed. Weiss sympathised with him - he was caught between a pack of Beowulfs and a Ursa Major. If he let them in, he violated his duty to House Lannister. If he tried to stop them, he would be labelled a traitor. 

Fortunately, they were prepared for that. Weiss stepped forward, past Lord Renly, as her friends did the same, approaching the line of guards at an unhurried pace without their weapons drawn. “Please, move aside,” Ruby said as they reached them - and without waiting for an answer, gently grabbed the man’s arms and lifted him up, then carried him to the side. Yang did the same with the man next to the leader, which was enough for the rest of the guards to fall back as well, clearing the path to the gate.

Weiss created a few glyphs to further hem in the guards as the group continued towards the gate. The guards inside hadn’t pulled the drawbrîdge up, though they had closed the gate - whether that discrepancy was the result of incompetence or hesitation, Weiss couldn’t say, but it made no difference anway; it would have been trivial for any Huntress to cut the chains holding the drawbridge up and let it fall down.

“Open the gate!” Lord Eddard called out. “In the name of the King!”

“The King is inside, and he hasn’t said anything about this!”

Weiss looked up at the ramparts. Ser Jaime was looking down at them with his usual smirk on his face.

They had been prepared for that as well. Weiss gestured and created a few glyphs, which her team used as stepping stones to quickly reach the top of the wall with a few leaps. 

Ser Jaime cocked his head at them, his sword already drawn. “So… you’ve decided to get involved in this, after all. I don’t suppose you would tell me what Renly offered you so my father can match it?” His grin looked a little forced, but he was holding up far better in the face of certain defeat than most people Weiss knew.

“We weren’t bribed!” Ruby spat. “This is about justice.”

“Oh? What tale has Lord Renly spun, then, to make you attack my family? It wasn’t Lord Stannis; the man has no talent for intrigue.”

“We know about what you and your sister do,” Ruby said with a grimace. “In the bedroom. We saw it,” she added before he could deny it - all of them had seen his shock, followed by a scowl.

“We also have an agreement that neither you nor the queen will be killed for it,” Weiss spoke quickly - desperate men were prone to lash out despite the futility of the act.

His eyes widened in surprise, but not for long. “So… you bargained Lord Eddard down to the Wall for me and the Silent Sisters for Cersei?”

Well, they had known he wasn’t stupid, if not as smart as his brother.

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. 

“And your nephews and niece won’t be punished for your actions,” Weiss said. 

He understood what she was implying, Weiss saw. He still looked around, as if weighing the odds, before he took a deep breath. “I see.”

“We don’t want anyone to die for this,” Ruby said. “Please!”

He threw his head back and laughed. “So, that’s how they got to you! Ah, if we had known…” Shaking his head, he dropped the sword to the ground. It almost fell off the rampart, Weiss noted. “Very well, I surrender.”

*****

“Traitors! Foul murderers! You killed the King, and now you want to kill me and his heirs! To arms! Guards! Defend your Queen! Jaime! Where are you? I need you!”

Not for the first time, Blake Belladonna wished her hearing wasn’t quite as good as it was - the Queen’s shrieking hurt. Maybe they should have knocked her out or gagged her, and damn the optics; it was already a debacle with the Queen being half-dragged, half-carried out of her quarters by two Stark guards while she cried for help.

“It could be worse,” Weiss said in a low voice next to her, “if we were the ones to carry her out.”

Blake hadn’t thought about that - the screeching would be even worse if she were so close - but she nodded anyway. Better tell Yang that as well. Her partner could be impulsive.

Although, seeing as Yang was staring at the Queen with her arms crossed under her chest, that was probably not necessary, Blake amended her thoughts.

But, except for the utter loss of dignity the Queen was displaying - Blake couldn’t tell if she had genuinely lost her composure or if she was deliberately acting like this to fish for sympathy from everyone who saw her - things had gone better than she had feared. A few guards had offered resistance, but they had been easily disarmed and overpowered by Blake’s team, and none had suffered more than a few bruises.

“Mother? What is going on? Mother!”

Blake closed her eyes for a moment. Of course, just when she thought things were going well…

“Prince Joffrey, this is not…” Lord Eddard started to explain.

“Joffrey! Help me! They want to murder us all!”

“What?” The Prince stood in the doorway leading to the hallway outside.

“Your Grace, you aren’t in any danger.” Weiss had stepped up to the Prince.

“Stay away from him!” the Queen shrieked. “Joffrey! Help me!”

“What is going on?” the Prince looked around, taking in the whole scene. If only he had been a minute slower to arrive, they would have been halfway out of the holdfast by then. As it was, he had caught them in the entrance room. 

“How did he get past the guards?” she heard Lord Renly mutter. “I gave clear orders to keep him away!”

Blake shook her head. Did he really expect his guards to stop the Prince if he pushed the issue? And the Prince would; he was a mere boy. A disturbed boy, what she had overheard proved it, but still a child. 

But his sworn sword wasn’t a child, and Blake used a few clones to appear in front of Clegane, meeting the man’s eyes with a cold expression. If he tried to start anything, Prince’s orders or not, Blake would end it.

Judging by his grimace and the curse he muttered, he was aware of that. Good.

“Joffrey! They want the throne! They’ll kill us all!”

“This isn’t about the throne, my prince,” Lord Eddard said.

“Mother! Release her! Your King orders it!”

“You’re no King yet!” Lord Stannis snapped.

“See? They admit it!” the Queen yelled. The two guards had stopped dragging her to the door - the prince was blocking it anyway - but hadn’t released her.

“Your grace, your mother is under arrest for the crime of incest,” Lord Eddard said. “Witnesses saw her and her brother. In bed.”

The boy gaped. “What?”

“Lies! Lies!” the Queen screeched. “Don’t listen to them! Help me!”

“Yes,” Blake said, stepping closer to the Prince. “We’re sorry you have to find out, especially like this, but the evidence is compelling.”

“We wouldn’t be here otherwise,” Weiss said.

“Lies! They did this! They want the throne! They will seduce you and then kill you, Joffrey! Don’t trust them!”

Blake was rapidly reconsidering her thoughts about knocking out or gagging the Queen.

The Prince was still blocking the door. “Mother! This can’t be true!” He sounded desperate.

“It is not true! They lie! It’s a plot against us!”

“But…”

Blake leaned in - he flinched but didn’t shy away - and said in a low voice: “I saw them myself, Your Grace. The Queen and her brother.” 

He looked from her to the Queen, shaking his head as Blake saw tears appear in his eyes. “This… this can’t be true.”

“Joffrey! Help me!”

Weiss reached out and gently took his hand. “Please, Your Grace… this can’t be settled here. Things will be explained later. And there will be a trial. Your uncle surrendered.”

“No.” He stared at the Queen.

“Lies! Jaime would never abandon me! He would die for me! They killed him, Joffrey!”

“We didn’t kill him! We didn’t even touch him!” Ruby blurted out. “We confronted him and he surrendered!”

“You have my word, Your Grace, that your uncle is in custody but unharmed,” Weiss said.

Unharmed for now, Blake thought. They had seen one prisoner die before his trial; they would have to ensure that none tried to kill Ser Jaime or the Queen before their trial - everyone would blame Team RWBY if anything happened to the prisoners.

Shaking his head - and suddenly looking far younger and more fragile than before - the Prince turned away from the room and walked past Clegane, who followed him at once.

“Joffrey! Don’t leave me! What did you do to him? Joffrey! Joffrey!”

“Finally!” Lord Renly scowled. “Who was in charge of locking the Prince in his chambers?”

“We couldn’t stop him, m’lord!”

“Couldn’t stop a little boy?” Lord Renly scowled.

“He is the Prince, my lord,” Weiss reminded him. “And Clegane, his sworn sword, is certainly not a little boy.”

“Joffrey! Jaime! Help me! Unhand me! You will all pay for this!”

Lord Renly looked like he wanted to retort, but shook his head instead. “Let’s get Cersei to the Black Cells. I’m getting a headache from her screaming.”

Blake nodded in agreement. If not for her Aura, her ears would probably have started bleeding by now - all four of them.

*****

That had been a mess! Yang Xiao Long shook her head - and checked that she couldn’t still hear the Queen’s screeching; shouldn’t the woman be hoarse by now? Blake must have had it even worse with her ears! - as she walked across the courtyard. “So much for coming quietly,” she commented.

Blake snorted, and Weiss frowned, which Yang had expected, but Ruby didn’t react, and that was a bad sign. 

“Ruby?” Yang asked as she stepped up to her sister.

“We’ll have to explain this to the Prince. And to his brother and sister as well,” Ruby said. “And they’re little children!”

Ugh. Yang grimaced. How could they explain what crime the Queen and her brother had done without explaining what incest was? She glanced at Weiss.

Her friend huffed. “That isn’t a problem. The Prince already knows. His siblings can simply be told that the Queen committed a crime and will face a trial.”

That sounded reasonable enough.

“We have a much more important problem,” Weiss said. “We need to take measures to prevent rumours that paint us as having launched a coup against the royal family.”

“We can take a stroll with the Prince while we explain things to him,” Ruby said. “People can see us walk together and will know we didn’t hurt him.”

“That won’t prevent some from claiming we were forcing him to come with us,” Blake pointed out. “We cannot stop such rumours. Not after we pushed our way into the royal quarters and arrested the Queen.”

“Yes, we cannot prevent it, but we can at least ensure that the truth gets out as well,” Weiss said. “And that means telling people what happened and our stance. Many smallfolk consider us messengers from the gods, which should help with presenting our side.”

“They probably would back a coup by us anyway,” Yang said. Those people were pretty crazy about their gods.

Weiss scowled. “Yes, they probably would. Which means they should listen when we tell them that this was not a coup but merely us lending assistance to the King’s Hand and the Master of Laws.”

That sounded a bit optimistic to Yang, but it probably wouldn’t hurt. And it would prevent people from assuming it was a coup and trying to help them. That would be really bad. “So, who’s going to the Sept?”

“Weiss should go,” Ruby said,

“Ruby should go,” Weiss said.

“Your glyphs really impressed everyone!”

“So did your Semblance!”

“Best go both together,” Yang told them. Really! They shouldn’t be bickering like this - not in the open, at least. Then again, the whole debacle had strained everyone’s nerves. Yang had really wanted to punch the bitch’s lights out. 

“Well…”

“I suppose that would be acceptable.”

“Good! Now off with you two! We’ll spread the word in the Keep.” Yang made shooing gestures with her hands,

“‘Spread the word’?” Ruby asked.

“People will want to ask us what happened. It would be rude not to answer their questions, right?” Yang shrugged.

“Actually, in a decent judicial system, witnesses commenting on the investigation would affect the credibility of their testimonies,” Weiss said. “But since people here think you can judge people on appearances and the outcome of a duel…” She shook her head. “Let’s go, Ruby.”

“Ah, yes! Bye, Yang! Bye, Blake!”

Yang looked at them until they had left through the gate, then turned to her partner. “I almost expected you to say something about being judged on appearances.”

Blake snorted. “Weiss has come a long way.”

So did you, Yang added silently. “So… let’s get something to eat in the Great Hall and see how long it takes for someone to approach us. I think they’ve got more fresh fish yesterday.”

Blake nodded. “I know.”

Of course, she would know. She probably smelled them already. Or checked the stores at night while looking for poison. Yang really needed to pull her weight there - Blake couldn’t do this all by herself. But they could sort that out later. She crossed her arms behind her head and started walking towards the Great Hall.

*****

As it turned out, they hadn’t even reached the table before the first question flew at them.

“My ladies! Would you care to tell us what just happened?” Prince Oberyn grinned at them, but he and his paramour looked a bit strained, Yang thought. They kept glancing around. Of course, their family weren’t too friendly with either Lannisters or Baratheons, and Oberyn was a potential suspect for the King’s murder.

But that wasn’t their problem. Yang nodded. “The Queen and Ser Jaime were arrested. For sleeping with each other.”

For the first time since she had met the man, Prince Oberyn looked shocked. He was blinking, his mouth half open. “What?”

The whole table had fallen silent, Yang realised. Ah, well, they had said they would spread word.

“The charges are adultery and incest. And violating the oath of the Kingsguard,” Blake said.

“Well, Ser Jaime already violated his oaths when he killed the Mad King, but… incest?” Prince Oberyn shook his head. “That sounds too far-fetched to be believable.”

“Yes,” Ellara added. “How trustworthy are those accusations?”

“Very,” Yang said with a nod.

“I saw them myself doing the deed,” Blake added.

“Oh.” Prince Oberyn blinked again. “Trustworthy indeed, then.”

Ellaria nodded. “Yes. Who would dare to question the Blessed Maidens?”

“And who would dare to face you in a trial by combat?” Oberyn added with a wide smile. “Ah, if only I could see Lord Tywin’s face when he hears about this! His eldest children sleeping with each other! The shame!” He started laughing.

Around them, people had started whispering, then talking as the news spread.

“How do you think he will react?” Yang asked.

“Hm?” Oberyn stopped laughing. “Oh, he’ll call his banners. He is too proud to do anything else.”

“Call his banners? You mean, he’ll start a war?” Yang asked.

“Oh, yes. A war he will lose!”

The man was too damn happy about a potential civil war, in Yang’s opinion. They had to discuss this with the others. If war broke out… Yang remembered what she had learned about the Great War and the Faunus Rights Revolution.

They had to stop this!

*****

 

Chapter 22: Duty

‘For a group known for their martial ability, exaggerated to near-mythical levels, and their moral backbone and willingness to challenge even customs and mores that endured for millennia, if we trust the Order’s records, as we should, it would seem surprising that they were so restrained in applying their might. Not as surprised, of course, as their contemporaries, who were used to might making right, must have been. But as the records, especially those from court, show, the Ruby Order overwhelmingly acted within the boundaries of the laws and customs of the time, even offering their services to the court to act as its champion. It was only when the law itself failed that they took action outside of it - a tradition upheld by the later incarnations of the order, which caused several crises for both the organisation and the realm and which stood in marked contrast to the Kingsguard, famous for blind obedience to the ruler of the realm. One can but wonder how things would have turned out if King Robert had died before meeting the Ruby Order.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Stay calm. Everything will work out. The Queen will be freed - the Prince would never let his mother be put to trial, much less convicted!

But no matter how often Jocelyn Swyft told herself that, no matter how much she wanted to believe it, she couldn’t. She couldn’t even calm down enough for needlepoint - she had stuck her own fingers more than when she had started to learn the skill as a child!

The Starks and the Baratheons had arrested the Queen and Ser Jaime, and the Prince had let it happen. The Four Maidens had talked to him - Jocelyn hadn’t seen it herself, but everyone agreed on that - and the Prince had returned to his quarters, meek as a lamb, leaving his mother to the indignity of being arrested like a criminal.

And for the most heinous crimes - adultery and incest! How could anyone believe that the Queen would, wîth her own brother…? She shook her head, almost ruining her stitching. Ridiculous! No sane person would believe such an accusation! As the Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Joceyln would have noticed if she were having an affair! Of course, the Queen and her brother were close - they were family. Jocelyn was close to her own siblings - who, fortunately, were not in King’s Landing but back in the Westerlands, far from the madness that had broken out in the capital. Whatever happened here, they would be safe!

She hissed in pain when she stabbed herself again, but managed to pull her finger away before she left a bloodstain on the fabric. Not again! Frustrated, she put her tools down and sucked on her finger.

“We should be consoling the children,” Jana spoke up.

Joceyln glanced at her friend. Jana wasn’t doing any better than her - she was wringing the handkerchief she held so much, it was sure to tear if she kept it up. “Lord Tyrion forbade it.”

“The Queen wouldn’t want him with her children.”

Jana was right, of course - the Queen loathed the Imp. And with good reason; everyone knew that the dwarf was a womanising drunkard who spent more gold on whores and wine than entire houses spent on their holdings! Even worse, he had no respect for anyone, not even Lord Tywin, his own father! Jocelyn could only imagine what he was telling the children. But he was Lord Tywin’s heir. “Will you tell him that?”

Jana looked away with a frown.

Jocelyn nodded. The Prince had stayed in his chambers since the… since the Queen had been arrested. Not even the Imp had been allowed inside; the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting hadn’t even tried to ask. They were on their own. “We can’t rock the boat, anyway,” she said. Who knew what would happen if they earned the ire of the Imp - or the Starks and the Baratheons?

“The Queen will be angry that we let this happen once she returns,” Jana said.

If she returns, Jocelyn thought. The Queen had been taken to the dungeons, like a common criminal, and none of her ladies-in-waiting had been allowed to visit her. But yes, should the Queen return, Jocelyn and the others would be punished. Perhaps as bad - or worse - as they had been punished after they had taken the Queen to her chambers upon the King’s death. She shivered at the memory. “We couldn’t do anything,” she said. Not when the Queen herself was rendered powerless. Not when Ser Jaime himself had surrendered without a fight.

“Never stopped her before.” Jana scoffed. “She should never have started this feud! Everything started to go wrong because of them!”

Jocelyn agreed. The Queen would never have been arrested if not for the Four Maidens. They had climbed the wall as easily as others stepped over a threshold and made Ser Jaime, the most skilled knight in the realm, surrender without a fight before opening the gate themselves. Who could stand against such power? Not a mere lady-in-waiting. If only the Queen would realise this! If she had managed to befriend Lady Ruby and her friends… “Lord Tywin is coming. He’ll sort this out,” she said.

Jana snorted. “By the time he arrives, we might be dead - or disappeared like Lyra.”

“Lyra hasn’t disappeared!” Jocelyn replied. “She went on a task for the Queen!” Both Lyra and the Queen had said so - and to keep it a secret. It was important.

“A task we were never told of and which the Queen never mentioned? Which had her leave in secret?” Jana shook her head. “She is gone for good. If she is not dead, then she has fled.”

“Lyra would never desert the Queen!” Jana was a fool to assume that. “She would die for her!” Jocelyn knew that - Lyra had said it often enough. And not merely to appease the Queen’s anger. And the Queen had said that Lyra was returning after having completed her mysterious task. Granted, the Queen had said other things, mainly about the Four Maidens, which had turned out not to have been true…

“Then the Queen’s enemies had her killed. Either way, she’s dead or gone.” Jana grabbed her glass and refilled it from the bottle… Wait!

“Is that arbor red?” Jocelyn gasped. They would be punished for taking the Queen’s wine without permission!

Jana rolled her eyes at her. “The Queen won’t miss a bottle. If she returns at all, she’ll have other concerns.”

Jocelyn pressed her lips together. “It’s still wrong!” The Queen trusted them! This was betraying this trust!

“So? If we’re about to die, I don’t want to be sober. And if I am getting drunk, I might as well do it with the best wine.”

“We’re not going to die!” Jocelyn insisted. They were just ladies-in-waiting from minor houses. Surely not important enough to be killed during this!

Not important enough to serve as hostages, she thought with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Not important enough to bother bribing or turning. Not important enough for anyone to care about them should they disappear… She squeezed her eyes shut. She wouldn’t cry. The Queen didn’t like it if her ladies-in-waiting cried. “Hand that bottle over,” she snapped while reaching for a glass for herself.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose felt kinda bad when she stepped into the training yard. She hadn't done anything wrong, not really - the Queen and Ser Jaime had broken the law. What they had done would have been a crime back home as well. And yucky and disgusting - how could you do that with your own brother or sister? Yuck! But Team RWBY also had, kinda, known that for a long time and hadn't done anything. That wasn't very honest.

Also, they had kinda shown up the Kingsguard, too. The royal family's guards should have noticed this, shouldn't they? Well, it was hard when one of your own betrayed your trust - Ruby would feel devastated if a team member would do that (though they wouldn't!), so she kinda knew how the Kingsguard must be feeling, and even if it wasn't the fault of Team RWBY, she still felt a bit guilty about that as well. And about Prince Joffrey and his siblings, who had to learn such yucky things about their mother.

She shuddered and unfolded Crescent Rose, taking a few swings to warm up - and to shoo away the raven who was sitting on the closest post. The silly bird needed to be more careful! Probably too used to people.

Just as she was ready to start some of her usual routines, she noticed someone approaching the yard as well: Ser Barristan. She winced as all her guilty feelings returned at once. Even though she hadn't done anything wrong - well, not when arresting the Queen and Ser Jaime. They weren't being tortured, and their cells were, well, not fine, but Weiss and Blake had said they were acceptable. Of course, both were a bit biased, Weiss for having to deal with the Queen for so long, and Blake for having to watch and hear them do the dirty, as Yang called (which was yucky - they were siblings!), but they wouldn't be as petty as to let the two suffer in their cells.

She forced herself to smile and called out “Good morning, Ser Barristan!” when he stepped closer.

“Lady Ruby.” He nodded at her and stepped into the training yard as well.

He sounded like he usually did, but… he would be angry, wouldn't he? This was a huge scandal! Westeros didn't have TV or radio, or the Net, not even newspapers, but Ruby knew (from their visit to the Great Sept, and Blake had confirmed it) that everyone knew about the arrest. And everyone was talking about it.

None of the other Kingsguard had come with him. That was unusual. Were they angry? She bit her lower lip as Ser Barristan started to take swings at one of the training buddies. “We didn't want this to happen!” she blurted out.

He stopped and turned to face her. He wasn't wearing his helmet, so she could see his eyebrows raise a tiny bit, but the rest of his face didn't show any expression. “The arrest of the Queen?”

“The whole thing,” she replied. “But without us, well… there would have been a fight.”

He slowly nodded. “Yes, there would have been. Ser Jaime would have never surrendered to anyone else. I am still surprised that he did surrender at all. I would have expected him to fight, if only to preserve his pride. Then again, maybe he thought surrendering was more dignified than being defeated with such ease, he would have looked like a toddler trying to attack a bear. Especially since it all but confirms his guilt in the eyes of many, even amongst his brothers in the Kingsguard.”

“Ah…” She winced again. “It wasn't just that.” She didn’t know if she should tell Ser Barristan that they had a deal with Lord Eddard - wasn’t that a rigged trial? On the other hand, limiting the sentence wasn’t the same as rigging the trial, was it? “We promised him that the Queen’s children wouldn’t be punished or suffer for his deeds.”

“Ah.” Ser Barristan nodded again, though his expression remained hard to read. “It is said that you were witness to the crimes of which Ser Jaime and the Queen are accused.”

“Not me personally, but Blake saw them.” More than once. Ruby grimaced.

“It’s true then, and not a convenient lie.” He sighed, sheathing his sword. “Ser Jaime has broken his vows as a brother of the Kingsguard.”

“And the law,” Ruby added. “Sorry.” She winced a little. “Though sleeping with the Queen is probably against your laws, even if it were not incest, right?”

“Our laws? Is adultery allowed in your world, my lady?”

“Well… you shouldn’t cheat on your partner, but it’s not against the law.” She decided that it was best not to use her family as an example. That would be… complicated.

“But…” He shook his head. “Is that why you are so accepting of bastards?”

“Kinda?” She tilted her head. “People shouldn’t be judged for being born. That’s not their fault. Anyway, I’m sorry if this whole thing embarrassed you. We didn’t want to do that.”

“We failed in our duty,” he said in a grave voice. “That is a stain on our honour.”

“But could you have noticed anything anyway? If Ser Jaime went to guard the Queen, he would have been the only Kingsguard with her. At least at night.” She blushed a little - she should have worded that better! But it was true - with only seven Kingsguard, they couldn’t spare two guards for the Queen - just having one with her and one with the King at all times would take three shifts and leave only one of them in reserve. Ruby knew how difficult it was to plan a good guard schedule. Especially if you also had other stuff to do during the day.

“There is no excuse. One of our own did this, and we all share the blame. As the Commander of the Kingsguard, it is my personal failure. I should have realised Ser Jaime’s character.”

“Right.” She nodded. “You’re the leader, you’re responsible.” Like Ruby was for her team. “I’m still sorry for the trouble it caused you.” She frowned, then grimaced again. Almost forgot! “Oh, and something else for which I am also sorry: You probably should guard the Queen and Ser Jaime in their cells so they don’t get murdered. The King’s murderer is still around - well, we don’t know that, but it’s better to assume that they are still around. Anyway, it’s probably your duty anyway since she’s still part of the Royal family, right?”

“No regent has been appointed yet, so no one could have countermanded our last orders,” he said. That was agreeing, right? “Although we have a certain leeway in following orders. In this case, I agree that they need to be guarded, though.”

“Good!” She smiled. That was one possible problem solved - she felt like a weight was lifted from her chest. A not-so-small weight considering the war that might break out as soon as Lord Tywin heard about this whole thing.

She was about ready to restart her training routine when Ser Barristan spoke up again. “May I ask a question, my lady?”

“Sure!” It was the least she could do.

“Is Lady Blake going to serve as the court’s champion, should the Queen or Ser Jaime demand a trial by combat?”

“No. I will do that,” Ruby told him. They needed to inform Ser Jaime (and the Queen, though she probably wouldn’t listen anyway) of that before the trial.

“Ah.” He nodded.

“My team, my responsibility,” she said.

He smiled at that. A bit sadly, but it was a smile.

They didn't talk about anything else until the others arrived for the morning training session, but Ruby felt better anyway.

*****

Ruby scowled as she entered the dungeons. The Black Cells were as nasty as they had been when they had first gone to the dungeon. Cold, damp-ish, and the stench… If only Aura helped with that! She made a small retching noise. “Hello?”

The jailer who greeted her looked nervous. “M’lady?”

“We're here to see Ser Jaime,” she told him.

“Ah…” he glanced over his shoulder. “Lord Renly said not to let anyone talk to the prisoners.”

“I am certain that he didn't mean us,” Weiss said with her ‘I'm only being polite because whatever angered me isn't your fault, but don't push me’ smile.

The man grimaced. “He said no one…” 

Weiss glared at him. “Do we have to get him down here to tell you that this doesn't include us? We arrested the prisoners!”

“Ah… yes… But he was very insistent…”

Ruby shook her head. “Tell him you tried to stop us.” She walked past him, grabbing his keyring on the way.

He didn't say anything or make a move to stop her.

Weiss snorted and followed her.

Ser Preston Greenfield was standing guard in the hallway behind the jailer. 

“We're here to visit Ser Jaime,” Ruby told the knight.

Unlike the jailer, Ser Preston didn't try to stop them. “Go ahead. Try not to wake up the Queen - she tends to be loud.” He nodded with a smirk and gestured to the hallway behind him, which led to the cells where the Queen and Ser Jaime were imprisoned. He was close enough to watch the doors, not close enough to talk to them. Not without yelling or screaming. Which the Queen apparently did a lot. Well, they already knew that.

Ruby quickly checked both cells. The Queen, still wearing the dress she had been wearing when she was arrested - and probably the same underwear, ew! - was on a cot, seemingly asleep, and half-covered by some scratchy-looking blanket.

Ser Jaime had been stripped of his armour, and unlike his sister, he was manacled to the wall, but he had also gotten a blanket and a cot. 

Ruby tried the keys. The third fit the lock, and she carefully turned it..

Ser Jaime had either been woken by the squeaking noise the door made or had been awake already and feigning sleep. Either way, he sat up when they entered.

“Hello, Ser Jaime.”

He grinned at them. “My ladies. To what do I owe this visit?”

“We're checking up on you. Making sure you're treated well,” Ruby told him.

He made a point of looking around in his small cell and raised his eyebrows at her,

“Reasonably well,” she clarified. If he could be snarky, he wasn't doing too badly.

“We would ask the Queen as well, but we doubt she would appreciate our visit,” Weiss added. 

Ser Jaime laughed. “No, Cersei wouldn't. She has spent hours making her opinion of you and your friends - and of everyone in the Red Keep who didn't save her - very clear.”

“Does she also blame you?” Weiss asked.

He shrugged. “While it is nice to have your family trust your skill with a blade, her opinion of my chances against any of you is somewhat exaggerated.”

Ruby wouldn't have believed that, but she had seen how the Queen had behaved at the arrest, and Blake had told them what she had overheard. So, it was probably true. “We're sorry about the cells,” she said. “But they don't want you to talk to your family guards.”

“It was deemed too dangerous to allow you contact with your retainers,” Weiss added.

“Anyone who’d be so foolish as to attempt anything would be easily defeated by you,” Ser Jaime replied. 

“That thought won't stop someone who assumes they won't be caught,” Weiss said. “And bribes are often far more dangerous than a blade.”

“What use would all the gold in the world be to you if you were too dead to spend it?”

“‘If’,” Weiss replied. “How many would make such a bet?”

He nodded. “I concede the point. Alas, the Kingsguard has a reputation for not being swayed by bribes.”

“He's here so no one will attempt to kill you before your trial,” Ruby told him.

Ser Jaime nodded with another smirk. “That would be embarrassing. People's tongues would wag with all sorts of rumours about what the new regent has to hide.”

“No regent has been chosen yet,” Weiss told him.

“Ah? I thought they would move faster than this. Father must already be calling for his banners, after all.”

He sounded completely unconcerned. As if this was a joke. But this was why they were visiting him. “Will he really start a war?” Ruby asked.

“Of course. This whole affair? He'll see it as an attack on his House. An insult to both his honour and reputation that has to be answered. Father will go to great lengths to avenge such a slight, if only to maintain the reputation he worked so hard for.” He whistled a few notes that Ruby didn’t recognise.

“How can we stop a war?” Ruby asked.

“By crushing the enemy, of course.”

“We don’t want to crush people! How can we stop the war without crushing anyone?” Ruby glared at him.

He shook his head. “You really care about that. You care about people who will do their best to kill you.” He threw his head back and laughed. “Oh, that’s too much! If we had known this beforehand…”

“You do not seem to care about the fate of your family’s soldiers,” Weiss said.

“There’s nothing to be done. Father is the only one who could avoid this, and if he were willing to change his views on this, a great many lives would have gone differently.” He lay back on his cot and closed his eyes.

Ruby stared. “But… They’re your people!”

He didn’t react, and Weiss tugged on her hand. “Let’s go, Ruby. We can’t get any help here.”

Ruby clenched her teeth, but Weiss was right. Ser Jaime wouldn’t help them. But that wouldn’t stop them! They couldn’t let this happen!

*****

“Thank you for accepting my invitation, my lady.” 

Lord Tyrion, using a special chair again so they were of equal height, looked honestly grateful, but then, Weiss Schnee was aware that, as the heir of Lord Tywin and a regular at Court, he would be used to hiding his true sentiments. Better than the Queen, at least. 

She bowed her head anyway. “We were hoping to meet with you, actually.”

“You were?” His eyes narrowed, and she saw him tense up for a moment.

“Yes. We are concerned about your father’s reaction to the arrest of your siblings,” Weiss said.

“You are concerned about my father’s reaction to imprisoning his favourite son and only daughter? For incest?” He shook his head. “Shouldn’t you have considered this before you insulted my father and threatened his legacy, my lady? Or, at least, chosen a less embarrassing pretext?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “This is no pretext. Your siblings have multiple times engaged in incest - we’ve witnessed it personally.”

“You’ve witnessed it? Multiple times?” His shock seemed genuine - but was he shocked about his siblings’ proclivities or about the implication that Team RWBY hadn’t intervened after the first time?

Weiss nodded. “Yes.”

He frowned before smiling faintly. “And when did you observe such acts for the first time?”

Apparently, it was the latter rather than the former. “Quite some time before Lord Eddard and the others approached us with the same accusations,” she replied. That would come out at the trial anyway. “And we only lent a hand for the arrest to ensure it wouldn’t come to violence - and only after receiving a promise that neither of your siblings would be put to death for their actions, nor your nephews and niece be punished for their mother’s indiscretions with their uncle.”

This time, the surprise seemed genuine. So, he must not have spoken to his incarcerated siblings yet. His eyes narrowed again, though. “You are quite the conundrum, my lady. You and your friends. Why would you do this?”

“Because executing people for such crimes is not just,” Weiss replied. The death penalty itself was barbaric, but they were in a barbarian kingdom. They might not have the facilities to house prisoners for life - not that such life would last very long in the dungeons. Executing someone might be more humane than letting them die slowly and painfully in such conditions.

Lord Tyrion chuckled. “Ah, a delightfully exotic view. And what if the promise were not to be honoured?”

Weiss raised her eyebrows. “Do you think Lord Eddard will break his word?” Lord Tyrion knew Lord Eddard, after all.

“No, I don’t think he would. However, Lord Renly is far more, shall we say, pragmatic, and Lord Stannis far more set in his views. And as second and third sons, they might see this as a unique opportunity to satisfy their ambitions.”

“Ruby made her stance clear. She stated her willingness to be the champion of the court in a trial by combat - or the champion of the royal children, should they be charged.” And Weiss hated the dolt for doing this! What if she were forced to kill someone, like Blake? Ruby shouldn’t shoulder that kind of guilt!

Once again, his surprise was evident, and his brief laugh was tinted with disbelief. “Well, no wonder I can’t make sense of you, my lady - I dare say none at court would understand your views.”

She sniffed in response. “Our views make perfect sense if you consider them with an open mind.”

“Then I fear you shall remain misunderstood forever, my lady.” He flashed her a wry grin. 

She laughed against her will before growing serious. “I hope that our talk here will disprove that. But first, let us address what brought you here. You asked for a meeting.”

He nodded. “I suppose that would only be fair. Although some of my concerns were addressed already.”

His siblings’ actions, Weiss supposed. Though those were a minor matter compared to their consequences.

“Given what my idiot brother and my sister did, I cannot, in good conscience, ask for more clemency than you already granted them. That they will survive their foolishness is already more than anyone would expect and still call themselves sane.”

Would he be saying the same if she hadn't told him that they had witnessed their actions? Or would he attempt to convince her that it was but lies made up by rival houses to weaken or destroy his own family's influence at court? She took a sip from her tea instead of replying.

He went on: “And I am very relieved that you will not punish my nephews and niece for their mother's actions and will, instead, protect them against attempts to usurp their birthright.” Another wry smile. “I would expect quite transparent attempts to exploit the weakness caused by my siblings’ foolishness to remove them from the line of succession.”

Weiss nodded. “There were accusations of incest raised already, though they were based upon rather flimsy reasoning. We will not allow such a biased judgment to stand and destroy your nephews and niece's lives.”

He didn't seem surprised but satisfied. “I wondered why the arrests were limited to my siblings. Lord Eddard has a reputation as an honourable and also kind man, but he is allied with Lord Renly and Lord Stannis. The former is rather opportunistic - he is a close friend of the Tyrells, whose head laid siege to Storm's End during the Rebellion and almost starved the garrison and Lord Renly himself into surrender. And Lord Stannis’ reputation as a hard man who would never let any supposed misdeed go unpunished no matter what else you did.”

Weiss hadn't heard that Lord Eddard was supposed to be particularly kind. If this was true, then that said a lot about the standards applied to the local nobility - and nothing good. She didn't know Renly enough to call him opportunistic, though - certainly not when his closeness to the Tyrells was easily explained by his closeness to Loras Tyrell. And Lord Stannis was assuredly a hard man, very inflexible, yet still able to accept a compromise. 

Not that it mattered right now - Weiss had to set the record straight before Lord Tyrion made the wrong assumptions. “It's not a question of kindness but justice. The so-called proof against the princes and the princess that we were presented with was nothing but assumptions based on superficial appearances and some superstition. If that would be enough to condemn anyone, no one would be safe from similar accusations.” And while Weiss wouldn't call herself an expert on Westeros’s noble houses, she was quite certain that many heirs would end up accused of being bastards unless they looked like a clone of their father. In some cases, not even that would help.

“Ah, I see. It's a matter of principles, then.” He nodded with a lopsided smile that managed to be both understanding and mocking at the same time.

“And common sense,” she added. Westeros's society didn’t seem stable enough to weather such a precedent.

“I think that is an argument that even my Father would agree with. And speaking of my father…” He sighed.

Weiss couldn't tell if the pause was just Lord Tyrion being dramatic or if he was trying to find the right words for a sore topic. “Will he start a civil war over this?” she asked.

He snorted. “It seems Lady Ruby and Lady Yang aren't the only ones in your group who are likely to be blunt. Yes, my father will call his banners - he will have started calling them as soon as a notice about Jaime and Cersei's arrest reached him. Which will have happened multiple times already.”

That implied that Lord Tyrion's father had even more sources at the Court than Weiss had expected. “With so much information available to him, wouldn’t he realise that we can shatter his army and take him prisoner without risk? Your father is known for many things, but being a fool fighting against impossible odds isn't amongst them.”

Lord Tyrion laughed, though Weiss couldn't hear even a trace of humour in his tone. “Oh, his pride might push him to fight such odds - it's my family's main weakness, as Cersei so aptly demonstrates whenever she has the opportunity, though others display the same traits. But unless Father thinks all his agents in King's Landing have gone mad or fallen for a Mummer's trick, he will plan accordingly.”

“And still face us? We could simply ignore his army and take him prisoner in less than five minutes.” Why would anyone still fight them in such circumstances?

“I have no doubt about that. But my father is quite cunning. Blinded by his prejudices, of course, like so many others, but not stupid. He will do his best to find a strategy that would allow him to fight you despite your strength and power.” He shrugged. 

“And what would such a strategy entail?” Weiss asked.

“Oh, I am not the military leader Father is,” Lord Tyrion deflected. Weiss couldn’t tell if it was false modesty - Lord Tyrion had the tendency to put himself down - or an honest self-evaluation. “But I would speculate that he would try to exploit the fact that you can’t be everywhere at once. Oh, you can’t, can you?”

That was… true. Team RWBY might be able to travel faster than most in Westeros, but they were still far too slow by any decent standards. It would take quite some time to catch up with even an army in the field. A smaller warband, moving quickly? Mounted raiding parties?

Weiss wasn’t a military strategist either, but she had learned enough history to know about the Great War and the Faunus Revolution. “That would render his force vulnerable to defeat in detail.”

“Yes. And if I were in command, that would be the expected outcome. But my sire is more experienced.” He shrugged. 

That was a rather vague warning. If it was a warning. Weiss cocked he head. “So, since you are no strategist, according to your own words, yet wished to talk to me about this, I assume you have more thoughts on this matter to share.”

“Yes. And knowing that you wish to avoid a war - and that you won’t punish the children for the sins of their parents - facilitates this somewhat.” He nodded and took a sip from his goblet. “I will do my best to convince him not to wage war over this. However, based on my long personal experience, I fear that my best might not be good enough for him. His pride and belief that he knows better than anyone else outstrip his reason at times.”

“If your voice isn’t enough to convince your father that this course of action would lead to his ruin, is there anyone else whose opinion he trusts?” Weiss asked.

“You flatter me if you assume he trusts me, my lady. Alas, most people at court would be dismissed as trying to manipulate him for their own goals.”

“Most but not all, then?” Weiss tilted her head again.

He hesitated a moment, then smiled crookedly. “He might listen to the Grand Maester - or he might consider the man compromised since he has been helping you.”

Weiss nodded. So, the Grand Maester was one of Lord Tywin’s sources? “Thank you.”

“No, thank you. My nephews and niece, and I, are in your debt. Without your presence, I fear all of us would be in prison or dead merely for being Lannisters.” He bowed his head.

It was a blatant attempt at manipulation, Weiss was perfectly aware of that, but that didn’t change the fact that what Lord Tyrion was bluntly hinting at was true: Team RWBY was the only reason that Prince Joffrey and his siblings had not been named incest children and either killed or otherwise removed from the succession.

It was another problem that Weiss and her friends would have to solve.

*****

Blake Belladonna tilted her head as she listened for any voices from behind the sturdy door. She didn't hear anything but the sound of footsteps and the rustling of papers. Good. She nodded at her friends. The Grand Maester was alone.

Ruby smiled and knocked three times on the door.

Blake could hear the steps approaching the door while they waited. Then the pause while the man tried to listen, followed by a muffled “Who's there?”

“It's us, Grand Maester!” Ruby yelled. “Team RWBY!”

The key in the lock turned, and the door was opened.

“Hello, Grand Maester!” Ruby smiled at him while Blake and the others nodded at the man.

“Ah, greetings, my ladies.” The Grand Maester took a step back. “Please come in.”

“I hope we're not interrupting,” Ruby said as they entered.

“No, no. I was just going over some correspondence.” He shook his head. “Please, have a seat.” He gestured at the seats arranged in one corner of the room. Four seats, Blake noted, so she stepped past and leaned against the wall behind Yang's seat.

“Ah, thank you. My old bones aren't what they were like in my youth.” The Grand Maester sat down with a relieved sigh that seemed a bit exaggerated to Blake.

“You're welcome,” Blake told him. 

“Are you OK standing there, Blake?” Ruby asked.

“Yes. It's fine.” She had listened for any sign of spies around but hadn't caught any hint. They should be safe.

Ruby nodded at the agreed-upon signal and turned to smile at the Grand Maester. “We’re here to ask you for a favour, Grand Maester!”

“You have but to ask, and I will attempt to help. That is the duty of our Order.”

Blake suppressed a snort. She didn't think he - or anyone in a similar position - would be that altruistic. He would have his own goals. Especially if he was a contact of Lord Tywin, as Lord Tyrion had insinuated. But as long as their interests aligned…

“Great!” Ruby nodded. “We would like you to write to Lord Tywin and advise him that he shouldn't try to start a civil war over his son and daughter being arrested.”

The man's eyes widened in surprise for a moment before he coughed. “Ah, I would, of course, write a letter for you, if you wish, though I can't say what good it might do - while Lord Tywin will certainly know me, we were never close.”

“Lord Tyrion said he might trust your judgement,” Weiss said in a bland voice that didn't quite match the glint in her eyes.

“He did? Ah.” The man slowly nodded. “I shall do my best to honour his trust.”

“Yes. We really don't want a war,” Ruby said.

“We don't want to smash armies or hunt down the commanders and make them stop fighting,” Yang added. “It's a chore.”

The Grand Maester nodded, though he looked a bit more nervous now. “Of course, senseless violence should be avoided whenever possible.”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “We don't want to get involved in court politics, but we can't stand aside when war threatens innocent lives.”

“That is a very merciful stance. However, some might consider this to be a partisan stance,” the Grand Maester said. “In light of the arrest of the Queen and her brother with your assistance, some might assume that you have chosen to back the late King’s brothers and Lord Eddard in an attempt to usurp the throne.”

“We haven’t allied with anyone!” Ruby blurted out. “But we don’t want people getting killed if we can help it! And Lord Eddard, Lord Stannis and Lord Renly were going to arrest the Queen anyway. Without us, there would have been fighting.”

“And we have proof that the Queen did commit incest with her brother,” Weiss added. 

The Grand Maester winced. “Ah. I… I don’t think Lord Tywin will be very receptive to that.”

“You mean he’ll deny it even if he knew it were true,” Yang said.

“Lord Tywin is a very proud man. He would consider this an unbearable stain on his honour.”

“And he thinks starting a war will help with that?” Yang scoffed. “They’ll call this the Incest War or something.” She bared her teeth in an almost feral smile. “Also, the most one-sided war in history.”

Blake knew that this was a bit of a boast, of course - it would take time to reach the Westerlands, and even more time to find Lord Tywin, should it come to that. But once they found him, the war would be over. One way or the other.

“We spoke with Lord Eddard and the others about the trial as well,” Weiss said. “We have his word that neither the Queen nor Ser Jaime will be executed. Ser Jaime will be sent to the wall, and the Queen to the Silent Sisters. We also made it clear that we won’t let them treat the Queen’s children as bastards based on appearances,” Weiss said.

“I will be their champion if they attempt to bring the children to trial for that,” Ruby added with a scowl.

The Grand Maester seemed to perk up at that. “Ah? That does change things. Significantly, I believe. Lord Tywin will want to know this. I hope this will be enough to persuade him not to act rashly,” he said with a smile.

“It better be!” Ruby said, pouting. “I’m growing tired of all this stuff.”

The man’s smile slipped a little, Blake noticed. “I’ll do my utmost.”

“Thanks!” Ruby smiled at him.

“Since we’re already here,” Blake spoke up. “Have you found out anything else about the King’s murder?”

“Ah.” He sighed. “I assume you already know about the nature of the poison?” He glanced at Blake as he spoke. Was he aware of her spying activity? She’d better assume that people at least suspected, once they realised she was the witness.

“Yep. Binary poison. If the two parts combine, it melts your lungs with acid,” Yang said while Ruby grimaced.

“Yes. A very rare poison. Few would have known about it, and fewer still would have known how to procure it.”

That narrowed the number of suspects down. 

“Do you know who would be able to acquire it?” Weiss asked.

“They would have to have extensive contacts in Essos - or a way to hire the Faceless Men.”

Right. The Assassins from Braavos.

“Those are the guys who kill not just for money, but for their religion, right?” Yang asked.

“It is said that they demand a price that is expensive but not beyond the ability of whoever is hiring them to pay, and that the price depends on the client’s means.”

“So… anyone could hire them?” Ruby pouted again. “And they could look like anyone?”

“That is said. And while it sounds preposterous, there are too many independent sources to dismiss it as hyperbole.” The Grand Maester spread his hands.

“Do they kill those whom they copy?” Blake asked.

“Some say they literally take someone’s face.”

“Ew!” Ruby grimaced. “That’s awful!”

Blake agreed. But what if someone had killed the handmaiden for her face? It would allow them to get close to the royal family. But none had seen Lady Lyra return since she had left the court… On the other hand, the noblewoman had visited Pentos, not Braavos. And they still didn’t know what she had done there, except for purchasing jewellery. Could she have purchased the poison? 

*****

“My ladies! Do you bring further good news? Has a certain bloodthirsty lord died from the shock of hearing about his children’s crimes, perhaps?”

Yang Xiao Long shook her head at Prince Oberyn’s smile. The man was far too happy about this mess, in her opinion. She got where he was coming from, of course, but it was still somewhat disturbing. At least, it made it easier to ignore his flirting. Well, for Yang - Ruby would still be a flustered mess, and Weiss would overcompensate, which was the reason they weren’t with them here. Blake, on the other hand, could easily handle his attitude.

“No, we haven’t heard anything like that,” Blake told him without batting an eye, as cool as ever. “We would like to ask you a few questions about the poison.”

“Oh? By all means, come in! I am always willing to educate people on this!”

And the guy was a bit too enthusiastic about poison. Like Ruby was about weapons, only she didn’t like to talk about using them on people. 

Ellara greeted them, already setting up the table in the guest area. “My ladies.”

“Hello!” Yang smiled at her and sat down on the couch facing the woman. She didn’t take a sip from the glass until Blake had made a show of inhaling the scent and smiling - Aura would protect against poison, but why risk being weakened? Team RWBY couldn’t really trust most people here. But this was nice fruit juice.

“So! You wished to learn about the poison that killed the late King?” Oberyn sat down next to Ellara and placed his hand on her thigh, squeezing it.

“Mostly about its origin - and who might have been able to procure it, my prince,” Blake replied.

“We already know how it worked.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “It’s from Essos, probably from the southern parts - most such exotic poisons come from Slaver’s Bay since Sothoryos is a known source for some of the most lethal ingredients. And the most likely source of a magic poison would be Asshai, also relatively close to Slaver’s Bay.”

“Would it be available in Pentos or Braavos?” Blake asked.

Oberyn frowned a little, “For enough gold, yes. Though you’d need to know the right people - most become somewhat suspicious of your intentions if you ask for poisons. They might be the intended target, after all. And few purveyors of poison wish to be bothered by the kin of the victim, so they need to trust in your discretion and ability to avoid getting caught.”

That meant Lady Lyra wouldn’t have been able to buy the poison unless she had been far smarter and better connected in Essos than a minor noble, as Weiss found out, from the Westerlands would have been. On the other hand, if she had merely served as a courier?

“Thank you, my prince.” Blake nodded.

“Was that helpful?”

“It confirmed a few things,” Blake said.

Yang nodded.

“Do you have a suspect then? Other than the Lannisters?” Oberyn grinned.

“Do you think the Queen killed the King to hide her cheating on him?” Yang asked.

“It’s an obvious motive, isn’t it?” He grinned. “Now that we know what she was doing, it’s quite obvious that she wouldn’t have come to an arrangement with her husband the King about tolerating each other’s affairs even if they had not loathed each other.”

Yeah, and the fact that you hate the Lannisters doesn’t influence your opinion at all, Yang thought with a snort.

“You think they could have come to such an arrangement?” Blake asked. “Despite the suspicions it would throw on their children?”

“People generally wait until they have their heirs before engaging in such affairs - at least the married women. And they tend to take steps to avoid pregnancies,” Ellara said.

“But you don’t think the Queen did,” Yang told Oberyn.

He spread his hands. “The children do look like pure Lannisters. Purer than most Lannisters, actually.”

“Yeah, appearances aren’t proof,” Yang told him. “We explained that to the others already.”

“So the rumours were true.” He nodded. “*So, you’ve decided to support Prince Joffrey’s claim.”

“We’ve decided not to let the hair colour of children decide their fate,” Yang told him. “Hell, Hair’s important, but not that important.” She ran a hand through her own mane. “After all, if you just looked at the colour, you wouldn’t think Ruby and I were sisters.”

“I see.” Oberyn nodded again, and his grin twisted a bit.

Yang rolled her eyes. “I doubt that. Back home, we can check who’s a child’s father or mother by testing their blood. Hair colour isn’t proof.”

Judging by the way he blinked, he hadn’t heard that.

Blake leaned forward. “Another question, if we may, my Prince.” She had that smooth talking down, like Weiss, but cooler. “Would the Faceless Men use that poison?”

He tensed. “They use a variety of tools. But if this was their work, someone hired them. Someone who can pay their price.”

They knew that already. It looked like this visit was a bust. Well, win some, lose some.

Yang just hoped they would start winning some soon.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Yang?”

Yang stopped stretching - she had been a bit too vigorous in their morning training session, but sue her, she had had some frustration to work out, and her friends could take it - and turned to face Jon. “Yeah?”

He glanced over his shoulder back at the centre of the training yard, where the others were still training with the Kingsguard, Brienne and the kids. Poor boy didn’t realise that Blake could hear him perfectly fine at this distance. Apparently satisfied, he faced her again. “I was wondering…”

“Yes?” She started another stretching pose.

“Ah…” He cleared his throat, and she didn’t need to look at him to know he was blushing. The boy really needed to get over his crush. It was cute, but hopeless. “I heard a rumour that… that you can find someone’s parents.”

Oh. Yang winced while her face was hidden from his view by her hair, then forced herself to smile gently. Like Ruby would. Turning to him, she shook her head. “The rumour’s wrong. Back home, people - our kind of Maesters - can do that. But we can’t do it here. We don’t have the tools.”

“Oh.” He looked crestfallen. “I… I had hoped you could help me find out who my mother was.”

Oh, damn! She winced again. She knew how that felt. “Your father’s not telling you?”

He shook his head. 

She knew how that felt as well. And he wouldn’t even have a picture of her. 

“I… I asked, but he said he’d tell me later. When I was a man grown.” He sighed and looked down at the ground.

Damn! Yang stood. Just like Dad. What were the odds? “Did you ask him again?”

“I did. Just a few days ago.”

She clenched her teeth. Maybe she should have a talk with Lord Eddard. Or not - she would probably lose her temper, and things were already a mess, what with the trial coming up, and everyone looking scared of a war. But she couldn’t leave Jon hanging like that, either. She clenched her fist. She hated this. Hated this whole mess, this keep, this court, this world…

“My lady?”

She looked at him. “What?”

“You’re, ah…” he pointed at her, and she realised she had been about to activate her Semblance.

“Oh.” 

She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths and forced herself to calm down. Cratering the training yard - again - wouldn’t help anyone. “Sorry. I know how you’re feeling. I don’t know anything about my mother - my birth mother - either.” She smiled at his struck expression. “Tell you what, next time you ask your father, ask me and I’ll come with you.”

“Thank you, my lady!” He smiled at her with so much relief, she felt guilty for not doing anything right now.

*****

 

Chapter 23: Death

‘The Succession started with the death of King Robert. In hindsight, most of the events that followed may seem predictable - some scholars even claim that they were obvious. That is obviously both arrogant and wrong. While in hindsight, many actions could be explained by prior events and decisions, that doesn’t mean that those actions were the only possible consequences of said situations. Many different courses of action would have been explained by the same situations and events. So, coupled with the shock of the King’s death, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that few of the major factions were prepared for the Succession. Team Ruby was amongst them; some of my colleagues base their claims that they were anticipating such an event - a few even hint at involvement in the King’s death - on the fact that the Ruby Order was quicker to react than others and ignore that it was far easier for four individuals at court to act than for someone who only heard about through messages by raven and who took weeks to react. Back then, information travelled as slowly as people, and so it took weeks, in some cases months, before most of the population was aware that the King was dead and his succession somewhat in doubt.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

…and I don't need to explain to you how much our family's fortunes are affected by this. A potential rift between the Starks and Lady Ruby and her friends, especially over a blatant attempt to remove Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella from the succession, has the potential to change the game board. As long as they support your grandson, no one will dare question his claim to the Iron Throne.

Tyrion Lannister paused, moving his quill away from the letter lest it spill ink. Was that a bit too forceful? If he were to hear this said, Father would cut in and caustically remark that if Tyrion didn't need to explain something, he shouldn't waste his breath and explain it. Yet, he knew his father. The odds that he would believe the reports about Team Ruby's power were slim. His father was prone to making his own judgment and then defending it against any and all criticism, no matter how well-founded. And Lord Tywin Lannister wasn't the kind of man who would believe that a group of girls, foreign girls at that, without even a single retainer in their service or much money to spend, would pose a threat to a Lord Paramount, much less the entire realm.

Tyrion could only hope that the multitudes of reports Father must have received already would raise enough doubt that he would not call his banners without at least taking a look at Team Ruby himself. At the very least, even if he didn't believe that the four girls could wreck the entire host of the Westerlands - or any other of the seven kingdoms - he might not be so quick to dismiss their obvious influence at court, especially on the Starks and Baratheons. Father would realise at once what the charges levelled against Jaime and Cersei meant for the succession; he would not hesitate to exploit such an opportunity if he were in the Baratheon's place.

Adultery and incest! He clenched his teeth and grabbed his cup, then the bottle of arbor red to refill it when it turned out to be empty already. 

What have you two idiots done? No, what have you idiot done, Cersei? Jaime was an idiot as well, but he would be following Cersei's lead in this. He would never go against her wishes, and the idea that he was the one to seduce her was laughable. Cersei would have, as always, led him in this.

Led him into her bed and her family to the brink of ruin. No matter whether the children were fathered by Jaime or not - and they did look a lot like Lannisters and not at all like Baratheons - even servants were already wagging their tongues about the affair. Joffrey’s position as the heir was crumbling. 

Heh, Tyrion couldn't help thinking that it would actually be better if there were a formal accusation of being bastards born out of incest; Lady Ruby would be their champion and soundly defeat whatever fool would fight for the court. The smallfolk would bow their heads to the judgement of the Seven Who Are One, and the courtiers would see Lady Ruby and her friends firmly backing Joffrey's claim. That would put most dissent to rest for the time being.

Which, of course, was the reason the Baratheons were not pushing their claim. Lord Renly, at least, was aware of the political realities and must have persuaded his brother and Lord Eddard not to push Team Ruby into the Lannister's camp.

Tyrion found his cup empty again - how had that happened without him noticing? - and refilled it once more. Most would already assume, should they know of the talks between the Starks and Baratheons and Lady Ruby's group, that Lady Ruby was allied with House Lannister. Tyrion knew better, of course. They were not allied with anyone. The only reason they were both supporting the accusations against Cersei and Jaime and defending Tyrion's nephews and niece was their sense of justice. Their very foreign sense of justice.

And that, to be fair, was as much a boon as a problem. If Father mistook their stance as currying his favour… Tyrion took another swallow of wine. Lady Ruby's mercy was astonishing, going as far as to force Lord Eddard and the Baratheons to spare his foolish siblings’ lives despite Cersei's attitude and actions against Team Ruby. But like everything, it had limits. And Tyrion had a feeling, based on his extensive experience with his family, that both Cersei and Father could reach those limits. And once they did…

Tyrion didn't want to find out what Lady Ruby would do if pushed beyond mercy. It might make Father's more infamous actions pale. And if her friends followed her - and why wouldn't they? They were following her lead from the start - heads would roll by the hundreds.

He picked up his quill again and dipped it into his inkwell. He had to make Father listen to him. Him and Pycelle. And hope that all the spies Father employed at court were reporting the truth to him.

If war broke out, and if House Lannister was blamed for it, Lady Ruby and her friends would move against them. And Tyrion's family could not stand against their power. 

His kin stood at the brink of ruin, and he wasn't certain if he could save them. But he would do everything he could to try. As many of them as he could. Even those who didn’t deserve it. 

Or brought it onto themselves, like his foolish siblings.

*****

“Tyrion! You came!”

Even in his cell, Jaime was smirking, but Tyrion knew his brother, better than most, and could tell that it was fake bravado. Jaime knew he had gone too far and would now suffer the consequences.

“You fucked up, Jaime” he told him. “You fucked up worse than Father thinks I did.”

Jaime winced, as he should. Father might publicly deny the charges, but he would rip into Jaime in private. He looked behind Tyrion.

Tyrion scoffed. “I arranged privacy.” It hadn’t been cheap, but he could afford it.

Jaime slowly nodded. “Yes, I fucked up. I know.”

“Do you?” Tyrion raised his eyebrows. “Do you truly understand what you have done? You and Cersei?” Jaime shrugged, but Tyrion didn't let him answer. “You ruined your life and Cersei's. You ruined our family's reputation. You made Father a laughingstock.”

Jaime winced again.

“You might yet ruin our family and plunge the realm into a war. A war we will lose.”

“Father won't be as stupid as to call his banners when he has no allies at all and is facing four girls who can destroy his host without trying,” Jaime replied.

“Father hasn't seen them. He has been told, by many, but you know him.”

Jaime pressed his lips together and didn't answer.

“You fucked up so thoroughly, the only reason your life isn't forfeit is because Lady Ruby and her friends are more merciful than anyone else I've ever met or heard about. They insisted that neither you nor Cersei will be executed when you're found guilty. Despite everything Cersei did and said against them.”

“The septons might be on to something with their claims of the four maidens being messengers from the Seven,” Jaim quipped. “Not that you will see me complaining, of course.”

“You better not!” He would likely complain a lot once he was at the Wall, Tyrion knew him. But he would be alive. Tyrion would even be able to visit him. And he would be so far away, not even Tywin's fury might reach him. Though Tyrion wouldn't put it past Father to travel to the North with the sole goal of scolding Jaime - Father could be terribly petty at times.

Jaime shrugged. 

Tyrion shook his head, then sighed. “Why?” Why had he done this? He was handsome, skilled, famous - he could have had almost any woman he wanted. Tyrion could have found him a whore who looked like Cersei's sister, if Jaime had told him. Why had he endangered his family?

Jaime closed his eyes and sighed. “I love her, Tyrion.”

Tyrion clenched his teeth. Of course! The fool! He took a deep breath before he schooled his features in a wry, suffering grin. “And not in a brotherly way.”

Jaime snorted at the weak jape. 

If Tyrion hadn't already known, this would have told him enough to realise that his brother was faking his usual attitude. He muttered a curse under his breath.

“So, how much longer will I have to spend here?”

“Not much longer. The trial will be soon,” Tyrion told him. “A few days at most.”

Jaime frowned. “That would mean Father won't make it to the trial.” He sounded almost relieved.

“That’s the idea, I believe,” Tyrion said. At least for Lord Renly and, perhaps, Lord Stannis. Lord Eddard probably thought that justice shouldn't wait or something.

“So… I could be off to the Wall before Father arrives.” Jaime shook his head and glanced at the door.

“Yes.” Lord Eddard has probably already arranged transport, Tyrion thought.

“This might be the last time we can talk,” Jaime said.

“You're going to the Wall, not to your death,” Tyrion said. “I can visit.”

Jaime shrugged. “Look after the children,” he suddenly said,

Tyrion stared at him. Did that confirm what he suspected? Or was Jaime just concerned about the children? “Are they…?”

Jaime slowly tilted his head. 

Tyrion closed his eyes. He didn't need to know that. Or he did. “As long as it can't be proven, Lady Ruby will defend them.”

Jaime smiled. “She is truly too good for this world,” she said, his smile shifting into a smirk.

Tyrion narrowed his eyes. That had been his brother's usual smirk.

*****

“Monster! Traitor! Murderer!”

Tyrion winced. Not because the insults hurt - they didn’t; he had heard much worse from his sister - but because Cersei’s shrieking hurt his ears.

“You fell for the lies of those whores! You took their word over mine! And Jaime’s!”

Should he mention that Jaime had confirmed the accusations?

“You let them drag me into this cell! Get me out of here!”

“I can’t get you out, Cersei,” he told her.

“You useless monster! You killed Mother, and now you want to kill me! What did they promise you to betray your own family? Did they sleep with you?”

That insult hurt. He had killed his mother - she had bled out after his birth. So he ignored it and shrugged. “I am quite happy to hear you think so highly of my charms, but no, none of Team Ruby slept with me.” Except in his dreams, but that was neither here nor there.

“They did! And they set you against me!”

“They didn’t set me against you.” That was all your doing.

“You turned my children against me! Joffrey would never have abandoned me if you hadn’t poured poison in his ears! Stay away from my children! I won’t have you corrupt them!”

Tyrion didn’t think he could do anything to corrupt Joffrey; it would do the boy good if Tyrion managed to persuade him to go whoring and drinking. It might mellow him some. And Tommen and Myrcella were far too young to be corrupted. Or far too good - they were nice children despite Cersei’s influence.

“I explained to your children why you were arrested.”

“You did? You fiend! You monster! Spreading filthy lies! You will pay for this! Father will punish you! He will teach you family loyalty!”

Tyrion shrugged. He was certain that his father would blame him for the mess - either for covering for his siblings or for not stopping them, depending on his mood, maybe both - but Tyrion had faced such scorn all his life. He was used to enduring it, and it had sharpened his wit. Besides, Father would step very carefully once he saw the Four Maidens spar. He might even be impressed that Tyrion managed to maintain cordial relationships with those terrifying girls and managed to keep his nephews in the line of succession.

And pigs might fly. He chuckled. “I have no doubt that Father is most unhappy about the whole situation, but I think his ire will be focused on you and Jaime first. Provided that you’re still in King’s Landing when he arrives.” 

“What do you mean?”

“They’re holding your trial before Father arrives.” The Baratheons didn’t want to risk Father’s interference. Tyrion had made some discreet overtures, but he wasn’t his father - he could only offer so much.

She seemed stunned for a moment by the news, gaping at him without saying anything. He would cherish that memory for a long time.

“Father won’t save you from this, Cersei,” he said, smiling twistedly. “The only reason you won’t be executed is that Lady Ruby insisted that neither you nor Jaime would be killed for your adultery.”

He had expected her to be angry at that, but the sheer horror she showed on her face was surprising.

“The shrouds… No!” she whispered, before starting to scream at him. “No! NO! They will kill my children! You can’t let them do it! Save them! SAVE THEM!”

Once again, he winced as his ears hurt. “Your children are safe, Cersei. Lady Ruby said she will be their champion if anyone should try to harm them.” Close enough, at least.

“What? No! They plan to corrupt them, use them and then discard them to take the throne! And you’re helping them!”

He clenched his teeth. His sister had lost her mind. If she didn’t recover until the trial, it would be a farce. “I’m not helping them, Cersei. And they haven’t seen the children.”

She shook her head. “No… this is their plan… No!”

“Cersei!”

She looked at him, her face twisting into a sneer. “Go away, Imp! You have done enough harm to your own flesh and blood! Go!”

Well, he had tried. Tyrion gave her a mocking bow and left her cell without asking if she wanted him to pass on anything to Joffrey, Tommen or Myrcella. It would be pointless, anyway - it was quite obvious that his sister was truly mad.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yes, I saw the two of them sleep with each other with my own eyes. They were naked, and there was no chance of a mistaken identity.”

Ruby Rose blushed as Blake explained what she had seen - gave her testimony - in front of Lord Eddard and the people in the Great Hall broke out in whispers and gasps. Doing it with your sister… Ew! She shuddered at the thought. 

Lord Eddard nodded. Apparently, that was enough for him, but Lord Tyrion rose to ask: “When you say ‘sleeping with each other’, what exactly do you mean, my lady?” 

“They were engaging in carnal pleasures, my lord,” Blake replied, showing her teeth in a definitely not very friendly smile.

“She means they were fucking like rabbits,” Yang whispered next to Ruby.

“Yang!” Weiss hissed.

Ruby rolled her eyes. She knew what Blake meant. She had peeked into those books as well - the characters in those books were the only ones who spoke like that, anyway.

“Ah.” Lord Tyrion nodded. “Like husband and wife?”

“Yes. Exactly like husband and wife.” Blake wasn't blushing at all.

“That means intercourse,” Yang whispered.

Ruby elbowed her. She knew about sex. She knew why it was important that Ser Jaime and Cersei had had sex and hadn’t just been fooling around.

“Lies!” Cersei yelled from her seat.

Ruby glanced at the Queen - former Queen, now that the King was dead, she reminded herself. 

Ser Jaime had put a hand on her arm and was trying to make her sit down, but she tried to shrug him off. “You are lying!”

Lord Tyrion didn't even look at his sister as he asked: “How exactly did you happen to see them, my lady? Where did this supposedly happen?”

“It didn’t happen, Imp!”

“I was climbing the broken tower in Winterfell, my lord,” Blake replied. “I was teaching Lord Bran how to climb walls and wanted to ensure the wall there was safe. The tower was not in use, so I saw no harm.”

“Until you did,” Yang commented in a low voice, prompting another admonishment from Weiss.

“Do you make a habit of climbing towers, my lady?” Tyrion asked.

“I prefer jumping on them,” Blake replied.

Yang snorted, and Ruby grinned, but Weiss frowned. Ruby knew what her partner was thinking - that people would now look out for Blake hanging on the walls outside before talking in their rooms - but that couldn't be helped.

She looked at Lord Baelish. Ah… the nobleman was frowning at Blake. Damn! He would be one of those checking his windows from now on. As if they didn't have enough problems already!

“Noted, my lady.” Lord Tyrion nodded at her answer without changing his expression. “And why did you wait months until you told others what you had seen?”

Ruby winced. That was a tricky question. But they had thought of it.

“We had just arrived in Westeros and didn’t know the laws of the land nor our place in it. But when we were approached by Lord Eddard, Lord Stannis and Lord Renly, who all suspected the queen of adultery already, we told them,” Blake replied.

“I see,” Lord Tyrion commented while the crowd whispered and mumbled.

“Do you have any further questions, Lord Tyrion?” Lord Eddard asked.

“Not right now, my lord.” Lord Tyrion sat down again.

Cersei had been sat down again, but she was still trying to shrug off Ser Jaime's hand. And she could still speak. “What? Question her further! Expose her lies!”

Lord Tyrion still didn't look at her. Ruby winced. If one of her team were accused, she wouldn't treat them like that. On the contrary - she'd support them all the way.

Lord Eddard took a deep breath. “We have heard the testimony of Lady Blake. The next witness is Lady Jocelyn.”

Ruby leaned back on her seat. They had been warned about this - there would be a lot of witnesses, even though they hadn't seen anything - but Lord Eddard, Lord Stannis and even Lord Renly insisted on hearing them all. Even though Ruby (who was no lawyer at all) could tell that just because Lady Jocelyn hadn't seen Ser Jaime and Cersei sleeping with each other didn’t prove that they hadn't. Slept with each other, that was.

This was going to be a lengthy trial. And a loud one, she added when Cersei started to yell again. Yang’s joke about being glad for the former Queen's temper and volume since it would keep them from falling asleep seemed pretty much on the mark.

*****

“...and the court finds you, Lady Cersei Lannister, guilty of incest and adultery, and you, Ser Jaime Lannister, guilty of incest and oathbreaking,” Lord Eddard stated. “As punishment, you, Lady Cersei, will spend the rest of your life as a Silent Sister.”

Ruby clenched her teeth, but (to her surprise), Cersei didn't start shrieking about lies and injustice. She glanced at Ser Jaime and Cersei and saw that they were whispering together. Lord Tyrion was frowning at them. At least the children weren’t present, though from what she had heard, that had taken some persuasion by Lord Tyrion.

Lord Eddard, who was also frowning, went on. “You, Ser Jaime, are sentenced to death, though you will be allowed to take the Black if you choose so.”

Ser Jaime rose, glanced at his sister, who nodded, then turned to face Lord Eddard. “I demand a trial by combat for me and my sister.”

Ruby gaped at him as everyone started to whisper and even talk excitedly. What was he doing? He had known he wouldn't be killed - he could choose the Black! Lord Eddard had said so! Why was he doing this? This made no sense!

While she was staring at him, their eyes met, and she saw he was smiling faintly for a moment. Then he glanced at Cersei again.

And Ruby realised that Cersei was smiling as well and also staring at her.

No…

“That bitch!” Yang hissed next to her,

“That fool!” Weiss snapped.

Lord Eddard nodded. “Very well. As its champion, the court chooses…”

“I'll be…!” Blake said.

“I’ll be your champion!” Ruby said through clenched teeth as she shot to her feet, her hand on Crescent Rose and her eyes on Ser Jaime.

“Ruby!” Yang protested.

“We talked about this,” Ruby replied without taking her eyes off Ser Jaime - the idiot. She took a step ahead, another, then drew and unfolded Crescent Rose. “I’ll be the court's champion!” she repeated herself, slamming the shaft of her scythe down hard enough to crack the stone.

“And I will represent myself and my sister!” Ser Jaime rose as well.

What was he thinking? He knew he couldn’t beat her! They had sparred often enough!

“Ruby! What are you thinking?” Weiss hissed as Lord Eddard ordered everyone to move to the yard outside - the same place where Blake had beheaded the Mountain.

“Ruby!” Yang was also angry.

Ruby frowned at them. “I’m doing what I said I was doing.” She wouldn’t let any of the others do this. None of them. She was the team leader; it was her responsibility to lead.

“Lady Ruby?” Lord Renly approached her. 

“Yes. Let’s step outside,” Ruby said with more confidence than she felt when she started walking next to him. She would be facing Ser Jaime. Would kill him. But could she? Could she kill him in cold blood? He was no threat to her. And he wasn’t a murderer…

The courtyard was already filling with people - more than had come to watch the Mountain’s trial, or so it seemed. Ruby tried to ignore the crowd. And her friends, who were still trying to make her change her decision. 

She couldn’t! She had said she would do this! And she wouldn’t let her friends do this! 

She stepped into the ring and swung Crescent Rose around, limbering up. She didn’t need to, but it helped her focus. She still didn’t get Ser Jaime. Did he want to die fighting? Like some movie character? But why? He could just go and fight Wildlings at the Wall and get killed, couldn’t he? And why had Cersei been smiling? Oh! Had Ser Jaime been sandbagging all this time? No. Ser Barristan would have said something - Ser Jaime wouldn’t have hidden his skills before their arrival. He was far too proud for this. 

Sooner than she had expected, Ser Jaime arrived, in full armour - though with an open helmet, not a closed one with a visor. 

Ruby straightened when they handed him a sword and shield, and he stepped into the ring.

Both of them bowed to Lord Eddard. Then they had to wait while the High Septon led a prayer for divine justice. Ruby tried not to look at her friends or at the crowd, so she glanced at Ser Jaime. He was still smiling. Didn’t he get that this could only end with his death? 

Finally, the High Septon finished! Ruby turned to face Ser Jame, and Lord Eddard gave the signal.

Ser Jaime didn’t charge her like the Mountain had charged at Blake. He slowly started to circle her, shield and sword up to guard himself.

She knew she could kill him with one blow - neither his sword nor his shield would stop Crescent Rose. Just one lunge, one blow… She clenched her teeth.

He stepped closer, close enough she didn’t have to lunge, but didn’t attack her. “You don’t want to kill me, do you?” he asked in a low voice, still with that smile - that smirk - on his face.

“Why are you doing this?” she snapped, also in a whisper. “You knew - you heard - neither you nor your sister would be killed!”

“Yes.” He still kept circling her, carefully putting one foot in front of the other as she mirrored him. “But we’d be separated forever. Unable to see each other. What man would I be if I did not risk everything for my love? Why should we be punished for this? We never hurt anyone.”

The crowd was starting to whisper and mutter. She could hear them. They wanted her to attack. But… 

“It’s hard to kill, isn’t it?”

He suddenly lunged - but it was a feint, a half-hearted one at that. Ruby parried it easily with Crescent Rose, and her follow-up strike, out of reflex, tore half his shield off.

That only seemed to amuse him as he backed off. “Just now, you could have killed me easily.”

Yes! She could have! And he knew it!

“But you don’t want to.”

She clenched her teeth. How sick would you have to be to want that?

“But the only way this can end is with my death - or with the accusations withdrawn. What will it be, my lady?”

She blinked. Was he…? “That’s your plan?”

He tilted his head slightly to the side. “It’s not very honourable, I know.” He smirked. “But I’d do everything for love.”

He was… He expected her to… He was trying to force her - no, Blake! - to withdraw the accusations by threatening them with his own death? That was crazy!

The audience was muttering. More people called out for them to fight. The noise was covering their talk. 

And yet, it would spare you from killing him, a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of her mind. No one would have to die. No one would wage war.

She shook her head. That wasn’t… It was true, but… She clenched her teeth. Team RWBY had talked about this. Not exactly this, but… “You’re taking yourself hostage,” she said.

“In a way, yes.” He tilted his head again.

“That was what you meant, back in your cell!” ‘If only we’d have known!’, he had said.

“I had not much else to do but think of a way out of this for me and Cersei.” He smirked again. “What is a little risk for a man in love? Compared to spending the rest of my life in the freezing North, far from her?”

She blinked again. Her eyes felt wet. But… “And you’d do it again.” Take a hostage. To get his way. To force Ruby and her friends to do his bidding. And even if he wouldn’t do it, others would. People would suffer because of this. Because of Ruby. Because she didn’t want to kill people. People would die.

She shook her head, blinking tears away.

He was still smiling, more confidently now. “You don’t want to…”

Ruby moved before he could finish his sentence. Crescent Rose rose and fell, cutting through him, from shoulder to hip, through armour, sword, and arms, in one smooth motion.

She watched him fall, watched the blood splatter on the sand, the pieces dropping.

The crowd had fallen silent.

“No! Jaime! JAIME!”

She turned, bowed to Lord Eddard, then walked out of the ring and kept walking. The crowd parted before her while Cersei kept screaming her brother’s name.

Ruby didn’t care. She just wanted to get out of here. Away from this… this crazy, stupid mess.

A moment later, she was halfway to their quarters, trailing petals and tears.

*****

Weiss Schnee stared at the pieces of Ser Jaime on the ground. Blood was pooling around them. With his mouth open and his dead eyes staring at the sky, he looked surprised. He probably hadn’t even realised what was happening before he was dead. Ruby had killed him… Ruby needed her!

Yang was already running - the crowd of spectators, already closing again after Ruby had gone, quickly parted for her, Weiss noted with relief - she didn’t think Yang would have been gentle in pushing through obstacles.

“Blake!” Weiss called out. When her friend, who had been going after Yang, stopped, Weiss flicked Myrtenaster and created a glyph in the air - facing the gates leading into the keep.

Blake flashed a tired but grateful smile, and both of them jumped up, at the glyph, which propelled them over the crowd to land at the gate. 

It still wasn’t enough to overtake Yang, but they saw her running ahead now as they charged through the hall, weaving around noisy servants and whoever else hadn’t been outside watching the fight.

“He thought she couldn’t kill him and would yield,” Blake said, anger clearly audible in her voice as they sped down a hallway and up the stairs. “His plan was to take himself hostage.”

Weiss felt fury fill her. “That scumbag!” she spat through clenched teeth. How dare he do this to her partner!

They reached the hallway leading to their room just in time to see Yang push the door open. A quick sprint later - Blake cheated with a clone - all were inside their room.

Where Ruby was sitting on the bed, cradling Crescent Rose in her arms and staring at the floor. 

“Ruby…” Yang whispered.

Weiss bit her lower lip and closed the door, then looked at Blake, who was already checking for spies. There weren’t any - which was good. Weiss didn’t know if she could have controlled herself right now.

“The bastard tried to take himself hostage,” Blake told Yang.

She gasped. “He didn’t! I…”

Ruby’s sniffle interrupted her. “He told me I couldn’t kill him. That he was doing this for love. That they hadn’t hurt anyone.” She raised her head, and Weiss saw that she was crying. “But… If I had yielded, he would have done it again. Or someone else. They would have taken hostages!”

Yang sat down next to her and wrapped her arms around her shoulders.

Weiss clenched her teeth, then forced herself to relax and sat down on Ruby’s other side, putting her hand on Ruby’s - she was still holding her scythe - and squeezing gently. “I know, Ruby,” she whispered.

Blake, still standing at the wall which hid the secret passage, hesitated a moment, then came over as well to stand in front of Ruby. 

It’s getting a bit crowded, Weiss thought, then had to suppress a snort at her silly and utterly inappropriate thought.

“You had no choice, Ruby,” Blake said.

“I knew that!” Ruby blurted out. “I knew I had to kill him when he demanded a trial by combat. But I didn’t understand why he wanted to die. Until he told me!” She sniffled again. “I didn’t want to kill him! But I had to.”

You knew that this was a possible outcome when you insisted on being the court’s champion. Weiss didn’t voice her thought - Ruby knew that as well. But she - and, to be fair, Weiss and their friends as well - had thought that it wouldn’t come to this. “No one could have expected him to try this,” she said.

“I should have expected it!” Ruby shook her head.

“No!” Yang growled. “You couldn’t have expected this! Everyone was surprised - even his brother!”

“Not Cersei, though,” Ruby whispered.

Weiss nodded. “She knew. She wanted him to do it. It might even have been her plan.” And Weiss would never forgive her.

Ruby shook her head. “No… he told me it was his plan.” 

Blake nodded.

Weiss pressed her lips together. He might have believed that, but it wouldn’t be the first time someone might have been manipulated by their lover into doing something without realising it.

“That bitch!” Yang either shared Weiss’s suspicion or thought that going along with it was bad enough.

Ruby hadn’t let go of her weapon, and Weiss hadn’t let go of her hand. She could feel how tense her partner was, still.

At least Crescent Rose wasn’t dripping blood - Ruby must have been too fast for that. Or the blood had been shed during her rush to their room. Either way, Weiss was glad. Blood stains on the floor - or, worse, the bed - wouldn’t have helped at all.

“It’s not your fault, sis,” Yang said.

“I chose this,” Ruby replied, still staring at the floor.

“He chose this,” Weiss said. He and his sister.

“I killed him. Cut him apart.” Ruby raised her head and looked at Blake.

Blake slowly nodded, and Weiss felt an irrational bout of jealousy. Ruby was her partner, yet Blake was the one who had killed like Ruby. She would know best how this felt. All Weiss could do was offer her support.

And she wanted to do more. Ruby needed more. She was the youngest of them. And the most… Some would call it naive, but not Weiss. Not any more. Ruby was… idealistic. Determined to do the right thing, to help people, regardless of the cost to her.

“Next time, I’ll fight,” Weiss said.

“What?” Ruby stared at her, blinking tears away. “Weiss! No!”

Weiss met her eyes. “I won’t let you do this again!” She could handle it. She would handle it.

Ruby shook her head. “Weiss…” She trailed off. She must have realised Weiss wouldn’t budge on that.

Weiss half-expected Blake to chime in, but her friend didn’t say anything. Good.

After a moment, Yang chuckled, though Weiss couldn’t hear even a hint of amusement. “Are we really arguing who gets to kill the next scumbag trying something?”

Weiss nodded. “Technically, we are.” With benevolent motives, but… the situation was absurd in an almost comical way. She snorted.

Yang chuckled again, Blake made a noise that might have been a snort, and Ruby… still was sniffling but managed a weak giggle.

Weiss squeezed her hand again. They would get through this.

And if anyone tried this again… Weiss would deal with them.

*****

Blake Belladonna's ears twitched. Still no sign of any spies trying to listen in. She looked at Ruby, who had fallen asleep between Weiss and Yang. This wouldn't have happened if Blake had insisted on fighting, as she should have - nominally, she had been the accuser. It had been her testimony that had proved the guilt of Ser Jaime and Cersei. Instead, she had let Ruby be the court's champion. And pay the price.

She bit her lower lip. She should have known the Lannister siblings would do something like this. She should have sneaked into the Black Cells to spy on them. They would have been ready for it. If she had known that Ser Jaime would call for a trial by combat, Blake could have taken Ruby's place - she had already done it once before, after all. She was already a killer. And she had lost her innocence the day she had joined Adam's cell.

But she couldn't dwell on what she should have done - she had to focus on what she needed to do now, with their plans so thoroughly derailed. If what they had heard about Lord Tywin was true - and she had no reason to doubt it, not with so many people, both his allies and enemies, even his own son, agreeing on it - then he would call his banners, as they called mobilisation here.

“I wish the rumours that new Silent Sisters got their tongues cut off were true,” Yang muttered, Ruby still in her arms. “It's all that bitch's fault.”

“Without her, Ser Jaime certainly wouldn't have committed incest,” Weiss said.

Technically, that wasn't true, but Blake didn't think Ser Jaime shared Lord Renly and Ser Loras's inclinations. She certainly had never seen any hint of it. Not from Lord Tyrion, either, but she hadn't actually observed what he did during his carousing escapades. Still… “I wouldn't sell Ser Jaime short. According to his own words, he was the one who thought of this plan. That doesn't sound like he was a victim.”

“While I would caution against underestimating Cersei, I do concur that the attempt to use Ruby's own idealism against her would have required an amount of empathy I doubt she could muster,” Weiss agreed.

And it would keep Ruby from feeling even worse for killing a victim of Cersei's manipulation instead of killing a manipulating bastard.

“I still want to punch her head off. More than ever,” Yang said. “Can't really make it worse now, can I?”

“You don't want that,” Blake told her partner with a shake of her head.

Yang closed her eyes. “You're right. But break her legs?”

Blake snorted, feeling both mirth and a pang of pain at thinking of Nora. Their friends must believe them dead… She pushed the thought away. They had more urgent problems to worry about. “What do we do now?”

Weiss looked at Ruby, who was still cradling her weapon in her arms. “We'll have to discuss this once… everyone's ready. But we certainly need more information.”

“I don't think Lord Tyrion wants to talk to us right now,” Yang said.

Blake nodded. The noble would be blaming them for his brother’s death, and not incorrectly so. Ultimately, Ser Jaime had chosen his own fate by gambling with his life and losing, but without Blake, Ser Jaime wouldn't have been in the same situation - he certainly wouldn't have faced a member of Team RWBY in the trial by combat, but another member of the Kingsguard instead. And after sparring with the knights for so long, Blake would’ve bet on Ser Jaime in a fight against any of the others but Ser Barristan. “And I think the others are a bit more wary of me now,” she said.

“Yes.” Weiss frowned. “That was inevitable, but it does restrict our options somewhat.”

Blake nodded. She would have to be more careful - and sneakier. 

“We need to talk to Lord Renly and Lord Stannis. And Lord Eddard. Once Ruby has rested some,” Weiss said.

Blake understood what she meant. They would be checking the walls now, but she knew the secret tunnels leading to their rooms and offices.

*****

“Isn’t it ironic, Loras? After all that negotiating with Lady Ruby, compromising to let Cersei and her brother live despite their crimes, Jaime forces her to kill him herself. A mummer would love this twist.”

“I would call it poetic justice, Renly. Yet, Cersei still lives.”

“For now.”

Hidden in a narrow passage - an air vent, probably once connected to a kitchen - that she had only managed to navigate thanks to her flexibility, Blake frowned. Would Lord Renly arrange for the murder of Cersei?

“Do you want her dead, Renly?” Lady Margaery echoed Blake’s thoughts.

“I do. But I am confident others will take care of that problem. The Lannisters have made too many enemies for Cersei to survive this. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s poisoned shortly afterwards.”

“Do you think the Martells would risk that?”

“The Lannisters have lost all influence at court, and no one likes them. Tywin will call his banners and move against the throne.”

“Will he, Renly? It would be suicide. He has no allies, and Lady Ruby and her friends would trounce him - and they know he would blame them for this. Lady Blake testified, and Lady Ruby slew his son.”

“He is too proud to let this go.” Renly sounded sure.

“I beg to differ,” Margaery said. “Joffrey is still the Prince. If Tywin breaks the King’s peace, he undermines his own grandson. Would he risk that when everyone already doubts Joffrey’s legitimacy?”

“Tywin’s pride will be his downfall. And Joffrey won’t become king.”

“Lady Ruby made it clear that she will defend him.”

“In a trial, Loras. And because she won’t let the bastards die. But do you think she will fight to put him on the throne? You’ve seen her after she killed Jaime.”

“But she did kill him,” Margaery pointed out. “As did Lady Blake against the Mountain. Do you want to risk it?”

“We don’t have to. Sooner or later, someone will deal with him. Lord Eddard knows he’s a bastard as well.”

“He won’t betray his oath as regent, Renly.”

“No. But I bet he’s already looking for an excuse to dissolve the betrothal between Joffrey and Lady Sansa and return to the North. He only came to serve as Hand for Robert, and he would only stay out of loyalty to Robert’s children. With them being bastards? He’ll be gone before the season ends.” Renly sounded very sure of this.

“And then Stannis will become King.”

“Yes. And he either needs a new wife to get a son, or the throne falls to you, Renly.”

“Either way, we win.”

Blake blinked. She wasn’t surprised about the naked ambition - not any more - but it seemed quite a bit optimistic to assume everything would come out in your favour without doing anything yourself. At least, it meant that there shouldn’t be any trouble from Lord Renly and the Tyrells.

When Lady Margaery excused herself, and Lord Renly and Ser Loras started to get intimate, Blake left the shaft. She could check Lord Stannis and Lord Eddard’s quarters, but it was already late - Ruby had slept until dinner - and the odds of overhearing anything were slim.

Tomorrow, then.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Yang!”

“Yo!” Yang Xiao Long waved at Gendry as she entered Tobho’s smithy.

“How are you? Do you have any news about the murder of m… the King?”

She snorted. “You can call him your father. He acknowledged you. And who would disagree with the King?”

“I know, but…” He looked around. “People are saying all sorts of things. In the Great Sept, some say that the gods prevented you from saving him because of his sins.”

“What?” She growled. “I thought we’d set that nonsense straight!” And she had come here to distract herself from failing to protect Ruby!

Gendry winced. “People keep talking. Although some also say that the Lannisters killed the King, and that was why Lady Ruby punished them.”

That wasn’t what the trial had been about, which everyone should know! “If we thought that the Queen had murdered your father, we’d have accused her - and told you,” she said. “But we don’t have any news about that. They’re still investigating.” Despite all the torture, she added to herself. Well, there was the dead lady-in-waiting, possibly connected to the poison purchase, but… Best not mention that. If Lord Renly and Lord Stannis heard, everyone who knew her would get tortured.

“But why did Lady Ruby stay her hand? She could have killed Ser Jaime in the blink of an eye. She did, in the end. Was it to give him time to confess his sins?”

Damn. Yang wasn’t about to betray Ruby’s confidence. And the last thing her team needed was more people thinking that they could be pushed around with hostages. “Yeah, sort of,” she said. “She wanted to know why he was doing this.”

“And when she knew, she killed him. Because he showed no remorse and didn’t repent.” Gendry apparently was listening quite closely to those rumours.

Yang shrugged. “He thought he could win. He was wrong.” No need to go into details.

“I’ve heard some criminals prefer to die rather than join the Night’s Watch,” Gendry said. “If you are used to living in luxury, it must be even worse, I guess.”

Yang shrugged again. “So, what else are they saying in the Sept?”

“Ah… I mainly go to pray to the Smith, to ask for his blessings for our work here. I don’t really talk much to people, my lady.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“I’ve heard that the children of the Queen are born of incest.” He grimaced. “But many say that the Four Maidens would have called them out if that were the case. Others say that Lady Ruby is only staying her hand because they are still children, and should the prince try to claim the throne once he is of age, he’ll be struck down.”

Someone had been busy spreading all those rumours. Not Lord Eddard, and Yang didn’t think Lord Stannis would do this - though both had retainers who would - but this might fit what Blake had overheard when she had spied on Lord Renly.

She noticed how Gendry was looking at her. He obviously expected her to answer the unspoken question. “We haven’t seen any proof that the King wasn’t the father of Prince Joffrey and his siblings,” she said. Only hearsay and conjecture, as Weiss called it. Oh, Yang was pretty sure that Lord Eddard and the Baratheons honestly believed it, but they had no real proof. Hair colour didn’t prove anything - Yang and Ruby were the best examples of that. And Weiss too.

“Oh.” Gendry nodded. “I’ll tell the others when I visit the Sept next time.”

“Which won’t be for a few days, boy!” 

Yang had noticed Master Tobho approaching them, but Gendry was startled. He needed better situational awareness. Even Jaune wouldn’t have jumped like that. “Master Tobho.”

“Lady Yang.”

“The Smith is blessing us, Master,” Gendry said with a pout. “Ever since I started praying, we have made much more progress.” 

Tobho scoffed. “That’s because you focus more when you don’t leave your thoughts wandering. But if the sept is full of rumours, you can’t focus.”

“I’m praying!”

Tobho scoffed. “Do it less often. We have a lot of work to do.”

“Any trouble with…” Yang tilted her head and looked at the walls outside the smithy. “...unwanted attention?”

“Not that I’d have noticed, but I don’t follow the boy outside.”

“Who would waylay me on the way to the sept, Master?” 

“Any assassin worth their pay, boy! If they can kill the King, they can kill you.”

Yang winced at that. If they hadn’t revealed Gendry to the King… But he had already been known by others, like Lord Eddard. “If you see anything or anyone suspicious, call us, OK? I mean, send for us.” No scrolls here.

“Of course, my lady.”

For whatever it would help.

“Now, can I take a look at your work?”

“Of course, my lady. Your tools are almost done.”

“The Smith has been blessing us.”

“Don’t be a fool, boy! This is our honest work!”

Well, as long as Yang got her tools, she didn’t care who did it. That would be one less thing to worry about. Maybe Ruby would cheer up as well if she could tinker a bit with those tools and the rest of the materials...

*****

 

Chapter 24: Dealing

‘The trial by combat in the Lannister Incest Case is one of the most famous fights of the Succession era. Not for its result - anyone who had witnessed the Battle of the Maidens or the trial of Ser Gregor Clegane, or any later historian who had studied the trial's records, would have known that it could only end in Ser Jaime Lannister's death - but for its consequences. Both the court and the Ruby Order underwent significant adjustments in the wake of the trial, although in the order's case, they were a bit more subtle. Even so, one cannot fall into the trap of focusing merely on Lord Tywin Lannister's response to the death of his eldest son and the banishment of his daughter - many of the most important consequences of the fight were less obvious yet as crucial for understanding the changes that happened to Westeros at the time. The realignment of the various factions at court, for example, had a significant effect on the Succession, for example. And one cannot overlook the effects the fight had on the Faith and the smallfolk, albeit those consequences took quite some time to manifest.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Good morning, my Lord Hand, Grand Maester.”

Petyr Baelish was in a good mood when he greeted the others and took his seat at the table for the meeting of the small council. The Lannisters were done for. Ser Jaime was dead, the former Queen had been sent to the Silent Sisters, both disgraced as an incestuous couple. That left the Imp as heir, and everyone knew he was too fond of drinking and whoring, Petyr better than most since the Imp tended to frequent his brothels.

If Tywin were smarter than he was proud, he would disown the Imp and wash his hands of all his children. Pick a new heir and focus on keeping his grandson in line for the throne. Not that he would succeed at that; not when rumours about dear Joffrey being the offspring of incest were running wild in King's Landing and spreading to other regions. And if you considered Joffrey's horrible character, all the money in Tywin's coffers wouldn't help him there.

But Tywin's intelligence wasn't greater than his pride. He wouldn't be able to accept that his children had been tried and found guilty of incest, and his proud son had not merely been killed but outright humiliated by Lady Ruby in the trial by combat. He'd call his banners and attack all his enemies, imagined and real. Probably the Stormlands because he couldn't get to Dragonstone, King's Landing or the North.

But that would bring in the Tyrells even if Stark, the noble fool, would not condemn Tywin for breaking the King's peace. Tywin would struggle against that alliance, and once everyone with a grudge and a border with the Westerlands came to fight the Lannisters, they would be defeated in short order - they couldn't stand against that kind of power. 

And they had no allies. Lysa was a gullible fool, but she would have reservations about joining the Lannisters in such a doomed war, even if Petyr were to visit her and persuade her in person. Which would take too long, anyway. The Ironborn might try to raid all coasts, but it was far more likely that they would use the opportunity to raid the Westerlands, to take revenge for losing the Greyjoy Rebellion years ago.

He shuffled his notes - not that he needed them - as they waited for the other members of the small council. To have the war end quickly and without a lot of damage done to any part of the realm except the Westerlands wouldn't be ideal. It would further undermine Joffrey and his siblings, but if the Lannisters lost the war, Stark would likely make them write off the money the court owed them - he had mentioned something like that. And that would stabilise the realm. And damage his own influence. Neither was acceptable.

And yet, Petyr couldn't be sure that this would come to pass. Not with those girls at court! Team Ruby had the power to prevent this - if Tywin listened to all his spies, he wouldn't dare to draw the Hand's ire while the four girls were around. And if he still defied the crown and the four girls involved themselves in the conflict, the war would be over as soon as the girls reached the Rock and killed Tywin in his throne room.

He had to deal with the girls so he wouldn't miss this opportunity to destabilise the realm further. Fortunately, the relationship between the Starks and Baratheons and the girls had been strained recently.

Petyr could exploit that. He just needed the right angle.

Fortunately, for someone who had been playing the game for years, and who had risen from a disgraced petty noble to the Master of Coin of the entire realm, putting together what the four girls wanted was not too difficult.

Lady Ruby and her friends had known about the incest for months, yet hadn't said anything. It was patently obvious that they had been biding their time and saving that information for when they were ready to use it to the best effect - when they had ingratiated themselves so closely with Prince Joffrey that not even removing his parents would damage their relationship, and no one else would dare to stand against them. 

And they were close; the little bastard was following them around like a lapdog. He hadn't even thrown a tantrum when his mother had been dragged off to the dungeons by the girls. They were leading him by his nose - or rather, his little cock; the girls were not sleeping with the bastard - he was not nearly as love-struck as he would be - but they were dangling that lure in front of him. Like they had done to Stark's sons. And were still doing in the bastard's case.

Fortunately, Petyr had tipped off Stark to the Queen’s infidelity, and Stark and the Baratheon fools had been quick enough to unravel the secret to foil the girls’ plans and force them to act before they were ready. Even better, he had exposed the Lannisters’ crimes, and so the little bastard's legitimacy was all but ruined. Instead of using the Prince to rule the realm, they had to use their reputation to prop up his claim. And now, Tywin would want revenge for what they had done to his children, the Baratheons still wanted the bastards gone, and Stark was caught between his so-called allies’ different goals. 

Petyr chuckled under his breath. Would Stark back Joffrey, using his daughter to turn from the Hand of the King to the Prince’s regent and goodfather and the power behind the throne? Or would he back Stannis's claim? Demand an engagement between Stannis's disfigured daughter and his own son as his prize? Even though that would oppose the plans of the very girls he had courted so hard and earn their enmity?

Petyr didn't know - not yet. But he had the man's trust, thanks to dear, gullible Lysa and Cat, and so would be amongst the first to find out. With the right touch, Petyr would be able to present himself to the girls as a trustworthy source of what went on at court. And once he controlled what they knew, he could control what they'd do. 

Of course, they had a spy of their own, but skulking around in shadows and climbing walls to listen at windows wouldn't grant them any really valuable information. Certainly not now that people knew about her - even Stark would take precautions.

But Petyr had a network of spies and contacts. Whatever happened in the city and beyond, he would know. Money talked.

And knowledge was power.

He smiled at his thoughts when Varys entered - the last member of the small council. His old rival. The man acted like usual, smiling and tittering as he brabbled an excuse about having been held up, but Petyr could tell that the man was off his game. Had been since the Battle of the Maidens. For all his experience, Varys simply wasn’t smart enough to deal with four powerful women. Well, he wasn’t a man. Petyr was.

Stark nodded at Varys and started the meeting. They quickly covered the daily business - and, again, Petyr noted that Varys was talking less than usual - before Stark finally decided to address the actual problems - or opportunities.

“We haven’t heard from Lord Tywin yet,” the fool said. “So, we don’t know yet how he will react to the death of his eldest son.”

As if there was any question - the Old Lion would call his banners and attack the Stormlands. Or the Riverlands, if he wanted a few victories before he was crushed by the combined might of the realm. And then, not only would the bastard prince be left entirely dependent on Team Ruby and, perhaps, Stark, but the war would have drained even more gold from the realm’s coffers - and filled Petyr’s.

“I hope Lord Tywin will remain reasonable and accept the judgement of the gods,” Pycelle, the doddering old fool, said.

“He would stand no chance in a war,” Renly added the obvious. “But I can’t say that he ever struck me as someone who would let his pride take second place to survival.”

“And he has not seen Lady Ruby and her friends; he might doubt their power,” Stark said in a thinly-veiled attempt to remind everyone of who was the most powerful faction in the realm.

Varys cleared his throat. “Lord Tywin has alternatives to letting the crown feel his displeasure. The Kingdom owes him a fortune, after all, and should Lord Tywin call in his loans, things would become… uncomfortable. Even the mere refusal to loan us more gold might make the Iron Bank raise the interest for future loans to the crown - or refuse further loans altogether. The latter would be a certainty if we defaulted on Lord Tywin’s loans.”

That was… Petyr didn’t bother hiding his scowl. Stark would assume he was worried about the realm. But Petyr was angry that he hadn’t considered this; if the Lannisters stopped loaning money to the court, people would expect Petyr to find alternative sources of gold. And if he failed, he would get the blame for the resulting consequences. Of course, Lord Tywin using such a ploy to put pressure on the court wouldn’t be enough to repair his reputation, but the Old Lion wouldn’t hesitate to use it to weaken the realm before he took more drastic - and more violent - actions.

Petyr quickly schooled his features. “Let us hope it doesn’t come to that; it would probably be easier and quicker to conquer the Rock and seize the gold mines there instead of finding more money.” He laughed to show he was joking, although he wasn’t really joking, so Stark wouldn’t scold him for his comment; at the moment, Petyr couldn’t afford to annoy the man.

Not until he was ready to use the Four Maidens against his rivals.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose ran through a series of moves to limber up before her morning training session and stopped in the middle of a downstroke. The same move that had cut Ser Jaime in half. Half and a few smaller pieces, a voice in the back of her head whispered.

She pressed her lips together. She had killed a man. Deliberately. A man who hadn't been a threat - not a physical threat, at least. Not to her. She could have let him live, spared him, but she had chosen not to. 

She had killed him so he wouldn't live. So others wouldn't imitate him. Wouldn't try to use hostages against them. Wouldn't try to use themselves as hostages against Ruby and her team.

No matter how often she repeated this to herself, the guilt remained. Weiss had told her that she hadn't had a choice. That Ser Jaime had forced this on her. Blake had told her that she had done what was necessary to prevent others from becoming hostages. Yang had told her that it wasn't her fault.

But she’d had a choice. She could have let Ser Jaime go. It would have been unfair, and would have meant Cersei would go free as well, but Ruby could have made that choice. Ser Jaime hadn't controlled her. And she didn't know if what she had done had actually saved anyone. People here were used to taking hostages. Theon had been - was - a hostage back in Winterfell. Lord Eddard was keeping him as a hostage to ensure Theon's father wouldn't start another war. Sooner or later, someone would take people hostage to control Team RWBY. 

And it was her fault. Ruby was the leader of Team RWBY. She had decided to use this plan. She had decided to fight as the court's champion. She had failed to convince Ser Jaime that this was foolish. If he hadn't believed that she didn't want to kill him, he wouldn't have demanded a trial by combat.

“I should have been… tougher. Harder,” she muttered as she drew Crescent Rose back and repeated the move, then flowed into a sweeping attack. Scarier. If she were scary enough, no one would bother her or her friends.

She ran through another set of moves. Faster, and more forcefully. She imagined her scythe cutting through an enemy as she swung it at a training dummy, slicing off limbs and sending blood spraying… She stopped, barely preventing Crescent Rose from tearing into the ground before she let it rest on her shoulder.

“Your form's a bit off, Lady Ruby.”

She turned around, staring at Ser Barristan. She hadn't even noticed him approach her! So much for her situational awareness!

“Yes,” she agreed. No point in lying. Especially not during training - you'd be lying to yourself.

If he had also noticed that she had missed him coming to the ring, he didn't comment on it. Instead, he drew his sword and executed a few moves himself before sheathing it again. “Was Ser Jaime the first man you killed?”

They had probably killed a few wildlings, after their arrival in this world. Indirectly, by causing them wounds that wouldn't be healed, and by taking food and supplies that they needed to survive in the cold lands beyond the wall. But she hadn't realised it at the time, and as guilty as she felt for missing that, it wasn't the same. “He was the first person I deliberately killed,” she said. “I could have spared him and didn't.” She looked at him, meeting his eyes, while she pressed her lips together for a moment. “I chose to kill him.”

He slowly nodded. “Aye, you did.” He performed a few more forms.

She did a half-hearted spinning move before stopping again. “And I wasn’t in any danger. He was no threat to me.” Just to others.

He nodded again, a hint of a smile on his lips. “He knew that. It must have galled him.”

She frowned in return. “It didn’t stop him from fighting me.”

“No, it didn’t. But Ser Jaime knew the odds, and still chose to face you, out of pride or desperation.”

Not love? Maybe Ser Barristan found that too disgusting to consider it love. “He thought I would rather surrender - I mean, make Blake withdraw her accusations - than kill him.” Ruby pressed her lips together. She hadn’t told anyone else except her friends that. But it wasn’t really a secret, was it? It would be better if people knew it, anyway, so they wouldn’t try the same, and she wouldn’t have to kill anyone else.

“Oh.” He blinked. “I see. Yes, he might have thought so - he was not quite as clever as he thought he was.”

Ruby nodded. Ser Jaime had been stupid. Too stupid to live, Yang had said.

“And yet, I can understand how he might have come to this conclusion,” Ser Barristand went on, sheathing his sword again. “You and your friends, my lady, loathe killing to a degree most of us cannot understand. Or do not want to understand, in some cases.”

She snorted. “It’s not hard to understand. Killing shouldn’t… It should be a last resort. You only kill when you have no choice.”

“You had no choice - you were the court’s champion. The gods were watching.”

Ruby so had had a choice! “You always have a choice,” she said. “You just might not like the results.”

Ser Barristan nodded. “Wise words, my lady.”

She felt herself blushing - she had stolen them from her favourite game!

“And yet, I would say that the results of certain choices are so abhorrent, we don’t have a real choice.”

She nodded. “I couldn’t let him walk away.”

“And he could have chosen not to challenge the verdict and lived. But he couldn’t bear the thought of going to the Wall.”

“Yes.”

After a few more moves - she thought she had figured out how to wield Crescent Rose to deflect arrows back at an archer, though she would have to test that (and without putting an archer into danger) - he spoke up again: “You wanted to know why he was facing you before you killed him.”

She hadn’t wanted to kill him at all. “Yes. I needed to know why he was doing this - why he was risking death.”

Ser Barristan nodded. “And he told you. And then you killed him.”

“Yes.”

“He really wasn’t as clever as he thought he was. Although, I fear, that applies to many amongst the court.”

“I sure hope they aren’t as stupid as he was,” Ruby said through clenched teeth. She didn’t want to kill anyone else. “Do you think his father will start a war over this?”

Ser Barristan took a deep breath. “I don’t know. He lost his son, but Ser Jaime and Queen Cersei brought immense shame on his house. Lord Tywin has gone to great lengths to restore the reputation of the Lannisters, which he thinks his father hurt. The best course of action would be to disown both and bear the embarrassment. His grandson will be crowned once he is of age. You can recover from such humiliation - Lord Tywin proved that himself, albeit in different circumstances. But he is very proud, and pride can drive a man to as much foolishness as love can.”

“If Lord Tywin dies, Lord Tyrion becomes his successor, right?” She didn’t want to kill anyone, but… if it was necessary to stop a war? They could probably capture Lord Tywin instead. But wouldn’t rebels be executed anyway?

Ser Barristan narrowed his eyes for a moment. “Lord Tyrion is Lord Tywin’s heir according to law and custom.”

And Lord Tyrion probably hated Team RWBY for Ruby killing his brother. Ruby closed her eyes and sighed. “How can we stop people from being so stupid?”

“That is a question the brightest minds have failed to answer, my lady,” he said with a wry smile.

Ruby sighed again and tried to distract herself from her dark thoughts by training as hard with her baby as she could without wrecking the training yard.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Lord Tyrion looked tenser than he had the last time they had met, Weiss Schnee noted. He looked more tired as well - not quite exhausted, but she had seen students cramming through the night who looked better.

“Thank you for seeing me, my lady.” He bowed his upper body with a lopsided grin that held more edge as well as before, in her impression.

Well, Ruby had killed his brother. It had been Ser Jaime's own fault, and Cersei's, but that wasn't a thing you could easily forget. If someone had killed Winter… It was a good thing Ruby wasn't here.

She bowed her head in response. “There are a few things we need to discuss, my lord.”

“Just a few,” he said with a short, sharp chuckle before taking a sip from his cup.

It wasn't even noon. She hid her distaste with ease from long practice. Things were different here in Westeros, she reminded herself. People drank far more in general. The water wasn't particularly safe, and there were not many alternatives to alcohol. And it wasn't as if Lord Tyrion was drunk already. Despite his low body mass, he held his liquor well, though that was probably from a long habit.

And yet, Weiss couldn't help feeling that there were some similarities between his and her mother’s drinking, at least right now. Time would tell if Lord Tyrion would end up the same kind of useless drunk who would while away their days in a drunken stupor.

“You said you didn't blame people for the actions of their kin.” He stared at her.

“Yes. We don't.” How could you blame the children for the sins of their parents? That was barbaric!

“You also said you had ensured that Jaime and Cersei would live. Forgive me, that was uncalled for,” he quickly added.

Was that a planned outburst to make her feel guilty? Or his feelings overcoming his self-control? Weiss couldn't tell. But it had to be addressed either way. “We did. And if not for Ser Jaime calling for a trial by combat, he would not have died.” That had been entirely his own fault. And he deserved it, and worse, for making Ruby go through this!

“Jaime was a fool. He wouldn't have done that if not for Cersei.”

Weiss nodded in agreement, though she didn't know if Lord Tyrion was talking about the trial or the incest. “That is my thought as well.”

He took another swallow from his cup - no, he emptied it. “Will you take action against her?”

Against Cersei? Was he serious? She shook her head. “No.” Not unless that… stupid, malevolent person made another attempt to hurt Weiss's friends in any way.

“Ah. Is that because you think she's already suffering as much as she could, reduced to being a Silent Sister? She certainly loved flaying people with her tongue and must miss that as much as her position as queen.”

What did he think they were, petty and cruel? Like his sister? “No. Because she is already serving her sentence,” she said in a slightly clipped tone.

“Ah.” He snorted again. “No wonder you keep confusing everyone you meet.”

Weiss frowned. “Why would anyone be confused? She was judged, found guilty, and sentenced. That is the end of it.” Or it should be, though you never knew in this world, where justice was decided by a fight to the death.

“You sound like Lord Stannis.” Lord Tyrion laughed and refilled his cup - had he emptied it already? He must be drinking more than normal. “And yet, you will defend my nephews and niece?”

“Of course. We care about justice, not power. A thinly-veiled power-grab based on flimsy accusations, lacking any actual proof, is not just.” Weiss nodded sharply for emphasis.

He stared at her, shaking his head, before he laughed once more. “Oh, how that must vex Lord Stannis! To find his plans foiled because they aren't just! The very man who thought he was justice personified!”

“Our views of what is justice differ somewhat,” Weiss replied. “As do our standards for what we consider proof beyond doubt.”

“Oh, I doubt anyone would doubt that.” He half-emptied his next cup and wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

She snorted at his… it wasn’t a joke, not even a weak one - just some wordplay. 

“Well, except for Father, of course. Oh, I wish he were here and trying to make sense of you! You'd drive him mad. Mad with confusion, not anger, although he'll be angry as well.”

And now they were reaching the topic of this meeting. “Do you think he'll start a feud over this?” she asked. “Will he blame us for your brother's death?” Do you? she silently added.

Lord Tyrion sobered up - figuratively; he had not stopped drinking - at once. “He'll carry a grudge. ‘A Lannister always pays his debts’, you know.”

Was that a threat? she wondered. “But will he call his banners and start a war?” Will we have to kill him to stop this?

He shrugged and took another swallow from his wine. “I don't know. It would be stupid, but… Father blames me for my mother's death. She died giving birth to me.”

What? That was barbaric! She pressed her lips together. “I see.” Though she didn't. Was this an honest warning? Or an attempt to manipulate Team RWBY into killing Lord Tywin so Lord Tyrion would inherit? “You are saying he will attempt to avenge Ser Jaime’s death.”

“Most likely. Though whether he will weigh your protection of his grandchildren against this debt or not, I cannot say. It would be the smart and logical option, but Father is not always as coldly logical as he should be, despite his reputation.” Lord Tyrion finished his next cup of wine.

“And what about you?” she asked, looking directly at him. Straight and to the point. Like Ruby would, if she were here.

He avoided her gaze while he refilled his cup, then stalled some more by sipping from it. But she was patient.

“Lady Ruby could have spared him,” he said, narrowing his eyes slightly. 

“She didn’t want to kill him,” Weiss said. “Yet she couldn’t spare him.”

“No power in Westeros could have forced her to kill him,” he spat. “You can kill every guard and noble in this city before the sun sets.”

That was probably hyperbole. Tracking down all soldiers and nobles, preventing them from fleeing… Weiss didn’t think Team RWBY would manage such a feat. Not that they would ever do this, of course. But she got his point. And yet, he was wrong. “If she had spared your brother, she would have endangered many more people - people who did not challenge her to a trial by combat.”

He shrugged with a twisted grin. “You can’t know that.”

“It was obvious. So obvious, even your brother and sister saw it.”

Weiss almost winced at the sheer hatred that briefly appeared on his face. Was that aimed at his sister? She hadn’t been mentioned so far, so perhaps. Unless this was what Lord Tyrion wanted her to believe. 

“Cersei’s actions are unforgivable,” he whispered.

And Ruby’s? she wanted to ask but didn’t. “I hope you will advise your father not to escalate matters. No one but your rivals would gain anything from such a course of action, and many people would lose everything.”

“Including Father?”

Weiss stared at him. “His troops sacked King’s Landing and murdered many of its citizens. Do you think we would let him repeat this?”

He winced and shook his head. “I guess not.”

She nodded. “For what it is worth, we don’t blame anyone but Ser Jaime and Cersei for this. For all of this.”

She didn’t have to add ‘so far’; his expression told her that he understood her.

Good. Weiss really didn’t want more problems for Team RWBY.

*****

“...so, Lord Tyrion doesn’t think his father will be reasonable. Or that’s what he wants us to think so we will kill his father and make him the new ruler of the Westerlands.”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded at Ruby’s summary. “I can’t tell if either or both are true.”

“But we can expect trouble from the Westerlands. Like a war.” Ruby pressed her lips together.

“It’s a distinct possibility. I’m sorry.” Weiss felt guilty - if she had been able to judge Lord Tyrion better…

“It’s not your fault,” Ruby said.

“It’s Cersei and Ser Jaime’s fault,” Yang added.

Weiss nodded. That was certainly true.

“It’s not just their fault. It’s this whole world’s fault!” Ruby spat. “Everyone - every noble, at least - is so quick to use violence to win whatever argument they have.”

The smallfolk were quite eager as well, in Weiss’s opinion, they just seemed to lack the means most of the time. But the religious dispute they had seen…

“Well, violence does solve a lot of problems,” Yang said. “Like Grimm, bandits, criminals…”

“Yang!” Ruby glared at her.

And Yang winced. “Sorry, bad joke. I know what you mean.” 

Blake spoke up: “We can’t overlook that as Huntresses, we’re trained to fight, just as the nobles here are trained to fight. Most of them, at least. And if you are trained to use violence, and don’t have many alternatives…” She trailed off with a wry and humourless grin.

“There are alternatives!” Ruby said. “But no one wants to use them. Not if they think they can win a fight.”

“They can’t win a fight against us,” Yang said.

Weiss nodded. “But instead of using alternatives, they - at least some of them - are trying to make us fight for them.”

“Well, we won’t! I’ll stop them!” Ruby said with narrowed eyes. “Ser Jaime thought so, and he was wrong.”

Weiss grimaced. Ruby sounded… She shouldn’t sound like that. “I’m not letting you do this alone,” she told her.

“Weiss!” Ruby gasped.

“No. If we have to kill another idiot to protect people, I’m with you.”

Ruby met her eyes for a long moment but then looked away with a sigh. It wasn’t the pout she usually showed when she lost an argument with Weiss, but it was a start at least.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Lord Baelish had increased his security, Blake Belladonna noted as she studied the noble’s main brothel from a distance, her eyes having no trouble piercing the darkness and spotting the additional guards he had placed on the roofs. Two on neighbouring roofs, one on the brothel’s roof itself - the man was taking his privacy seriously. Then again, he had a lot to hide.

But despite his efforts, his guards couldn’t cover every possible approach, nor every hiding spot. They must have seen Blake at the Battle of the Maidens - Lord Baelish certainly had - but they must not have realised the full extent of her abilities.

They knew she could climb walls better than they thought, and jump farther than they thought she could.

They didn’t know how far she could jump. And how well she could see in the dark - or how sensitive her ears were.

Grinning briefly, she moved to the edge of the roof she was on, quickly checked for witnesses in the side alley below - Lord Baelish would have people watching the streets as well, but they couldn’t see through the darkness - and then jumped down. A few quick steps had her cross the alley and pass through an even narrower alley that was almost completely covered by overhangs from both sides - more like a tunnel. But there were still nooks and crannies through which she could fit, and it didn’t take her long to reach the end of the alley while hiding above the street level, with a clear line of sight across the street to the brothel - and within jumping distance, provided she used a clone as support.

Which she did, launching herself across the street, and not onto the roof, but under a projecting alcove, whose supporting beams provided her with ample hand- and footholds. And a nice, dark path to Lord Baelish’s office. Just from below instead of above, this time. Still out of sight of his guards.

Granted, she could not as easily look through the window as before, but Lord Baelish had added more drapes anyway. And she was close enough to hear everything said inside the office.

“...and those are the profits? They’re lower than last month!”

“The death of the King, and the violence in the Great Sept have had an impact, m’lord.”

“That’s no excuse! Difficult times mean people want more entertainment! Show me your numbers again!”

Unfortunately, it seemed as if today’s evening would be focused on the brothel’s business, and not whatever else Lord Baelish was planning - Blake was sure he was planning something; she had seen him move money from the treasure chamber to his private quarters and then out, but she hadn’t yet found out what he was doing.

But it was a start. And as time passed without any incident, Lord Baelish would grow less cautious. And his guards would grow bored and less alert.

And Blake might find something incriminating in his offices.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys, on the other hand, was proving to be a tougher opponent, Blake had to admit as she pressed herself into a corner of a tunnel ceiling close to his office, wedged against the stone like a ninja from her favourite novel. She could slip past his guards as well - with more difficulty, since the tunnels limited her approach, but she was dealing with children, and for all the training they had received, they were still not on par with a trained adult. Much less an Ex-White Fang member turned Huntress. And with a bit of help from a freshly drilled hole into the tunnel that led to Varys’s office, she could perfectly listen in on any conversation.

But being able to listen to whatever was said in Varys’s office was of no use if there was nothing of importance being said at all, not even when his spies and couriers went in for reports and orders.

“Here’s the message. Have you read it? Good.” 

She could even hear the sound of the message being burnt, but that didn’t tell her what the courier had read. Or delivered. She could only follow the courier and find out for whom their message was meant.

She would do it, of course - knowing who in the city was working for Varys was important - but it would take a long time to chart his network that way. And even longer to figure out what he was doing.

Unless she wanted to let this courier go and hope the next spy would offer something more important… No. She couldn’t tell anything, so she might as well go with the first opportunity.

She waited until she heard the footsteps of the courier in the tunnel next to her spot, then dropped down and quickly dashed forward, then climbed a short shaft that let her cut off the courier in the main tunnel.

Not that she would actually intercept the child; that would expose her work to Varys for nothing. Instead, she followed them through the maze of tunnels and passages under the Red keep - they were not moving as if they were trying to lose a tail, she noted - and then through the alley of King’s Landing until they reached a small warehouse in the docks.

Sneaking into that warehouse was easy - they had one guard at the door, and two people were counting crates inside. Fortune was smiling on her, even - she managed to hide herself in the rafters above the man the courier was approaching. A perfect spot to observe the entire exchange.

“What message do you have for me?” the man asked.

The courier gestured at the parchment and quill on the makeshift desk near them. 

“What? You want to… write the message here?”

The child nodded, and the man muttered about the cost of parchment. He still handed the utensils over, so Blake made a mental note that Varys held quite the influence over his contacts - he must be paying them well.

The courier quickly started writing, obviously they were practised, and their handwriting was neat and easily readable even from the rafters above them.

But it was also obviously in code, making references to established information and past events without naming anything. Blake clenched her teeth in frustration. She would still note down what she had read, of course. Any information could be important. Even the most basic piece might turn out to be crucial later.

Her nose twitched when the courier burnt the parchment as soon as the man had stated his understanding. No doubt, Varys knew about proper spycraft and information security. 

But he wasn’t perfect. Sooner or later, Blake and her friends would find a crack. And then they would find out where and how he got the mutilated children he used as spies and put a stop to that. One way or the other.

*****

Yang was dressed for bed but still awake when Blake returned to their quarters, but both Ruby and Weiss were asleep already - she could hear them snoring slightly from the other bedroom.

“Any luck?” Blake’s partner asked when she stepped into their bedroom - after checking with a glance that the bar at the door was set and the alarm devices Ruby and Yang had constructed were planted on the doors and windows. There was no candle burning, but the starlight was enough to see clearly - and enough for Yang to spot her.

Blake shook her head. “Nothing substantial. Lord Baelish was occupied with managing his brothels, and Varys was using encoded messages.”

“Ah, damn.” Yang shook her head. “Well, you’ll get lucky sooner or later.”

Blake raised her eyebrows at the double-entendre, and Yang blinked, then giggled. “Sorry!”

Blake smiled and sat down on the bed, then slid Gambol Shroud’s sheath off and started undressing. She could and had, more often than she liked, slept in her combat clothes and with her weapons ready, but they should be safe enough to forego that. For now.

The nightdress was locally made - well, from imported silk, but a tailor in King’s Landing had made it. A small piece of luxury, and something Blake hadn’t had back home. Not since she had left Menagerie, at least. But easily affordable here with the money from the Battle of the Maiden. The others had indulged as well - Yang had opted for a silk version of her usual sleeping attire, though it had taken her some sweet-talking and a gold dragon more to get it made by the scandalised tailor. Apparently, wearing their combat clothes was fine for the Maidens, but commissioning more such clothes was a bit much.

“How’s Ruby holding up?” Blake asked when she slipped under the covers on her side of the bed. 

Yang sighed. “She and Weiss both are determined to be the one who’ll handle the next ‘problem’.”

Weiss hadn’t yet killed anyone, as far as they knew. But Blake could understand that she didn’t want to be ‘kept out’ of that by her friends. She also knew it wasn’t a good stance, of course, from her time in the White Fang. Taking part in missions to ‘prove your worth’ despite your age… She had been such a stupid girl, in hindsight. And yet… “Weiss won’t let us protect her like that.”

Yang snorted. “Of course not,” she replied. “I wouldn’t let you do that to me either.”

There was a certain edge to Yang’s statement that belied her confident smirk.

Blake nodded with a smile. “I know better than trying that.” Even if it were better. Yang had killed a man, but by accident. She hadn’t killed someone intentionally. That was a step you shouldn’t take lightly or at all. But as Blake had said, she knew better than to try to shield her partner. Especially after Ruby had killed Ser Jaime.

“Good.” Yang lay back down, hands behind her head, and stared at the ceiling.

But Blake would still try her best to keep her friends from having to kill again. Or at all, in Weiss’s case. Even though she didn’t think she would succeed. Not in this world.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Brienne was acting weird, Yang Xiao Long noticed. She was looking at Yang, which wasn’t unusual when they were training, but she was trying to avoid Yang’s eyes. If it were Jon, she’d think the woman was brooding. She would ask her what was wrong later - right now, she had to focus on finding a counter to Weiss’s latest trick with Myrtenaster; Yang could tank the hit, of course, as long as she had Aura to spare, but it was always better to have the option to avoid getting hit in the first place.

“Again, please!” she said, grinning at Weiss.

Her friend matched her grin. She was overconfident, in Yang’s opinion, since she had just learned that move from Ser Barristan, but lunged again at Yang, her blade twisting in the middle of her move. This time, Yang caught the tip with her bracer, deflecting the point - and managed to avoid the follow-up kick so she could grab Weiss instead of the other way around.

“If I had used Dust…” Weiss complained when she landed on the ground.

Right. Yang would need a better counter to that. Maybe if she used her shotguns to throw off Weiss’s aim? She couldn’t quite train that here, ammunition was scarce, but… “Let me try something else.”

“Alright.”

That ended with Yang hitting one of Weiss’s glyphs in the middle of her counter-attack, but she still managed to avoid the original twisted lunge. Progress!

At the end of the training session, Yang had a good idea how to counter such a move. She just needed a bit more training with Dust in play.

She used a rag - a clean one - to towel off some sweat as she walked to the edge of the training area and grabbed the jug of water from there; Blake had checked for poison already.

A few swallows later, when she was wiping her mouth with the back of her arm, she noticed Brienne approaching her, though more hesitantly than she usually walked. 

Frowning slightly, she leaned against the fence there and waited.

“Lady Yang?” Brienne asked, after clearing her throat a few times. Nervous. 

“Yes?” Yang smiled, though she was a bit on edge. If this was another marriage offer… No, Brienne wouldn’t serve as a messenger for that - she had no male relative close enough, anyway; that was why she was her father’s heir.

“Ah, I was wondering about…” she trailed off, then straightened. “I was wondering why you are defending the children of the former Queen, even though you fought to condemn them.”

Yang cocked her head to the side. Was that Brienne asking? Or was she asking on behalf of Lord Renly? Lord Renly already knew why Yang and her friends were doing this, but he might try to make them change their minds through their friends asking questions. In any case, Brienne was her friend and deserved a straight answer. “Because there’s no proof that they are bastards,” she said. “While there is proof that Cersei and her brother committed incest.”

Brienne looked unconvinced. “Everyone’s saying they are bastards, though.”

“Everyone?” Yang raised her eyebrows.

“Well, everybody who talked to me about that,” she said, blushing slightly.

Meaning, Renly. Yang was sure of that.

“They don’t look like the late King at all,” Brienne added.

“That doesn’t matter. Sometimes, you look like one parent and not like the other. Ruby and I have the same father, but I look like my mother.” Who had abandoned her and Dad. “And she looks like Mom.” She pushed off the fence and took a step closer to the two. “Looks aren’t proof.”

“But would all three children favour the mother?” Brienne argued.

Yang shrugged. “It’s still not proof. You cannot condemn someone just because you think they’re guilty. You need proof. Proof beyond doubt.” Damn, she sounded like Weiss when she was ranting about the justice here. But her friend had a point.

“But what would be proof?” 

Yang shrugged again. “A confession that Cersei never slept with the King? I don’t know. Back home, we could test their blood, but not here. And without proof, they’re innocent.”

Brienne hesitated, then cleared her throat again and asked: “But do you think they are bastards, my lady? Even without proof?”

It would be like Cersei to cheat on the King from the start - though the King hadn’t been faithful to her anyway. But Yang shook her head. “I wouldn’t condemn anyone just because I think they’re guilty. Or bastards. Or whatever. It’s not enough. I need to know - I need to be sure.”

“Oh. And if you aren’t sure, you… treat them as if they were legitimate? Even if you have doubts?” Brienne asked as if that was weird.

Yang nodded. “Yes.”

“So, even if you think someone’s a criminal, unless you’ve got proof, you treat them like an honest person?”

Ah, Brienne was being sneaky. “It doesn’t mean I have to like them. Or hang out with them,” Yang said. 

Brienne nodded. “I see. That must be difficult.”

More difficult here than back home. Yang didn’t say that. She just nodded. “But it’s important.”

“And that is why you will defend the children’s claims?”

“Yes. Because it’s the right thing to do.” Yang nodded again, emphatically.

“I see,” Brienne repeated herself with a smile. “Thank you, my lady.”

“No problem.”

“It is clear why you’re favoured by the Seven.”

Yang blinked. What the…?

But Brienne had already turned away. She was walking with more confidence now, Yang noted.

Weird. Yang was about to call out for her to wait, but then she noticed Jon walking past the training area - and he looked shocked.

*****

 

Chapter 25: Honour

‘One thing that set the Ruby Order apart from other factions in their time was their code of honour. While some contemporary scholars claim that the Four Maidens had no code of honour - an obvious attempt to disparage them that can be dismissed easily - it is true that the code cited by later scholars, often members of my own order, as well as that followed by the later incarnation of the Ruby Order, are of questionable veracity. In many works, one can easily see where the author substituted their own views for those of the Ruby Order or, in a blatant attempt to hide their lack of sources, claimed that the Ruby Order followed simple rules such as ‘do good’ and ‘help those in need’. Such a simple code of honour, however, does not fit with the fact that all sources agree that from what they told about their homeland, they were raised in a civilisation with a sophisticated philosophy. A group with an origin like that would also have a sophisticated, evolved code of honour. Alas, for all their clear interventions in the politics of the Seven Kingdoms, the Ruby Order kept - with some notable exceptions - quite quiet about their own laws and views - likely because there were key differences between their views and those of Westeros that would have antagonised the majority of the population. Otherwise, their lack of any attempt to promote their own philosophies and views cannot be explained given their proven influence at court and on key members of the highest nobility of the realm.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“What's wrong, Jon?”

Jon Snow blinked as he realised that he was standing near the Kingsguard's training yard. He must have walked here without thinking. “Lady Yang? Lady Brienne?” he added when he noticed the noblewoman.

“What's wrong? And don't tell me nothing's wrong!” Lady Yang put both hands on her hips as she stared at him with narrowed eyes. “You look like you’re in shock!”

“I'm not!” he retorted, sharper than he meant, “I’m sorry, my lady,” he quickly added with a bow of his head.

“Yeah, sure, and I am Ozpin.” She didn't look mollified, though whether it was because he had just contradicted her or because he had been too formal, he couldn't tell.

“Ah, who is Ozpin, Lady Yang?” Lady Brienne asked, sparing Jon from doing it - the name sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.

“Ozpin's the headmaster of Beacon Academy, the Huntsman Academy of our home,” Lady Yang explained.

Right. That was where he had heard the name before. Jon nodded.

“But we're not talking about school. We're talking about what's wrong with you, Jon.” Lady Yang flashed her teeth as she leaned in closer, making Jon bend back as he struggled not to look away or to blush at how close she was. 

By the Old Gods and the New, she was so beautiful, it hurt!

“So, who do I have to hit to make things better?”

He gasped. “None! There's nothing…” He flinched under her glare and looked away, then caught Brienne frowning as well. “It's private,” he said. And lethally dangerous for his entire family.

“Ah.” Lady Yang withdrew a bit, half a pace, but didn't smile - she kept frowning. “Private and weighing so much on your mind?” Her eyes widened. “Oh! Did you talk to your father?”

Jon stiffened. He had talked to Lord Eddard, not his father. “Ah…”

Sadly, Lady Yang had caught his reaction - and drawn her conclusions. She smacked her fists, still covered in her gauntlets, together.

“No!” he blurted out. “Yes, I talked to him. But it's not… It's not his fault.”

“Oh.” Lady Yang cocked her head to the side and tossed her beautiful mane of golden locks back before she glanced at Lady Brienne.

The noblewoman was already backing off with an apologetic smile. “I'll leave you to your private talk, my lady, Snow.” She turned and started to walk away.

“So… Do you want to talk about it?” Lady Yang asked. “It's your decision, of course, but I know about missing mothers.”

Jon closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. His mother had died long ago, but he still felt as if he had just witnessed it. “Lord Eddard told me about my mother, yes. She’s dead. Died shortly after giving birth to me, actually.” He blinked - his eyes were getting a bit blurry. “All those years, I hoped…” He drew a shuddering breath.

Lady Yang put her hand on his shoulder, squeezing very gently - he drew a sharp breath to mask his reaction - as she smiled sadly, and nodded. “You hoped to meet her. Talk to her. Ask why she had left you with your father. Why she wasn't there when you grew up.”

He winced. For most of his life, he had thought he knew the answer to that: He was a bastard, and it had been bad enough that Lord Eddard had taken him in. If Lord Eddard had also taken in his mother… Lady Catelyn would not have tolerated either of them. And Lord Eddard, as the Lord Paramount of the North, would have provided him with a better life than the mother of a bastard. Even if she had been a noblewoman.

He snorted against his will as the irony struck him - his mother had been a noblewoman, as he had dreamt in the more naive days of his childhood. But Lord Eddard wasn’t his father.

“I just wanted to meet her,” he said, blinking again.

Lady Yang nodded again. “Yeah, I know the feeling.”

Jon tried not to focus on the feelings she caused to grow inside him. Could he tell her the truth? About his mother, not about his feelings. She already knew those. But… this secret could destroy his family - would destroy them. Lord Eddard had been clear about that. He couldn't tell anyone, or he would doom his family.

And yet… Lady Yang was not merely a friend - a very close friend, if not as close as he wished she were. She was also one of the Four Maidens. Blessed by the gods with power and mercy beyond mortals. Willing to defy the most powerful people in the realm to protect even their worst enemies from any injustice.

If he couldn't trust her, whom could he trust? She didn't care that he was a bastard. None of the Four Maidens did. Who else had ever treated him like that?

And, he couldn't help thinking, why should he heed Lord Eddard's order after he had been raised in such ignorance all his life? If not for Lady Yang, Lord Eddard wouldn't have told him the truth until Jon was a man grown - his uncle had told him so himself. A few more years in ignorance, thinking Lord Eddard was his father, wondering about his mother, falsely hoping he could meet her one day…

He took a deep breath. “There's more, my lady. But it's a deadly secret.” He bit his lower lip, hard enough to hurt. Could he really tell her? But if he didn't tell anyone… He couldn't stand it. It was too much. What he knew…

“Ah.” She nodded. “I understand.” She squeezed his shoulder. “You're sworn to silence.”

He shook his head. “I didn't swear an oath, my lady.” He glanced around. No one was close enough to overhear - the closest being was a raven on the roof nearby, but that was still too far. “Lord Eddard isn't my father,” he said. That was the easy part. 

She blinked, obviously surprised. “But…”

“My mother was his sister, Lady Lyanna,” Jon whispered. 

Lady Yang’s eyes widened before she let out a hissing sound and grimaced. “That's… She was kidnapped by the last prince, wasn't she?”

He nodded. “Prince Rhaegar Targaryen.” Lord Eddard hadn't explicitly told him that the Prince was his father, but he had made it clear without saying his name. And who else could it have been? The Prince had kidnapped Lady Lyanna - Jon's mother - and kept her prisoner in a tower guarded by three members of the Kingsguard until Lord Eddard had freed her - just in time to have her die in his arms after giving birth to Jon. And why would he have kept Jon's mother a secret if it had been someone else? 

But also that meant Jon was the son of a rapist, not the child of an honourable man who had made a mistake during the war. Jon’s mother had been dishonoured and forced to give birth to him - at the cost of her life. 

Lady Catelyn had all the reasons to dislike or even hate him.

“Fuck.”

Jon snorted. Lady Yang had a talent for summing up a situation in very few words.

He sighed. “That's… weighing on my mind.”

“Yeah, I bet it is.” She shook her head. “I'm sorry you didn't get better news.”

He shrugged. “I'm still a bastard. So, in a sense, nothing really changed.” And yet, everything had. Lord Eddard was his uncle, not his father. Robb, Sansa, Bran, Arya and Rickon were his cousins, not his siblings. It shouldn't change anything, but it did. Deep down.

And, of course, his foolish, childish hope that his mother was alive was gone.

And he was the child of a rapist, he reminded himself.

“So, wanna spar a bit? Get your mind off it?” Lady Yang asked with a faint grin.

He blinked at her.

She shrugged. “Hey, while we're here? And it helps dealing with… such stuff. Ruby's feeling better already.”

Right. Lady Ruby had taken her fight with Ser Jaime - if you could call it a fight at all - hard, or so he had heard. “It must be hard sometimes to do the will of the Gods,” he said. No matter whether it was the old Gods or the new.

She snorted. “You just try doing what's right and hope for the best.”

Well, that was a simple rule. And yet, one he could get behind. “Let's spar then, my lady,” he said.

*****

Ruby Rose was feeling better when she left the training yard. Sparring always made her feel better. Well, almost always. Sometimes, it could be frustrating. When no matter what you tried, it didn't work. Or if you were training with a jerk who just wanted to win.

But today had been nice. She had figured out a counter to a lance attack. With her speed, it should work against arrows as well - she had to test that tomorrow. Once she found someone willing to shoot at her. The Kingsguard hadn't wanted to, saying they were knights, not archers. Which was kinda silly - everyone should have a ranged attack. Just in case you were stuck fighting someone you couldn't reach or catch.

And now, she had breakfast - second breakfast, well, a good snack - waiting for her. Lots of honey cakes and warm milk (with honey). Just the thing you needed after a good workout to take your mind off the fact that you…

“Lady Ruby!”

…cut the uncle (or father) of Prince Joffrey into pieces because he had been listening to his stupid sister. Prince Joffrey, who had just greeted her. “Good morning, your grace,” she said, smiling awkwardly. This was bad. What do you say to someone whose mother you sent to a fate worse than prison? After killing her brother? “Hello, Sandor. Or is it Lord Clegane now?” His brother was dead (killed by Blake), and if he hadn't had any children, Clegane would be his heir, right?

Sandor glared at her with a grunt instead of answering her question.

“He's Lord Clegane now,” the Prince said.

“Noted.” She nodded.

Sandor grunted again. He was tense and looked around them - he was too focused on guarding the prince. 

Ruby clenched her teeth and pressed her lips together. She knew that the Prince was in danger. And he knew it as well. “Shouldn't the Kingsguard be guarding you as well?” she asked. Or was it instead?

“I told them to guard my brother and sister instead. I trust the Hound to guard me.”

“Oh.” That was nice of him. Both that he wanted his siblings kept safe and that he trusted Sandor. She nodded again.

“I wish to talk to you, my lady,” the Prince went on.

Ruby winced. She didn't want to talk to the Prince. Not about what she thought he wanted to talk about. But someone had to. And it was her responsibility. “Alright.” She looked around. “What about the ramparts? No spies there.”

The Prince blinked. “Do you expect spies…” he looked around. “...in your quarters?”

Not if Blake is around, Ruby thought. But she nodded. “There are probably spies everywhere. You're safer if you assume the walls have ears. And eyes.” She winced again. Should she have said that? Would that make Blake's spying harder? Drat, she was an idiot!

“I see. The ramparts will do fine, then. Not many chances for an assassin to hide there.”

Sandor grunted in what was probably agreement. Ruby wasn't sure.

They walked over to the closest stairs leading up the walls. 

“Uncle Tyrion didn't want me to talk to you, but he cannot order me around,” the Prince said. “If I am to be King, I have to make my own decisions.”

Ruby nodded. It was the same for her as the leader of Team RWBY.

“Keep your distance, Hound!” the Prince snapped when they reached the top. “Guard the stairs.”

To Ruby's surprise, Sandor obeyed without a grunt or glare.

“I wish to have a private talk,” the Prince said, though Ruby hadn't asked. It was pretty obvious, after all.

“Alright!” She nodded and leaned against the rampart, taking a deep breath. Here came the uncomfortable questions. But she was ready for them. Probably. Hopefully. It wasn't as if she could run away now - well, she could, but it would make everything even worse.

“You killed my uncle Jaime in the trial by combat.” He stared at her.

“Yes.” What else could she say?

“Yet Uncle Tyrion assures me that you would fight for me in a trial, should anyone contest my claim to the throne.” He shook his head. “Why?”

“Because that's the right thing to do?” Why else would she do this?

“You accused my mother of being an adultress - with my uncle. It was your testimony that condemned them. And it was your blade that proved their guilt when you killed my uncle.”

It had been Blake who had seen them do it, but Ruby nodded. “I didn’t want to kill him. We ensured that neither your mother nor your uncle would be executed. But your uncle called for a trial by combat.” And she had had to kill the stupid, arrogant idiot!

He stared at her as if he didn’t understand. “Why didn’t you want to kill him? You said he was guilty - and he challenged you.”

“Because you should only kill people if you have to,” she told him. He still looked confused, so she added: “I didn’t want to kill him for what he had done, but he forced me to. If I had let him go, he and others would have thought that they could control us like that. Taking hostages.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “You had to kill him to scare off others.”

“Ah… kinda.” It wasn’t quite perfect, but close enough. “I really didn’t want to kill him. I’m sorry it came to that.”

The Prince nodded again. “I understand, my lady.”

Good. It would have been bad if he hated her. Sure, she had killed Ser Jaime, but that had been Ser Jaime’s fault. 

“And if someone accused me of being a bastard, you would kill them?”

Ah, that was a tricky question. “If they have no proof or try to kill you. But I don’t see how they could prove that - you don’t have blood or gene tests here.”

He looked shocked and was silent for a moment. A long moment. Then he asked in a low voice: “But… Do you believe that I am a bastard?”

It was possible, of course, but Ruby wouldn’t tell him that - he was still a boy, and being a bastard was very bad here. “It doesn’t matter what I - or anyone else - believe. What matters is what can be proven.” Yang had said the same, though she had been much younger then and it had been about stealing cookies. Though while she had convinced Ruby, Dad hadn’t been convinced.

“I understand now.” He nodded once again, slower this time, and with a determined expression.

“Good.” Ruby smiled gently at him. It would be bad if he, once he was King, would decide trials based on what he believed instead of what was proven.

*****

“Ah, Greetings, Lady Ruby.”

“Oh? Hello, my lady.” Ruby forced herself to smile. She hadn’t expected to meet the Red Priestess in the library. Couldn’t Marwyn, Pycelle and Hernis have warned her? Well, they probably couldn’t have, not having scrolls, but still! And now they were hiding in the back of the room - she caught glimpses of their robes - while she was stuck here, the woman who made her uncomfortable! And… “What are you doing here?” Oh, that had come out a bit too forcefully. This wasn’t her library; she was just a guest here.

“I am looking through the books,” Melisandre replied. “Lord Stannis gave me permission.”

“Ah, OK.” Ruby nodded, then clenched her teeth. Of course, she was here for the books, duh. Why else would you step into a library? Unless you were looking for a CCT connection or something. But they didn’t have anything like that here. Though their ravens were kept in towers, so it was kinda like the CCT towers back home…

“You’re still looking for magic to send you home to your world, aren’t you?”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded emphatically. They would have left this world already if they knew how!

She placed the book she had been reading - or looking at - on the shelf next to her. “I’ve gazed into the flames, but R’hllor has not shown me answers yet.”

“Oh?” Was Melisandre praying to her god to help Team RWBY? Or was she just saying that to make Ruby like her?

“It might be that you’ve yet to fulfil your destiny here.”

“Our… destiny?” Ruby grimaced. What did she mean by that? The woman gave her the creeps! If it wouldn’t be rude, she would have left her here.

“You defeated the Others and their king.”

“We did?” Ruby blinked. “Oh, you mean the ice zombies!” She smiled as she nodded. “Yeah, we killed their leader, and they all fell down and didn’t move any more.”

“And you saved a great many lives by that. Yet, you have not been sent back. You might still be needed in this world.”

Ruby frowned. “Do you mean we were taken here?” That was kidnapping! No one had asked them if they wanted to travel to another world!

“Yes. I do not believe that your arrival - at the precise time and place to defeat the Others - was a coincidence.”

“And who took us here?” Ruby narrowed her eyes and touched Crescent Rose on her back. If she found the kidnapper…

Melisandre smiled. “That is a question to which I do not yet know the answer. It was not R’hllor, though; he would have told me. But there are others with power over such things.”

“Do you have a list?” Ruby asked, smiling encouragingly.

Melisandre stared at her for a moment. “You wish to ask them to send you back.”

“Yes!” Ask, and if they refused, make them do it if she had to.

“They cannot be reached easily. Just as only the truly faithful can contact R’hllor, there are limits on who can contact those powers. And doing so is fraught with danger. For an outsider like you to attempt it… I would not advise it.”

“And who can contact them?”

“Priests, faithful…” Melisandre spread her hands. “Though as I said, you might not yet have fulfilled your destiny.”

“It would be a lot easier and quicker if someone told us what we need to do.”

Melisandre laughed, and something in her voice made a shiver run down Ruby’s spine. “Oh, that is not how those powers work. Our minds can barely comprehend them with training and use when they deign to contact us. But one way or the other, your duty will become clear.”

Ruby snorted. That sounded far too vague. Why would anyone transport her team here and then just let them be? That made no sense.

“And what are you planning to do while you wait to understand what is expected of you?”

“Uh…” Ruby shrugged. “Same as we’ve been doing so far?” Help where they could and look for a way home. Was that a trick question? They had never hidden their plans.

“I see.” Melisandre smiled, and Ruby felt a shiver run down her spine again when the woman bowed in a weird way before leaving the library.

That had been weird.

*****

“Who's a good girl? You are! You are!” Weiss Schnee cooed while rubbing the soft underbelly of Lady. The direwolf was such a dear! Always well-groomed and so well-behaved!

And so fluffy! When Weiss was back home, she would have to look into getting a dog like her. If she ever returned… She pressed her lips together for a moment while she petted Lady. They would return home! Nothing else was acceptable! Weiss would never settle for living in Westeros!

A soft cough interrupted her thoughts. “Lady Weiss?”

“Ah, I'm sorry, Lady Sansa.” She felt her cheeks flush. She hadn't meant to lose her focus.

She slowly rose to face the girl while Lady softly protested at the sudden end of her pets.

“No, no, it's alright. Lady loves you!” Lady Sansa said, smiling widely as she rubbed the direwolf's head herself. “I was just…”

“Yes?” Weiss tilted her head slightly to the side.

“I was wondering about my betrothed,” Lady Sansa said in a low voice. Weiss saw her biting her lower lip for a moment, clearly nervous or worried.

“Prince Joffrey?” 

“Yes,” Lady Sansa said, and her expression clearly added ‘who else?’

“I heard he was doing better with regard to the consequences of the trial,” Weiss said. Ruby had told her that. And it was best to step lightly around a sensitive topic - she was speaking with a young girl, after all, not an adult. 

“It's… “ Lady Sansa looked around and lowered her voice. “People are saying that he is the, ah, result of the Queen's affair with her brother!”

Oh, that. It was definitely a sensitive topic. “Those accusations lack any valid proof,” Weiss told her with a firm nod. She knew how quickly rumours spread, no matter how baseless - although in this case, one couldn't claim the rumours were baseless; such a scandal would have resulted in the same kind of rumours back in Atlas - and spread with the same motives by those who would profit from such a turn.

“So, those accusations are false?” Lady Sansa leaned forward, and her voice grew slightly in volume.

“They are unsubstantiated,” Weiss corrected her. At the girl's expression indicating a lack of comprehension, she explained: “There is no proof for those claims, meaning they are mere allegations. But at the same time, they haven't been disproven either.”

Lady Sansa didn't seem to be satisfied with Weiss's answer. “But… don't you know the truth? You're blessed by the Seven!”

Weiss didn't wince at that even if she wanted to. “That is not how it works,” she replied. “We rely on verifiable facts, on proof beyond reasonable doubt, to determine what is true and what isn't.”

“But… Father said you'd defend the Prince's claim!”

That wasn’t entirely correct as far as their stated intentions were concerned, though it didn't seem to be an intentional misrepresentation on the part of Lord Eddard. “It's a bit more complex,” Weiss replied. “Or nuanced. We believe that those who make a claim bear the burden of proof.”

“Does that mean Prince Joffrey has to prove that he's the King's son?” Sansa sounded worried again.

“Only if he had not been acknowledged as the heir by the King himself before,” Weiss tried to reassure her. “To change that, one would need solid proof that he's illegitimate.” Although, this being Westeros, an armed coup or rebellion apparently was always a viable alternative - Weiss didn't mention that, of course. The girl was worried enough already.

“So, Prince Joffrey doesn't need to prove his claim, but others would have to… to disprove it?”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded with a smile. “A stable, prosperous society needs such rules. Otherwise, things would descend into chaos as the burden of proof on any claim would be shifted according to the whims of those who’d profit from the outcome of a trial.”

Weiss had to explain that in smaller words as well until Lady Sansa nodded with apparent understanding.

“So, it's more important to follow rules than what you believe?”

“When it comes to trials and similar judgment calls, yes.” Weiss nodded. “However,” she added with a smile, “often, following your beliefs is the right decision for you. It's not a blanket rule - you have to keep the consequences of your decisions in mind.”

“And what if you don't know what the consequences are, my lady?”

“Then you make your best guess,” Weiss replied. “And you consider the risks and rewards as well.” Without waiting for the question she knew was coming, she went on: “If an action promises a small reward, but presents a high risk for you or others, you should consider carefully if it's worth taking such a risk. Say…” She tried to come up with a good example that the girl would understand. All the examples she knew referenced economics. “Say, you stand in front of a very narrow gorge. You aren't sure you could jump over it - it looks narrow enough, but if you misjudge your leap, you will fall to your death. Is making the attempt worth the risk if you could walk half an hour and use a bridge instead?”

“No, it isn't! That would be stupid!”

“Yes. But what about if the next bridge is a day away? And what if you're chased by Grimm who can't jump the gorge?”

“Ah…” 

Weiss winced. It seemed her explanations weren't helping Lady Sansa.

*****

“Ah, Lady Weiss!”

Weiss's good mood on the way back to their chambers - petting the adorable fluffballs of the Stark children was always a treat - vanished at once, and she pasted a polite smile on her face as she turned to greet the pimp. “Lord Petyr.”

He smiled widely at her, flashing his teeth. “You're looking radiant today.”

He was overdoing it. Too much flattery. And too much presumption to address her like this. Especially given his age. “Thank you, my lord.” She bowed her head, slightly less than she would have if facing someone else of his rank.

If he noticed - and as an experienced courtier, he would have - his smile didn't falter. “Are you on your way back from your training?”

She nodded. “Yes.” Meeting Lady Sansa had delayed her, and if she had gone out of her way to meet the girl and her direwolf when she had spotted her across the yard, then that was between Weiss and Lady.

“I’m on my way to an early meal,” he said. “Work tends to pile up in these trying times, so I found it better to eat when I can.”

Was he fishing for sympathy? Weiss had none to give. If you couldn't organise your schedule to eat when you needed, you might be in the wrong position. Her father certainly would never be caught like that. Besides, working lunches were a staple for businessmen. “I assume so,” she said in her best noncommittal voice.

“So… since we're going the same way…” He gestured towards the gate across the yard.

There was no way to refuse that without offending him. Weiss was tempted to do it anyway, but nodded instead - Team RWBY didn't need more enemies, although she would argue that Lord Baelish might already be an enemy. In any case, she didn't trust him.

“It's been quite a time since the trial… as Master of Coin, I am not directly involved in such matters, but sooner or later, everything comes down to money.”

“Money makes the world go round,” she quoted Father.

“That's a good line! I might borrow it from you!” He laughed, flashing his teeth again.

She nodded with a polite smile.

“Too many people forget that, though. Especially at court. Those who have grown up never wanting anything, and never needing to take responsibilities, more often than not never learned that lesson.”

“The bill always comes due,” she repeated another quote.

“You seem to be experienced with such matters, my lady.”

She shook her head, lying easily. “My father loved such sayings. He never taught me much, though - the family has staff for that.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “That might be a bit short-sighted of him. What if something happened to him and left you having to trust that none of your servants and employees will steal from you?”

“Exactly.” She nodded again. They had almost reached the door, where she could leave the man and return to her friends.

“But as you said, it comes down to money. Sometimes, it feels as if just looking at where the money from the treasure chamber goes tells you more about the court's power struggles than listening for hours to people gossiping.” He nodded at her as he sketched a bow. “But I don't want to bore you with such details. Good day, my lady.”

“Good day, my lord.” She bowed her head again, marginally lower. His offer was subtle, but clear.

And she trusted him about as much as she trusted her father.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna kept a wary eye on the four beasts surrounding Weiss as she carefully walked along the fence separating the training area from the rest of the yard. Her friend was doing an admirable job of keeping the direwolves distracted and happy, but you couldn't trust them. 

“Lady Blake!”

“Lady Blake!”

“Lady Arya.” She nodded at the girl and leaned against the fence. “Lord Bran. Already done with your training?”

“We’re just taking a break!” Arya gestured with the small, slim training sword she used and beamed at Blake. “Lady Yang said we've earned it!”

“That is high praise,” Blake told them. Yang wasn't easily impressed, so the kids must have done well - for children their age and without Aura, of course.

Arya smirked. “Want to see for yourself? Now that you've slept through half the day already?” Without waiting for an answer, she ducked under the fence and entered the training yard, raising her sword.

Blake snorted. She was up quite early, considering that she had spent half the night in the secret passages below the keep. But she could easily handle Arya. “Alright.” She drew Gambol Shroud but didn't take it out of the sheath. “Ready?”

Arya's grin grew as she nodded.

And then it disappeared when she failed to block or deflect Blake's first lunge, which ended with the blunt part of her sheath resting on Arya's shoulder.

“You dropped your guard,” Blake told her. 

Bran giggled, making him look even younger than he was.

Arya scowled in return at him and then turned to Blake. “You're too fast.”

“And too strong,” Blake said. “And too experienced. But unless you're planning never to fight anyone stronger or more experienced than you, you will have to learn how to deal with such people.”

“How? You're stronger, faster and more skilled!” Arya blurted out.

Blake nodded. Skill could compensate for a lot, as could speed - anyone who had ever fought Ruby could attest to that - and people could leverage greater strength as easily as picking up a heavier weapon. “Then you need to be sneakier.”

“You mean feinting?” She frowned. “That doesn't work against someone more experienced!”

“Sometimes it does,” Blake replied. “But I'm not talking about feinting. I’m talking about being sneaky. No amount of skill, speed or strength will save you if you're hit before you realise someone's stabbed you.”

“But… Do you mean to stab someone in the back? That would be dishonourable!” Bran blurted out.

“Like cutting down a fleeing enemy?” Blake cocked her head. “Are you supposed to let them go so they can rally and regroup?”

“That’s different!” Arya pouted. “That's what you do in war.”

“A fight to the death is a fight to the death,” Blake said. “If someone is stronger, faster and more experienced than you and wants to harm your family, do you do everything you can do to stop them? Or do you fight them head-on, lose and let your family be hurt?”

Arya opened her mouth, then closed it. “That's…”

“...the question, and the answer is: You defend your family any way you need to,” Blake finished for her - Bran looked pensive. “If there's no other way, you stab them in the back if you can.” They were their father's children, after all. Blake had to frame the lesson so they wouldn’t reject it out of hand. Make them think and question things.

“But…” Arya, stubborn as ever, pouted. “That’s still dishonourable!”

“More dishonourable than letting your family get hurt, or worse, because you chose not to do everything you could to protect them?” Blake slowly tilted her head at her.

Arya frowned again. “Honour isn’t supposed to work like that!”

“But that’s how honour works - or doesn’t work - in practice,” Blake replied. “You’ll encounter - find yourself in - situations where you have to decide between actions which are all dishonourable.”

“That’s not true! If you’re strong enough, you can always act with honour!” Bran cut in. “If you can defeat every enemy in honourable combat, you’re not forced to act in a dishonourable way!” He grinned.

“Is that so? What if you have to protect someone, but you know your family is under attack as well, and you cannot protect both? Who do you let die in that case?” Blake asked.

That made both kids pout and frown again. “That’s…” Bran started, then fell silent.

“Drag the one you’re protecting to your family and protect everyone there!”

“What if you can’t reach your family fast enough if you’re dragging someone?” Blake shook her head. 

“If you swore an oath, then you follow it!” Bran said, nodding firmly.

“What if the oaths conflict?” Blake smiled a little sadly. “When you’ve sworn an oath to obey the King and an oath to protect those in need, and the King’s hurting them?”

“Uh… the King’s not supposed to do that!” Bran said.

Blake nodded. “But you still swore an oath to him. Do you obey him? What if he wants you to hurt children?”

“Uh… I would refuse that!” Bran raised his chin almost defiantly.

Arya nodded firmly.

“And you’d break your oath to him over it.” Blake smiled. “So, whatever you do, you’ll break an oath.”

That had the kids apparently confused. 

“Then you shouldn’t swear any oaths!” Arya said. “So you can do what’s right!”

“Do Huntresses swear oaths?” Bran asked.

“Not formally,” Blake said. “But even without oaths, you still might have to decide what dishonourable action you take. Do you leave your wounded partner behind to save a village from Grimm?” She shook her head. “When you’re faced with such a decision, you can’t hide behind honour; you will have to make a decision. You will have to decide what’s the right decision - or the least wrong.”

Bran pouted again. “And what if you don’t know what’s the right decision?”

“Then you still make a decision you think is right, and live with it,” Blake told them. “Live and learn,” she added before she could keep herself from saying such a corny line. “You have to live with it, so you can’t let others dictate your actions. In the end, you have to do what’s right. And yes, it helps if you don’t have too many potentially conflicting obligations. A Huntress isn’t beholden to the ruler of the Kingdom. We are free to fight the Grimm where we can. No one commands us.” Well, they still had to take missions to earn money, but that was different. But they weren’t soldiers bound to obey orders.

“Like a Hedge-Knight?” Bran asked. 

“Something like it, yes.” Blake wasn’t an expert on hedge knights, but they sounded close enough to Huntresses.

“Ah.” Arya nodded. “But without the knight’s oath.”

“No formal oath, no. But any good Huntress team will have principles and rules,” Blake replied. “And we’re adults, so we don’t have to obey our parents,” she added. Judging by the way both kids pouted, they had been thinking what she had suspected. “Alright,” she said, lifting Gambol Shroud. “Let’s continue your training.”

“Yes!” Arya charged her at once, and Blake disarmed her.

“You need to be a lot more sneaky than that,” she told the girl. “You can’t…” She trailed off as she saw Hunter moving towards them, followed by Nymeria.

Bran grinned. “Reinforcements have arrived!”

Blake clenched her teeth. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Dogs had no place in the training yard!

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake frowned as she crept along the narrow, partially crumbling tunnel. The city didn’t have a sewer system, but there were a lot of secret passages and tunnels, forgotten cellars and buried remains of former buildings. And according to what she had heard, many brothels had secret entrances to allow wealthy clients to enter and leave without being seen by anyone else.

The trick was finding them - and finding one that wasn’t guarded or had partially collapsed. Like this one, she added as she reached the end of it. It must have collapsed long ago and then had been partially filled from above. By Blake’s estimate, she was under the neighbouring building. Another dead end, then.

She adjusted the map she was drawing, made a few notes and headed back. Maybe she had to try the cellars of the adjacent buildings; there might be passages leading to the brothel. If she knew whether Lord Baelish owned any of those buildings, it would make it easier, of course. But the city archives were a mess, and if she started asking the clerks there for help, Lord Baelish would hear about it at once - he wouldn’t be able to own brothels without anyone at court knowing if he didn’t have someone taking care of the records.

So, legwork it was. At least, she was getting so familiar with the city’s underground, she doubted anyone else knew as much as she did by now.

She left the tunnel through an entrance hidden under an old barrel that once caught rainwater, after checking for witnesses, and then headed down the side alley. One tunnel down, two more to check.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and this is how you craft the spring.” Yang Xiao Long pointed at the piece of metal, then started bending it. “You need to widen the end just a bit here, so it fits.”

“Oh!” Gendry whistled, impressed by the simple design.

Mott, on the other hand, nodded as if he had already known that. He probably had - the old smith had been paying close attention to everything that Yang had worked on here. 

“So… with that, you can craft an alarm device that will alert you if someone tries to move it,” Yang said. “And one that’s not as easily disarmed as a bit of string and a bell.”

“It can still be disarmed, though,” Mott said.

“Sure. Nothing’s perfect. Not even I,” Yang grinned, though the way Gendry nodded was a bit weird - he knew she was joking about being perfect, not joking about not being perfect, right? She pushed the thought away. “Anyway, with a small casing, it’s pretty hard to disarm it. And then it can double as an alarm clock in the morning!”

“I wish you knew how to craft clocks, my lady,” Gendry said. “If we could do that…” He smiled wistfully.

Yang shrugged. “You probably can work that out yourself; you already know the basics.” She would have liked to help out more, but mechanical clocks hadn’t exactly been something she had paid attention to, back in her workshop back home. But he already knew that. “Besides, you’re already making pretty bank with the mousetraps, right?”

“They do sell nicely,” Gendry said, nodding.

“Others are already copying the design,” Mott grumbled. “It’s too simple.”

Yang shrugged again. That there was no patent office in Westeros wasn’t her fault either. Nor that Mott had forgotten to ask for a royal monopoly or whatever because he hadn’t thought that the trap would sell. Hah! Whether on Westeros or back home, new gadgets always sold!

“Well, I also know a more complicated design, but I don’t know how a trap that catches the mouse alive will sell,” Yang said.

“Why would you want to catch the mouse alive, my lady?” Gendry asked, though Mott looked surprised as well.

Because my little sister didn’t want the cute little mice to die. Yang didn’t say that, of course - this wasn’t Remnant; mice were not just a minor pest here. “Some people like to feed them to their pet snakes,” she said instead.

Now both were looking at her as if she had just told them they practised blood sacrifices or something back home. 

“Pet snakes?” Gendry looked appalled.

“Were there many who kept snakes to milk them for their venom?” Mott asked.

“Ah… I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Most pet snakes weren’t venomous. Some people just like snakes.”

Gendry shuddered.

“Anyway, those are alarm devices.” Not quite as complex as the ones Yang and Ruby had made for their team - you didn’t spill that secret so thieves could steal their gear - but better than anything else here, at least, according to Mott, and he knew his stuff. “But you can combine that with traps, of course!” She grinned again. “Traps that catch thieves. Alive.”

“We’ve heard of your paint traps,” Mott said.

“Everyone did - it was part of the latest sermon at the Great Sept,” Gendry added. “Those who steal from the Maiden shall be marked for all to see,” he said in a deep voice.

Yang blinked. They were preaching about that? “Ah… It’s not really… magic,” she said. “Or, ah, divine. It’s just a trap. A mechanical trap.”

Gendry nodded. “Of course, my lady. It’s a metaphor. It’s just paint for the body, but those who steal are still marked in their souls. A stain that cannot be washed off, only atoned for.”

Yang grimaced. “Yeah, that’s… kinda going far.” Atoning? What did they mean? Maybe she should visit one of those sermons. Although if they went on for hours, as last time, she would struggle not to fall asleep…

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Yang! What an honour to have one of the Seven’s Chosen visit us again!” The High Septon - Gendry had talked about him so much, Yang couldn’t have forgotten his title if she had wanted to - bowed deeply. More deeply than she thought possible since he was as fat as Professor Port and not nearly as agile - apparently, just the short rush to meet them had made him breathe hard.

“Ah, don’t pay attention to me. Just do what you usually do,” Yang said. 

“Of course! Your humility does you proud, Lady Yang!” And another bow followed before he turned and bellowed: “Make way for the Maiden!”

Yang winced. “I’m not the Maiden,” she said, though she doubted anyone was listening.

“No, but you are one of the Four Maidens, Her chosen.” Well, except for Gendry.

Yang winced again. She wanted to correct him, but she also knew that they had to step lightly here - some people were still whispering that they were evil witches; Blake and Weiss hadn’t managed to find out who was spreading the rumours now that Cersei was gone. And if people started doubting Team RWBY, it could end badly for their friends. So she sighed and followed the septon to the front benches. And tried to ignore all the whispers and gasps and bows and calls for blessings. And more gasps and thank yous when she waved her hand at them as if that actually did something.

Maybe she shouldn’t have decided to attend the sermon today. But she couldn’t leave now.

So she sat on the bench with as much grace as she managed - and she could manage a lot - and watched as there was a brief, whispered scene between the High Septon and his underlings.

“It looks like the High Septon will do the sermon today, in your honour, my lady,” Gendry whispered from her side.

“Yeah, I gathered that,” she whispered back.

“Of course, my lady!”

Then the sermon began, and Yang quickly had to strain to keep smiling. All the stuff about the blessings of the Seven, that she had expected, but all the stuff about the Blessed by the Seven? The Four Maidens? The Chosen of the Seven?

And everyone was watching her - people were craning their necks to look at her. One blonde guy who looked familiar - where had she seen him? Must have been at court - was all but standing to watch her. Usually, she didn’t mind attention - hell, she was hot and had nothing to hide - but this was a bit much. No, more than a bit much.

“...and we shall follow their example, uphold what’s good and just, and fight what’s corrupt and evil, in the name of the Seven-Who-Are-One, and led by the Four Maidens!”

Yang blinked and glanced at Gendry. He was watching attentively, but a light touch from her elbow had him look at her. “What’s that about ‘fighting’?” she asked in a whisper.

“That’s the daily struggle in our lives. Not actual fighting with weapons, my lady,” he whispered back.

That was good. Yang let out a breath of relief.

The last thing Team RWBY needed or wanted was some people starting fights in their name.

*****

 

Chapter 26: Doubts

‘One aspect that modern readers - and sometimes even scholars, who definitely should know better - often miss when considering the events of the Succession in greater depth is that even back in those times, logistics decided wars. The layperson might be prone to think that knights and footmen did not need much in the way of supplies, being able to live off the land, often based on popular tales, but nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, small bands of men-at-war could live off the land - provided that no army had already plundered the countryside or the rulers of the territory hadn't taken measures to secure or deny the supplies to their enemies - but a sizeable force, one able to lay siege to even a small castle, could not last long without either moving into new territories or having a secure supply train. And, as anyone who has ever used horse-drawn wagons can attest to, supplying any force overland, far from the sea or rivers, is in itself a very costly operation. The greater the distance to cover, the greater is the need for feed for the draft animals used to pull the wagons - there is a point where the entirety of a wagon would be needed to supply the feed for the draft animal, which, unless you are transporting draft animals, presented a hard limit to how far forces could project power from secure ports. So, a kingdom waging war did not only need trained soldiers, but an organised support system as well to move and supply them. And for most areas far from the shore or navigable rivers and not blessed with a rich country able to supply armies moving through it, that meant strategically placed depots. Depots, which, of course, were the primary targets of an attacking force and were generally prepared to be burnt rather than surrendered to an enemy. That, of course, meant that it didn't matter nearly as much how many men-at-arms a realm could muster but how many and where it could supply them - and that a well-organised and prepared smaller but better supplied force could, if well handled, defeat a much larger force. At least in theory.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Stoney Sept, Riverlands, Westeros, 298 AC

…and I saw Lady Yang in the Sept. Her hair shone like gold with the blessings of the Seven while she prayed. Her golden gauntlets gleamed with power while the High Septon gave a sermon, and I've never felt more protected and at peace than then. Even the shame my cousins brought on our House was not felt while I basked in her radiance. Whatever worry I felt was gone - as long as the Four Maidens stood at the King's side, everything would be alright. I've seen them rip open the very Earth with their steps and smash castle walls with their fists. Blessed by the Seven-Who-Are-One, none can stand against them.

“Tywin, are you sure that you want to continue?” Kevan Lannister asked, looking up from the letter in front of him. “What Lancel writes here…” He trailed off. His eldest son had never been the brightest boy, but he wasn't an idiot either, and all his letters praising this ‘Team Ruby’ read as if written by him - Kevan was familiar with his son's writing style. 

“Yes.” His brother nodded, briefly pausing his own writing. “As much as I would like to dismiss those claims about magic or divine power as fabrications and mummers’ tricks, there are too many reports for that.”

Such as Tyrion's, Kevan thought. He didn't say it - Tywin’s views of his second son were… complicated, and the death of Jaime and the banishment of Cersei hadn't improved matters at all - but the boy was smart and had a decent head on his shoulders (unless Tywin was involved). Tyrion wasn't one to be easily fooled by tricks. Still… “But what if it's a trap?” Kevan asked. 

Tywin scoffed. “Lord Stark is far too honourable for that.”

“He is but one man at court,” Kevan pointed out. “There are others who intend our family ill. Such as the Red Viper.”

Tywin scoffed again. “After the King's death, he is on thin ice. And I am not as easily poisoned as Robert.”

Kevan knew that as well, but he still thought it was too dangerous for Tywin to travel to King's Landing. The King poisoned, Jaime and Cersei disgraced, the legitimacy of the royal children questioned… It was obvious that the court was under the sway of people who wished the Lannisters ill. But his brother was stubborn and prideful, and he would not be called a coward for avoiding King's Landing, no matter how dangerous the court would turn out to be. “At least take more guards with you.”

“We have more guards in King's Landing than with us, and they could not protect our family,” Tywin retorted. “To wait for more would add an intolerable delay. I missed my son's trial and death; I will not waste any more time out of fear. If you would believe the reports from Pycelle and the others, then not even all our banners would be enough to stop those maidens.”

“You doubt that?”

“Of course. Pycelle might not be as addled by age as he acts, but he is not familiar with war. It's clear as day that those reports are exaggerated; no doubt spooked by watching real magic instead of a mummer's deception.”

Kevan's eyes widened. “So, you believe what Varys wrote? That they are witches from the lands beyond Essos?” The Spymaster had been circumspect, with tidbits of information semi-hidden in his condolences, but the meaning was clear as day.

“I do not care where they are from, only what they intend to accomplish here,” Tywin replied. “They have seduced Stark and then the King to enter the court, and when the King died, they installed themselves as the protectors of the Royal family and personally killed both my strongest knight and then my son so they could not do their duty and protect our kin, leaving Joffrey weakened and dependent on them. Coupled with their reported influence in the Faith, and our rivals already moving against us, they could easily doom Joffrey's claim merely by withdrawing their support.”

“It seems clear what their intentions are,” Kevan said carefully. “Marry Joffrey and become the power behind the weakened throne.”

“That would be obvious, and yet - why move against Jaime and Cersei? They had the King seduced already. People were offering marriages to them - Tyrion not only mentioned that but proposed a match with our family - yours, to be exact, though I am sure he wouldn't have minded to offer himself, had he seen the slightest chance they would accept!” Tywin spat. 

And, obviously, Tywin would have seen that as a disgrace. Kevan held his tongue and nodded in apparent agreement. His brother was grieving for his eldest son. And, he couldn't help thinking, for the reputation of their House, which had suffered a near-mortal blow.

“So, I will travel on to King's Landing to take the measure of those ‘Maidens’ myself. And show that I am not afraid of them,” Tywin went on. “Meanwhile, you will return to Casterly Rock and prepare to call our banners. Stock supplies, prepare the roads - we need to be ready to move faster than anyone else if we are to survive this.”

Kevan nodded firmly. “Prepare to, yet not actually call the banners.” 

“Yes.” Tywin went back to studying the parchment in front of him.

Kevan bit his lower lip for a moment, hesitating. His brother was angrier than he had been in a long time. With good cause, of course. And that meant he had even less tolerance for anything that annoyed him. Or anyone. But Kevan knew his duty as Tywin's brother. He should have asked before, but… Alright, he hadn't gathered the courage to do so, and now his time was running out. “What about Cersei?”

Tywin glared at him, lips pressed together, forming a thin, almost white line, eyes narrowed to slits. He knew what Kevan meant. “I will not dignify that slander with a response.”

So, that was how it would be. Kevin nodded. Tywin would avenge this slight, but not right now. Not when they both lacked knowledge of what exactly they were facing and were not ready for a war. With the Stormlands and the North as well as Dorne arranged against them, their only chance in a war would be to be faster with mustering their forces and strike before the others were ready. Fortunately, the North was too far away to play a role for months and could not spare too many soldiers to begin with. And Dorne was closer, yet their armies were smaller. In a war with the Stormlands, the Westerlanders would win, Kevan was sure of that. But Lord Renly was close to the Tyrells, close enough for Kevan to expect a marriage with Lord Tyrell's eldest daughter to be announced any day, and the Reach could muster more knights and footmen than any other kingdom. Mace Tyrell was a buffoon, as his actions in the Rebellion proved, but if he relied on Tarly to command his army, the Westerlands would be hard pressed indeed, even with the advantage of striking first, to win this war. And if the Riverlands and the Vale honoured the alliance with the North, even if they somehow managed to fight every army by itself, without the others supporting them, it would still take a miracle to win against them.

Kevan hoped Tywin had a plan that would take everything into account and would prevent the worst turns. His brother was shrewd and cunning, but if his pride was pricked… Well, Kevan would do his duty anyway. If Tywin failed, it would not be because Kevan had failed him. “Please give Lancel my regards.” It would have been good to see his eldest son again, especially in these dangerous times, but Kevan went where Tywin needed him.

Tywin nodded, though he didn't smile.

Just as Kevan knew he would.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So… the creepy red-witch-priestess-woman asked how to ‘help’ us. And is visiting the library.” Ruby Rose wished she had a whiteboard and actual crayons. Or just a decent sheet of paper. She could think better if she could make a quick sketch during a brainstorming meeting.

She made a mark on the large board Yang had bought in the city and scratched ‘M’ above it with a piece of chalk. In Remnant's alphabet, of course.

“She's a friend of Lord Stannis.” Ruby made another mark and placed a line between them before labelling it ‘S’.

“Whether or not that is still the case is somewhat in doubt according to the latest news,” Weiss added. “She arrived with him and stayed with his entourage at first, but she hasn't been seen with him lately, at least not in public.”

Oh. Ruby nodded and added a question mark to the line.

“Are or were they lovers?” Yang asked.

“There's no trustworthy source of information about that,” Weiss said.

“I haven't sneaked up to Lord Stannis's quarters yet,” Blake said. “Should I?”

Ruby shook her head.. “No. We don't know what kinda magic Melisandre can do.”

“If she can do any magic,” Yang said with a snort.

“I've asked around,” Weiss said. “She has impressed Lord Stannis to think she can do magic, according to a few of his retainers, and he is not a man who's easily fooled. I think we need to assume that she can do magic.”

“Fire magic?” Ruby asked. “She's a Red Priestess, and the other priest loves to fight with a burning sword. And she mentioned fire for her magic.”

“It would be best to assume the worst, so yes,” Weiss said.

Yang snorted again. “A bit of fire won't hurt us. We've got Aura.”

“Magic fire might be able to hurt us,” Blake pointed out. “We have never encountered magic, so we don't know what it does.”

Ruby nodded. That was a good point.

“We fought those ice zombies,” Yang said, “Their magic wasn't much.”

“The Others,” Weiss corrected her. “Though we cannot assume that fire magic would be the same. Supposedly, the magic the red priests use is granted by their god, R’hllor. That sounds more powerful than the magic the Others used.”

Ruby nodded. That was also a good point.

Yang shrugged. “Well, maybe this R'hllor is just a fire variant of the ice zombie king? We took down that one easily enough.”

“Would you bet our lives on that assumption?” Weiss raised her eyebrows with a sniff.

“No one's betting any lives on anything!” Ruby cut in. “We'll assume the worst and train for it.” She blinked. “Well, as well as we can train for something we don't know anything about.” How did you train to fight a fire priest? Learn to dodge flame throwers? Dodge arrows and bullets just made of fire? They already could do that. Maybe assume the fire would explode? Dodge grenades?

“We could ask Melisandre for a spar,” Yang suggested with a grin.

“I don't think she would agree - and if she did, I don't think she would show her power, or most of it. People distrust her precisely because she is a red priestess,” Weiss said. “Granted, part of that is because R'hllor is a foreign god, but part is that she's seen as a foreign witch.”

“We could ask the other red priest,” Ruby said. “The guy with the flaming sword.”

“Thoros.” 

“Thanks, Weiss!” Ruby beamed at her partner. She knew so much about the nobles and the court here! “So, we could ask him about this.”

“Or the Maesters. You said they seemed afraid of Melisandre,” Blake said. “They probably know something about her powers then.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded. “We'll ask them as well. The more we know, the better. Anyway, that's Melisandre. We don't know yet much, and, most importantly, we don't know if she really wants to help us or not.”

“Or if she wishes us ill,” Weiss said. “We need to be on our guard.”

Weiss didn't have to tell Ruby that - she was always on guard around that woman. “So… that's Melisandre,” she went on. “Next: Lord Baelish.”

“The Pimp,” Yang added while Ruby made another mark on the board followed by a ‘B’. 

“He's the Master of Coin and controls the treasury,” Weiss said. “And probably the only one who knows where and how the gold is flowing. I think we can safely assume that he is skimming from the top as well, but we don't know how much.”

“He doesn’t just own brothels, Blake added. “He has other investments.”

“And he is a childhood friend of Lady Catelyn, which grants him ties to Lord Stark, and her sister, the regent of House Arryn,” Weiss said. “Not to mention all the influence his money and position grant him.”

Ruby nodded and marked ‘Gold’ down on the board as well as two lines to Stark and Arryn, which she also had to draw. They were making progress. “We don't know what he wants, either. But he offered to give us information about the court.”

Weiss sniffed. “He is not as subtle as he thinks he is. And he is as trustworthy as a crimelord from Vacuo.”

“Or Torchwick,” Ruby added.

“Or Junior.” Yang grinned.

“Anyway, we don’t know what he wants - except more money, of course - but we know we can’t trust him,” Ruby said.

“People like him are never content with their wealth. They always want more,” Weiss said with a grim expression.

Ruby winced a little. That sounded a bit personal for her partner. Which usually meant it was about her dad. Weiss’s family was really bad.

“Well, if we can’t trust him, can we reveal his side business to Lord Eddard?” Yang asked as she stretched her arms over her head.

“That might be a bit pre-emptive,” Weiss said. “We also have to consider that revealing his activities, respectively his dismissal as a consequence thereof, might upset the realm’s government at a critical moment - I’ve heard that there’s some tension over loans involving the Lannisters.”

“Then we don’t reveal his, ah, business,” Ruby said. “We don’t want to do more damage to the kingdom. Unless he’s abusing women.”

“I’ll look into his other brothels,” Blake said.

“In any case, he can’t really do much more damage,” Yang said. “The realm seems pretty torn up already from what you tell us.”

“Things can always get worse,” Weiss said. “If the economy collapses, civil war usually follows. Or anarchy, although in a civil war, society tends to break down anyway.”

Right. War or anarchy, either would be very, very bad.“So, no telling on Baelish. Not until we know more,” Ruby said.

“A lot more. If we want to ensure that he can be replaced without plunging the realm into chaos as the finances of the court are ruined, we need to know not only how he has spread his wealth, but whether and how much he has stolen from the treasury - and how much of it can be recovered,” Weiss said.

“We’ll have to decipher his books for that,” Blake said. “I will have to break into his offices for that and use my scroll to take pictures.”

“And, as far as I can tell based on my talks with nobles, there’s no standard bookkeeping system in Westeros. Some use the ‘Braavos Book’ method, which seems very similar to what we use at home, but we cannot count on that. And we have to expect forged entries and receipts, even inventories.” Weiss shook her head. “To be honest, this is a major undertaking which will likely take a long time and a lot of effort.”

It sounded very complicated to Ruby. “Doesn’t the King - or Hand - have people who can do that?”

“The goldcloaks are either inept or corrupt, according to Gendry and Mott,” Yang said. “Which means the competent ones are corrupt, and three guesses who is the most likely guy to pay them off…”

Lord Baelish. Ruby sighed.

“If we can’t do this, exposing him is still a viable alternative,” Blake spoke up. “It’s better than letting him get away with this - corruption is something that hurts everyone, directly or indirectly. It poisons a kingdom.”

“If it becomes ingrained, people tend to get used to the practice,” Weiss (probably) disagreed. “But if a government goes bankrupt, the effects are horrible. Although with the way most money in Westeros - at least the money most people use - is based on precious metal, it might not be as bad as it would be back home. But if the court loses the money needed to exert its authority, the realm might fracture as the various kingdoms start settling their differences with war instead of royal rulings.” She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I still think we have to know as much as possible before we take action against Lord Baelish.”

“Alright, let’s just look for more information. Take the pictures, Blake, if you can,” Ruby said. They had to save the lightning dust to recharge their scrolls, but it was obviously necessary to use it in this case. “But if he is forcing women into his brothels…” Ruby shook her head. “We can’t tolerate that.”

“We could do something about that without exposing him,” Yang said, baring her teeth. “I’ve got some experience with busting clubs and bars.”

Ruby blinked. 

“That would expose us,” Weiss said.

“Not if we do it subtly!” Yang grinned.

“I don’t think you know the meaning of that word,” Weiss commented in a dry voice.

Yang frowned. “I can do subtle.”

“We can arrange something, I think, should it be necessary,” Blake said. 

“A bit of arson - clubs and bars are very flammable,” Yang said. “If we’re around to help, no one should get hurt.”

That still seemed a bit dangerous to Ruby. If they had to use their limited Water dust… But it was better than letting people suffer in those brothels. She shuddered. “Alright, we can hash out what we do if we know more.” That kinda summed up the entire Baelish problem.

“So, that’s Lord Baelish. What about…” Ruby checked her notes. “...Varys?” She made another mark and scratched ‘V’ above it.

“I’m tracking his network of contacts, but it is going slowly,” Blake said. “And I have even more trouble cracking his communications than with Baelish. He is using his mute couriers to pass on messages they write down after arriving. Messages that are likely encoded as well. So…” She shook her head. “We don’t know what he is doing. We only know he is in contact with Essos. And he is using children who had their tongues cut out.”

Ruby scowled and shuddered. How sick did you have to be to do that to anyone? Least of all to little children!

“So…” Blake went on. “We might want to look into that from the other side. Check where those children are from. Are they local? Or sent here from another kingdom? Or from Essos?”

“How can we do that without travelling?” Yang asked. “Are you suggesting we split up?”

“We won’t!” Ruby blurted out. “We have to stick together!”

“Yes,” Blake agreed. “But we might have to hire people to look into this. Well, maybe not hiring…” She grinned. “I have an idea.”

“Oh?” Ruby cocked her head to the side. 

Blake nodded. “So, according to Yang, we’re pretty popular in certain circles…”

“And I don’t mean the boys’ locker rooms this time!”

“Yang!” Ruby glared at her sister, feeling her cheeks heat up. That was a joke too far… or whatever. “Let Blake talk!”

“Lighten up, sis, I’m just joking.”

Blake cleared her throat. “As I was saying…”

*****

“...and while it is a bit of a challenge to avoid exposing our involvement, I think we can do it.”

Weiss Schnee nodded when Blake finished her proposal. “It’s a sound course of action.” Much better than ‘let’s set fire to brothels’, but that went without saying. Really, it was a wonder that Yang hadn’t proposed to wear suits of armour as a disguise and raid the brothels!

“Yes. I think we can do that.” Ruby nodded. “But Varys is the realm’s ‘spymaster’. Can he be replaced easily?”

“No,” Weiss replied at once. “He will have ensured that he is irreplaceable - he served the Mad King and then continued serving King Robert even though King Robert had led a rebellion against the Mad King. That alone proves how entrenched he is.”

“Or how loyal,” Yang commented with a snort.

Weiss nodded. Many of the best intelligence operatives in leading positions ensured their own safety as well. Father had told her that, and Winter had, if more than a bit reluctantly and while assuring her that this wasn’t the case in Atlas, confirmed it. “I asked around; there is no organisation like the Kingsguard, with continuity beyond the tenure of individual members. It’s basically a personal operation of Varys.” Which was an insane way to run essential departments of a state.

“So… if he gets fired - or jailed, depending on what he knew - the kingdom loses its spy network?” Ruby asked.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. Ruby understood the severity of this.

“Would that be bad?”

Or not. “Yes,” Weiss said, nodding emphatically. “The country would be rendered blind to both external and internal threats.”

“But are there such threats?” Ruby asked.

“Someone poisoned the King,” Weiss reminded her.

Ruby blushed a little. “Alright, but Varys didn’t prevent that - and didn’t find the poisoner either. So… Is that an existential threat to the realm?”

Weiss scowled. Her partner had a point. “Perhaps not. Especially with us present to provide a deterrence to internal and external enemies. But we cannot assume that Varys is ineffective.”

“We can’t assume that he is effective, either, though,” Ruby said with a grin. “And we don’t know if he is even working for the kingdom, or just for himself.”

Another good point.

“So!” Ruby nodded. “Let’s mark him down as non-essential.” She scratched ‘NE’ next to the mark for Varys - long nights studying with her partner had resulted in Weiss being able to decipher her handwriting.

She clapped her hands together. “So, next - the Baratheons. Lord Renly and Lord Stannis.” She made another mark. “I don’t know if they’re threats, but they really want to replace Joffrey. And we kinda are in their way.”

Weiss nodded. She had no doubt that without the presence of Team RWBY, Joffrey and his siblings would have met an untimely end already. 

“So, they’re threats,” Yang said.

“Not to us,” Weiss said. “And they know that.”

“But they are a threat to Prince Joffrey,” Blake added.

“And to Lord Lannister. Who is likely to be a threat - although more to the stability of the realm than to us,” Weiss said. “We need to meet with him and find out where he stands. If Prince Joffrey and his siblings are to survive our eventual departure, they will need a power base of their own.” The crownlands were supposed to represent that, but with the legitimacy of the Prince being undermined by Lord Renly and Lord Stannis, their loyalty was questionable. And Team RWBY couldn’t just leave if that meant abandoning those children to such a fate.

Ruby and Blake nodded, but Yang seemed confused.

“Is there a problem, Yang?” Ruby asked before Weiss could.

Yang grimaced. “Well… I just had a thought. Does anyone else think we sound as if we’re planning to run the kingdom?”

Weiss blinked. Oh. That was… More accurate than she liked.

“Oh, no, you’re right!” Ruby blurted out.

Where had they gone wrong? Weiss asked herself. “We can't take over the kingdom!” she said. “We're here to find a way back - we will leave and return home as soon as we can. If the kingdom depended on us, we would doom it by leaving.” And they had to go home. Their friends and families were waiting for them! And modern amenities! And a society where she wasn't expected to marry a man and let him decide her life for her!

“But many people already depend on us,” Ruby pointed out. “Like the Prince and his siblings. We can't just leave them to their fate!”

“We can't just abandon our own families either,” Weiss said. Well, she could abandon the majority of her family, but not Winter. “And we have responsibilities back home as well.” She was the heiress of SDC, and if she didn't return, Whitley would replace her - he might have already done so, if she had been declared dead in the meantime - and he would continue to ruin her grandfather's legacy just as Father had. And hurt countless people.

Ruby bit her lower lip and looked guilty, and Yang seemed to be torn, though Blake frowned, then smiled wryly. “We'll have to decide what course of action will do the least harm, then.”

“We can't stay here indefinitely,” Weiss insisted. They couldn't! She wouldn't!

“We won't. But we haven't found a way back yet, so we can't leave anyway. But we can't take the realm over either!” Ruby shook her head. “It's not our country - it's not even our world! It wouldn't be right!”

“Does that mean you'd be OK with taking over a kingdom if it were in Remnant?” Yang asked.

“What? No!” Ruby shook her head so fast, her hair almost whipped around her. “No taking over kingdoms!”

Weiss scoffed. As if they could take over a kingdom back home! “We can't ensure that the prince and his siblings are safe and have a sufficiently strong power base to rule the realm without actually running the realm at least for a bit,” she said. That was elementary.

“Then we need to run the realm,” Ruby said, raising her chin a bit in that stubborn way of hers. “But only for a bit, until they’re safe.”

Weiss sighed, but she should have expected this.

“We don't actually have to run the realm,” Blake said. “As long as we have enough influence on everyone to keep them from starting a war.”

“You want to become the power behind the throne?” Yang grinned.

“We already are the power behind the throne,” Weiss corrected her friend. “We represent the most powerful military force in the entire realm.” And the locals were aware of that.

“But we don't want to be the power behind the throne!” Ruby said. “We wouldn't even be talking about this if the locals weren't so… so…” She trailed off.

“...so local?” Yang suggested with a twisted grin.

Ruby pointed at her. “Yes!” Then she turned to address Weiss and Blake as well. “We won't take over the realm!”

“We already have,” Weiss said. “We need to work on handing it over to someone else.”

Which was easier said than done, of course. Not that that would stop Ruby and Yang. Or Blake.

Weiss sighed. It wasn’t that they were wrong, but it was still annoying to be forced to sort out this mess. If she didn't love her friends…

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Ruby! Lady Weiss! Lady Blake! Lady Yang! What an honour!”

Weiss bowed her head together with the others at the High Septon’s greeting. Around them, everyone was bowing as well. Some even fell to their knees. Maybe they should have gone with Blake’s suggestion and sneaked in through the backdoor - or window, in this case - at night to the High Septon’s quarters… No! That was something people only did in those lewd and trashy ninja books Blake loved to read. 

They didn’t have to sneak into the building like thieves if they could just walk in and ask for a private meeting - Weiss had no doubt that the High Septon would agree at once. Whether he genuinely believed that they were blessed by his gods or not, he would be eager to use this to boost his own status.

A moment later, she was proven right when the High Septon invited them into his study upon Ruby’s request.

A study, Weiss noted with a trained eye a minute later, when they stepped into it, that was very luxuriously furnished. Whatever the local faith taught about humility, the High Septon certainly seemed exempt from it. Well, his corpulent body already proved that he did not suffer from excessive ascetism.

But as long as he helped them, Weiss couldn’t care less about such details. Most humans craved creature comforts.

It took another few minutes to have everyone seated and supplied with expensive tea - and hot milk with honey for Ruby. Not as long as Weiss would have expected it to take, but she wasn’t going to question it.

“So… how can I help the Blessed By the Seven, my lady?”

“Ah!” Ruby nodded, set her cup down and licked the adorable milk moustache her beverage had left on her face off. “We’ve got a problem, and we think the Faith can help us.”

The High Septon looked surprised for a moment, then nervous before appearing eager. “Your wishes are our commands, my lady.”

Ruby nodded again. “Good. Anyway, we’ve found out that there are a lot of children in the city who have had their tongues cut off.”

The High Septon’s shock seemed genuine. Weiss wasn’t sure if she should count that in his favour, for not condoning or ignoring such atrocities, or against him for being ignorant of this. “What?”

“Dozens,” Blake spoke up. “And they live together - and work together.”

The man’s eyes widened. “Dozens? Then… that’s not a coincidence. That’s… Are you saying that someone deliberately gathered such children? Mutilated them?”

The man was sharper than he looked. Weiss nodded. “Exactly. As far as we know, they’re not local children who were captured and then maimed - they must have been brought here, though we don’t know from where.”

“Maimed children… Children with their tongues cut off. In those numbers?” The man shook his head. “I cannot believe that this could be done in Westeros. Maybe the Wildlings, or the Mountain Men, I heard some of them mutilate themselves as a sign of courage or such. But… My first guess would be Essos. Slavers would have no qualm to do such on demand, and the children would have been brought up from birth to accept such a fate - or were maimed as toddlers, never knowing or remembering what they lost.” He visibly shuddered.

Weiss nodded again. “That was what we thought as well. We would like to investigate ourselves, but we cannot abandon King’s Landing and sail off. But we thought that if some trusted followers of the Seven were travelling to Essos anyway, they might be asked to investigate. Although it is a dangerous task - those people who would do such a thing would not hesitate to harshly deal with anyone caught asking questions.”

“So, if anyone wants to help, they should be sneaky and smart,” Ruby said.

“And cautious,” Blake added.

The High Septon nodded. “I can think of a few such men. They might not be the, ah, most devout, but they can be trusted, and they loathe slavery as much as anyone else of the Faith.” He smiled. “We shall not fail you, my ladies.”

“Thank you!” Ruby beamed at him, and Weiss smiled.

“Though… did you ask the Master of Whispers for help? He is originally from Essos and should have contacts there,” the High Septon asked.

Ruby grimaced. “Ah…”

Weiss’s smile shifted a little. “We would rather not involve him precisely because he has contacts in Essos.”

“Ah.” The man’s smile grew a little thin as well. Yeah, you didn’t rise to lead such a huge organisation as the local church by being stupid. “I will ask the men to be very cautious indeed, my ladies.”

“Thanks!”

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“You didn’t have to come with me,” Blake Belladonna whispered without taking her eyes off the building slightly below them.

“I had nothing better to do,” her partner replied. “And someone needs to drag you to bed in time.”

Blake snorted. “I knew it - this is just an excuse to get me into your bed.”

“Our bed, actually,” Yang replied. “Though yeah - don’t think I’ve been missing how you’re wearing yourself out trying to spy on everyone in the kingdom.”

“The city,” Blake corrected her before she could help it.

Yang snorted. 

Her partner had a great talent to appear carefree and even careless, but she was very sharp, Blake reminded herself. She had to do some damage control. Blake knew that she couldn’t really keep an eye on everyone in King’s Landing, but she was their best spy. Her Faunus senses made sneaking around at night and in the darkness far easier for her than for anyone else. “We need to know more,” she said, watching a fat man enter the brothel below with a nod to the bouncer outside. He looked a bit too affluent for the venue, but that didn’t mean anything. People had peculiar tastes when it came to sex; Blake knew that from her time in the White Fang.

“Yes. But we need you healthy and not working yourself to the bone,” Yang replied. “Lord Tywin will be here soon.”

Blake knew that as well - it was the reason she wanted to get everything she could on Baelish before she had to spy on the head of House Lannister as well; her team needed this information or they wouldn’t be able to make an informed decision about how to handle everything that threatened to go wrong here. “It’s an easy mission,” she said. She wasn’t lying - this brothel was a lot less protected against spies and other threats than the other ones that Lord Baelish owned, which made sense since it catered to poorer clients. Blake might not know as much as she needed about Lord Baelish’s plans, but she knew that he wasn’t the type to spend more money on his investments than he absolutely had to.

She was quite familiar with the type; they were very common amongst those who employed predominantly Faunus in Atlas and Mistral.

“Yep. So easy I could do it once I know where the building is,” Yang said.

Oh, really? Blake narrowed her eyes at her partner. “And how long until the building burned down?”

Yang, leaning against the chimney on the roof, hidden from view from everyone but Blake’s eyes by its shadow, grinned. “I am not that bad.”

“A fire could devastate the entire city,” Blake said. “They don’t have modern fire brigades here.” They didn’t have a dedicated fire brigade at all, actually.

“I know,” Yang said in her serious tone. “If a fire breaks out, we can handle it.”

Blake wasn’t quite so optimistic, but that was par for the course in their team. Ruby and Yang were the optimists, Weiss and Blake the… she liked to call them realists. But as long as Yang didn’t deliberately start a fire, they should be good.

And, speaking of good. “Did you talk to the others?”

“About you overworking yourself?” Yang cocked her head to the side. “No. That’s between us.”

Blake nodded. Good. Ruby would fuss over her, and Weiss… well, Weiss would probably make a few well-meaning but harsh comments, and then things would be awkward when she realised what she had said. “You can’t get as close as I can,” she said. “And you can’t hear them from as far as I can.”

“Yes,” Yang replied. “But this isn’t about spying on secret meetings. This is just about checking if people are being abused inside.” She flashed her teeth in a wide but humourless grin. “And they won’t bother hiding that kind of stuff much if they bother at all.”

Blake knew that as well. Some of the attitudes of the locals made her want to start hitting people.

“So… now that I know this spot, let’s check the others,” Yang said. “Then I can take over and you can get some sleep.”

That would free enough time so she could…

“And if you don’t go home to sleep, I’ll tell Ruby and Weiss,” Yang went on.

Blake glared at her, but her partner kept smiling.

“You do need to cut back some,” she said in a softer tone.

Blake pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t blurt out her first denial.

“Now… the other brothels?” Yang grinned again.

Blake sighed. “Follow me.” She turned and quickly moved to the edge of the roof, then jumped.

“Oh, roof hopping!” she heard Yang mutter behind her, followed by the sound of her partner landing on the roof. “Fun!”

Blake snorted and picked up the pace.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

From up close, the dragon skulls were impressive. At least the larger ones - the smaller ones weren’t that much bigger than an average Nevermore’s skull would be if Grimm left behind skulls instead of vanishing completely upon death. The largest was even larger than the Nevermore her team had killed at the Initiation. Still, with their current training, Blake was pretty sure that they would be able to kill even a dragon of that size.

Standing in the darkness of the cellars below the keep, Blake shook her head. The Targaryens had collected the skulls of their dragons, which was more than a little creepy. She could understand why King Robert had them moved to the cellars - it was a way to remove the presence of the old dynasty from the seat of the government - but a few of them would make great conversation pieces.

But she wasn’t here to stare at the remains of dead dragons. She was here to check out more potential passages. There were no traces on the dusty floor here that would indicate someone passing, which meant that knowledge of any secret passage might have been lost with the last Targaryen.

Or that there was no secret passage here, of course. But Blake would still check it. Briefly - Yang was helping out, but only if Blake slept more. So, she couldn’t take too long for such checks.

But she had to check, anyway. Not just to keep others from using such passages to escape notice, but also because if no one knew about such a passage, it would make sneaking around without having to dodge Varys’ spies easier.

And you never knew what you might find in such secret tunnels. She wouldn’t be surprised if the former kings had left some treasure in a secret chamber, just in case.

If only there weren’t so much to search…

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long suppressed a yawn while walking to the main part of the keep. It had gotten a bit late, last night, checking a few brothels. And she had nothing to show for her effort, either. The only people who had gotten hurt had been two rowdy customers who had been thrown out of one brothel - literally. Though their YangTime hadn’t been great…

She pressed her lips together as the memory of the knight she had accidentally killed returned. She had joked about YangTime then as well, after throwing him around. She shook her head. She was better than that. She wouldn’t do that anymore.

She shouldn’t have done it in the first place.

Sighing, she entered the great hall to grab some food to tide her over until lunch. Free food at all times was one of the nicer things here. Of course, it had drawbacks as well - if they had chocolate, Ruby would probably have overdosed long ago. Even so, she was eating enough honey cakes to put a strain on the beekeepers.

Yang grabbed a bread roll and a sausage for herself - one of the things you could eat without grilling it. Not quite a salami, but decent enough, though she sniffed at it first to check if it was the variant with that weird spice she didn’t like.

No, those were good. Oh - she grabbed another sausage when she spotted the Stark kids at a table with their wolves around them. Well, with the exception of Jon. He was probably brooding somewhere. Not that she could fault him for that. If she had found out that Dad wasn’t her dad, and that her mother was dead, and that some crazy prince was her father…

She shook her head again and walked over to the small group. Brienne was there as well. “Yo!”

“Lady Yang!”

“Lady Yang!”

“Yang!”

“Lady Yang!”

“Room for me?”

“Of course!”

She grinned and sat down, then quickly ripped the breadroll apart, put the sausage into it and closed it before biting into it. Not quite a sandwich, not really a hot dog, but it was good enough.

As she had expected, the three direwolves were already gathering around her.

“Lady! Don’t beg!” Lady Sansa snapped.

But her wolf, usually well behaved - for a dog; certainly for a wolf, if not as nice as Zwei - ignored her and stared at Yang’s meal.

Grinning, she pulled a piece of her second sausage off and fed it to her. And then she had to defend her own meal from the other two wolves before she could feed them the rest of the sausage.

No one complained about spoiling them, though. The local nobles liked their dogs, sometimes more than their people. And everyone liked the direwolves - now far bigger than any wolf, much less a dog - well-fed, Yang guessed. “So, what’s new?”

“Uh…” Bran blinked. “Nothing?”

“Jon’s still being stupid,” Arya complained. “He’s all sad and brooding, and he won’t tell me why.”

Ah. So Jon hadn’t told his siblings about his mother. That was to be expected, she guessed - they were little kids, after all. Though he could have told them that his mother was dead… no, then they would probably wonder why he hadn’t been told before. They were kids, but not dumb.

He’ll be back to normal brooding. Yang didn’t say that. “He just needs a bit of time.”

“You know why he’s so sad!” Bran all but accused her.

“Did he ask you to marry him, and you said no?” Arya leaned forward with a frown.

“Arya!” Lady Sansa hissed.

Yang snorted. “No. He did not. But if he did, I’d say no.”

Arya kept frowning at her, but that was nothing new.

“Are you planning to marry at all, my lady?” Brienne asked.

Was that fishing for information, or just curiosity? Either way, Yang had no reason to lie. “I’m not going to marry anyone until I’m back home.”

“With your father, right?” Bran asked.

“With my family and friends,” Yang gently corrected him. “Not that Dad could get me to marry anyone or stop me from marrying anyone I want.” It wasn’t as if that was a secret any more.

Arya sighed. “I wish I were as powerful as you are. I wouldn’t have to marry anyone either then!”

Once again, Yang was tempted to tease the girl - she had been trying to play matchmaker for Jon - but that would be cruel as well. “You shouldn’t have to marry anyone, regardless of how strong you are,” she said instead.

“Father doesn’t agree.” Arya pouted.

Lady Sansa looked as if she wanted to comment, but she stayed quiet. But Yang could tell that she had to make an effort.

“My father has given up on trying to find a husband for me,” Lady Brienne said. She sounded… Yang couldn’t tell if she was sad about it, but she certainly wasn’t happy about it.

“You don’t want to marry and have to, and you want but can’t?” Bran asked, looking at both.

“Bran!” Lady Sansa glared at him.

Yang suppressed a grin even though his grimace was funny. But the situation wasn’t funny for Arya and Brienne.

“Can I come with you when you go back to your world?” Arya suddenly said. “Then I wouldn’t have to marry!”

“Arya!”

Yang winced. She could tell Arya that she might want to marry someone in a few years, once she hit puberty, but that would be patronising. And Arya deserved better than that. “We don’t know how we can return, yet. And whether people can come with us.” What had Ruby heard from that priestess? “It might have been that we were moved here for something, and once we do it, we get transported back - just us.” Yang didn’t think so, but it was possible.

“You can’t leave like that!” Lady Sansa protested. “We’re your family!”

“I’ll have to leave you anyway once I marry and have to live with a husband,” Arya retorted. “I could as well leave early!”

“Arya! You can’t do this! You have a duty towards our family!”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not done!”

Yang winced again. That wasn’t the best argument. But she also thought about Arya’s question. They had talked about this amongst Team RWBY, but mostly in general terms. What if someone wanted to visit Remnant and then return to Westeros later? What if they got weapons in Remnant, or if they brought Huntresses with them, or if a Grimm could follow them…

While the two girls bickered, she thought about the problem. She had a feeling that Arya wasn’t the only one who would like to go to Remnant instead of staying here. Especially the women.

*****

 

Chapter 27: Lord Lannister

‘To understand just how different the Ruby Order's view of what family meant was compared to their contemporaries, one has to take a look at not merely the ideals of the time as passed on through various works and songs, but how it worked out in reality. Every child knows about the taboo on kinslaying, but few of them ever realise that for all the materials condemning it, and all the records listing such actions as unforgivable, kinslaying was quite common throughout history for too often, someone wishing to advance their rank and increase their power found that the closest obstacle or rival was their kin. As one would expect after even briefly studying the history of noble houses, most kinslayers merely acted through intermediaries and proxies, simply hid their actions or denied them despite evidence to the contrary. Who could say if a captured nobleman truly chose death over dishonour? Or if an inconvenient heir truly died from sickness? When public opinion and a loss of reputation are the only means of enforcing a custom, those who can avoid or deceive the public eye rarely adhere to it once it is no longer advantageous for them. And it goes without saying that the definition of what exactly constituted ‘kin’ also varied throughout history and often depended on what an ambitious noble felt most comfortable with. 

On the other hand, it would be foolish to dismiss blood and marriage ties as merely performative, either. Many heeded the Faith's rulings in such matters, even if they might disagree with them - and many didn't disagree in the first place. If most people didn't love or, at least, care for their kin, marriage alliances would never have become common. And one also has to consider that most nobles, and most smallfolk, didn't have the means to kill a family member without being exposed for it. Nevertheless, with even such a central taboo not quite as absolutely enforced as naive students might think, it shouldn't surprise anyone that, especially when it came to the most powerful nobles of the era, the Lord Paramounts, Wardens and members of the Royal dynasty, even those who loved their kin would value their family's power over the individual wishes of their family and treated their lower-ranking kin as assets of their own power base. The child of a noble family, no matter their rank, was expected to marry according to the wishes of the head of the family.

In contrast, the Ruby Order valued self-determination far above the interests of family or clan. In fact, many scholars consider them to be the first who considered people as individuals instead of members of a family or Clan, even though the claim that their home kingdom had fought a war over such matters is obviously apocryphal, invented to stress just how far they would go to support their ideals - something that, obviously would affect a great many nobles.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Lord Tywin Lannister didn't show any reaction as he entered King's Landing at the head of his guards, but he paid attention to the reaction of the smallfolk in the streets - and he didn't miss the sneers that appeared on their faces when they thought he wouldn't notice. He knew he was not liked by the rabble living here, but on his last visit, the scum had been too cowed to show such disrespect. No one dared to openly mock him, so his reputation had not fallen that far, but it was still unacceptable.

He would have to rectify that and impress on the smallfolk that a Lannister always paid his debts.

The city hadn't changed, he also noted when his party made its way to the Red Keep. The stench was the same, the smallfolk crowding its streets were the same, and the goldcloaks were the same as well, bowing to their betters and pushing the scum out of Tywin's way. So much for the Messengers of the Seven walking the streets!

They reached the Red Keep and, to his mild but welcome surprise, were greeted by Lannister guards.

“Welcome, Lord Tywin!” their leader said, bowing his head.

“Ser Hyle.” Tywin acknowledged him with a nod. He was a bastard of a distant cousin, but a skilled and dependable one. And he was nervous. “I expected the Keep to be guarded by Northmen and Stormlanders.”

“There was some… shuffling in the schedules, but we maintain our strength here, my lord. And we serve Prince Joffrey.”

Good. He nodded again and led his party into the courtyard. Tyrion had written to him about the guards having stayed, but Tywin knew better than to accept it without confirming it himself. His son - his only son, now, he clenched his teeth - was a wastrel prone to spending his life in brothels and taverns, and his letters were filled with such fancy news, only a fool would trust his word. It made no sense that the Baratheon brothers and Lord Eddard had kept the Lannister guards in the keep - they should have removed them and taken over the entire keep with their forces. That they had not done so suggested other factors were at play. Either a split within their front, making them hope to ally with Tywin's house against the others - or the reports about those four maidens hadn't exaggerated their power as much as Tywin assumed.

He dismounted from his war horse in the middle of the courtyard, handing the reins to the closest guard of his while he looked around. A Northman was already walking towards him. Tywin recognised his face but did not recall his name.

“My lord!” The man bowed. “I am Ser Jory. Lord Eddard awaits you in the Throne room to offer you guest right.”

Tywin nodded - he had expected nothing less. Lord Eddard had a reputation as an honourable man, so he wouldn't risk it by breaking custom in public. But he had been raised by Lord Jon Arryn, and Tywin knew better than most how cunning and pragmatic that man had been.

He followed the knight - one of the few from the North, as beholden as they were to their own gods - into the throne room, but didn't miss how the servants were not quite as quick to give way, or quite as respectful as they used to be. Tyrion must have let them think this sort of disrespect was acceptable.

Another thing Tywin would have to remedy - once he had taken the measure of the court and restored his House's influence and power.

“Lord Tywin!” Lord Eddard greeted him with the proper forms and ceremony, serving him bread and salt. “Be welcome in King's Landing:”

With his guest right formally granted, Tywin felt slightly relieved. His rivals couldn't act openly against him now, which limited their options. More in some cases, less in others, he added as he caught Lord Oberyn glaring at him from the side.

Tywin met the man's eyes with his own. He had done what had been necessary for his family to prosper. Oberyn would have done the same in his place. That was how the game was played.

He looked around, noting who was present and who wasn't. And who was late, such as his useless son, who had just joined them. They were in public, so Tywin didn’t scold him for his lack of respect, but he narrowed his eyes at him, and even Tyrion understood.

Good.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Tywin scoffed as he looked around in Tyrion's chamber. It wasn't quite reeking of indulgence as he had expected, but he didn't miss the cups on the table and the bottles stashed in the basket at the wall.

“Wine, Father?” Tyrion asked, an undertone of mocking showing that he was aware of Tywin's thoughts.

He scoffed again. “It's barely after noon.”

“The best time to drink,” Tyrion retorted with a shrug. To add even more disrespect, he filled his cup and took a sip.

“I no longer wonder what possessed you to write such letters,” Tywin said.

“Oh, I am not drunk. Just… pleasantly mellowed.” Tyrion took a deep swallow. “Given recent unpleasant events, it's a very minor indulgence.”

“‘Unpleasant events’?” Tywin spat. “Jaime, your brother, dead - slain by a foreigner - and Cersei shamed and banished to the Silent Sisters, our House's reputation stained by this slander… this is a catastrophe! And you sit here, drinking!”

“If you don't drink, you die. And wine's much safer than water,” Tyrion replied, emptying his cup and promptly refilling it. “Not overly safe, of course - anyone who managed to poison the King could also poison my wine supply - but I like to think I am making them at least spend some effort.” He snorted. “And it might look like a catastrophe, but things could be much, much worse for us, Father.”

“I am aware how precarious our position is. More than you, it seems.” Did his son think he was blind? His heir dead, his daughter shamed, his grandchildren slandered and an alliance of three, four or five families perched to pounce on them… But the dogs forgot that even outnumbered, the Lion still had claws.

“Do you?” Tyrion raised his cup in a mocking salute before downing more wine. “If not for Lady Ruby and her friends, I have no doubt that Joffrey, Tommen and Myrcella would have been killed by now. But as things are, we still hold on to the throne. Provided my dear sister doesn't decide to get more of our family killed.” He bared his teeth in a grimace that would have been slightly threatening if he were not so pathetic.

“What do you blame Cersei for?” Tywin asked. Of course, he would blame Cersei for everything that befell him - when he couldn’t blame Tywin.

“She is the reason for the current mess we're finding ourselves in.” Tyrion scoffed, downed another swallow and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Jaime did his part, of course, but the trial by combat? That was Cersei's idea. The idiot wasn't content with ruining their lives; she had to send Jaime into a hopeless fight that could only end with his death. And the fool did it for her.” He emptied his cup and went to refill it.

“Don't tell me that you believe this slander! Cersei and Jaime would never do this!” Incest? His children? His heir? Inconceivable!”

Tyrion snorted. “They did. They were seen doing it in Winterfell. And it wasn't a single occurrence.”

Tywin stared at him. “You would believe the word of a foreigner over your own kin?” Had his son truly fallen that far? Or… had those girls lured him into betraying his own family?

“You don't know them. Of course, you wouldn't understand them.” Tyrion laughed, once, shaking his head. “They're not like us. Not in the slightest. They're… The smallfolk think they're messengers from the Seven, you know?”

“Ridiculous!” Tywin spat.

“Of course it's ridiculous!” Tyrion grinned. “Messengers from the Seven would not act like them. They wouldn't be like them. They're too strange for that.” He shook his head again. “They don't think like us. Or like anyone else. Let me take a guess: You think they want to take over the realm, right, Father? No, they don't!”

Tywin glared at him. “And why do you think that?”

“Because they could have the realm twice over if they wanted it!” Tyrion laughed. “I’ve seen them fight, Father, when they stop holding back as much as they do. They are as powerful as the Targaryens' dragons! Armies cannot stand against them! Castles cannot hold them off! If they went to war, people would bend the knee to them like they did during Aegon's Conquest. But they don't want to conquer the realm.” He snorted. “They loathe killing.”

Then they were weak no matter their power. “Women do not need to take a throne by force,” Tywin pointed out. Surely, his son had not forgotten that, as often as he slept with whores and soiled the reputation of his family.

“They could have had a betrothal with Joffrey, but they didn’t want it, Father. They have refused every offer from every family.” Tyrion leaned forward, part of his wine sloshing out of his cup. “They don’t think like we do. They see Cersei and Jaime convicted for adultery and incest because one of them witnessed them do it, yet they will defend Joffrey’s right to the throne because there’s no proof he’s a bastard.”

“Of course they would do it - he is dependent on them.” That his embarrassment of a son couldn’t see it only confirmed his unfitness.

“No.” Tyrion had the gall to laugh. “They don’t care, Father. They don’t care for the throne. Or for riches. Or for power. Why would they, when they have all the power they need, and a far richer world awaiting them?”

“And you believe their claims?” Were they truly as beautiful as others said? If there was one thing his disgrace of a son was experienced in, it was women and wine. He shouldn’t be impressed by a beautiful temptress. And yet, such things were not uncommon - many men had ruined themselves for women, the most prominent being Prince Rhaegar.

“Why would they lie, Father? But I know you won’t believe a word I say. Not until you see them with your own eyes. So…” Tyrion stood, not swaying despite the copious amount of wine he had drunk. “...let’s go and ask them for a demonstration. Because you need to see the truth, or our family is doomed.”

Tywin hesitated for a moment. No worthless child would order him around. But to refuse to see those women with his own eyes would make him look like he were afraid. 

So he walked with Tyrion.

A little later, they descended the stairs to the familiar training ground of the Kingsguard. Tywin had known that the King had granted the four women the use of it, but to see it like this… That the Kingsguard had not rebelled over this insult proved how seriously they took their oaths. But they…

He blinked. Those women… no, those girls! Had they no shame? They were pretty indeed, and would appeal to most men, but their attire! To wear clothes even a whore would baulk at! What noble would want to be seen with a woman who dressed like that? And had they no sense? To train without armour - and, he realised when he saw the blade cut through a training post as if it were a thin weed, not with training weapons but actual blades!

“Blades can’t hurt them, Father,” Tyrion spoke in a low voice next to him. “I saw Ser Barristan’s blade strike one of them in the face without leaving a scratch or cut a single hair on her head.”

“Ridiculous!” Tywin hissed as he quickened his pace. He didn’t doubt that a woman could be as strong or stronger than a man - Lady Brienne Tarth proved that. But those women, those girls, lacked the size and brawn that would require! They could…

…jump higher than a horse. High enough to leap over a tall knight.

And they could move faster than his eyes could track.

And hit someone hard enough to launch them across the yard.

And break wood and stone with their face, yet stand a moment later, none the worse.

And conjured glowing symbols that stopped such blows in their tracks - and formed steps to climb into the air.

“See, Father?”

Tywin shook his head. He couldn’t see a way a mummer could fake this. Or that Ser Barristan would go along with such a farce.

And yet, his eyes were not betraying him.

This was impossible.

This changed everything.

He glared at Tyrion. His useless son was enjoying this.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

So, that was Lord Tywin Lannister. Ruby Rose squinted a little at the tall man standing next to Lord Tyrion. He didn't look like his son at all. At least not from a distance. Although… there was a certain resemblance. Kinda. Though it really was hard to tell from this distance.

Which meant she should get closer.

She focused and moved.

“Hello!” she said, smiling as she reappeared in front of them.

Lord Tywin's eyes widened, and he drew a sharp breath, but he didn't jump or gasp, which was kinda disappointing.

“Father, may I introduce Lady Ruby Rose, leader of Team Ruby,” Tyrion said. “My lady, Lord Tywin Lannister, Warden of the West.”

She bowed her head, holding Crescent Rose out to the side - without punching a hole into the ground this time. “My lord!”

“My lady.” He narrowed his eyes at her, frowning.

She suppressed the urge to fidget. She hadn't done anything wrong. Well, she had tried to startle him, and she had killed his son, of course. But the things she had heard about him, the things he had done…

“And those are my friends - my team,” she said, gesturing behind her. As expected, Weiss, Blake and Yang were walking towards them - well, Weiss was doing that quick walk that wasn't quite a run, but close to it (a ‘dignified hustle’, or something) she did when she wanted to run but didn't want to look like she was running for some reason or the other - and the others were keeping up.

“Lady Weiss Schnee, Lady Blake Belladonna and Lady Yang Xiao Long,” Ruby finished the introductions with a smile. Being polite was important.

“My lord.” Weiss curtsied, followed by Blake, and even Yang bowed rather than nodding.

“My ladies.” He sounded curt and cold. Probably because he was both.

Ruby almost said ‘so we finally meet’, but that would have sounded like a challenge in a TV show. Or in a game. ‘May we offer our condolences for the death of your son’? That would sound like gloating. “We have a lot to discuss,” she said. That was true. Everyone was concerned about Lord Tywin's response to, well, everything. Kinda.

“That we do, my lady.” Another curt nod. 

“So…” Ruby looked around. They had been training, and training hard. Yang was a bit dusty from where she had crashed through the fence and left a dent in the wall. And everyone was sweaty. And Ruby was hungry. “Shall we meet after lunch to discuss things? In your son's quarters?” Those were big enough for everyone. And if anyone spied on them, it wasn't Team RWBY's fault. Not that they would let anyone spy on them, but Ruby didn't want to expose how good Blake's hearing was unless she absolutely had to.

Lord Tywin glanced at his son for a moment, and Ruby thought his eyes narrowed, but he nodded with a polite smile. “I think that would be best, yes.”

“Alright.” Ruby smiled. Maybe a bit more than politely. “We'll freshen up then. And eat.”

*****

The water ready in their rooms to wash up was, well, not cold-cold, but cold-lukewarm. Still cold, but not ice cold. It would have been better if it were hot, but it took a lot to have hot water here, so far from the kitchen, and ever since she had found out about that, Ruby would feel bad if she had to make the servants go to those lengths just to have warm - or hot - water. Winterfell had a huge advantage with their hot springs - all the hot water you wanted, and you just needed pipes to tap it. Too bad they couldn't have this here.

But the lack of hot water also meant that Ruby was done quite quickly with cleaning up after training. And she barely left a puddle on the floor, either, so Weiss couldn't complain!

“Watch it, Ruby. We don't want to get mould in here.” That wasn't really a complaint, not by Weiss's standards. That was just her. Probably being impatient to wash up herself.

Ruby stepped out of the basin and onto the towel on the floor and started drying up while Weiss stepped into it and grabbed the cloth and soap. “So… what do you think Lord Tywin will say?”

“I don’t know. I don't know enough about him to make a guess,” Weiss replied. “All my information on him is second-hand, and from quite heavily biased sources. Even knowing his likely goals, I can only guess about how he will want to achieve them. Though it will likely involve a betrothal proposal.”

Ruby made a face at that. “Lord Tyrion should have told him that we don't do those.”

“I am not sure if he will listen to his son - Lord Tyrion hinted at a strained relationship.” Weiss paused for a moment, scrubbing her face. “And Lord Tyrion might be of the impression that we don't follow the same customs as Westeros, but he might still think we would be willing to marry a local provided it's a love match.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Doesn't he get that even if we fell in love, that doesn't mean we would marry?” And they hadn't met anyone they would fall in love with, much less marry. At least not to her knowledge, but her friends would tell her if they were in love with anyone.

“I think Lord Tyrion would be content with something like Lord Oberyn's relationship to his paramour if it gained his family a tie to us,” Weiss said. “But whether his father would settle for that, I cannot say without knowing more about the man. As I've said before.”

Ruby nodded as she dressed again, then had to slap some dust out of her cape. They knew that he ordered the former royal family murdered and had his troops plunder the city, and had rebel nobles drowned in an underground castle or something, together with their families, but that only told them that he was ruthless and very, very proud. And that the law in this realm sucked. They already knew that from Lord Tyrion and from the trials they had seen. In any case, it didn't tell them what he thought about marriages. Well, there was another thing they knew from Lord Tyrion… “If he offers us a betrothal, we'll know he thinks we're not beneath him.”

Weiss scrunched her nose in that cute way she did when distracted. “And we would know he doesn't listen to others.”

Ruby blinked. Right. “So… would that be a good or a bad thing?”

“I can't tell that until I know more about him,” Weiss replied, rolling her eyes. “As I've said before.”

“Right, right!” Ruby grinned - she should have known that - and handed her a towel to dry off. “Let's go grab lunch, then! I'm starving - and they're making lemon cakes today!”

“Figures you'd know that.” Weiss shook her head, but she was smiling, so that was OK.

*****

“Greetings, my ladies.”

“My lord.” 

Weiss Schnee forced herself to smile and bow her head following Ruby’s lead, as did Blake and Yang. Lord Tywin had the same expression on his face as her father usually wore when dealing with her or her siblings.

“Please, sit down,” Lord Tyrion spoke up with a smile and gestured at the seats arranged around his table. There was no special seat for him, Weiss noted. That would be a little uncomfortable - only a little; he could eat in the great hall just fine - but it sent a message. And, glancing at Lord Tywin as she took a seat next to Ruby, she thought she knew what kind of message.

“These are the results?”

“Yes, Father.”

A snort. “I expect you to do better. A Schnee always excels.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Do not expect special privileges, Weiss.”

“Yes, Father.”

She suppressed the urge to shake her head and forced the thought away. She had to focus on this meeting; she couldn’t afford to lose herself in memories.

“So…” Ruby smiled. “We’ve got lots of things to discuss.”

“Yes.” Lord Tywin’s expression didn’t change. The death of his son must weigh heavily on him. Or that was what he wanted them to think - she was almost certain Father would only be more concerned about the effect on his reputation instead of truly grieving, should Weiss or one of her siblings die. He didn’t elaborate, probably trying to wait them out.

Well, Weiss would oblige him. “The situation at court is quite tenuous. We suspect that there’s an organised effort to question the legitimacy of Prince Joffrey.”

The man’s eyes narrowed as they flicked from Ruby to her. “An effort started because of the trial against Jaime and Cersei.”

A quick cut to the heart of the matter, then. Weiss nodded.

“We didn’t call for the trial,” Ruby said.

“Your testimony was essential for the verdict.” And that frown was familiar as well.

“We wouldn’t lie in court,” Ruby retorted.

“You claim to have witnessed them in Winterfell, yet you didn’t tell anyone until the trial?” Lord Tywin scoffed softly.

“I saw them do it,” Blake said, frowning right back at the man. 

He met her gaze.

“And we decided not to tell anyone since it wasn’t really our business, and because they would have been killed,” Ruby said after a moment. “And we don’t think people should be killed for that.”

“You condone incest?” Lord Tywin seemed surprised.

“Ew!” Ruby grimaced. “We don’t think it’s OK - it’s bad and icky. But it’s not a… big crime.”

Weiss swallowed the ‘capital crime’ comment she wanted to make; this wasn’t the time to correct her team leader - certainly not in front of a potentially hostile lord.

Lord Tywin had regained his composure and was staring at them like Father did after Weiss had told him she wanted to go to Beacon. “Like the Targaryens.”

Weiss wanted to curse. They had walked into this, and now Lord Tywin had the completely wrong impression - and, based on Lord Tyrion’s expression, he too seemed to have come to the wrong conclusion. “No, we do not share anything with the Targaryens, my lord,” she said. “Neither their ambitions nor their customs or inclinations.”

“We kill monsters. We don’t ride them,” Yang said.

Weiss hoped that Yang had not intentionally used a potential double-entendre.

“So you say. And yet, my grandson’s claim to the throne seems to depend on your continued support. Should you withdraw that support - or ‘discover’ that he is the product of incest - his birthright would be forfeited.”

“There is no way anyone could prove that Prince Joffrey is illegitimate,” Weiss replied.

Lord Tywin’s expression had the slightest hint of a sneer. Again, Weiss had to force herself not to remember a very similar expression. “The truth does not matter when appearance offers enough cover for ambition. Too many houses are arranged against my grandson.”

Weiss was quite certain that Lord Tywin was part - a significant part, at that - of the reason for this. Not everyone might loathe him as much as the Martells, but he was not popular amongst his peers. Only amongst those who depended on his support or wanted to profit from him.

Like her father.

“Of course, the truth does matter!” Ruby protested.

Lord Tywin’s expression didn’t hide his opinion of that - and of her - and Weiss clenched her teeth for a moment; oh, she didn’t like him or his attitude. Not at all.

But they were here to talk things out and to defuse some of the potential tension - or worse - before it created more problems, so she kept smiling. She had a lot of experience with such situations, after all. Both here and in Atlas. “Lord Eddard has not dissolved the betrothal between his daughter and Prince Joffrey. He certainly would have, should he think Pricne Joffrey is illegitimate - he is deservedly known for his honour.” She took Lord Tywin’s nod as acknowledgement of her point.

“The North is far away, and their forces are not nearly enough to stand against what forces Prince Doran, Lord Renly and Lord Stannis can muster. And should they take Lady Sansa hostage, Lord Eddard’s hands would be bound even if my grandchildren were still alive at that point.”

Of course, Lord Tywin would assume everyone else would be as ruthless about killing children as he was. Then again, Weiss had to agree that even if Lord Renly or Lord Stannis would not stoop so low, some of their underlings would likely do it, and probably expect a reward - just as Lord Tywin had done it for King Robert. It was really astonishing how many of the problems they were facing were caused, directly or indirectly, by Lord Tywin.

“You don’t think your guards could stop them? The Westerlands are known for their disciplined and well-trained and equipped troops,” Weiss said.

“Even our means are limited - more so if we have to defend a stronghold cut off from the Westerlands and riddled with potential traitors. If I’d move too many forces into King’s Landing, I would leave the Westerlands open to attacks,” Lord Tywin said.

Lord Tyrion nodded. “He who tries to defend everything might lose everything.”

It was a sound statement, but judging by the glare Lord Tywin sent at his son, he had just embarrassed his father. Weiss clenched her teeth again when she remembered similar occasions back home.

“But Prince Joffrey has the crownlands. Together with the North and the Westerlands, you’ve got three kingdoms. And Lord Stannis doesn’t have too many soldiers,” Ruby said. “That leaves the Stormlands and Dorne.”

“Whose lords don’t like each other at all,” Weiss added.

“It would not be hard for them to put their differences aside to strike at my grandson and myself,” Lord Tywin said. “And Lord Renly has close ties to the Reach. If he promises them more influence at court, he could sway them to his side.”

To Ser Loras Tyrell, Weiss mentally added. “Like a betrothal between Lord Stannis’s daughter and one of their heirs? Even though he is married to a Florent?” And was said to dislike House Tyrell for their actions during the rebellion, though Weiss hadn’t been able to confirm that.

“Yes.” Lord Tywin looked as if he wanted to roll his eyes and sneer at her for stating the obvious. “Or between Lord Renly and Lady Margaery.”

Ruby bit her lower lip, Weiss noted, so she wouldn’t comment on that. Weiss hoped that Lord Tywin would think that she was questioning whether Lord Renly would follow Lord Stannis on the throne in that case. Still… “As we have discovered, a marriage based purely on dynastic aims is not always a good idea.” She suppressed a grin when she saw Lord Tywin scowl at that.

“Not everyone is… driven by their emotions and base desires as King Robert was.”

“I am sure Cersei could have driven King Baelor the Blessed to drink and whore,” Lord Tyrion said.

Lord Tywin openly glared at him. “Mind your tongue, Tyrion! You’re talking about your sister!”

“Why yes, I am,” Lord Tyrion replied with a fake smile.

Weiss cleared her throat. “So, you feel that the Prince lacks sufficient support to take the crown.” And keep it.

“Yes.”

And he blamed Team RWBY for it. Weiss nodded. “Then that is the problem that needs solving.”

“Closer ties to your group would be a solution,” Lord Tywin said.

“We’re not going to marry anyone!” Ruby glared at him. 

Weiss nodded, as did Blake.

“Yeah. We’re not gonna stay around anyway,” Yang said. “We’re going to return to our world.”

“If you find a way to return to your world, will you or someone else from your world travel back to Westeros?” Lord Tywin asked.

“We don’t know,” Weiss told him.

“We didn’t exactly plan to travel here - we were sent here against our will. Either by accident or by a god.” Ruby added. 

Weiss almost missed Lord Tywin’s brief sneer at Ruby’s statement. But what had triggered the reaction? Did he doubt that they were sent here against their will? Or that someone sent them here?

“So, we don’t know if we can get back once we’re home,” Ruby went on. “Best not make any plans that depend on that.”

“I would be a fool not to consider the possibility of more people like you arriving here. People who might not share your morals,” Lord Tywin said.

That was a good point, Weiss had to admit. Remnant certainly had enough people who would not hesitate to conquer Westeros. Such as her father. And many of his ‘peers’ in Atlas. And how many of the people currently braving the Grimm to establish villages outside the Four Kingdoms would prefer to travel to Westeros instead? The White Fang would love a world where the humans didn’t have the technology or the Aura to defend themselves against them.

“We won’t let that happen,” Ruby said. “We won’t tell people how to return here - if we find that out in the first place.”

Lord Tywin didn’t look convinced. Not at all.

Ruby noticed as well and glared at him. “We’re Huntresses, Lord Tywin. We fight to protect the people, not to conquer them. From any threat!”

Again, everyone nodded. But Weiss didn’t like the slight gleam in Lord Tywin’s eyes at Ruby’s declaration. He looked like her father when he found a way to exploit a weakness for profit. Or simply to demonstrate his power. “There are more urgent concerns to address,” she said. “Such as the financial and political stability of the realm.”

“House Lannister stands in full support of the lawful King of the realm. If the realm’s stability is endangered, it won’t be by us.”

Well, it was good to have confirmation. But…

“I hope you will impress this on the current Hand, my ladies.”

Yes, that message was received. “And, speaking of Lord Eddard, what do you think about him becoming regent? He was the late King’s best and most trusted friend,” Weiss said.

“As long as he can be trusted to defend my grandchildren’s claims, I have no objection,” Lord Tywin replied. “I don’t think anyone would doubt his word.”

Of course not - Lord Eddard’s honour and Lady Sansa’s betrothal would tie him to Prince Joffrey. Again, the message was clear.

“Then perhaps it would be best to settle this and then reconvene to discuss the other topics,” Weiss suggested.

Lord Tywin nodded. “I agree.”

And Lord Tyrion emptied his cup of wine with obvious relief.

*****

Blake Belladonna checked that there were no spies listening in, then turned to nod at her friends. “We’re clear.”

Ruby sighed and sat down on her and Weiss’s bed. “That could have gone better.”

“It went actually better than I had feared,” Weiss said. “Lord Tywin wasn’t as overly hostile as I expected.”

“He saw us sparring.” Yang grinned and punched her palm. “Must have taught him that he better be polite.”

Blake nodded. 

Ruby sighed again. “But we didn’t get an agreement - all we got was a sort-of promise not to mess with the kingdom as long as we protect his grandchildren.”

“We’re protecting them anyway,” Yang said.

“But we’re not going to stay forever.” Blake had no intention to stay any longer than they had to in this world.

“We won’t leave without making sure that they are safe,” Ruby said, narrowing her eyes a little. “But it feels a bit like… like we’re doing his work for him.”

Weiss nodded. “That’s because we are doing his work. We promised to talk to Lord Eddard about the betrothal and the alliances. But if we want to see the princes and the princess safe, then we have to do that anyway.”

“I know!” Ruby didn’t quite whine but came close with a pout. “I just… I don’t want to feel like we’re doing what he wants us to do. As if he could order us around.”

“I understand - and I feel the same.” Weiss grimaced. “I don’t like it either.”

“Well, if he thinks he can order us around, he’s got a surprise coming,” Yang said. She didn’t seem to be looking forward to it, though.

Blake nodded. “That would cause another problem.”

“Yes.” Weiss scowled. “People like him cannot stand being seen as weak - or as losing a confrontation. It would be best if such a confrontation would happen in private, but… I doubt even that will help much. We need to carefully make it clear that while our aims align for now, we do what we do because we think it’s the right thing, not because we owe it to anyone.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded firmly. “We did tell him that we’ll protect people - from anyone.”

“I don’t know if he understood it - or if he heard what he expected to hear,” Weiss said.

Blake agreed with her. Most nobles in Westeros had trouble understanding where Team RWBY was coming from. “Or if he believed us.”

Weiss sighed. “He seems to be one of those people who cannot empathise with others.” She looked out of the window. “I’ve known similar people back home.”

Probably her father, based on what Blake knew about the Schnee family and what Weiss had let slip in private. She felt a bit guilty for letting Weiss take the lead in the talk, but her friend was the one best suited for that kind of meeting.

“And he dislikes Lord Tyrion,” Yang added. “So, we can’t count on him helping to keep misunderstandings down.”

“Yes.” Ruby lay down on her bed, arms spread. “This sucks.”

“We also need to talk about the issue with taking people with us - or letting people come back here,” Yang said.

Blake tensed. “We don’t know how we can return, much less if others can travel here. Discussing it without such information seems a waste of time.” They could worry about that once they knew more. Once they knew if they could return, a small voice in the back of her head whispered.

“That seems short-sighted,” Weiss disagreed. “We have to consider what we will do if people ask to come with us to Remnant - and what we can do to keep Grimm and unscrupulous people from coming to Westeros.”

“Yep.” Yang nodded. “How many women do you think would want to return with us rather than stay here and get married off against their will?”

Blake winced. Too many, she thought. “And what if we arrive where we left? In the middle of the wilderness, surrounded by Grimm? How many can we protect? They don’t have Aura and can’t fight.”

Ruby sat up again. “We finished all the Grimm there.”

“It’s been months since then,” Blake told her. “They will have returned. How many can we protect?”

“We don’t know if we would return to the exact spot from which we left,” Weiss said.

“That’s my point.” Blake nodded at her. “We can’t really make any plans without knowing more.”

“That would leave us unprepared.” Ruby frowned, and Blake winced. That was Ruby the leader talking. “We can’t just refuse to help people who need our help. Not when we can help them.”

“If we can help them,” Weiss corrected her.

“We can help them at least in some ways.” Ruby shook her head. “And we need to consider what we can do.”

“We already need to set up Prince Joffrey and his siblings so they are safe,” Blake said. “We can’t do that for everyone. And we can’t take everyone with us, even if we knew that it was safe. Not unless we want everyone on Remnant to know about Westeros - and that would endanger a lot of people here. If bandits or the White Fang heard about this…” Or the SDC, but she wouldn’t say that.

“Or people like my father and his fellow ‘businessmen’,” Weiss added.

Weiss could say it, of course. That was different.

“Even if we can’t help everyone, we still can help some. Like our friends here. Arya already asked about coming with us,” Yang reminded them.

“Would she be happy in Remnant?” Weiss asked. “Could she fit in? Could anyone from here fit in?”

That sounded a bit… snobbish? Blake wasn’t certain. 

“As long as she doesn’t try to become a Huntress without Aura, she should be fine,” Yang said.

Weiss shook her head. “And how would she earn a living? She has no skills that would help her in Remnant.”

That was correct. Most of what noblewomen were taught wasn’t really applicable in the four Kingdoms. Or in Menagerie, though that was not a good destination for a human anyway.

“Guys!” Ruby shook her head again. “If we don’t know if we can take anyone with us, we need to help them while we’re here.”

“If we want to do that for everyone, we’ll be here our whole life,” Weiss commented with a frown. “There’s too much wrong in this world.”

“It’s not as if Remnant is perfect,” Blake replied, smiling a bit toothily. She knew that better than most.

“We’re already talking about making it better,” Ruby said. “Stabilise the kingdom, avoid another war…”

“That won’t help a girl getting married against her will,” Yang pointed out.

Ruby deflated for a moment, then narrowed her eyes. “Then we need to find a way to help those girls.”

“How?” Weiss asked.

“That’s a good question,” Ruby said, smiling weakly. “But there has to be something that we can do.”

Blake couldn’t help snorting. If changing a society were so easy, Faunus wouldn’t still be discriminated against, and the White Fang wouldn’t have turned bad. But she couldn’t tell Ruby that. Not when her friend was looking so determined.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long watched Weiss carefully as she circled around her in the training yard. She just needed an opening. Or she had to make one. She tensed, then dashed forward. One step, two, three - Weiss jerked, and Yang threw herself to the side a moment before a glyph appeared in front of her.

Her boots dug into the sandy ground, leaving two small grooves as she stopped her slide, pivoted and surged forward again. One step, two - she jumped to the left side, avoiding another glyph, rolled, then dug her armoured fingers into the ground and launched herself forward using her arms and feet.

This time, she was too close, and Weiss too slow, and Yang hit her in the midriff with her shoulder, tackling her to the ground, pinning her down, one fist drawing back for a smash. “Gotcha!”

Weiss pouted. “Only because I wasn’t using Myrtenaster.”

Yang chuckled as she rolled off her friend and got up, then held out a hand to Weiss. “You’re standing in for the Red Priestess; I don’t think she would use a sword.”

Weiss huffed as Yang pulled her to her feet. “She should. Whether she can throw fire at her enemies or not - especially if she can’t. And I think we should assume that she can use a dagger as well.”

“Well, a dagger couldn’t get through our Aura, but I see your point,” Yang admitted before grinning. “Once we’ve got this down pat, we can switch to training against a sword-wielding red priestess.”

“I’m looking forward to it,” Weiss said. “And I need to train as well.”

“Well, you can block fire with your glyphs,” Yang said. “Let me grab a few stones to throw at you.”

“The glyphs might not stop magic fire. Or might be overwhelmed.”

“Then try to dodge my stones without using glyphs.” Yang grabbed two and started to juggle them with one hand while picking up a few more. “Ready?”

“What?”

Yang grinned, turned and let loose with the first stone.

Weiss yelped and jumped to the side, a glyph appearing to shield her further.

“I thought you didn’t want to use glyphs?” Yang asked, throwing the next stone.

“It…” Weiss dropped to the ground, letting the stone pass over her head and used another glyph to propel her forward. “...can’t hurt!”

Yang dodged and tagged her with two stones, and then a third for good measure when Weiss rolled over the sand to come to a stop next to the fence.

“It doesn’t hurt - unless you block your own path or an ally’s path,” Ruby commented from where she was sitting on the fence and munching on a piece of honey cake that had been an entire cake last time Yang had looked at it.

“I haven’t done that since before I started at Beacon,” Weiss said primly as she got up and dusted her skirt off. “Let’s do this again.”

“Sure.” Yang grinned and collected more stones. Too bad they couldn’t spare the dust to use their guns for this. She was pretty sure you couldn’t throw fire, magical or not, faster than a bullet went.

*****

“Are you training to fight slingers, my lady?” Jon asked when Yang took a break.

“Any sort of projectile weapon,” she told him as she grabbed a jug of water and took a deep swallow.

“But… if blades cannot hurt you, certainly stones or arrows won’t hurt you either.”

He was right, but… “Well, it helps with dodging all sorts of attacks,” Yang said. “Such as Dust-enhanced projectiles.” She grinned. “We have to stay in practice for when we return.” Although she was pretty sure that they had improved quite a bit with all the training they were doing - it wasn’t as if they had a lot of other lessons to attend. Then again, everyone back home would have been able to train at Beacon and get lessons, so… She hoped they wouldn’t have fallen too far behind. Although they probably would have to repeat the year anyway - they had already missed months of lessons.

“Oh. Of course.” He nodded, though he was frowning - and pouting as well.

“You know we will return home,” she told him. And they would!

“I know, my lady.” He snorted, but it didn’t sound like he thought of something funny. “Arya said she wants to go with you. Fa… Lord Eddard wasn’t amused.”

“I bet he wasn’t.” Yang frowned a little and looked around. No one was close enough to overhear them. Except for a crow trying to get at the crumbs left from Ruby’s honey cake massacre. “You should keep calling him your dad in public. You don’t want people to wonder why you’re suddenly calling him ‘Lord Eddard’.”

“Oh. Yes, of course!” And he looked even sadder now. 

Damn. Now Yang was feeling guilty. “Well, did Arya also tell Lord Eddard that we don’t even know if we can take someone with us?” Especially if that Red Priestess was right and someone had brought them here - the odds of them sending someone else back with Team RWBY were low.

“She didn’t. She stormed off in the middle of the talk. He was not amused.”

Yang chuckled. “Sounds like her.”

“She was punished, of course, but it didn’t deter her.” Jon shook his head. “She… She has her heart set on becoming like you, my lady.”

“Me?”

“All of you. She likes how Lady Weiss fights with her sword - Arya has a similar sword, Needle, since she can't wield the larger ones.”

A sword Jon had had made for her, Yang knew. 

“But she likes every one of your team,” Jon went on.

“Well, we are pretty cool.” Yang grinned again. “But I guess that’s something we’ll have to talk about when we meet with Lord Eddard later today.”

“I believe he plans to address this as well, my lady.”

“Whoo.” More issues to work out. They really needed to find a way to deal with this. Yang didn’t want to let the kids down - that would feel like letting Ruby down.

But what could they do?

*****

 

Chapter 28: Childhoods

‘Another area where the Ruby Order’s views significantly differed from those of Westeros of their era was how children were supposed to be raised. In a time when children were, whether amongst the smallfolk or the nobility, overwhelmingly considered an - even economic - asset of the family, to be used as the head of the family saw fit as they could use any other asset, the Ruby Order had a distinctly progressive view of what a childhood should be. Unlike some of their contemporary detractors claimed, however, they didn’t think children should be allowed to run wild and do as they pleased. The surviving sources that can be trusted agree that the Ruby Order was not opposed to children helping their family or learning a trade - in fact, according to one usually trusted source, they considered education for everyone, regardless of gender or social status, almost mandatory - but they were quite firm on the claim that children were not supposed to heed their parents’ orders all their life; an almost revolutionary view for those times when, in the most extreme examples, even a man with grandchildren of their own was still beholden to his own father when it came to the most fundamental decisions in his life. Of course, as any student of history should know, this was extremely rarely the case; in practice, most adults had a significant degree of autonomy and independence from their parents, and it was mostly soft power, such as the control over the family fortune, and, therefore, self-interest that compelled obedience, with the most famous examples found amongst the children of Walder Frey. But the Ruby Order, no doubt influenced by their own ages, went further than that with regard to self-determination.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Not for the first time, Eddard Stark regretted that he had agreed to become Robert's Hand. It wasn't the work piling up - though that played a part; ruling the North was not nearly as demanding as ruling the entire realm - but the fact he was stuck in King's Landing while Cat, Robb and Rickon were in Winterfell weighed on his mood. Perhaps he should ask Cat to join him here, if only for a visit…

He shook his head. Not at the moment. Not so soon after Robert's death, when the realm still seemed perched on a cliff and no one could say if it would plunge into war. He was already worried about having Sansa, Bran, Arya and Jon here with him. If Lady Ruby and her friends weren't here, he would have sent them back to Winterfell already, no matter their wishes.

The Four Maidens… He sighed, putting down the petition from a merchant for the permission to sell his wares in the market. The boon and bane of him - and of the realm. Without them, Lord Tywin would have called his banners and would be marching on King's Landing already. And Ser Jaime and Queen Cersei might have escaped their punishment - even Ser Barristan, due to his age, would have had trouble defeating Ser Jaime in a trial by combat. And Lord Renly and Lord Stannis would have had the royal children killed.

And yet, without Team Ruby, he would have had fewer problems to handle as well. Arya wouldn't be nearly as rebellious - she was worse than Lyanna, and didn't that comparison cause him to have nightmares! - and he wouldn't have had to tell Jon the truth about his birth before the boy was ready for it. And it was likely that the betrothal between Sansa and Joffrey would have been broken, allowing Ned and his family to return to the North and leaving the court to the scheming nobles of the South. Sansa would have been very upset, but she would have gotten over it in time.

But with Lady Ruby and her friends - the Blessed by the Seven, according to many septons - defending Joffrey's legitimacy, there was no honourable way to end the betrothal. Ned and his family were stuck here, tied to a prince who might be a bastard.

Might be. Ned scoffed under his breath. The boy looked nothing like Robert. And while appearances might be deceiving - Robb and Sansa took more after Cat than Ned - Joffrey didn't act like Robert, either. He was not nearly as skilled with arms, nor as… interested in girls as Robert had been at his age. 

Ned shook his head. To think that he had been worried about Sansa's betrothed being too eager to wait for the wedding, endangering her honour, and now he was worried that the boy only had an interest in the Four Maidens, and for their power, not their beauty…

But was this proof that Joffrey was a bastard? Lord Stannis and Lord Renly kept saying so, and Ned would have agreed with them, but Team Ruby insisted otherwise. Lady Weiss was particularly outspoken about the matter. But a lack of proof didn't mean something was false. Ned didn't want Sansa to marry Joffrey. The thought of having grandchildren fathered by the product of incest turned his stomach.

But breaking the betrothal merely based on suspicion would be dishonourable. Further, Lord Tywin would consider it a mortal insult and go to war. And while Team Ruby could crush the Westerlanders easily, Ned wasn't sure if they would take the field; they supported Joffrey's claim, after all. They might join in with Tywin, crushing the North - and everyone who stood with them - if they considered Ned in the wrong.

Ned was truly trapped here. And so was his family. And all because four girls with the power to crush every host of the Seven Kingdoms had dropped into his lands.

At least they were fond of Ned's family. Ned didn't think they would let any harm come to the children if they could help it - but could they help it? Robert had been poisoned under their eyes, and they hadn't been able to save him. They tried, of course - Robert had died with Lady Yang doing everything she could to heal him - but they had failed. Their power, for all that it made them the strongest force in Westeros, and with a fanatical following amongst the faithful in King's Landing, had limits. Limits that meant even their friends weren't safe. Or especially not their friends.

But he couldn't tell them to avoid his family. That would be a mortal insult. And Ned, and the realm, badly needed their help. Despite their strange and foreign views and habits.

He just hoped that whatever price they demanded for their help this time would not be too high to pay. He still wasn't certain if sparing the Lannister twins had been worth it, even with Ser Jaime dying in the trial at Lady Ruby's hand. If Cersei ran from the Order to her father, and Lord Tywin decided to protect her, things would get even more complicated. Although Team Ruby had clearly stated numerous times that they would enforce the law - as long as they considered it just, and their views of justice clearly proved that they were not from this world. Ned just couldn't predict them.

Well, whatever they wanted, he would find out soon; they had asked for a meeting with him. He took a deep breath and blamed the slightly sinking feeling in his belly on his hunger.

*****

“My ladies.”

“My lord.”

Ned studied the four women as they took their seats in the solar. Lady Ruby looked a bit tense, which was a good indication that this was important. Lady Weiss, as expected, didn't let any tension she might be feeling show, nor did Lady Blake, and Lady Yang was relaxed as usual.

“Thank you for meeting with us!” Lady Ruby said. “So! We've got a few things we'd like to discuss with you, if you have the time.”

“I do.” Ned nodded. As if he would pretend not to have the time when those four wanted to talk to him.

“First, we talked to Lord Tywin. You probably heard about that.”

He nodded. Of course, he had - even if the servants hadn't been wagging their tongues all day, Varys had come by to inform him personally that none of his ‘little birds’ had been able to find out what they had discussed.

“He expressed his confidence that you would support your soon-to-be kin, Prince Joffrey, on the throne,” Lady Weiss said.

“And he said if that was the case, he wouldn't stop financing the Crown,” Ruby added, nodding emphatically.

Ned nodded again. He had expected that. Lord Tywin was resorting to the few means to exert influence left to him after his children's trial. “I see.”

“Yep.” Lady Ruby grimaced a little.

“He also expressed his confidence that you would let your honour guide your actions instead of rumours and baseless slander,” Lady Weiss went on.

“He expects the betrothal between Prince Joffrey and Sansa to last, then,” Ned said. “And the alliance it forms.” That wasn't a surprise either. Only a fool would sever such a tie in such a situation.

“Yes,” Lady Ruby confirmed. “Is that a problem for you?”

“It would be dishonourable to break a betrothal based on suspicions,” Ned said. He didn't grimace - it was true after all. The four noblewomen clearly didn't think that Joffrey's legitimacy could be disproven, and for them, that meant he was legitimate. It was… an honest view, and just. But the thought that he might marry off his daughter to a potential bastard born of incest still made his stomach turn no matter how often he told himself that there was no proof.

“Indeed, it would be,” Lady Weiss said. She didn't smile or grin, even though she obviously knew what he was thinking. But was it kindness or merely graciousness in victory? The members of Team Ruby were kind, all of them, but only to a point, as Ser Jaime’s folly had so aptly demonstrated.

Ned sighed.

“So, they’re still going to get married?” Lady Ruby asked.

Ned nodded.

“And your families will be tied together.”

Ned nodded. United, Robert had said. But was Joffrey his son? Or a pure Lannister? He didn’t know.

“Ah. So, what do Lord Stannis and Lord Renly think about that?” Ruby asked.

He almost smiled. She was refreshingly direct. All of them were, even Weiss, though she was the most subtle of them. But this was a serious matter - the greatest danger for the realm. “They are not happy. They still believe that Prince Joffrey and his siblings are bastards born of incest.”

“Yeah, we kinda expected that. But will they try something?” Ruby leaned forward.

“Like send assassins after them? Start a coup?” Lady Yang’s tone belied the seriousness of her question, but Ned saw how her eyes had narrowed.

“I don’t believe that they will break the King’s peace. Not with you ready to defend the prince and his siblings,” Ned said.

Lady Ruby’s face fell, and the others were frowning, even Lady Weiss. So, it was true what Ned suspected - their honour would not let them leave the realm if it would doom those whom they had placed under their protection. They were trapped in King’s Landing as well, and tied to Prince Joffrey. 

The irony almost made him smile again.

“And what about assassins?” Lady Blake spoke up.

Ned winced. Robert had, against Ned’s counsel, used assassins before. It was wrong no matter the justification. Lord Stannis might not use such dishonourable means - might; Lord Stannis would do his duty no matter the cost - but Lord Renly, even though he was Master of Laws, was more flexible in such things. And both loathed the thought of Prince Joffrey becoming king.

“OK…” Lady Ruby looked at the others. “We need to protect them against assassins.”

“I don’t think either would hire an assassin,” Ned quickly said.

“But you don’t consider it impossible.”

Ned grimaced but shook his head - lying would be dishonourable. “No, I don’t.”

“Then we need to check on the children,” Lady Blake said. “Ensure that their guards know what they are doing and that there are no holes in their security.”

Lady Ruby nodded in obvious agreement.

“You should talk to Varys as well,” Ned suggested. When he saw how Lady Ruby winced, he felt his stomach drop. “What do you know about Varys?”

“Ah… we don’t know anything - we haven’t found any proof,” she replied. “Not yet. But we’re working on it. Don’t tell him - or anyone else - about that, though!”

“I won’t.” Ned shook his head again. So, Varys couldn’t be trusted either - well, he had served the Mad King before Robert, so that was, in hindsight, obvious. It seemed Petyr’s warning had been more accurate than Ned had hoped it was. And it probably meant they would need a new Master of Whispers in the future - if they were looking for proof, they were already suspecting him of… His eyes widened, and he gasped. “Do you think he murdered Robert?” He clenched his teeth; if that was true, Ned would enjoy swinging the blade after sentencing Varys!

*****

Ruby Rose winced. That wasn’t what she had meant! “No, no!” she blurted out. Teach her trying to be subtle! “We don’t think that - well, we don’t have any clue that he was behind it.”

“He almost certainly has the contacts in Essos to get the poison,” Blake said. “But while he would have had the means, the motive remains in doubt. What would he have gained from murdering the King? He was his spymaster, and a new King - or regent - might replace him, out of spite or because the King was murdered under his watch, proving that he failed his duties.”

Lord Eddard blinked at that. Ruby did as well. “And that,” she added. “Anyway, it’s not about that. That we don’t trust Varys, I mean.”

Lord Eddard stared at her, and she suppressed the urge to fidget.

“We are still looking into it,” Weiss, her best friend, came to her rescue. “If we are wrong, we would not want to besmirch an innocent man’s reputation.”

That was a bit much. They knew that Varys was using mutilated children as spies, and that was already bad enough.

Lord Eddard, though, nodded. He didn’t look happy, though. “The Court’s already riddled with untrustworthy people. Why would the small council be any different?” he muttered. “Petyr warned me.”

Ruby pressed her lips together so she wouldn’t blurt out what they knew about Baelish the Pimp.

“Can you really trust anyone in the small council except for Ser Barristan?” Weiss asked. “Even Lord Stannis, who has a reputation as a just man, has a personal interest in the throne.”

Lord Eddard hesitated just a moment before shaking his head. “Just because people have interests doesn't mean they cannot be trusted.” After a moment, he added: “Who would deal with, much less follow someone who breaks their word or even an oath? What would they gain that would outweigh that? Their family's reputation lost, their honour stained, their prospects destroyed.”

That sounded nice, but… Ruby glanced at Weiss.

Weiss shook her head. “That works as a deterrent - provided whoever is tempted will consider the risk of being caught. And criminals seldom expect that they will be caught.”

“You cannot compare lords of the realm to criminals, my lady!” Lord Eddard protested.

“Why not? The principle is the same,” Yang said. “And many, no matter their status, think alike.”

Ruby nodded. “Also, even if you do something bad and get caught, if you have a good excuse, you can escape consequences.” Sometimes, at least. 

Yang smirked, but Weiss was frowning at her. And Blake spoke up: “If you can control the narrative, if no one knows about a dishonourable action - or if everyone blames someone else for it - you won't suffer any consequences, such as a loss of reputation, for your deed.”

Lord Eddard didn't like that - he scowled deeply. “Even if no one else knows, the gods will know.”

“But will they do something about it?” Yang asked, cocking her head to the side. “Fast enough to help a victim?”

“Wouldn't you know best about that?” Lord Eddard said, raising his eyebrows.

Ruby blushed a little. “If we were brought here by a god, they didn't tell us what we're supposed to do. The Red Priestess said no one can easily find out what a god wants, anyway.”

He seemed surprised, but recovered quickly. “What else is there than staying true to your word and honouring your oaths?”

Like not torturing people? Ruby almost blurted out.

“Do you think we were brought here because we will act as we wish to, without more guidance?” Weiss asked.

Like a fire-and-forget missile? Ruby frowned. She wasn't a weapon or a tool, and neither were her friends. No one was. 

“I don't know what the gods intend,” he replied. “But it seems plausible, doesn't it?”

“It feels more than a bit conceited to assume that we were chosen by a god for our morals,” Weiss said.

Ruby half-expected Yang to make a joke about Weiss's morals, but her sister nodded in agreement, as did Blake. And they were right. Ruby wasn't someone special - she was just a normal girl. Normal Huntress. Of course, what was normal back home was special here, but that didn't make her special. It just meant they had more responsibilities.

“Judging by what I know about the gods, both old and new, humility is seen as a virtue by them,” Lord Eddard said. “Those who want to have the gods support them seldom manage to - at least in the legends.”

“No pressure…” Yang whispered.

And Ruby was feeling the pressure. “Whatever the gods want, we'll do our best to protect people.” As Huntresses should.

“Such as the royal family,” he said.

“And yours. And anyone else who needs protection,” Ruby said. “Provided we can reach them,” she added - they couldn't promise the impossible. Well, they could, but they wouldn't be able to keep such a promise. 

“And the best way to protect everyone is to avoid a war and stabilise the realm,” Weiss added. “Both politically and financially.”

“For the finances, you need to talk with Lord Petyr,” Lord Eddard said. “He knows best how much money the kingdom needs - and how much debt needs to be paid back.”

Judging by his slight frown, he must have noticed Ruby's reaction to that. She didn't want to talk to Lord Baelish the Pimp. 

But they needed to know more about the finances; Weiss was sure of that, and Ruby trusted her friend - she was very smart and she knew about such stuff.

And there was one more thing to talk about - well, people. She cleared her throat. “So, we also wanted to talk about your children, Lord Eddard.”

He tensed up at once. “My children?” And his voice had gone gravely.

But Ruby had to talk about this. If Arya wanted to be like a Huntress, and that led to trouble… Well, she knew (through Yang’s feelings about her mother) how family running away could hurt people. And through Weiss how parents trying to control their children could hurt them. “Arya likes to fight. I mean, she likes to train with her sword.”

“Yes.” Definitely still guarded.

“And she’s got a talent for it,” Ruby went on.

“And she’s got the guts for it. She’s no quitter,” Yang added. When Lord Eddard looked still-wary-but-also-confused, she explained: “She sticks it out. She doesn’t stop when it gets hard.”

“The Septa tells me differently when it comes to her lessons.” And that was the dry wit Lord Eddard showed all too seldom.

Yang shrugged with a grin. “Well, she likes swinging a sword around. She doesn’t like needlepoint. Unless it involves the point of Needle.”

“Her sword.” Lord Eddard frowned a bit - his eyebrows twitched.

“Are you unhappy that she got a sword of her own?” Ruby asked.

He hesitated before shaking his head.

Ruby frowned. That didn’t look very convincing. But she couldn’t push him, could she? “Anyway, she seems really determined to become a warrior.” Huntress, actually. “Like Lady Brienne.”

And now, Lord Eddard sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. He whispered something under his breath that Ruby didn’t quite catch. “Sorry?”

“It’s nothing,” he said and sighed again.

“Bran also wants to become a knight,” Ruby offered. “And he’s got talent as well. As does Jon.”

“Yeah, Jon’s great with a sword,” Yang said. Earnestly; she didn’t make a joke about his ‘other sword’.

Lord Eddard glanced at Yang, then frowned at Ruby. “What are your plans for them, Lady Ruby?”

“Plans?” She blinked. “I don’t have any plans for them. Why would I have plans for them? They’re their own people. Persons. I just wanted to know if you have any problems with their goals.” And she needed to work on her subtlety. Weiss was frowning at her, probably annoyed about that.

Lord Eddard sighed a third time. “It’s… complicated.”

She frowned back at him. That was generally an excuse people used if they didn’t want to say what they wanted or meant, in Ruby’s experience.

“Arya is a child. She doesn’t know what she is saying - no, she doesn’t know what this would mean for her,” Lord Eddard said.

“She wants to be a warrior. Like us. Or Like Lady Brienne. And while she can’t be a Huntress, since we’re not on Remnant, she can be like Lady Brienne,” Ruby said.

“Lady Brienne is the sole heir of her father. Arya is my second daughter.”

“Yes?” Ruby knew what was expected of daughters here - marriage with some noble, the more noble and richer and more powerful the better. But she wouldn’t let Lord Eddard just vaguely hint at stuff; he could say it out loud.

“She cannot inherit,” he said.

“So?” Yang shrugged. “Are you going to cut her off if she doesn’t marry? Throw her out on the street?”

“Of course not!” He shook his head. “But can she be happy like this? What if she regrets her choice later?”

Ruby blinked. “Then she stops being a warrior or knight and does something else? Becomes a teacher? Or marries someone?”

“Who would marry her? Lady Brienne has no suitors, and she is the heir to her house!” Lord Eddard said.

“Someone who would only marry her for her house would not make her happy anyway,” Ruby told him. Sheesh, everyone knew that - there were even a ton of books and movies and shows about that!

“Indeed,” Weiss spoke up. “Trust me, there is no happiness to be found when someone is merely after your family’s holdings.”

Lord Eddard frowned at her. “Things are different here compared to your world, my ladies.”

“Not that different.” Weiss met his eyes. “You and Lady Catelyn were lucky you found love. Your friend the King wasn’t so lucky. Do you wish to trust your daughter’s happiness to mere luck?”

Lord Eddard didn’t flinch. “I wouldn’t let someone who couldn’t be trusted to make her happy marry her.”

“Do you think your judgment is perfect?” Yang asked, cocking her head slightly to the side. 

“I have more experience than my children,” Lord Eddard retorted.

“But it’s their lives,” Ruby said.

“My children are my responsibility.” Lord Eddard was scowling. “None of you has children. Would your father let you make a mistake that could ruin your life?”

“My father did his best to personally ruin my life,” Weiss snapped, making him blink.

“Dad wouldn’t want us to ruin our lives,” Ruby said. “But he lets us live our lives.”

“Yeah,” Yang added. “Sometimes you have to make a mistake to learn from it.”

“And what if the mistake costs your life?” Lord Eddard scowled at her.

Oh. 

“You fear for Arya’s life,” Weiss said. “But what about Bran and Jon?”

“They’re boys.”

Ruby scowled. “So?”

“It’s… not the same. We’re not in your world.” Lord Eddard shook his head. “People are different here. Arya is not like you.”

“Neither is Bran. Or Jon,” Ruby said.

“You’re afraid of losing any of them,” Yang said.

“Of course! What parent wouldn’t be afraid for their children?” Lord Eddard snapped.

Weiss pressed her lips together, Ruby noted.

Yang, though, shook her head. “You’re willing to let Jon and Bran choose what life they want. But not Arya.”

Lord Eddard clenched his teeth and didn’t say anything.

Ruby didn’t understand him. Bran was even younger than Arya. 

“They’re still very young. They don’t have to make any life-changing decisions,” Blake suddenly spoke up. “Nor should they, you’re right about that.”

Lord Eddard looked as surprised as Ruby felt.

“Blake?” Yang turned to stare at her partner.

“I was a bit older, but still young when I made the biggest mistake of my life,” Blake went on, and Ruby blinked again. “Against the advice of my parents.”

Lord Eddard nodded.

“I ran away from home after a disagreement with my parents over what I wanted to do with my life.”

What? Ruby glanced at the others. Not even Yang seemed to have known that.

Lord Eddard stopped nodding. “You don’t think Arya would…”

“If she thinks you’re forcing her to marry someone?” Blake raised her eyebrows.

“I wouldn’t do that!” Lord Eddard sounded more… angry about that than Ruby had expected.

“Best tell her that,” Blake said. “Before she thinks she knows what you want.”

Lord Eddard slowly nodded.

“And ask her - and Bran - what she wants once she’s older,” Ruby added. “And maybe ask the Septa to cut down on the needlepoint lessons? Arya really hates them.” She smiled encouragingly at Lord Eddard.

He chuckled at that, and she blinked. The others were grinning as well. Ruby pouted - she was only trying to help!

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah, Lady Weiss! Welcome to my humble office! How can I help you?”

“Thank you, my lord.” Weiss Schnee smiled politely as she bowed her head, though inwardly, she was rolling her eyes. Lord Baelish was overdoing it again. Did he really think this act would fool her? She had grown up around such toadies. Her little brother was better at that, and he was still a child. Or did Lord Baelish think she was a naive little girl? In any case, she wasn’t here to cut him down to size; she was here for information. “As a matter of fact, there is something you might be able to help me with.”

“Anything I can do.”

I’ll hold you to that. “As you might know, we’ve met with Lord Tywin to defuse the tension lingering from the trial of his eldest children,” she went on. Or what the locals considered a trial - ‘may the best fighter win’ wasn't justice. Not at all. But she couldn't let herself be distracted by the local judicial system and its many, many flaws.

“Oh?” His surprise seemed not quite genuine. “I heard rumours, but… if I trusted rumours, I would expect the Dothraki riding across the sea to install Prince Viserys on the Iron Throne.”

Weiss made a mental note to look into that. They hadn’t really cared much about the other continents so far. “Indeed, we have. And during our talk, the kingdom’s finances came up.”

“Oh?” He sat a bit straighter, though his smile didn’t waver.

“Yes. There were claims that the kingdom depended on loans from the Lannister family.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “Well, the Kingdom’s debts are more or less split evenly between the Iron Bank - of Braavos, if you’re familiar with the city - and House Lannister. So, yes, one could say that Lord Tywin does possess quite the leverage against the crown, though since Prince Joffrey is his grandson, I think he will be keeping that within the family, so to speak.”

She snorted softly at his not-so-subtle emphasis on Joffrey being a Lannister. “Yes. But even between family - kin, as you say here - rifts can appear. Since we have an interest in the stability of the realm, I would like to ascertain the state of the kingdom’s finances, to determine what options the court has to refinance those loans.”

He blinked. “There are few others who could loan us such a sum, my lady. The Iron Bank might do it - though the interest they expect would be considerable.” 

“And if the crown defaulted?” Weiss asked.

“‘Defaulted’?”

Didn’t he know the term? They had pretty advanced bookkeeping. Was their financial system so underdeveloped? “Fail to repay the loan,” she explained.

He laughed and shook his head. “Who would loan us any money if we didn’t uphold our obligation to repay past loans? The Court would quickly run out of money.”

Weiss knew that a country didn’t work like a corporation, and she couldn’t claim to be an expert on a financial system that worked with the money in circulation not even backed by, but made of precious metal. But even so, it was obvious that with ever-mounting debts, the Court would, at best, slowly run out of money unless inflation and - hopefully - economic growth could counteract the rising debts. She doubted that either was happening, but she didn’t have the economic data to judge that. Personal observation of the market in King’s Landing was not very helpful. “I see. So, would you agree that Lord Tywin has a hold on the Court?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, my lady. The Lannisters are rich and powerful, and their influence is felt in every part of the Court, and many feel their grip throughout the kingdom, but should there be a rift between the crown and should Lord Tywin decide to call in the loan, he would likely face a war as a result.”

“Wouldn’t that make future loans even more unlikely and expensive than defaulting?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Likely, but the crown would take control of the Westerland’s mines, or at least acquire most of their gold, so the Court’s finances would be secure for a lengthy time.”

“I think I would prefer a refinancing method that doesn’t use violence,” she said in a dry tone.

“Wouldn’t we all?” He smiled at her, showing his teeth in what he probably thought was a charming smile. He would have been right if not for what she knew about his private businesses - and the obvious attempt to distract her from her apparent goal. “With the exception of Lord Tywin, of course - he was always willing to use violence to achieve his goals, even when it meant that innocent smallfolk would suffer. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Sack of King’s Landing and the Rains of Castamere, my lady.”

“Indeed, I am.” She nodded. “Anyway, I’d like to take a look at the books, so next time we’re meeting Lord Tywin, we have the numbers to argue what claims he might make. Would that be possible? Lord Eddard said he saw no reason against this.”

His lips twitched a little. “I can certainly show you the ledgers. Though please don’t hesitate to ask if they seem confusing - the system is a bit complicated.”

“Of course.” She didn’t doubt that even for an instant; he would have deliberately used a system to obfuscate the state of the kingdom’s finances - likely both to render himself indispensable as the only one who could handle it entirely and to be able to skim off the top.

“Also, the ledgers cannot leave my office. I am personally responsible for them, and I take my duties very seriously. I would never doubt you, my lady, but I cannot make exceptions there, or everyone would expect one.”

“Oh, that is no trouble at all, my lord. I only need a little time to get an overview.” She smiled at him.

He relaxed slightly - the tension in his shoulder vanished, and his hands stopped toying with the quill on his desk.

Weiss wasn’t lying, of course - it wouldn’t take too long to take pictures of the ledgers. The lighting Dust recharging her scroll would use up was worth this. And between Blake and herself, they should be able to analyse the numbers and entries well enough to get a more or less correct picture.

Though that reminded her of Blake’s revelations from the talk with Lord Eddard. Weiss didn’t want to pry, and it wasn’t really any of her business, and she wasn’t one of those girls who lived for gossip and rumours, and it wasn’t as if it would affect their plans here, but… she really wanted to know what exactly had happened between Blake and her parents. She hadn’t even known that Blake’s parents were still around; her friend had never mentioned them at all, so Weiss naturally had assumed that they had died - probably violently, though if they had been killed by SDC security, Blake would have mentioned that, wouldn’t she?

She shook her head and forced herself to focus as Lord Baelish pulled out leather-bound ledgers from a massive locked chest next to his desk.

“Here they are. That’s the one for the Court’s income, and here are the expenses.”

She managed not to wince at the haphazard way the ledgers were organised. She knew that they knew about double-entry accounting in this world! This was no way to run a shop, much less a kingdom!

Instead of berating him, she thanked him politely, sat down in a chair in a corner, and started reading - and taking pictures with her scroll.

“Ah… what is that, my lady? If I may ask?”

“It’s my scroll. In case I need to take notes, my lord.”

“Ah.” He was tense again - and kept glancing at her while she worked through the ledgers. But would he realise that she was taking pictures? Or would he assume she wasn’t taking notes?

She couldn’t tell, but it probably wouldn’t matter; he would be on alert anyway, at least for the near future. 

But that could be advantageous - he might make a mistake under pressure.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, Partner…”

Standing at the edge of the training yard, looking at the wall closest to it, and the sky above it, Blake Belladonna closed her eyes and drew a short breath through clenched teeth when she heard Yang speak up behind her. “It’s a private matter. And in the past. It doesn’t matter now.” And should stay there.

“You already knew what I wanted to talk about. Doesn’t sound to me like it doesn’t matter.” Next to her, Yang leaned with her back against the fence, elbows propped up on top.

Blake didn’t turn her head to look at her and suppressed a frustrated hiss. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than my family - such as returning home to Beacon.” To their friends and family.

“Yeah, could say that.” Yang nodded - Blake caught her mane moving in the corner of her eye. “But it sounded very personal, back there. And you don’t sound as if you’re over it.”

“I’ve been over it for years. I’ve made my decision, and I have been living with the consequences,” Blake replied.

“You called it a mistake yesterday.”

“My decision was a mistake.” She turned to frown at her annoying partner. “That’s all there is to it.”

Yang smiled at her before turning serious. “Doesn’t sound like that’s all there is to it. Trust me, I’ve been trying to get over my birth mother leaving for years.”

Blake felt a pang of guilt. She had left her family. They would be worrying, and… “They know I’m OK.” Only, they wouldn’t know it any more - she was missing. Had been for months.

“Yeah, about that,” Yang said with a grimace, “I don’t think anyone back home knows we’re OK.”

Blake clenched her teeth. “They won’t worry. They don’t know I am at Beacon. And they’re used to me staying off-line for months.” But… would they have been told anyway? Did Ozpin know about her parents? He had never said anything, but… it wouldn’t take that much for someone with his resources to find out about her parents. And he would have run a background check, if not before Orientation, then at least after the fight with the White Fang at the docks and on the highway. But that meant her parents would think she was dead - if you went missing on a mission, it meant you were killed by Grimm.

Yang was staring at her with wide eyes. “They don’t know you’re at Beacon?”

Blake hissed through clenched teeth. “I didn’t tell them where I was. Just that I was OK and had left the White Fang.” So they were aware that Adam might come after them, trying to find her. Or to get back at her, a small voice whispered in the back of her mind.

“Oh.” Yang was still staring.

Blake closed her eyes. “Look, I’ve got my reasons.” They might be shitty reasons, but they were hers.

“Sure.” Yang nodded, but Blake could tell that she didn’t understand - she knew her partner. And Yang wasn’t good at hiding her emotions. Hiding her intelligence, yes - her ‘dumb blonde’ act was very good. But her emotions? No.

Blake sighed. “I didn’t want… don’t want to… I can’t tell them.”

Yang nodded again, and Blake glared at her. Of course, her partner ignored that and wrapped her arm around Blake’s shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Blake narrowed her eyes even more and felt her ears lay flat against her skull under her bow. “Now you say this? After you made me talk like that?”

“I didn’t make you talk,” Yang replied with a grin and a squeeze of her shoulder. “I just was here to listen.”

Blake sighed. Maybe a short summary. “My parents didn’t want me to join the White Fang’s more… violent part.” Which was now the entire White Fang. “I wanted to do more than wave a sign and protest. Ad… Someone I thought I could trust showed me how to fight.”

Yang nodded.

“I found out he couldn’t be trusted, and I left.”

“Ah.”

Wait, that made it sound like Adam had cheated on Blake. As if this were just about a teenage relationship gone bad, and not about far more important things. “He couldn’t be trusted because he didn’t care about right and wrong any more, just about hurting people - Faunus, humans, soldiers or civilians, he didn’t care.”

“Oh.” Yang nodded. “And when you found out, you left.”

“I left with a train that he wanted to blow up.”

Her partner snorted at that. “Bet he didn’t take that well.”

She flinched - and felt Yang freeze for a moment before she squeezed Blake’s shoulder again. “No, he didn’t. But if our current predicament has one advantage, it’s that he won’t find me here.”

She half-expected Yang to ask more about Adam, but her partner didn’t and just stayed there with her. 

After a minute, though, she spoke up. “You know, the others are dying with curiosity.”

Blake groaned. “I have to analyse the ledgers with Weiss. I guess they won’t focus until I talk to them?”

“Mhm.”

Maybe an even shorter summary would be enough to satisfy them. Just the bare bones.

And maybe Marwyn would announce that he’d found a way back to Remnant in the Keep’s basement.

“Let’s spar a bit more,” she said. She needed to work out some frustration.

“Now you’re talking!” Yang grinned, released her and smashed a fist into the palm of her hand.

*****

“So, your parents were against you joining the White Fang…”

Blake frowned. “Not exactly, Ruby. They were against me joining the White Fang led by Sienna Khan.”

“There are two White Fangs?” Ruby sounded confused.

Blake closed her eyes for a moment. It wasn’t Ruby’s fault that the media had not really covered this part in detail. “It’s more that the White Fang originally was a peaceful protest movement, of which my parents were members.” Founding members, but that wasn’t important right now. “So, I grew up in it. Some of my earliest memories involve waving a sign around at a protest. But then Sienna Khan started changing the organisation, and my parents disagreed with that. I didn’t. I was dumb. So, I ran away from home and joined the White Fang. Or stayed in it, depending on how you look at it. I found out that the White Fang had grown too radical and betrayed what we stood for - equality for everyone, humans and Faunus - and left when my, ah, mentor, you could say, wanted to blow up a train full of civilians. I joined Beacon afterwards to become a Huntress.” She resisted the urge to add ‘The end.’ to her short summary.

“Oh.” Ruby nodded.

Weiss was frowning. “That seems a rather short summary.”

“It is a short summary.” Blake smiled at her with her eyes slightly narrowed. “There’s no need to go into details.”

Weiss pouted, but Ruby nodded again. “Alright! Now, let’s take a look at those ledgers!”

“Yes,” Blake said. She wasn’t an accountant, but she had some experience with gathering intel about corrupt officials to either blackmail or expose them. Or both, depending on what was most useful.

“Well…” Weiss looked like she wanted to argue, but Ruby was already reaching for her scroll, and the girl grabbed it before Ruby could. “There were fewer records than I expected, so I think it’s most efficient if we study the pages on my scroll and then write down the crucial information to save on the scroll’s charge.”

“And to check if Lord Baelish is trying to alter the entries,” Blake added. 

“Alright, you do that. I’m going to hit the smithy,” Yang said. “Gotta have to ask Mott about making a better Needle.”

Blake could see Ruby wavering - her eyes flicked from Yang to Weiss and back.

“Oh, go with Yang,” Weiss told her. “It’s going to be crowded already with just the two of us using one scroll.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Alright then. Yang, wait!”

And she disappeared in a cloud of petals.

Weiss sighed.

Blake didn’t comment. They had work to do.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So! I was thinking a sword that can also turn into a shield. With a crossbow. But that would be too heavy for Arya. And the time spent reloading the crossbow would be too long to be usable in combat, so it wouldn’t really help. But! The surprise factor of a sudden attack at range would be useful, and so I took a bit of inspiration from Myrtenaster - with Weiss’s permission, mind you - and came up with this!”

Yang smiled as her sister unfolded a pretty large piece of parchment on the largest table in Tobho’s smithy.

“A reinforced rapier that can also shoot darts or smoke or sand or paint or oil charges! Spring-loaded since you don’t have Dust here, and reloading will take a special lever that you have to carry separately - but I think we can turn that into a sheath - but Arya’ll have about six shots worth of it, which should allow her some flexibility. Although the oil and paint charges would have to be aimed very well to be effective, unless this idea I have with a primer to set the oil on fire works out, but I’m not sure that will work. We could change the composition to make it more flammable, but then it would also be a fire hazard if it worked, if the magazine got struck and there was a spark, so… probably not. Although the threat of setting someone on fire would work, especially if there’s a torch nearby after you drench them in oil. And, of course, you can turn the floor slippery and mess up their footwork.”

Yang grinned as her little sister very enthusiastically showed her plans to Tobho and Gendry. Mechanically, the design was rather simple - like Myrtenaster, just less advanced. A round non-moving magazine built in front of the crossguard, around the slim blade, triggered by a rotating mechanism set in the grip. No mechashift design, not too many movable parts - perfectly possible to craft with the tools and materials available to the locals.

“I see. That should be possible, but the balance of the blade will be changed whenever you use one of those charges, and it will be quite a bit heavier to begin with,” Tobho said after a few minutes.

“That will be compensated by the missing weight of the charge!” Ruby replied. “At least partially. The calculations depend on the kind of charge you use.”

“And the blade seems a bit slim,” Gendry added. “Won’t it break too easily?”

“Well, that’s where the layered construction comes in and the hardened steel!” Ruby pointed at the lower part of her sketches. “If we use this scheme to construct the blade, I mean, forge it, then it should be quite hard to break!”

“That would use the kind of steel Lady Yang mentioned, right?” Tobho asked.

“Yes! We need to experiment a little with the carbon count, but it should be possible, and…”

Yang looked up from the plans when a small bell sounded in the smithy. “You’ve got a client.”

“Gendry.”

“Yes, Master.”

Gendry not quite rushed out - he would loathe to miss more of this discussion, Yang knew. King’s bastard or not, the boy was a smith with all his heart. But a few minutes of missing talk wouldn’t be the end of the world. She bent over the plans and pointed at the pommel design. “It’s mounted on a screw, and the grip is hollowed out so the weight inside can be changed. You could even use it for storage, if you find something that fits the balance.”

Tobho snorted at that. “Only a fool would use a blade to carry things.”

Yang wouldn’t disagree with that. If your weapon’s balance changed, it could be fatal in a fight. 

“It’s an option, anyway. More options are good!” Ruby insisted. “And it’s easier to repair or alter with the screw-on pommel.”

“If you have a matching screw, my lady.”

“Ah…” Ruby smiled in that embarrassed way of hers. “I kinda forget you don’t have standardised parts here. Never mind that, then!”

“Alright.” Yang nodded. “So…”

“It was just the beer delivery,” Gendry announced as he returned. “I put the keg in the kitchen and brought a pitcher back.”

“Oh? Is that Thad’s brew?” Yang asked. That man made the best beer in King’s Landing.

“Of course, my lady. Your favourite, even.” Gendry smiled and held out a mug for her.

“Thanks!” Yang downed the mug at once, then burped. “Ah, that hit the spot!”

“Yang!”

“What? It’s true!” Yang grinned at Ruby. “Just because you don’t…” She blinked as her stomach suddenly felt like lead. “Ugh.”

“Yang?”

Then the pain came, and Yang clenched her teeth. That was… “Poison!” she spat. “The beer’s poisoned!”

Her stomach clenched again, like having cramps. Ugh.

*****

 

Chapter 29: Cracks

‘It is remarkable, even in hindsight, how quickly the Ruby Order managed to establish themselves as a powerful faction at the Court. Some scholars claim that as proof that they wielded fantastical powers, some even going as far as to claim that they presented a credible threat to the realm’s armies, which is, of course, nonsense. In the same vein, as was pointed out before, there is no actual proof that the four maidens seduced the King, and what influence such a - quite common at the times - action would have gained them would have been lost with King Robert’s death, yet the Ruby Order, according to all accounts, remained a crucially important faction at Court during the Succession. How, then, had they achieved that? The answer is politics. They managed to ally with several of the most powerful Houses and gained the support of the Faith. While the details remain vague - negotiations and plots at that level were never recorded; sometimes even the results were not put to parchment - it is quite clear that, seeing the vastly differing interests of all involved factions, only masterful diplomacy, and by what at least appeared to be a neutral party, could have managed such a feat, even short-lived as it was.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys stared at the latest notes from his little birds. The blonde witch had walked into the keep on her own. ‘Staggering as if she were a little drunk’, according to his spy covering the gate of the keep, and propped up by her sister, but still - a little drunk! She should have been dead, her innards dissolved by the poison! He had paid a fortune for it, killed two of his best contacts to ensure no one could track it back to him - and tested the poison on one of them - and all he had achieved was slightly inconveniencing the witch? How many people had she sacrificed to gain that resistance? How much poison had she gorged, keeping herself alive by taking the blood of the innocent, to walk this off?

Another report - from one of his little birds prowling the secret passages of the Red Keep - claimed that she was suffering from cramps ‘as if it were my period’. The little child had not understood the term, but it had to be her monthly flows. That, at least, was a bit more informative - the witch was still fertile. Her womb had not been sacrificed for her power, nor had it atrophied with age hidden by dark magic.

But it was still nothing more than an inconvenience! All that gold, all that time spent organising, waiting, tying up loose ends, then inserting a spy to the brewery, to time the delivery to her visit - a spy he’d had to kill as well, to ensure he would not be tracked - and all he had achieved was making the witch feel what every woman felt once a month!

Varys would have found it amusing if the situation weren’t so dire. He had learned from his first failure. He could not trust such a delicate affair to unwitting tools. The queen had not used the poison he had arranged for her ignorant handmaiden to purchase on the four witches - no, for all her ranting about the threat those four represented, all the hatred she had spilt in supposedly private conversation, dutifully reported by his little birds, the thrice-damned fool had used the poison on the King! If she had poisoned the witches, it wouldn’t have killed them, but it would have saved Varys a fortune spent on his own attempt.

But no, the mad queen had murdered her husband instead. Whether she had thought to rule in his stead or merely thought that the witches would be cut off from influence without him, Varys couldn’t tell - both views were wrong, after all - but the deed was done. Maybe he should have exposed her instead, earning the trust of the soon-to-be-regent and the Baratheons, but that would have put him against Lord Tywin, and when his own attempt to poison them failed, the slightest mistake would have seen the four witches coming after him because they suspected him. Or because he failed to find the culprit this time. Or just because they wanted to replace him with one of their own creatures.

He shook his head and burned the notes. As he burned the other note, which had informed him that Viserys had let his temper and arrogance doom him earlier than expected. Well, he had never been meant to last too long, and as long as his sister gave the Khal a son, the Dothraki would still be a possible tool to further weaken the realm and allow the Young Griff to take over. It was actually better this way - as long as those four abominations were not dealt with, any invasion would not last longer than it took for one or more of them to reach the invaders.

No, he had to urge his remaining allies to stay patient and find a way to remove those witches. He could hire the faceless men, but… would even the blessings from their dark god be enough to lay low one witch, much less four? Well, he wouldn’t lose too much by trying - although he would have to carefully pick which ally to sacrifice for this; he was starting to run a bit short on them. Maybe he should reconsider…

The four witches kept up a united front in public, and they played the part of close friends for the gullible, but no one who had sacrificed as many people as their powers demanded would be able to trust someone else who had done the same. Asshai proved that; the plots and in-fighting between the Shadowbinders were legendary if you knew where to look. If Varys found the right lever to break up their tense alliance, set them against each other… It was dangerous, but it might work. Their distrust and ambitions would do most of his work for him if he managed to get to at least one of them.

But speaking of Asshai… Maybe the red priestess could be used. She had contacted the four witches under the pretext of trying to help them, but it was obvious that she was only doing this to gain the secrets of their power for herself, one way or the other. But she was powerful - powerful enough to pose a threat; Varys knew that even the witches thought so, for they had been preparing to fight a fire-wielder lately. Yes, this might be promising as well.

He nodded. He was far from defeated. He might not be able to spy on their rooms, and he couldn’t use poison, but he still had ample options to deal with those abominations. As a last resort, he could use them to remove others from the game. They already distrusted Lord Eddard and the Baratheons and didn’t like Lord Tywin. 

And he had already prepared several letters to lay the blame for the failed attempt at the feet of someone inconvenient. He just had to observe the reactions to pick the best and least suspicious choice.

Although he would have to be very careful about this. The slightest mistake could be fatal. This was even more dangerous than serving under the Mad King’s rule.

And a small part of him relished in the challenge even as his stomach clenched in disgust and revulsion whenever he thought of the four witches. For all their vile magic, they were not nearly as skilled in the art of plotting as he was - and they lacked his experience and contacts. No, the game was far from decided.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yang! You have to rest!” Ruby Rose yelled when she saw her big sister shifting around on her bed. She hadn't half-carried her back to their room only for Yang to kill herself trying to be stubborn! 

“It's just like cramps!” Yang snapped - though she was clenching her teeth. She was hurting!

“You were poisoned - and with a very strong poison. Prince Oberyn was astonished that you were still alive. What you vomited melted the tools they used to collect it in the smithy. If not for your Aura, I struggle to imagine what your insides would look like now,” Weiss, best partner ever, said. 

“But I have Aura,” Yang said with a twisted smile. “And I'm not going to run out.”

Ruby glanced at Weiss, who used her scroll to check. She had done so before, but you couldn't really be too careful with the kind of poison that melted through stuff. Like acid. Probably some acid poison. Poisonous acid. Prince Oberyn had said it probably formed after reacting with the stomach acid, and that he would have to be very careful about testing the beer they had secured. Whatever, it was bad, and it was inside Yang's body! And Yang was being an idiot and wanted to walk around instead of resting! At least she hadn’t tried to activate her Semblance! That would deplete her Aura!

“You still should rest,” Weiss replied. “We don't know what kind of poison it is, nor what its effects are.”

“It's been almost an hour, and I feel the same.” Yang winced, and Ruby held her breath. “It still feels like your worst period.”

Ruby winced at that. “That's bad!”

“But nothing I can't handle!” Yang sat up. “See?” Her smile wouldn't have fooled even someone who didn't know her as well as Ruby did.

“You don't have to handle anything but the poison.”

Blake had returned! Ruby turned to smile at her friend - and Yang's partner - when she slipped into the room and closed the secret passage behind her. “Blake! 

“Did you find anything?” Yang asked, her smile slipping a bit more when she groaned.

Blake glared at her, and Yang smiled a bit weakly before lying down. Blake snorted and shook her head. “The delivery boy is missing. As is the clerk at the brewery.”

“Did they flee?” Ruby asked. They would have fled, wouldn't they, if they had knowingly delivered poison. Or unknowingly, since they would be tortured anyway.

“Or they have been killed by whoever ordered this,” Weiss said. “Whoever they are, they wouldn't want to run the risk of being exposed should their henchmen be captured and interrogated.”

Ruby grimaced. “Like the thief in Winterfell?”

Blake and Weiss nodded.

“But who could be behind this?” Ruby asked. “The same person who murdered the King?”

“Possibly,” Blake replied.

“It's a different poison, but that doesn't have to mean anything - they would have been aware that we're on the alert for another attempt,” Weiss said.

“If this was aimed at us. Ngh.” Yang groaned, and Ruby bit her lower lip to keep from yelling at her. And from rushing over to push her down so she'd rest properly. “They could have wanted to kill Gendry.”

Weiss scoffed. “I doubt that. He’s not a factor in politics - he has neither a claim nor the backing of a noble house. There would be no need to go to such lengths to murder him. They used a poison so exotic, Prince Oberyn did not know it and, therefore, had no antidote.”

“Unless someone wanted to make an example out of him,” Blake pointed out. “But there would have been easier and less costly methods. Unless this was meant to showcase another poison.”

“Why would they want to showcase a poison?” Ruby asked. Was the murderer trying to advertise? That would make no sense if no one could contact them.

“To remind everyone that we couldn't save the King,” Weiss said, nodding at Blake. “To undermine our influence at Court and damage our reputation amongst the smallfolk. It is a possible motive. Though I still think it's more likely that they wanted to poison Yang and Ruby.”

They wanted to poison Yang and her? “I don't drink beer,” Ruby said. “Not when I am working on weapons,” she added when Weiss opened her mouth. That would be irresponsible - imagine working on her baby while tipsy! Even a slight trembling, a bit of carelessness, could ruin a weapon! Alcohol and precision tools didn't mix! Even if they didn’t have real precision tools here, it was never good to get into bad habits!

“They might not have realised that,” Weiss said. “Most people drink beer here.”

Blake nodded in agreement. “They might have been jumping at the chance to get both of you.”

“That would mean they had someone watching the smithy,” Yang said before groaning again.

“Yes,” Blake pressed her lips together for a moment. “Unfortunately, Mott's shop is at a very exposed place. There are multiple spots from which a spy could observe it. I checked them but found no distinctive traces that would give us a clue.”

“So… it could be anyone.” Yang scoffed, then groaned again and rubbed her belly. “This is getting annoying. When I catch whoever did this, they’ll wish they were dead.”

“Even if it’s more likely that they wanted to poison us, we still need to protect Gendry,” Ruby said. 

“We need to find the poisoner. Before the next attempt causes someone else to die,” Weiss said.

“That, too,” Ruby agreed.

Blake nodded with a grim expression. “Whoever it is, they’re good at erasing their tracks.”

“So… Who is good at that spy stuff and has a motive to go after us? Or Gendry?” Yang asked before clenching her teeth again.

“Half the Court?” Weiss scoffed. “I doubt anyone - except for Cersei - would reveal that they hated us.”

“So, they could be all nice and friendly with us, and plan to kill us in secret?” Ruby shook her head. Did that mean they couldn’t trust anyone? Even friends? Lord Renly and Lord Stannis hadn’t been happy with Team RWBY’s choices, but would they go as far as this? “It’s not Lord Eddard.” She was sure about that. Pretty sure.

“I agree. Lord Eddard is unlikely to secretly orchestrate attempts on our lives,” Weiss said. “According to what I heard, he almost had a falling-out with the King over such a thing.”

“I… ngh… note a distinct lack of other people who are unlikely to be behind this,” Yang said.

“That’s because most of the nobles have the means and could have a motive, even a warped one,” Weiss replied.

“I’ll do my best to investigate this,” Blake said. She had her hand on Gambol Shroud’s hilt, Ruby noted.

Ruby nodded - she knew her friends would do their best. “Thanks.”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“My ladies! I heard about the assassination attempt on you! Are you alright?”

“Hello, my prince.” Ruby smiled at Prince Joffrey. The boy was concerned for them! “Yang's fine.” Well, now she was, after a not-so-good night's sleep.

“A bit of poison can't keep me down!” Yang boasted, one gauntleted hand smacking her chest.

Ruby rolled her eyes. Yang had groaned and moaned in her sleep for half the night! Poor Blake couldn't have slept at all!

But where were her manners? She smiled at Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella, who hadn't said anything yet and were staring at them. The poor kids looked afraid! Of course, they knew she had killed their uncle; she should have considered that they would be traumatised after the King's death and their mother and uncle's trial, followed by this new shock. “Hello, my prince, my princess. It's alright - we're doing what we can to make sure there won't be another attempt.”

Prince Joffrey nodded. “The assassin would have to be a fool to attempt to poison you now that you've proven it won't hurt you!”

Ruby suppressed a wince. Yang had been hurt, if not seriously, by the poison. And Dad had taught her early that you couldn't really predict what an unknown enemy would be doing. 

“Some assassins are fools like that, though,” Weiss said. “That doesn't make them any less dangerous - quite the contrary.”

Ruby frowned at her partner. She was scaring the kids even more!

Prince Joffrey nodded in agreement, though. “It would be best to hunt down the culprits and kill them. They've already done too much harm. I heard that those are the same who murdered Father,” he said, clenching his teeth. “They won't escape justice. A Lannister always pays his debt, as Grandfather told us, and I am half-Lannister.” He shivered a little, Ruby noted. And his siblings were wincing. 

“It seems like a prudent assumption that the two poisonings are related,” Weiss said. “Though we cannot, and should not, assume that there’s only one faction using assassins.”

Ruby nodded and smiled as comfortingly as she could at the younger prince and the princess. “Don't worry, though, the Kingsguard and we are working hard to protect you. We'll do what we can to keep anyone from harming you.”

Both glanced at their big brother before smiling weakly at Ruby and her friends. Drat. What could she do to comfort and reassure them? Tell them she hadn't wanted to kill their uncle? That they had tried their best but still failed to save the King? She went down on one knee so she wouldn't loom over them and reached out to put her hand on Tommen's shoulder - he tensed up at once, and she had to wince again. “Please, trust us. We won't harm you or let anyone harm you.”

Tommen nodded, shakingly, and Myrcella smiled very weakly, both obviously still afraid. Ruby clenched her teeth. If only she could help them better!

“Stop trembling!” Prince Joffrey hissed at them. “Team Ruby will protect us!”

That only made things worse, Ruby saw.

“Perhaps we shouldn't talk about such things in their presence,” Weiss suggested. “We're frightening them.”

“Yes.” Prince Joffrey nodded. “Go to your rooms, you two.”

Both quickly left, Tommen just stopping to pick up a huge cat from a pillow in the corner.

“They're still children,” the Prince told Ruby and her friends.

So are you, Ruby thought, but, of course, didn't say out loud. Boys were sensitive about that.

“With my siblings no longer present…” Prince Joffrey looked at Lady Yang. “What are the odds that this was an attempt on the bastard?”

“While we cannot exclude the possibility that this was aimed at your half-brother, we don’t consider it very likely,” Weiss said.

The Prince nodded. “But it would have been convenient for anyone wishing to remove my family if they had managed to not only poison Lady Ruby and Lady Yang, but also murder a royal bastard at the same time. And a master smith who has been taken into your confidence.”

Ruby nodded. That sounded… well, not wrong.

“They certainly didn’t care about innocent bystanders,” Yang said.

“Right.” The Prince nodded. “But whether it was aimed at you, my ladies, or at the bastard, it is an attack meant to weaken me. Someone doesn’t want me to succeed my father on the throne, and since they cannot defeat you in honourable combat, they will use such means - just like they murdered my father.” He stared at her, Ruby noticed. “And as my father’s death and this attempt have proved, even you, with all your power, cannot prevent all assassination attempts. The only way to ensure my survival is for me to gain the power to resist any poison.”

Oh. Ruby bit her lower lip. This was gonna be awkward. “Well…”

“I tried to pass this power to the King,” Yang said. “It didn’t work.”

The Prince blinked, staring at her with his mouth hanging open for a second. “You did?”

“Yes.” Yang grimaced. “I’m sorry, but we can’t pass on our power to you.”

“Oh.” The by deflated. “That’s…” He shook his head. “I’ll need more food tasters. But…” he looked at Ruby again. “Is there another way to gain such power?”

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

He looked at the floor, and Ruby could see his hands clenching into fists. “I see…”

Yep, this was getting really awkward. So much for comforting the kids.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“I must confess that this is the most intriguing assassination attempt I have ever seen!”

Prince Oberyn was far too cheerful, in Weiss Schnee's opinion. Someone had tried to kill her friends! This was no game. She narrowed her eyes a little and said in the flattest tone she could manage: “This is a serious matter, my prince.”

“Well… it was a serious effort, but no one died.” His grin grew. “That makes it more amusing than serious.”

“People died. Probably,” Ruby cut in with a frown. 

He shrugged. “The poisoner's helpers. Not only was the attempt a failure, but it also cost the lives of the assassins - poetic justice in its purest form. What's not amusing here?”

“That they died?” Ruby asked, scowling now.

“And that we don't know who was behind this,” Blake added.

Prince Oberyn grew serious at that, at least. “Yes, that is a most vexing but correct point you make. This is almost assuredly the work of the same assassin who killed the King, and he is now openly targeting you, which adds a sense of urgency to the investigation.”

Weiss was tempted to ask if he didn't think that murdering the King was a reason to consider the investigation urgent, but he'd probably make a flippant remark about King Robert being dead already, and Ruby and Yang would probably not take that kind of attitude well.

“So, given that urgency, what did you find out about our mysterious enemy?” Yang asked, draping herself over the chair in front of her. She was back in fighting shape, but not quite at one hundred per cent yet, even if her Aura was - Weiss could tell.

“They are, without a doubt, either one of the greatest masters of poison in the world or connected to one,” Prince Oberyn answered at once. “I thought the ‘binary poison’ - and I applaud you for the name, Lady Weiss - was impressive, but this poison is even more of a marvel!” He beamed. “By itself, it's harmful enough, but if put into a sufficiently acidic environment - such as a stomach - it quickly changes into a potent acid that can eat through metal and wood easily and even damage stone!” He chuckled. “I escaped a rather embarrassing death thanks to what I considered at the time as excessive precautions. I strongly advise against mixing the tainted beer with a more potent acid, by the way - the reaction proved rather volatile. It was a somewhat scary but educational experience - and an expensive one. Rest assured, though, that I shall continue my analysis as soon as a new room has been furnished for my needs!”

He was as passionate about poisons as Ruby was about weapons, Weiss realised. “Shouldn't that narrow down the number of suspects?”

“Oh, it should - although, unfortunately, few such masters advertise their talent in the first place,” he replied. “There are rumours, and many middlemen make good coin with promises of contacting such people, but those who could share anything more substantial rarely are willing to do so - or survive for long, if they do.”

“Another dead end, then,” Yang commented, and Weiss couldn't tell if that had been a deliberate wordplay or merely a coincidence - her friend looked grim.

“Literally.” Prince Oberyn, of course, left no doubt about that. “However, as I said, if we assume that whoever is behind the assassination attempt did not create the poison themselves but merely procured it, the sheer cost involved would reduce the number of suspects significantly - only the most wealthy members of the Court would be able to afford this.”

Weiss agreed with the logic, but she also knew how biased the man was against Lord Tywin. Perfectly understandable, of course, in light of the fate of his sister, but it still meant Weiss and her friends could not blindly trust his pronouncements.

“Great. So that’s what - every ruler of a kingdom?” Yang asked.

It was tempting, of course; they needed to find this assassin. Before they struck again, harming - or even killing - one of her friends. But if Weiss had learned one thing, it was that you couldn’t trust the obvious solution without double- and triple-checking. 

“I don’t think the Greyjoys have the means to pay for such a service, although there are rumours about the exiled brother of Lord Balon…” Prince Oberyn trailed off with a shrug.

Weiss focused on her dilemma. Yes, Lord Tywin had the means to procure such a poison, and he had had the opportunity, should he have sent for it as soon as he heard of Team RWBY - which was a safe assumption to make since Lord Tywin had the reputation of being both coldly calculating and ruthless enough to plan to kill any potential enemy - as well as agents in the city; his children would have been cultivating and spreading their influence at Court for decades. He also had a motive - Team RWBY was responsible for humiliating his family by exposing his children’s incestuous affair and killing his eldest son in a trial by combat. But would he truly move against them in the current situation? When Team RWBY was the main reason his grandson, and so his family, retained their claim to the throne? And if that were the case, would he want to risk the consequences of a failed assassination attempt that could be traced back to him? She had her doubts about that. But no more than doubts.

“We haven’t done anything to the Greyjoys,” Ruby said. “At least, I don’t think we have.”

“Not yet. I do think you might find some of their kingdom’s customs distasteful, though, to find the motivation to do something about them if you had the opportunity.”

“They have officially stopped their raiding and slaving,” Weiss said.

Prince Oberyn laughed. “Of course! And every raider with a ship built in the Iron Islands and crewed by Iron Islanders just happens to be a rogue pirate or exile, I am sure.”

“Do you seriously think they would do this?” Weiss asked him.

“Seriously? No. But I think it illustrates the fact that everyone, even my dear brother, has, at least in theory, a motive for an attempt on your lives, as hopeless as it would be. The only question is who would be arrogant enough to think they could pull it off.” Prince Oberyn spread his hands.

“Or stupid enough,” Yang said.

“Arrogance and stupidity go hand in hand, in my experience.”

“In short, we have no real clue,” Blake spoke up.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Prince Oberyn said. “Every such attempt leaves traces. Even the dead can, sometimes, tell tales.”

Weiss agreed with that. Back home, the police would have investigated the finances of the missing men. Checked for suspicious transfers, purchases, and bribes. Tracked electronic trails, examined their social media, questioned their social circle… They just would have to do the same here. Adapted to the local conditions.

She glanced at her friends. Judging by Blake’s grim expression - it might look bland to others, but Weiss could see how tense she was, and the way her bow lay betrayed how Blake’s ears lay flat against her skull - Blake was already planning how to do that.

Weiss and the others would do what they could. The analysis of the ledgers would have to wait.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

They had tried to murder Yang and Ruby. 

Even two days after the attempt, Blake Belladonna felt rage bubbling inside her when she thought about seeing Yang, supported by Ruby, stagger into their rooms, grimacing from pain as poison tried to dissolve her insides. If not for her Aura, Blake's partner would have died. Even so, she had suffered through the night - Blake didn't buy the claim that it was ‘just bad cramps’ for a minute. She knew Yang better than that. No, her partner had suffered for hours.

And whoever had done this to her was still out there, hiding, preparing their next attempt. Probably procuring an even worse poison. Or, if they thought that wouldn't work, trying something else - maybe magic, like a curse or fire. At least they didn't have to fear bombings since Westeros had no knowledge about Dust or other explosives. But they had wildfire, and what Blake had heard about it had sounded nasty, perhaps even worse than Dust-fuelled flames.

It didn't matter. Unless the assassin - or assassins - were caught, they would try again. And people would get hurt - either Blake's friends, or innocents. And those involved, so they could not betray their employer, though Blake found it hard to feel sympathy for them if they knew what they were doing.

She clenched her teeth. The assassin had to be found to be stopped. And she was failing to do so. She was useless. Despite her superior senses, despite her training and experience, she hadn’t found them yet.

She cursed herself as she checked the next tunnel for spies, tracks or hidden traps. There were more ways to deliver poison than mixing it with food. You could use poison gas as well. Blake's nose would detect most such attacks, but that didn't mean she could detect all of them. Carbon Monoxide was odourless, though its creation usually caused some smell or stench - but magic might circumvent that,

There was nothing suspicious in this tunnel. No traces either, though.

She checked the next part - nothing - then moved one level deeper. Just a quick check of the tunnels leading to the hidden pier at the bottom of the cliff, and…

Her nose twitched. Blood? 

She knelt down, checking the ground. Definitely blood. And other traces. Not too old, either - and leading, not to the pier, but to an opening further up. Where a body could be disposed of easily.

On the way to the opening, she found more traces. Blood, fibres, and other clues that someone had dragged a body through here. No, carried it, but the body had snagged on the wall a few times. Not very often, though, and given how narrow the passage was, that meant that whoever had carried the body had been quite skilled and strong to avoid that… or the body had been small.

Pressing her lips together, she peered through the hole, checking the edges and the cliff's wall below.

Another trace of blood.

She would have to check the sea below. And she needed help with that.

*****

“Alright, I gotcha.”

Blake nodded at Yang's announcement, checked the makeshift harness and that the line was properly fastened to it, then squeezed through the small opening - she barely fit - and started climbing down the steep cliff. There was a small ledge protruding from the cliffside, too small to sit down - barely enough for a hand- or foothold - but it was directly below the opening, and if whoever had disposed of the body had been a bit sloppy and hadn't pushed the body far enough… Ah! She grinned when she spotted a torn piece of fabric stuck to a sharper edge. Linen, not silk or wool. And not dyed. She stuffed it into a pocket and climbed further down - after making sure that the rope Yang was holding would not snag on the ledge or rub itself against the sharper edges.

She reached the sea below soon enough and peered into the water, foaming slightly from smashing itself against the rock. She couldn't see a body caught in the underwater rocks that would tear open a ship's hull from her point of view, but even a Faunus's eyes were hard-pressed to spot anything in these conditions.

The body might already have been swept away into the deep sea, she told herself. It would have been small and light. On the other hand, if the murderer had it weighted down… Blake peered at the dark water once again. Was that an underwater plant, or something else? She hesitated, then tugged three times on the rope before slowly pulling on it until she had enough to cover the depth here - and some slack to roam.

Then she took a deep breath, pressed her lips together and lowered herself into the water.

The waves tried to rip her away and smash her against the rocks, but she managed to hold fast to the cliff, pushing herself deeper into the water, past the foam covering the wavetops. The water below that wasn't much calmer, but she could see better now. Somewhere here was…

She froze for a moment when she spotted the body. It had been caught beneath a jagged rock that rose at an angle. The fall down the cliff and the impact on the water had torn it up some, and being worked on by the waves and currents hadn't helped, but even so, she could see the sliced throat beneath a child's face - a clean cut, from a sharp blade, not a rock's edge. A murder victim.

Blake would still check, of course, but she was already certain that the child had been missing their tongue before their death.

*****

Blake looked at Weiss as her teammate studied the corpse in the small room they had arranged for this. She felt a bit bad for telling Ruby to go with Yang in case someone attacked her again, and worse for not going with Yang herself; she was her partner and should be with her, but she was needed here. Ruby, though, didn’t need to see this. And Yang would get too angry, Blake knew - she had trouble controlling her temper herself. But she had to stay calm. Professional. 

“He’s about seven, maybe eight years old,” Weiss said. Was that a slight tremble in her voice? She wasn’t as cold and controlled as she tried to act here, either.

“Probably closer to ten,” Blake corrected her.

“I know how tall my brother was at that age,” Weiss pointed out with a frown.

“Your brother was never wanting for food when he was little, was he?” Blake cocked her head to the side. She had seen how small children who grew up without plenty of food were.

Weiss pressed her lips together but didn’t contest the point. “The clothes are about the cheapest you can get in King’s Landing, but they’re not rags.”

“Just enough so they wouldn’t stick out in most parts of the city,” Blake agreed. “And the boy’s neither too thin nor too fat - Varys knows how to get the best out of his spies.” And after going hungry for an extended time, even the barest necessities would gain him fierce loyalty; Blake had seen that with kids the White Fang had saved from camps.

“No sign of abuse,” Weiss went on. “Except for the obvious.”

The missing tongue. Blake nodded. “Was the boy killed because he discovered someone too dangerous? Or by Varys because he knew too much?”

Weiss pressed her lips together again in an obvious sign of frustration. “Either answer is equally likely based on our current information.”

And now Blake felt frustrated. More frustrated. It was her job to gather information - she was the best spy amongst Team RWBY. She was letting her friends down. Her partner had been poisoned and this child been murdered - disposed off, like trash - because she had missed a conspiracy. “We need more information.”

“Let’s analyse the ledgers we have,” Weiss said. “I doubt we’ll find an itemised invoice for an assassination, but we might find some irregularities that could tell us where to investigate further.”

Blake doubted that Lord Baelish was behind the poisoning attempt, but it was possible; Lord Baelish certainly had a lot to hide, and she had a feeling that he was ready to kill to preserve his rank and position as well as the wealth that it granted him. “Yes.” She looked at the corpse. She hated to say it, but… “If we hand it over to the Master of Laws, whoever murdered him will realise we found him.”

Weiss scowled but didn’t contradict her. “Can we… bury him? Somewhat dignified?”

That was better than weighing the body down properly and dropping it into the bay at night. Somewhat riskier, though. “I’ll look for a place to bury him where no one will stumble over him. Once we’ve solved this attack, we can give him a real burial.” Probably underground. Like a catacomb. 

Weiss nodded. “That sounds good.”

Needless to say, they would not go into grisly details about this with their friends.

*****

Dragonpit, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Hidden in a side alley, the body stashed further back, Blake looked up the steep hill at the Dragonpit. It was the biggest building in the city, but it had been left in ruins for a century and a half. No kingdom back home in Remnant would have let such a huge building, sitting in one of the best locations in King’s Landing, on top of a high hill overlooking the entire city, go to waste like this. Apparently, the building had housed the former dynasty’s dragons, and after the pit had been stormed during a civil war and the dragons killed, they had just… locked it up and left it alone.

Blake couldn’t quite understand that. But the sheer size and the age of the building meant that there would be good spots to bury a body deep underneath it. If she found a discreet way inside, of course - she was certain there were tunnels underneath it, but she hadn’t yet found one.

She could, of course, climb the walls easily, even carrying a body in a bag - but that ran the risk of being spotted or leaving traces. A small risk, though. Still, she’d prefer to travel underground where her eyes and ears provided her with the greatest advantage over the humans here.

She was certain there were secret passages like in the Red Keep. Whoever had built those would have wanted a secret way to enter this building as well. But where could they be? She mentally ran through the keep’s passages that she knew. The exits were usually hidden in other structures - cellars in one case, the abandoned storage of a shop in another. A bush in a third case.

The hillside sported several such potential exits. But they wouldn’t be too exposed - a secret tunnel entrance or exit was useless if you couldn’t reach it without being spotted. So, she had to check the foot of the hill. Still a daunting task, but not quite as challenging.

But time-consuming, especially with a body to hide. She could just drop it somewhere else. A hastily dug grave would likely suffice… No. The child deserved better. They didn’t even know his name, but he would get a decent burial.

*****

It took her a few hours, but fortune favoured her - she found a passage in an old cellar a bit too easily accessible from the outside compared to others, though fallen into disuse. The hidden door was of a familiar design - she had seen several of those in the Red Keep. Opening it was easy once she had repositioned all the stuff piled up against it - no marks on the ground, so the owner didn’t know about the door - and the tunnel behind it felt familiar as well; as she had expected, at least some of the tunnels under both the Red Keep and the Dragonpit were built by the same people.

She grabbed the body out of the broken barrel she had stashed it in and slipped into the tunnel. Now she just had to find a good spot to bury the body and leave no trace.

Not that the tunnel smelled as if anyone had used it recently. Her nose detected mostly dust and some… whiff of chemicals? She narrowed her eyes and followed the tunnel further inside.

Until she came into a large room filled with jars that reeked of this smell. Jars bearing an unknown symbol.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Are you sure you’re up to this?”

Yang Xiao Long rolled her eyes. Her little sister was acting like a mother hen. That was the big sister’s job. “Ruby, I am fine. My stomach doesn’t hurt any more - hasn’t since morning. You saw me eat, didn’t you?”

“Well… Yes.”

Yang didn’t have to look at Ruby to know she was pouting.

“But you were really sick! And poisoned! With acid poison that melted stuff!”

“Hey!” Yang grinned as they walked down the street. “It takes more than some poison to take me down. When it comes to melting hearts, I’m doing the melting!” She pushed the memory of the melted remains of the shovel Gendry had grabbed to pick up the poison from the floor away. She was fine. 

“That was awful!” Ruby protested.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Yang replied with a shrug.

“I meant your melting line!”

Yang snorted in return. “Really, Sis, I am fine.”

Ruby made a doubting noise and narrowed her eyes at her as they passed a patrol of goldcloaks who gave them a wide berth - like others, Yang realised. Weird.

But she had other things to worry about right now. Like reassuring her worrywart of a sister that she didn’t need a bodyguard for the rest of her life. “Look, it wasn’t exactly nothing…”

“You were in pain for the entire night!”

“Yes, I was, but I got over it.” Yang clenched her teeth after her reflexive comment. Ruby was really worried. She must have been more spooked about the poison than Yang had realised. “Aura took care of it, Ruby,” she added in a softer tone.

“But what if it hadn’t? Or what if you had been attacked while you were weakened? What if you had used your Semblance, and depleted your Aura, and…”

Yang reached over and tussled her sister’s hair, interrupting her. “I’d have taken out anyone who attacked. And you were there as well.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded firmly.

And Yang realised that she would likely have her sister trailing her for a while yet.

That wasn’t how it was supposed to be - she was the older sister, she should be looking out for Ruby! Maybe…” She blinked, trailing off, when she saw the crowd gathered outside the smithy.

And then the crowd noticed them.

“The Maidens! The Maidens are here!”

“Blessed by the Seven!”

“The Stranger has no hold over them!”

“Lady Yang! You are alive!”

“Of course she is! The Seven Who Are One watch over her! I told you that!”

“You were worried as well!”

“Lady Ruby! Have you caught the assassin yet? Did you kill him?”

“We’ll kill him! No one may raise a hand against you and live!”

“Lady Ruby! Can you bless me and my family?”

“Praise the Seven! The maidens live!”

Unlike her little sister, Yang generally liked attention. Sure, it might be vain, but if you had it, you flaunted it. And Yang had it. In spades.

But turning the heads of fellow students was one thing, seeing the naked reverence on the faces of a crowd of people filling the street, hearing the noise from people praising her - praying to her, asking for her ‘blessing’, promising to kill people for her - was another. This felt even worse than when they visited the Great Sept; the people here were almost crying with relief. No, not almost - she spotted several with tears running down their faces.

And Ruby was smiling that strained smile that showed she was struggling not to bolt. That she was ‘guarding’ Yang was probably the only reason she hadn’t yet disappeared in a cloud of petals - petals the crowd would probably be fighting over.

Time to step up and do her duty as the big sister.

Yang pasted her best smile on her face and spoke up, hands spread and her head cocked slightly to the side: “Hello, everyone! Yes, I’m fine - the poison upset my stomach, but I’ve had worse. No, we haven’t found the culprit yet. We’re looking for them, of course.” Should she ask for help? No, better not; people would probably flood them with all kinds of false alerts. “But we’d appreciate it if we could pass through - we want to check up on our friends. Make sure they’re OK.” She pointed at Tobho’s shop, which the crowd was surrounding.

For a moment, the mob pressed even closer, hands almost reaching out to touch them. But then, voices calling for everyone to give way rose, and the crowd parted.

Whew. Yang sighed inwardly with relief.

Ruby did so outwardly.

But they managed to get inside, and that was what counted. “Hi, Gendry!” She beamed at the boy.

“Lady Yang. Lady Ruby. I’m happy to see you healthy.” He looked relieved.

“Hey! Nothing can keep me down. Not even acid poison!” Yang grinned.

“My ladies.” And there was Tobho. And he definitely looked annoyed. Uh-oh.

“Sorry about the crowd,” Yang said.

“They are here to protect us,” Gendry said. “At least they said so.”

“By scaring away everyone, customer and delivery boys alike?” Tobho scoffed. “Some help!”

Yang winced. She hadn’t known that. “We’ll talk to them. Make them go away.”

“Or talk them down to an organised guard that won’t disturb your customers,” Ruby added. “That would be more effective, wouldn’t it?”

Yang stared at her sister. As did Gendry and Tobho.

Ruby blushed a little. “Well, you are in danger because of us, so… If people want to protect you because of us, that kinda cancels out?”

“I don’t think it works like that, sis,” Yang said. What could they do against poisoned food, anyway?

“But it won’t hurt?” Ruby clearly wasn’t letting this go. “It’s easier to send them away if they see we appreciate them and let them do something, right?” She smiled.

That was a decent point, Yang had to admit.

And so, although grudgingly, did Tobho.

*****

 

Chapter 30: Twists

‘One thing that is often overlooked when studying the martial achievements of the Ruby Order is their influence on facing and fighting magic threats. The Four Maidens were amongst the first who trained specifically to face magic users in combat and did so at the very beginning of what was later recognised as the renaissance of magic, a time when arts thought lost or merely myths were rediscovered and put to use. While accounts of their training regime were fraught with the unfortunately common exaggerations - I have already laid out how they could not perform superhuman feats such as moving faster than a trained eye could see - they are quite detailed in the goals and methods of their training, and proved quite effective in later years when used against magic users. Some of the most famous members of the Faith credit those techniques with allowing them to prevail over shadowbinders and warlocks from Asshai during the Shadow Wars in Essos a decade later, and even considering the esteem in which the Faith of the time held the Ruby Order, those claims are credible.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Prince Joffrey Baratheon was the heir to his father, King Robert. The future King, as soon as he came of age. He told himself that as he paced in his chambers. For he was in great, mortal danger. He had too many enemies who wanted to keep him from ascending to the Iron Throne. To murder him, as they had murdered his father. Cowardly, with poison, for they would not dare to stand against him or his family in open combat. Not when he was protected by Team Ruby.

Which was why those craven usurpers had tried to murder Lady Ruby and Lady Yang with poison. They had failed, though - not even poison as powerful as to melt iron could harm them. Nothing could.

But if Joffrey had drunk that poison… He shuddered. His insides would have melted. He would have died spewing blood, like Father had. Even if there were an antidote, he would not have had the time to drink it before he were dead - or, worse, dying from his guts ripped up inside him.

And he knew the next attempt would be aimed at him. Whoever was behind this now knew that this poison wouldn’t work on Team Ruby, but they could still use it against Joffrey. And there was nothing he could do about it! Prince Oberyn the Red Viper was the most obvious suspect; he was known for his knowledge of poison and for hating Joffrey’s family. Oh, how he wanted to send the Dornish knave to the Black Cells and have the truth tortured out of him! Make the villain howl with pain, scream himself hoarsely as he begged for the mercy of death…

But there was no proof - nothing that Team Ruby would accept; he knew how they thought about torture. And no one else would listen to him. Not Lord Eddard, his soon-to-be regent. The man would never move against Team Ruby’s wishes. Lord Renly, his supposed Master of Laws, would probably protect Prince Oberyn; he tried to hide it, but Joffrey was aware that his uncle lusted for the throne himself - the Imp had confirmed it. And not even Grandfather would risk starting a war with Dorne and alienating Team Ruby at the same time.

He clenched his teeth. It all came back to Team Ruby. They stood between Joffrey and his enemies. But that cut both ways. Their power held everyone in check, including Joffrey and his scant allies.

But they couldn’t stop assassins. They hadn’t been able to save Father, even though he had been poisoned right under their eyes. And they refused to move against anyone without proof.

He balled his hands into fists, almost hitting the wall before he managed to control himself. He had to do something! Before it was too late!

But he didn’t know what he could do.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, how are you? I know there are a lot of scary rumours going on, but…”

“I’m fine, Uncle Tyrion.” Joffrey nodded at the Imp. 

The Imp looked at him, narrowing his eyes for a moment before nodding, then smiled at Tommen and Myrcella. “How about you?”

“Ah…” Tommen winced, and Joffrey glared at his weak brother. What did he have to fear? Joffrey was the king-to-be. He was in danger. No one cared about Tommen, much less Myrcella. Not as long as Joffrey was alive.

“Don’t worry, not even the strongest poison can hurt the Four Maidens,” the Imp told them. He looked even uglier when he smiled. “They’ll protect you.”

Tommen, the dunce, nodded, swallowing before trying to smile as well. As if he’d survive an assassination attempt any better than Father had!

“But they killed Uncle Jaime and sent Mother to the Silent Sisters,” Myrcella said, trembling still.

The Imp sighed. “They didn’t want to kill Jaime, but he forced them. And they had your mother sent to the Silent Sisters so she wouldn’t be killed.”

“Which was explained to you before,” Joffrey snapped. “Didn’t you pay attention?” 

“Joffrey.” The Imp frowned at him.

Joffrey scoffed in return and met his eyes. Why was he bothering to talk to Tommen and Myrcella? They were useless. Except for alliances, but there hadn’t been any offers yet, as far as Joffrey knew. That would change once he was King, of course.

“Don’t worry,” the Imp repeated himself. “We’ll keep you safe.”

“How?” Joffrey snapped, then clenched his teeth. He hadn’t meant to blurt out that, but now that he had, he would stand by it. “Not even Team Ruby managed to find Father’s murderer!”

The Imp frowned even more - his face turned into an ugly grimace - but Joffrey scoffed. He had but told the truth. Father had complained often enough about all the liars at court. 

“Everyone is looking for the murderer,” the Imp said after a moment, but even Joffrey’s dim-witted brother and useless sister saw through his claim; both were wincing again. Worthless. And stupid.

Joffrey scoffed again. “The real suspects are not being investigated.”

The Imp glared at him. “No one knows who was behind this. Your father had too many enemies.”

“That’s why you question suspects,” Joffrey retorted. “Except no one is getting questioned. Only the worthless smallfolk, who don’t know anything.” 

The Imp shook his head. “You cannot torture nobles on a whim, Joffrey. The last king who did that ended up killed on his throne.”

Joffrey glared at the Imp. That had been the Mad King. He had seen enemies where none were. This was different. “Team Ruby could do it,” he said. “No one can stop them. No one would dare to stop them.”

“They could, yes - but they never would, Joffrey. They abhor torture. And they would never go against anyone without proof.”

“But… what if the Lord Stark ordered them?” Tommen asked. “He’s the Hand!”

Joffrey snorted. His brother really didn’t understand anything.

“They would refuse.” The Imp tried smiling again. “And Lord Eddard knows this. Never give an order you know will be refused.”

“But…” 

Joffrey glared at Tommen, and the dunce fell silent. “They only obey their leader, Lady Ruby. No one else.”

“And the Seven!” Myrcella piped up.

Useless. Joffrey frowned at her. 

“They have pledged to protect you,” the Imp said. “Not to obey you. They aren’t the Kingsguard. They are doing this because it’s the right thing to do, not because they were ordered - except by the Seven.”

Joffrey clenched his teeth again. If Team Ruby was the only reason he could become King, but they didn’t obey him, then he would be a weak king - a king in name only. He wouldn’t be able to do anything. He wouldn’t have any real power. 

Joffrey needed to be a strong king. Strong enough to deal with all his enemies. So strong, no one would dare to oppose him.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Isn’t that nice, my prince? Oh, Lady, No! Don’t chase the poor cat!”

Joffrey laughed as the huge direwolf skidded to a stop in front of the tree onto which it had chased the stupid cat - one of Tommen’s, he recognised the three-coloured fur.

Lady Sansa flushed, and he saw her scowl a little, before she called out: “Heel, Lady!”

The wolf trotted back to them, tongue lolling out of its maw, and rubbed its flank against Lady Sansa’s waist.

“That was bad of you! We don’t chase cats!” she scolded it while petting its thick fur.

“Those cats are fine to be chased,” Joffrey said. Tommen had too many of them, anyway. He wouldn’t miss one. “It looked a bit fat, anyway.”

“That means it’s someone’s pet!”

Joffrey almost shrugged - who cared about that? - but caught himself in time. Lady Sansa was a good girl, proper, obedient, and she knew to listen to him, but she still had some hangups, as Lady Yang would say. Nothing that would make her outright defy him, but her attempts to question him, meek as they were, were still annoying. A king shouldn’t be questioned. Well, she would learn in time. “Then they should take better care of their pets. You wouldn’t let Lady run free, would you?”

“Of course not! I promised Father to take care of her!” Lady Sansa replied. “I take all my responsibilities seriously. But…” She hesitated, biting her lower lip, and Joffrey forced himself to keep smiling. “...a cat isn’t the same as a wolf, is it?”

“The principle is the same,” he said.

For a moment, she looked like she wanted to question him further, but then she nodded. “Of course, as with all animals.”

He smiled again. Good. She was learning. If only Team Ruby were like her… No one would be able to gainsay him if he had their obedience. But they weren’t. Lady Sansa was dutiful and obedient, but she was lacking in comparison. The backing of House Stark was nothing compared to the might of the Maidens, and while Lady Sansa was pretty, Team Ruby were beauties without peers. Still, she would do - provided Joffrey could acquire the power he needed to be a real king.

Her wolf softly growled, but he was used to that. It wouldn’t dare touch him. Unlike others, such as his grandfather, whom he was to meet later, it knew its place.

*****

“Are you aware of our current predicament?”

Joffrey frowned. His grandfather was, as always, not showing the proper respect for the prince of the realm. At least he hadn’t added ‘boy’ to the question. That would have been an insult - Joffrey wasn’t a child. He was almost a man grown. And he knew what his grandfather was alluding to. “Do you mean how I depend on Team Ruby?” He didn’t add ‘Grandfather’, he could be rude too!

His grandfather scoffed. “That is merely a symptom, not the problem.”

Joffrey frowned. “I lack the power to defend the throne without them. That is the problem:”

“Almost. The problem is that your right to the throne is questioned in the first place, boy.”

“I know!” He gritted his teeth. Oh, how he knew that! If he had the power, no one would dare question him, much less his position!

His grandfather nodded. “Good. I will not lie to you, Joffrey - our family is in a precarious position. Our enemies gather, probing for any weakness, and all that stands between us and our doom is the support of four foreigners - and that might vanish as soon as they change their minds for any reason. Such as Jaime’s death showed.”

Joffrey pressed his lips together. Uncle Jaime had been weak. As the Imp had explained, he had listened to Mother and had died for it. As much as Joffrey wanted to contradict him, he couldn’t - it was obvious in hindsight that, in this, at least, the Imp was correct. If Mother had been as smart or as powerful as she had always claimed, she would not have fallen like this. “They will keep their word,” he said. He knew Team Ruby. Better than anyone else. They were like Lord Eddard, bound by their honour. They would kill for it, even if they didn’t want to.

His grandfather scoffed again. “You are naive! They will keep their word to protect you as long as they find it in their interest, and not a moment longer.” He leaned forward, and Joffrey would have taken a step back if he hadn’t been seated. “They are foreigners, with a foreign mind. Tyrion stressed that they don’t think like we do, and I am inclined to agree with him - they certainly don’t act like anyone from Westeros would.”

“They have kept their word!” he protested. “They have done everything they said they would!”

His grandfather sneered. “Only because it served their interests, Joffrey. We have no hold on them, nothing that ties them to us. Nothing will keep them from turning against you as they have turned against your uncle and your mother.” He shook his head. “Until we’ve restored the power of our house, grown too powerful again for our enemies to dare oppose us, we depend on those four foreigners. You cannot afford to antagonise them or you will suffer the same fate Jaime and Cersei did.”

“Only a fool would antagonise them,” Joffrey spat. He was no fool.

“Your mother did, according to all accounts.”

“Mother was a fool.” Joffrey scoffed, if not as loudly as his grandfather.

“She was - she gave those four a motive to destroy her.” His grandfather gripped his goblet hard - his knuckles turned white, Joffrey saw. He didn’t drink from it, though - the Imp would have emptied the goblet twice already.

After a short pause, his grandfather nodded. “Good. You understand our position, and you know what not to do. Cultivate your relationship with your betrothed. We cannot afford to antagonise Lord Eddad either; the Starks are currently our only allies that we can trust.”

“But he sentenced Mother and Uncle Jaime!” Joffrey blurted out.

“Because Lady Ruby and her friends pressured him. Don’t give them any reason to pressure him to move against us, Joffrey.”

Of course he wouldn’t! He was no fool. 

He nodded, stiffly. He was the Prince. He shouldn’t be talked to like a servant! Like a boy! Not from anyone! But he kept his calm - he could not lose his temper. “What about the assassin who murdered Father and tried to murder Lady Ruby and Lady Yang?”

His grandfather scowled. “He has not been found yet. As riddled as the Court is with our enemies, this shouldn’t surprise anyone.”

“He will go after me next,” Joffrey said. He pressed his lips together and balled his hands into fists so he wouldn’t tremble. He was the Prince of the Realm!

“I’ve arranged for more food tasters for you. Stay with a guard at any time in case the assassin decides to switch methods.” The man wasn’t even looking at him - he was staring out of the window, at the city below. “That’s all for now. Leave.” His grandfather dismissed him. “I have work to do.”

Another insult. He clenched his teeth. He should tell off the man. Punish him for his insolence, but… He couldn’t. Not yet. He had no power to do so.

“Yes, grandfather,” he pressed out and left.

The Hound waited outside and fell in after him without needing a prompt. Good. He as well knew his place. 

Joffrey took a deep breath as he descended the stairs from his grandfather’s quarters. His position was in peril. He had no power to call his own, and everyone knew it. Even if his grandfather succeeded with whatever he was planning, it would only mean Joffrey would depend on him instead of on Team Ruby.

That was unacceptable. He would be the King, in truth and not merely in name. He wouldn’t be anyone’s tool. 

He would have the power he needed to vanquish his enemies. His life depended on it, and he couldn’t trust anyone else. His grandfather had just proven that.

His course was clear.

Once they were in the open yard, away from anyone who could overhear them, he turned to the Hound. “I need a cut purse, Hound. No, I need the best cut purse!”

Only the best would be good enough for this.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“You found mysterious jars under the Dragon Pit?” Ruby Rose cocked her head sideways. “Did you open one?” Ruby would have, in her place.

“Suspicious jars,” Blake corrected her. “And no, I didn’t. The strange chemical smell was too strong to risk it.”

“Right.” Yang nodded. “If it’s poison inside, and it fills the tunnel with gas if it’s opened…”

Ruby winced. Aura protected against a lot, poison included, but you still needed to breathe. Suffocating was a danger even here.

“I doubt that the jars could hold enough gas to render the air unbreathable,” Blake said. “Their contents couldn’t be under any pressure. So, I should have been able to make it out anyway. But I was worried about explosions.”

“Explosions?” Ruby frowned. “You think those are bombs?”

“They might be leaking inflammable gas,” Weiss said. “But your lantern would have set them off.”

“Yes. But who knows what is inside the jars? If it’s a complex chemical and it is degrading and dissolving into its components…” Blake shook her head. “They have binary poison here, and poison that changes weak acid into something that can melt steel. I don’t want to risk experimenting.”

Ruby nodded. “Yeah. Even Prince Oberyn blew up his lab when he examined the poison Yang drank.”

“Technically, he examined the poison I didn’t drink.” Yang grinned. “What I drank and vomited out melted his tools.”

Weiss rolled her eyes, but Ruby smiled. That sounded like the Yang she knew.

Blake smiled too - but she grew serious almost immediately. “There was also a symbol on the jars.” She showed them a quick sketch.

Ruby peered at it for a few seconds, but she didn’t recognise it. “I’ve never seen that before.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Yang said.

“I am unfamiliar with this symbol, but I am sure the Maesters would know more about this.” 

Blake nodded at Weiss’s words. “I was thinking the same, but I wanted to talk to you before doing anything. Like explaining what I was doing beneath the Dragonpit, so we’re on the same page.”

Right. She had been looking for a place to bury that poor boy who had been murdered. Ruby clenched her teeth. To murder a child like that! If she found out who had done it, she would… She blinked. Wait a minute… “Team!” She grimaced as she looked at her friends. “How many adults without tongues have we seen or heard about?”

Her friends gasped and went pale. “We haven’t seen any. Do you mean…” Weiss trailed off.

Blake looked grim. “Unless this… practice of using mutilated children as spies is relatively new, some of them should have grown up. We’re talking about dozens of them, in this city alone. People who can read and write, but not talk.”

“They… might still be spying for Varys, just elsewhere?” Yang didn’t sound as if she believed that.

Blake looked ill. “Why move them elsewhere? They would be familiar with the city and the Red Keep, especially with the secret passages. If they were sent somewhere else, they would have to familiarise themselves with the new environment and conditions. And newcomers who are mute would likely stick out a bit - people overlook street kids all the time, even in Remnant, but adults doing shady stuff?” She shook her head.

Ruby really hoped that Varys had only started using children as spies a few years ago. But… “Varys has been the kingdom’s spymaster for decades,” she whispered.

Yang cursed under her breath.

Weiss was stiff. Ruby knew how her friend looked when angry, and she was furious now. But controlled. Cool, sort of. “We cannot assume the worst. The Faith has sent out people to look into the origin of those children. Hopefully, they will find out more - especially how long this has been going on.”

“And we can ask around about mute people,” Blake said. “The Faith might know more - they would have a place for someone who can’t talk but can read and write. Copying books is done by hand here. Or they ran away once they were old enough to seek a better life elsewhere.”

Weiss nodded. “They could have found employment with merchants as scribes. The nobles have Maesters, but the Smallfolk cannot use them.”

Ruby nodded. “We shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” she agreed. Even though she feared that her worst assumptions were right. “So… speaking of Maesters?” She smiled at Blake.

“I’ll show them the symbol,” her friend agreed.

“And I’ll talk to the High Septon,” Ruby said. “I have to talk to him about the guards for Tobho and Gendry, anyway.”

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Blessed be the Seven! How may we help you, Lady Ruby?”

“Hello, High Septon.” Ruby managed to smile politely and not grimace. The man was practically - no, not practically, literally - bowing to her. She couldn’t blame Yang for this - it hadn’t been her big sister’s fault that she had been poisoned - but the faithful here had become even more, ah, faithful since they had heard that Yang survived poison that melted steel. “I am just… I wanted to ask you about something that concerns us.”

“We’ll do whatever we can to help you, Lady Ruby!”

She suppressed a wince. The man meant well, but she didn’t like all the bowing and scraping, as Blake called it, even though it was just bowing and no scraping. She was no divine messenger. She wasn’t even a noble - she was just Ruby, a Huntress (in training). 

But she had a mission here, and she would do it. “It’s about the mute children - related to them,” she said.

“We haven’t heard back from the men who went to investigate Essos, my lady. But I can assure you that they will do their utmost to find out everything they can!” he quickly said.

“I know that,” she tried to reassure him. “It’s just… we were wondering how long this has been going on. We haven’t seen many adults who were missing their tongues. Grown men and women,” she added when he seemed confused.

“Ah.” He frowned. “I do not recall anyone myself - although I will make an inquiry with the Silent Sisters. Women with their tongues cut and released by their master would find a place amongst them. With regard to the men, though…” He winced, probably realising what Ruby was afraid was happening. “I will make inquiries, my lady.”

She smiled at him. “Thank you, High Septon.”

“I am merely doing my duty, my lady.”

“Also, I wanted to ask about the people guarding Master Mott’s smithy,” she went on. “I know it’s not a, ah, official Faith business, but… Could you keep an eye on them so they won’t be, ah, too…” How could she word that so it wasn’t an insult? “...too rash?”

He nodded with a smile. “Several of our Septons were guards or men-at-arms before joining the Faith. I will arrange for some of them to join the guards there. It would not do for the honest enthusiasm of the faithful to turn into something detrimental to their goals.”

Ruby smiled again. That was good to hear. “That’s great! I am glad to hear that if someone should attack them, they can defend themselves and the others.”

“An astute observation, my lady. I think those I know might also do some teaching for the volunteers. Nothing like the Faith Militant, of course! Merely assuring that those who volunteer to help out are able to do what they set out to do.”

Ruby nodded. That sounded good as well. Though she would have to ask Weiss if she knew what the ‘Faith Militant’ was - it sounded important.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah, yes. That’s the symbol of the Alchemists’ Guild,” Archmaester Marwyn said.

“Also known as the Guild of the Alchemists,” Grand Maester Pycelle added with a side glance at his colleague.

Weiss Schnee wanted to roll her eyes - apparently, both men still couldn’t go along with each other. At least not to the point of avoiding such silly games. On the other hand, based on what she had heard about some feuds between Maesters, the fact that they were not physically attacking each other indicated a rather congenial relationship.

“They fancy themselves as scholars, keepers of secret knowledge,” the Grand Maester went on, “but apart from producing wildfire, they have no achievements of note.”

“And many times, they became the victims of their own wildfire,” Archmaester Marwyn said with a chuckle. “Where did you happen to discover the symbol? Did you notice their guildhall in the city?” 

Weiss hadn’t noticed the guildhall. An oversight since, apparently, the guild boasted of secret knowledge - knowledge that might help Team RWBY with returning to their world. “Several hundred jars under the Dragonpit are marked with it. We discovered them while looking for records that might have survived its storming,” she told them the cover story they had agreed upon.

“Several hundred jars of wildfire?” Archmaester Marwyn’s eyebrows rose.

“That’s… why would they be there? This has to go back at least to the time of the Mad King!” The Grand Maester exclaimed.

“You would know - you were there.”

“Yes - I saw the atrocities conducted in the last years of his reign,” Pycelle glared at his colleague before nodding at Weiss. “However, such a dangerous substance should be recovered and properly disposed of.”

Wildfire. Weiss had heard about it and read up on it. If the descriptions were even partially correct, this was indeed a substance as likely to kill whoever handled it as it was to do what they wanted. And if it was decades old… “We noticed a distinct smell. Is that normal?”

Neither of the men seemed to know the answer. The Archmaester shrugged. “I am an expert on magic, not wildfire.”

“The alchemists guard their knowledge jealously. When they enjoyed the favour of the Mad King, it was perilous to inquire too much about their guild. According to rumour, Lord Chelsted, then the King’s Hand, ran afoul of them, and was burned alive and replaced by the leader of the guild as a result,” the Grand Maester explained.

“The guild has not been in anyone’s favour since the rebellion,” Archmaester Marwyn commented.

“Nor was there any reason to care about them any more,” his colleague shot back. “But I reiterate: the substance, especially if it’s indeed wildfire, should be recovered.”

Weiss nodded. That made sense. “I’ll pass it along to the Hand,” she said. “He’ll handle it.”

Both men nodded in agreement.

*****

Weiss was almost to the Great Hall, on her way back to her team’s quarters after informing Lord Eddard, who agreed to have it handled - by the guild itself, since the alchemists would know best how to do it - when she spotted a familiar and despicable man moving to intercept her. Varys. She hid her scowl as he approached in a rather transparent attempt to make the meeting appear a coincidence instead of a planned encounter.

“Lady Weiss! Already done with your training?”

“Master Varys.” She nodded her head and slowed down; it would not do to snub him and give the game away. “I had a minor matter to deal with.”

“Oh?” He smiled. “Not something that would concern me, I hope.”

“I doubt it. We discovered a stack of wildfire under the Dragonpit, and I informed the hand.”

To her surprise, the man tensed. “Wildfire?” His smile dimmed. 

Oh - of course, he had been at the court of the Mad King as well; he likely wouldn’t have fond memories of the substance used to burn people alive. “Yes. Apparently, it was stored there and forgotten,” she explained. He would be told everything at the next meeting of the small council anyway.

“Ah.” He nodded. “It’s a very volatile substance; you must have been very cautious to avoid setting it off.”

Weiss shrugged. “I’m used to working with volatile substances.”

He nodded again. “Of course.” His smile grew a little, shifting into his usual expression. “Then it was fortunate indeed that you discovered it and not one of your more impulsive friends.”

She chuckled. “If Yang had set it off, she’d have joked how she was on fire for days.”

He seemed taken aback for a moment before laughing politely with a hint of tittering. “Ah, yes. Your friend has an affinity for fire, or so it seemed at the Battle of the Maidens, when she forced you to yield in such a brutal way.”

“I’ve been hit harder in a sparring match,” Weiss replied, frowning slightly. Was he insinuating that she couldn’t take a few punches? Sure, Yang had gotten the upper hand in the match, but it had been close. Weiss was a far cry from her debut at Beacon.

“I wouldn’t know,” Varys said, spreading his hands - soft and decorated with rings, Weiss noted - “I am no fighter. The spectre of getting accidentally maimed or killed in training is too much for me.”

Weiss suppressed a scoff - she suspected he was no stranger to murder - and nodded. “It’s not for everyone. Huntresses are a minority back home.”

“And competition might winnow the numbers down even more, I suppose?”

“The Grimm do that already,” she said, her lips forming a thin line as she thought about Ruby and Yang’s mom.

“Ah.” He nodded once more. “But I am keeping you from joining your friends. I would not want you to miss out on what they are doing any longer. Good day, my lady.”

“Good day, Master.” She nodded, more curtly than she had intended - it had been harder than she had hoped to hide her feelings toward him - and walked on. 

The brief talk had been weird, she realised as she climbed the stairs to their quarters. Varys’s small talk was usually smoother and more casual. Did he suspect that they were on to him? Was that why he had stressed that he was no fighter?

She would have to ponder this further. First, she had to inform the others that the jars contained wildfire and that it had been handled.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

With the jars’ mystery solved, and after a thorough check for spies, Blake Belladonna and Weiss were poring over the pictures on Weiss’s scroll. Blake had learned the numerical system used in Westeros - at least the current system - and so had Weiss, but the scanning app on her scroll didn’t recognise any numbers or letters, and Weiss’s attempt to train it by hand hadn’t worked out as well as they had hoped - somehow, the app steadfastly refused to read the letters and numbers as very badly hand-written texts and numbers in Remnant.

So, they had to go over the pictures one by one. It didn’t do good things for the scroll’s charge, of course. And it was very tiring to look at hand-drawn columns on a small display.

“I think we’ve established that the costs for the Court’s staff and food and other supplies have been steadily rising since Lord Baelish was installed as Master of Coin,” Weiss said. 

Blake ran the numbers in her head. “Substantial, but not outrageous - for Westeros.”

“Yes.” Weiss sighed. “It could be due to rising prices. But we can’t tell. And we haven’t even touched the extraordinary expenses. We need a more detailed analysis. And for that, we’ll have to transcribe the ledger’s data into my finance app.”

Blake winced. “That will take a while. We could split it up between everyone, but…”

Weiss nodded. “I love and respect Ruby, she’s great, but she’s not a good fit for this. If it were related to weapon construction, maybe. But I’d have to check her work myself.”

“And Yang’s not patient enough for such work. If it were a game…” Blake added.

“That leaves us,” Weiss said.

Blake suppressed a sigh. That would take time she couldn’t spend on spying.

“Or, rather, me, since you’re needed for surveillance,” Weiss went on.

Blake managed not to smile at that. Weiss snorted anyway. 

“Say…” Weiss trailed off. “Never mind.”

“What?” The last thing Blake wanted to do while on a recon mission was to wonder what Weiss wanted to talk about but had not dared to ask.

“Are you related to Ghira Belladonna?” Blake blinked, and Weiss, who was not meeting her eyes, went on: “I am just… You mentioned that your parents were members of the White Fang, and that they left, and you stayed when it became more violent.”

“When it became violent,” Blake corrected her. “It was a peaceful movement despite the best efforts of the authorities to provoke the exact response Sienna Khan then gave them once she took over.” With the help of Adam.

“When it became violent,” Weiss conceded. “Anyway, I was just curious - it’s the only Belladonna I know except you.”

Blake was tempted to comment ‘typical’, or ‘took you long enough’, but that would have been petty and inappropriate. “My father.”

Weiss stared at her, mouth slightly open, for a moment.

“Yes, really,” Blake added with a twisted grin before Weiss could say anything.

Her friend blushed and frowned at her. “So… You’re the daughter of the leader of Menagerie?”

“Yes.” Blake held back from adding another sarcastic comment.

“And you ran away from home against the wishes of your parents.”

“To join the White Fang, yes.” As Blake had already told her team. “The biggest mistake of my life.”

“Ah.” Weiss slowly, almost imperceptibly, shook her head. 

Blake narrowed her eyes slightly. “Do you disagree?”

“What? No, no. Just… comparing families, I guess. Leaving my home and attending Beacon was the best decision I ever made.” Weiss snorted and absentmindedly ran a finger over the scar on her face.

“I can’t disagree with that,” Blake told her, trying to take the sting out of her words with a wry smile - Weiss had said that her father had done his best to ruin her life, though she hadn’t gone into detail.

Weiss chuckled, once, so it probably worked.

They looked at each other for a few seconds, then Blake nodded. This wasn’t the time to pry. “So… I’ll go check on the usual suspects.” They still didn’t know what had happened to the poor kid, they didn’t have any lead on the poisoner and their investigation of Lord Baelish was just starting, but Blake was, after months here, sure that there were more plots going on that she wasn’t aware of. Not yet, she hoped.

Weiss nodded.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Loose!”

Yang Xiao Long was moving before the archers started drawing their bows and shooting. Unlike their first attempts, they were no longer hesitating. And with their arrows going through a series of Weiss’s accelerating glyphs, evading their shots was a bit of a challenge - in fact, she had to deflect one shot with her left gauntlet as she threw herself to the side, her other hand touching the ground of the training yard, bending before straightening and pushing herself straight up.

The glyphs rose just as the archers knocked their next arrows, and Yang bared her teeth in a fiery grin as another volley flew towards her. Two were too low, one had been leading her jump too much, but three flew true. She caught two on Ember Celica’s armour plates, but the third hit her aura.

“Hit!” Weiss announced, and the archers cheered.

Yang twisted her body to land on her feet, knees bending to absorb the impact, and straightened as she smiled at the archers - volunteers from Lord Eddard’s men. “Yeah, good aim there, guys.”

The six men smiled back, obviously proud. Good. It had taken them a few demonstrations to both get over their hesitation to shoot at Team RWBY with actual arrows and to understand how to use Weiss’s glyphs, but now, Yang’s team could finally train against decently fast ranged attacks. Well, except for Weiss, who was needed to create the glyphs. But Weiss was the one best suited to counter such attacks, thanks to her barrier glyphs anyway. They still needed to figure out how to train evading fire attacks. Dodging water was not going to help much if a witch could shoot fire at you at higher velocities.

“Short break!” Yang announced. Archers weren’t marksmen; shooting arrows took a lot out of them - they were good for a few minutes of quick firing, tops - and if Yang didn’t set an example, they might push themselves and strain some muscle out of pride. At least the Northeners didn’t worship them as messengers from the Seven.

She started walking to the rest area, on the other side of the yard - far from where they were shooting at the wall. Which was sporting a few more holes by now; those arrows were almost as fast as some of the slower cartridges back home. Actually, she would have to check if she could adapt Ember Celica’s cartridges; with the short barrels in her gauntlets, her shots were on the slower side as well, compared to, say, Ruby’s Crescent Rose. They hit hard since they were shotgun rounds, but that wouldn’t matter if the target dodged… Hm. If she strengthened the chambers, she could use stronger loads. That would help with muzzle velocity…

“If Theon saw this, he would be green with envy!” Bran, who had been watching attentively, commented when Yang reached the jug of water at the edge of the fenced-off training area. He was holding the rear part of one of the arrows that had hit the backstop and shattered. “It’s a bit wasteful, though - Ser Jory has complained about having to buy more arrows.”

“Ah.” Yang nodded, then checked the seal on the jug for any sign of tampering before breaking it and taking a big swallow. “I thought we were paying.”

“Yes.” Bran nodded, as if that explained the complaints.

Well, he was a kid. And as long as Ser Jory didn’t complain to them… On the other hand, why wouldn’t he? Was he hiding some resentment? “Did he say anything else about that?”

“Uh…” Bran scrunched his nose. “No! Just said he didn’t like sending people out to buy arrows in the city.”

Yang frowned after taking another big swallow. That shouldn’t be a problem, should it? It wasn’t as if the guards of House Stark had a lot to do, was it? She’d have to ask Blake about that. And Weiss. Trying to pump Bran for information wouldn’t be right; he was a boy, after all.

“So, can anyone learn to dodge arrows?” Bran asked. “You could dodge magic arrows, so a normal person could dodge normal arrows, right?”

Yang winced. That was… Not good. She had to nip that in the bud at once before Bran tried dodging arrows by himself.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“The feast is about to start, hurry up, guys!” Yang grinned. The cooks always pulled out the stops for such occasions. “I’m not about to miss out on the good food because you’re slow to get ready!”

Weiss sniffed from where she was adjusting her ponytail. “Who monopolised the bathtub for an hour?”

“It wasn’t an hour. And I needed to go first since these locks take time to style!” Yang ran a hand through her mane.

Blake snorted, and Yang turned to grin at her partner, who was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. “I’m sure they’ve got the best fish!” Blake’s bow twitched, and Yang’s grin widened - she knew what made her partner tick.

“The staff know our preferences,” Weiss commented. “I doubt that they will run out of any dishes before we arrive. In fact, I doubt they would start serving food before we’re present; that would be seen as an insult.”

Yang shrugged. “If we’re late, it’s our fault. Or yours, actually, for being so slow.”

“That’s not how things work,” Weiss corrected her with another sniff. “If Lord Eddard started the feast without us, the Court would assume he was deliberately snubbing us. And so would I, actually,” she added. “We do have a reputation here, after all.”

One Yang had mixed feelings about. Sure, people respecting you was nice - no one looked down on her or made some sexist remark - but she didn’t like people bowing to her and treating her like some divine messenger. At least, most of their friends here didn’t do that.

“Besides, they have no clocks, so we can’t be late since there’s no precise time!” Ruby had appeared, smiling widely, Crescent Rose on her back and covered by her cape. She ran a hand over her skirt to smooth it out in a familiar gesture, then frowned. “I think I need to visit a tailor; the hem is fraying a bit again.”

Yang smirked and glanced at Blake. “Combat skirt problems, am I right?”

Her partner’s lips spread in a toothy smile as she nodded.

Weiss made that scoffing sound she did when irritated. “Let’s go! We shouldn’t hold up the feast’s start.”

“Wait! If we’re early, won’t that mean others who are on time will miss out on food?” Ruby asked.

“They should have been early as well, then. I would, if I were hungry. Matter of fact, I am,” Weiss said.

“Let’s feed the Ice Queen before she gets cranky,” Yang said.

“Crankier,” Ruby added. 

“I heard that!”

Yang watched Ruby checking the traps set for thieves, and then the team left the room.

*****

“Lady Yang! I saw you training today! You were almost as fast as your sister!”

“Not quite that fast,” Yang told Arya. Nobody was as fast as Ruby when she used her Semblance. “But yeah, I did pretty well.” No need to fake humility. “But so did your father’s archers.”

“Oh, yes! If Theon could see them, his face would be stuck in a pout!” Arya grinned. 

First Bran, then Arya… Well, Theon did think very highly of his own skill at archery and wasn’t shy to say so. Unlike Jon, who had great talent with the sword but was too shy to say anything about it. And too shy to join Yang and her friends at the feast. “Have you seen Jon around?” she asked Arya.

The girl blinked. “He should be…” She looked around, frowning more deeply with every second. “I’ll hunt him down and drag his sorry butt back here, my lady!” she announced, then turned and vanished in the crowd.

“‘Drag his sorry butt back here’?” Weiss, sitting next to Yang, asked as she bent away so a serving girl standing between her and Ruby could place more food on the table. “Why, I wonder where she picked up that expression.”

“She got it from me, of course!” Yang chuckled. “And I bet she told her Father and the Septa so when they asked.” The girl was sneaky, after all.

“If future generations ask themselves why the Court language became so coarse, they will end up with your name.” Weiss sniffed again, but Yang could tell that she wasn’t serious.

“It means I’ll have left a lasting impression!” Yang grinned again and refilled her cup - from their own jug, of course. Less temptation for the poisoner to tamper with the wine and beer of the feast. Varys kept saying he was following up leads, but Blake didn’t think he was actually doing that much - she hadn’t noticed much of a change amongst the child spies - and Yang trusted her partner over the ‘Master of Whispers’ any day of the week.

And, speaking of the devil… She smiled at the sight of Blake serving herself another plateful of fish from the pot on the table. “Enjoying yourself?”

“Someone has to eat all the fish,” Blake replied without blushing.

“Might as well be you, huh?”

“I think that people are a bit reluctant to eat from our favourite dishes - not because they wish to leave more for us, but to avoid another attempt to poison us,” Blake went on before filling her mouth with the next serving.

Oh. Yang frowned. That wasn’t good. Not too bad, either, but still… Was that also why they were a little less bothered by all the courtiers than usual? At least their friends stuck with them - Lady Brienne sat across from them, next to Bran and the empty space where Arya had been sitting before she had gone to hunt down Jon. The royal family - well, the royal siblings, Yang corrected herself with a slight wince - were seated next to them, with Prince Joffrey between Lady Sansa and Lord Eddard, though… Oh. The Prince just got up, talking to Lord Eddard before leaving the table.

Yang turned to Blake.

“He is probably tired,” her partner said. Which meant that was what the Prince had told the regent.

Tired - or afraid? The Prince hadn’t struck her as afraid, but he had seemed a bit nervous - and he had avoided them at the feast, hadn’t he?

Yang pressed her lips together. Damn, if the Prince was now too afraid of getting caught in the crossfire to socialise with them, things were getting really bad.

She watched Lady Sansa get up, but the Prince waved her off, and she sat down again, frowning. Tough luck, Yang thought. But the Prince didn’t mean to snub her, she was sure of that.

She noticed a lot of people watching the Prince leave. Sure, he was the Prince, and the highest-ranked noble at the table - the feast was in his honour - but how many of them were watching for signs of poison? Damn, she was losing her appetite, and before dessert was served!

They really needed to track down this poisoner! The longer this went on, the worse things would get - like when a Grimm started to haunt an isolated village, people would start panicking, and that would make things even worse. But what could they do?

She glanced at Blake. Her partner’s expression hadn’t changed much, but Yang could see that she was no longer enjoying her fish dishes but faking it. She wouldn’t have missed the mood shift, either, of course - Blake rarely missed anything. Best partner she could wish for; with her at Yang’s side, they could grow old together as Huntresses; something few achieved. So…

A gasp from Weiss drew her attention before she could try to lift Blake’s mood with some jokes and some flirting. “My dust cartridges!”

“Wrghlat?” Ruby leaned in from the other side after hastily swallowing her food.

“My spare dust cartridges - they’re gone!” Weiss hissed, patting her dress’s hidden pockets down. “Some of them,” she corrected herself a moment later.

“But…” Ruby trailed off.

Weiss wouldn’t have forgotten to carry her cartridges, Yang knew. A Huntress lived and died by being ready for a fight, and Weiss was very anal about that stuff, especially Dust.

Someone had picked her pockets! “A thief!” Yang hissed, looking around.

They were surrounded by dozens of people. Anyone could be...

“Main suspects would be the serving staff; they were the only ones getting close to us for such a theft,” Blake said.

That made sense. “We need to check all of them, then.” Yang hadn’t paid attention to the servants - not how she should have. Uncle Qrow would scold her for such a lapse.

“Or we can get help!” Ruby said. Before Yang could ask what she meant, she turned to Lady Sansa. “Lady Sansa! We need Lady!”

“Huh?” Lady Sansa wasn’t the only one who was confused.

*****

“This way!” Lady Sansa announced the obvious - Lady, nose loudly sniffing, was already moving down the next hallway. “She got the trail!”

“Good girl!” Ruby cheered.

Yang grinned. Indeed - whoever had stolen the dust, they hadn’t planned for Lady’s nose! Even Blake was smiling, toothily, of course, at the direwolf.

“Let’s hope they didn’t run too far,” Weiss, ever the pessimist, muttered as they reached a side door leading outside the building.

“They cannot run faster than we can track them!” Ruby announced. 

Yang hoped she was correct.

Whoever had stolen the dust knew how to move - the route they followed was quite obscure, or so Blake would call it. It led through dark passages and doors, but not towards the main gate. That meant the thief was either not planning to leave the Keep, which was good, or trying to use a secret passage - which was also good since Blake knew those like the back of her hand.

Yang grinned. They would get the thief! 

They rounded the next corner, past some herbal mini-garden, and almost ran into a huge figure coming their way. Lady started barking loudly.

“Clegane!” Blake hissed. 

“Get your wolf under control!” 

Yeah, that was the man’s voice.

Lady, though, kept barking, circling around the man as he turned - and Yang saw he was carrying a big bag slung over his shoulder.

“Lady!” Lady Sansa yelled, but the wolf was growling now.

At the bag, Yang realised.

“It smells like blood,” Blake whispered behind her.

“Put down the bag!” Yang snapped, stepping forward, Blake moving to her side, Gambol Shroud out.

Weiss pulled Lady Sansa back as Ruby drew Crescent Rose.

“I caught a thief,” Clegane snapped. “Snuck in disguised as a servant. Tried to get to the Prince.” He dropped the bag, and Yang caught a glimpse of brown hair when it fell slightly open.

Blake moved forward, kneeling down, and Yang glared at Clegane until he took a step back.

“Don’t look!” Weiss whispered to Lady Sansa.

Yang hoped Ruby listened to her partner as well since Blake opened the bag and revealed the body of a young woman. “She served us at the table.”

“She stole from us,” Weiss hissed, then glared at Clegane. “You killed her?”

Before the man could say anything, an explosion shattered the windows above them.

And Yang realised that they were close to the royal quarters.

*****

 

Chapter 31: Interludes II

‘Students often have romantic notions of how succession worked in the time of absolute monarchs. Some even now tout the idea of hereditary positions as being more stable and predictable than the current system, often citing a few cherry-picked examples from recent troubles to support their argument. Leaving aside the question of legitimacy by birth, they merely betray their ignorance of history by making their argument as such. Even in monarchies where the line of succession was clear, a determined pretender could easily find a reason or excuse to challenge the heir - provided they could find enough material support to overcome the heir's own. Of course, legitimacy played a significant role in gathering such support, but it was not nearly as crucial as some of the more popular tales might make the unwary and uncritical reader assume. The Targaryens ruled for centuries, but without dragons, they would never have conquered Westeros, nor held the throne long enough, until even after losing the dragons, they had established themselves as the legitimate royal family. And yet, it only took one mad king to undo their legitimacy enough for a rebellion not only to challenge but topple their rule after three centuries. Why should it be any surprise, then, that dynasties that were far younger than the Targaryens’ had much more trouble defending their right to the throne? Most ambitious nobles could easily come up with a claim, no matter how far-fetched it might be, and trust their armies to win them the throne. That danger was especially high when the rightful heir to the throne was not a grown man with decades of experience at court but an untried child who would not rule for years while a regent handled the affairs of the realm. Ultimately, despite the pretensions of legitimacy and justice, it far often came down to naked force as might made right - a stance distinctly refuted by the Ruby Order but not many others, at least among the members of the Court.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Sandor Clegane froze. He didn’t have to look up to know what had happened - the stupid little shit had blown himself up with the stolen magic powder! So much for knowing what he was doing!

A bit away, the broken windows hit the ground, shattered glass raining down while broken frames and shutters splintered on cobblestones, but his focus was on the four monsters and the wolf in front of him. 

“That was a dust explosion!” Lady Weiss blurted out. “My missing dust!” 

She glared at Sandor, but before she could say anything, her leader spoke up: “Weiss! We need stairs!”

“Right!” A moment later, the girl’s sword flashed, and those magic symbols appeared in the air.

Lady Ruby was the first to jump on them, vanishing in a cloud of petals - Sandor shuddered at the sight - and reappearing on the floating symbol next to the smoking hole in the keep.

“Stay!”

He jerked at the sudden command from Lady Blake. How has she again managed to get behind me without me noticing? he wondered while the girl jumped up as well.

“Prince Joffrey…” Lady Sansa stared at the smoke pouring out of the keep, and Sandor saw the blonde witch who could create a firestorm around her place a hand on the girl’s shoulder.

They were distracted by the explosion. Should he make a run for it? But they had already seen the corpse of the thief. And more people were arriving, attracted by the explosion. Guards among them. If he ran… He suppressed a shudder. They could outrun an arrow in flight. And the wolf had been tracking the dead thief. If it could do that, it could track Sandor through the keep. He wouldn’t get far, and it would make him look guilty. And a convenient scapegoat for the death of a prince.

No, best to stay and try to shift all blame to the prince. He had just been following the little shit’s orders, after all. But ‘the Prince told me to kill the thief so she couldn’t betray him’ wouldn’t go over well with the four witches. ‘Stopped a thief trying to get to the prince’ was much better. No one cared about the smallfolk, especially Fleabottom’s gutter trash. 

No one but the witches. Sandor could only hope that the little shit was dead so he couldn’t contradict him. And that no one had seen him with the thief when he hired her for the little shit. If he had known what the idiot had wanted her for before he had brought her to the Red Keep… He gritted his teeth. It wasn’t looking good for him.

“It’s Prince Joffrey!” a voice sounded from above them. “He’s dead!”

The redheaded chit gasped, then started to weep. The fire witch was holding her, and the wolf was growling.

“Sansa! Lady Yang! What happened?”

And the regent had arrived. With half the Court, or so it seemed. And too many damn guards.

“Prince Joffrey’s dead, Lord Eddard,” the fire witch told him. “Blown up with dust stolen by the woman here whom Clegane killed.”

Sandor cursed as everyone stared at him. He should never have followed the little shit’s orders! Not when magic was involved. No money was worth getting killed.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Grand Maester Pycelle shook his head when he saw the body. You didn’t need to be a Maester, much less a Grand Maester with his experience, to realise that there was no way Lady Ruby had been mistaken about the Prince’s death - the boy had been all but ripped apart by the explosion that had devastated the royal chamber. At least the face had been mostly whole, so they were not mourning a servant who had disobeyed the Prince's order to leave his quarters. “A dust explosion…” he said as he bent to examine the wounds.

“Not dust, Dust. Magical Powder from another world.” Marwyn, of course, couldn’t conduct himself with the dignity this situation required. The Prince of the Realm had died, and Marwyn still acted as if this were a debate in the Tower’s hall!

“I am aware of that,” Pycelle snapped. Lady Weiss had been quite clear about that. And he really didn’t have the time for this. Not in the middle of this crisis! “Not that it matters - what matters is that Prince Joffrey is dead.”

“I think it matters quite a lot,” Marwyn disagreed. “He was killed - and his room wrecked - by the explosion of a single vial of Dust.”

“We’ve already established that,” Pycelle retorted.

“One of many that Team Ruby routinely carries around.”

Pycelle froze for a moment, then drew a breath through his clenched teeth. If multiple such vials exploded… He shuddered. “That’s… We need to know how this explosion occurred. It can’t be that easy to set off an explosion, or they would never risk carrying such vials around, certainly not for sparring. It would be like sparring with jars of wildfire strapped to you.”

“Yes.” Marwyn, for a change, agreed with Pycelle. “We need to ask them how they secure the Dust and how they prevent accidental explosions.”

Of course, the man would agree as long as he could learn more about magic! “And how to reassure the Court that they won’t be the next victim of such an explosion,” Pycelle added because he knew that the four women would never leave their remaining Dust reserves unguarded. Not after two attempts to steal from them, one of which had succeeded. And he was also quite well aware that no one in the realm had the power to keep them from carrying around enough Dust to blow up the Tower of the Hand, but a few might be deluded enough to try. At least Lord Lannister would be too occupied with dealing with this latest blow to his House to focus on that. “We need to talk to them and compare our notes anyway.” The regent and the rest of the small council wanted answers. Team Ruby had stated what they knew, and Clegane had told a story with a few gaping holes in it, but the Court would want an unbiased account and was looking to Pycelle to get one.

Marwyn nodded. “Let’s go then!” 

Pycelle had to agree. There was nothing he could do here any more - the body was beyond healing; in fact, he doubted that the Silent Sisters could do much to make it presentable for a funeral - and the room was so thoroughly wrecked, neither Pycelle nor Marwyn had been able to determine what the boy had been doing to cause the explosion, whether he had attempted to conduct a magical ritual, as - to the surprise of no one - Marwyn speculated or whether he had simply mishandled the powder and it had gone off like wildfire, only more destructive.

He nodded at the guard posted here to prevent thieves from taking advantage of the scene and left the chamber.

*****

“Dust in solid form - such as in cartridges - can only be triggered under specific and often unique circumstances. But even loose Dust is perfectly safe when properly stored,” Lady Weiss, Team Ruby’s expert on Dust, said in a firm but polite tone, though Pycelle could see her eyes narrowing a bit. Either that was a sensitive topic, or she was still quite angry about the fact that the thief who had robbed her had been killed before she could arrest and interrogate the woman. And also, Pycelle knew, about the fact that the thief had been killed, period.

It wasn’t wise to press powerful people who were already annoyed or angry, but Pycelle knew his duty to his office and Lord Tywin. “In a vial?”

“Yes.” Lady Weiss nodded. “Perfectly safe - unless you spill it.”

Lady Ruby coughed. “Which you shouldn’t.”

“What if it breaks?” Marwyn asked.

“They are quite solid,” Lady Weiss replied. “You’d have to exert a significant force to break the vials.”

“Like a blow from a sword or hammer?” Pycelle resisted the urge to lean forward. That could have been interpreted as an attempt to push them.

Lady Weiss hesitated. “It depends on the circumstances,” she said. “If we carry the vials, we can protect them.”

Pycelle glanced at the other members of Team Ruby and noticed them nodding.

“How do you protect them?” Marwyn, of course, the fool he was, leaned forward, an eager expression on his face.

“The same way we protect our clothes and weapons in battle,” Lady Weiss said. “We can extend our own invulnerability.”

The power that made them shrug off sword blows and ignore acid strong enough to melt steel. They probably could withstand wildfire as well. Of course, as Lady Weiss’s facial scar indicated, it was not complete invulnerability, though Pycelle wasn’t sure he wanted to know what kind of attack could break such protections. “Do you think that Prince Joffrey broke the vial open and triggered such an explosion?” 

“He could have simply opened the vial - it’s not sealed shut,” Lady Weiss replied.

That threw some shade on her declaration that the vials were safe, in Pycelle’s opinion.

“What if he attempted a ritual with the Dust?” Marwyn just had to use his pet theory- albeit Pycelle had to admit that it made some sense. In hindsight, some of the questions the boy had asked him lately were suspicious.

“That is likely,” Lady Weiss said. “Uncovered, Dust can be volatile. Even a sneeze can set it off.”

Lady Ruby nodded in agreement. “And it doesn’t take that much to blow a crater into stone.”

Pycelle felt his stomach drop at the thought that between the four of them, the girls carried dozens of such vials. It seemed that his attempt to be able to reassure the Court and his fellow members on the small council that there was no danger of a repeat of this tragedy had not been as successful as he had hoped.

At least he had the small satisfaction that Marwyn hadn’t gained any more information about the girls’ magic. The less such dangerous knowledge spread, the better.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Sitting behind his table - overloaded with parchment - in the solar of the Tower of the Hand, Eddard Stark nodded at Jory. “You say the smallfolk are restless?”

“Yes, my lord.” Jory nodded. “They were already riled up after Lady Yang was poisoned, but the death of Prince Joffrey seems to have made it worse.”

Ned nodded. To lose both the King and his heir so soon after each other… Of course, the smallfolk would be restless. They must be worried about the future, what with Prince Tommen even younger than Prince Joffrey was, so it would take even more years until he would be ready to be crowned. And yet, despite the tragedy - albeit one the Prince apparently had caused himself - and the daunting prospect of spending even more years as regent in King’s Landing, Ned couldn’t help feeling relieved as well. Sansa wouldn’t have to marry a boy who was likely the product of incest and not the son of Ned’s best friend. He felt ashamed about this, but he could not deny what he felt.

But he couldn’t let himself get distracted by such thoughts either. “Do you think there’ll be rioting?”

Jory nodded. “Yes, my lord. Everyone is on edge. Men-at-arms, guards, even septons. And rumours are flying, or so my men tell me. Sooner or later, someone will start a fight, and the gold cloaks won’t be able to handle it before it turns into a riot.”

Jory had not yet seen a riot in King’s Landing, but Ned agreed with him. So many people being anxious and riled up would lead to a riot. And Ned didn’t trust the gold cloaks to handle it. Not with all the scheming at Court leaving the very guards who might reinforce the gold cloaks in an emergency at each others’ throats. “We need more guards to keep order,” he said. His own wouldn’t be enough to turn the tide. Lord Renly, Lord Stannis and, of course, the Lannisters would have enough, or so Ned hoped. But asking any of them for help would see Ned getting dragged into the next conflict at Court. And if such a conflict were to turn violent…

Jory nodded but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. This was Ned’s duty to handle. Only he didn’t know how. And with all the other duties he had in the middle of this latest crisis, pressing duties… He was already hard-pressed to keep up with all the work and problems. He hadn’t even been able to comfort Sansa properly in her grief. To spend days negotiating with the nobles… No, that wouldn’t work out. 

But there was a possible solution. He would have to talk to Lady Ruby and her friends.

*****

“You want us to calm down the people?” 

Lady Ruby sounded surprised, Ned noted. Was she out of touch with the mood in the city, then? Or was he misinterpreting the mood? No, he trusted Jory. And it made sense that the smallfolk would be concerned about the lack of a king. “Yes, my lady,” he said. “The smallfolk trust you.” Almost worshipped them, or so he had heard - at least the followers of the New Gods. Ned didn't really have much contact with the worshippers of the Seven in King's Landing, and neither did his men. If Cat were here, it would be different, but she was back home with Robb and the others. “The death of both King Robert and his heir, and the culprit still unknown, is causing a lot of worry among them.”

Lady Blake's face didn't show any reaction, but both Lady Yang and Lady Weiss were frowning. “We can't promise them that we'll watch over them until a new King is crowned,” Lady Weiss said. 

“Yep.” Lady Yang nodded. “We're not going to stay here for years.”

Ned knew that, of course. “You don't need to. The smallfolk fear unrest and a war over the crown. If they're reassured that neither will happen, they will calm down.”

“For now, you mean,” Lady Weiss said.

“Yes,” Ned admitted as he put his elbows on his table. “That's all the city needs right now. A period of calm so we can adjust and stabilise the realm.”

The four girls exchanged glances. “And what if we find a way home and have to leave?” Lady Weiss asked.

“What are the odds that this will happen in the next few weeks or months?” Ned met her eyes. “I do not ask you to stay forever, or even delay your departure. I merely ask you to help out in this time of uncertainty and potential unrest.”

“Well, Huntresses protect people,” Lady Ruby said. “So, telling the smallfolk that shouldn't be a problem. We've already told them that, anyway.”

“It bears repeating,” Ned said, earning him a frown from Lady Weiss and a raised eyebrow from Lady Blake even though Lady Ruby nodded.

“We'll do it. But we're not going to stay here forever,” she said.

“Thank you, my lady.” Ned bowed his head.

“Oh! Since we're here anyway,” Lady Ruby said. “What's going to happen to Lord Clegane? He did admit to killing Taisha.”

Ned managed not to wince. The man stuck to his story that the thief had tried to get to the prince, planning to kill him with a stolen vial of magic powder, and so he had killed her in defence of his charge, but Ned had his doubts about that. Sure, he could see Joffrey picking up the vial and sending Clegane away with the dead thief, but… Clegane was a skilled warrior, the equal of many knights, and the thief had been, but for the vial, unarmed and unarmoured. Of course, one couldn't take many risks when magic powder was involved, much less with the life of the Prince, but it was a bit too convenient. 

On the other hand, that the woman had stolen the vial was beyond doubt - the Four Maidens themselves and Lady had proven that - and who could fault a guard for killing a thief trying to accost the Prince? “We're investigating the incident,” he said. “We need to find out who hired her.”

“Clegane was seen with her in Fleabottom a few days before her death,” Lady Blake said. “And she told a friend of hers about him.”

This time, Ned did frown. “Then there will be a trial.”

“Good.” Lady Ruby nodded firmly. “Taisha may have been a thief, but that doesn't mean she deserved death.”

Ned agreed with her, even though this would add even more work for him.

*****

Ned could do without meeting Lord Tywin - he was buried in work - but he couldn’t refuse a meeting with a Lord Paramount without giving offence. “Lord Tywin.” He greeted the man with a respectful nod - Lord Tywin was known to be prickly about any insults, no matter how minor, and to hold grudges.

“Lord Regent.” Lord Tywin returned the nod as he took a seat in Ned's solar. “You are quite busy,” he commented with a glance at the parchment on Ned's table.

“You've been Hand before; you know how it is,” Ned replied.

Lord Tywin scoffed at that. “Things were different when I was Hand.”

Ned nodded. They had a mad king - although Aerys's madness had not been obvious yet, when Lord Tywin had served as his Hand.

“But I won't keep you from your work, Lord Regent. I am here to discuss the betrothal between the heir to the throne and your daughter.”

Ned tensed. “Prince Joffrey is dead,” he said, “The betrothal was with him.”

“The betrothal was to unite the Baratheons and the Starks,” Lord Tywin replied. “Now that Tommen is the heir, it follows that he should be betrothed to your daughter, to forge closer ties between our families.”

Between the Lannisters and the Starks, Ned thought. Robert had wanted to unite his and Ned's families. But Robert was dead. And Ned had doubts about the legitimacy of the prince and princess. But he couldn't tell Lord Tywin that - the implication alone would be an insult worth a feud. And with Team Ruby insisting on ˆproof beyond doubt’ for any claim against the royal children, Ned couldn't tell whose side they would support if it came to war. He had to gain time to sort this out. “Sansa is still grieving over the death of her betrothed. To push her into a new betrothal would be cruel,” he said.

Lord Tywin frowned, and Ned half-expected him to scoff. But he slowly nodded. “What about your other daughter, then? She would be closer in age to Tommen.”

“Arya?” Ned winced. Arya was still dreaming of a life as a Huntress - or a warrior woman, or ‘Lady Knight’. She didn't dream of a royal marriage, much less becoming queen. If Ned told her she was to marry, she would make her displeasure known very loudly. But to tell Lord Tywin that would embarrass Ned and his family. “She's still very young,” he said instead.

Tywin scoffed at that. “She's old enough for a betrothal. And the marriage wouldn't be until both are of age, of course.”

Ned didn't want to tie his family to the Lannisters. Honour had kept him from breaking the betrothal between Sansa and Prince Joffrey, but he was not bound by it to betroth Arya to Tommen. Or Bran - or Robb - to Myrcella, if Lord Tywin would go there.

But how to refuse without insulting Lord Tywin and potentially drive Team Ruby to the Lannisters? Oh! He suppressed a smile when the solution presented itself. “My children are close to Team Ruby, Lord Tywin.” The other man's expression turned into a puzzled frown. “So, they have been influenced by their views - even with regard to marriages. And, as you undoubtedly are already aware, Team Ruby’s members are used to choosing their own betrotheds.”

Lord Tywin's frown turned into a scowl. “Surely your children will listen to you.”

Ned spread his hands, “Indeed, they will - but, as you surely know from your own experience, children, especially young children, do not always obey their parents. And even if they do, they often complain about it. If Lady Ruby and her friends were to hear Arya or Sansa whining about a betrothal, they might be moved to intervene. They are still very young themselves, and, therefore, more likely to side with those close to their age rather than their parents.” He nodded gravely. “Their support can be a two-edged blade. As embarrassing as it is, it's best to step very lightly around them.”

Lord Tywin's jaw muscles trembled briefly - he must be clenching his teeth, Ned saw - but he slowly nodded. “I see. Indeed, one must step lightly around them. I will consider this carefully, Lord Regent.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Ned waited until Lord Tywin had left his solar before he smiled with relief.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Prince Joffrey was dead. Gendry Storm - not Waters, Storm; the late King, his father, had named him so - wasn’t sure what to think. His half-brother was dead, slain in an explosion. It sounded like an assassination, and there were rumours that a faceless man had infiltrated the Red Keep as a servant, stolen magic powder from Lady Ruby and her friends, and used it to kill the prince. And yet, other rumours claimed that it had been the Prince who had stolen from the Four Maidens, and the Seven had struck him down for the sin. The latter rumour was much more popular amongst the volunteer guards outside the smithy. Was his half-brother a thief or a victim?

Gendry didn’t know. And he wanted to know. Because if the Prince had been killed by a Faceless Man, then his other half-siblings were the obvious next targets. And Gendry might be next - the poison that Lady Yang had drunk might have been aimed at him. And the guards outside - half a dozen to a dozen depending on the time of the day, and he still didn’t know what to think about that, either - wouldn’t be able to stop a Faceless Man, would they?

“Boy! Stop daydreaming and finish that crossguard!”

“Yes, Master!” Gendry jerked and hastily started to work on the piece again. He couldn’t do anything about the assassins or whatever had killed his half-brother. But he could smith.

But he couldn’t finish the crossguard before he was distracted again, this time by Lady Yang and Lady Blake visiting. At least, they entered through the door instead of jumping over the wall without warning - Lady Yang had done that a few times in earlier visits, and Gendry doubted that she had done that merely to ‘test his situational awareness’, whatever that was. “Yo!”

“My ladies.” Master Mott nodded at them without stopping his work on the sword.

“We wanted to check up on you.” Lady Yang looked at the wall surrounding the yard, then at Lady Blake before smiling at Gendry. “How’s it going with the guards?”

Master Mott scoffed. “They’re still standing around uselessly.”

Gendry winced. “They have been quite polite and they don’t prevent customers from entering,” he said with a glance at Master Mott.

“Good, good. We asked them to, ah, tone it down a little,” Lady Yang said.

Gendry was aware of that. And thankful - the shop had counted fewer customers when a bunch of armed people had surrounded it. But even with that problem solved, he was still in danger. Quite a clear danger, in case the Prince had been assassinated instead of having been struck down by the Seven for stealing. 

He hesitated, then swallowed. There was no reason not to ask. The Four Maidens were friendly and helpful, even with smallfolk and bastards, not arrogant as most nobles. “If I may ask, my ladies… What happened to the Prince? I’ve heard many rumours…”

“Ah.” Lady Yang winced. “He got his hands on Dust stolen from us and accidentally set it off.” She shook her head. “The blast destroyed his room.”

Gendry grimaced at the thought of what that would have done to a boy, and even Master Mott winced. And yet… “So, he wasn’t killed by a Faceless Man who had taken the shape of a servant?”

“No,” Lady Blake spoke up. “The servant was a thief hired by the Prince’s sworn sword, Lord Clegane, who killed her under circumstances that we have yet to clear up. But she wasn’t a Faceless Man in disguise.”

“So, she stole from you?”

“From Weiss,” Lady Yang said.

Ah. Gendry was no noble; he was a simple smith and a bastard who had met his father just once before he was rendered an orphan again, but he knew enough not to press for more explanations.

But he could correct the guards’ rumours next time they came in to get their training weapons repaired. Master Mott didn’t like it, but Gendry thought repairing their training weapons was the least you could do for people who volunteered to guard you. Especially if they were sent by the Faith of the Seven at the request of the Four Maidens.

Even if Lady Yang and Lady Blake had not said so out loud, it was clear as day that those who had dared to lay their hands on the Maidens’ property had died as a result, and brutally so.

Sometimes, the Seven’s justice struck quickly and harshly, and Gendry certainly would never scorn them or their followers. 

But that still left him torn about what he should feel about his half-brother’s death.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and we know you’re worried about the succession, with the King and the Prince both dead, and all those rumours, but you don’t have to be afraid. Team Ruby’s here! We’ll protect you to the best of our abilities. We know our duty as Huntresses!

“So, don’t give in to fear, don’t lash out at others - focus on staying calm and help each other if there’s a need. Think positive thoughts! You’re not alone! It might take a while, but there will be a new king, and you have a regent until then. If we all work together, this won’t be a problem at all!”

Seated behind Lady Ruby, the High Septon nodded as she spoke to the gathered masses - the faithful - in the Great Sept. Yes, the people would find solace in the fact that the Blessed of the Seven watched over them. Who could be afraid of the uncertainty of the current succession with such obvious proof of the Seven’s grace here? Why would anyone have to fear the future king - or a violent succession - with Team Ruby protecting them?

“No one - not me, not my team, not anyone else - can do everything. But together, we can!”

Lady Ruby smiled as the gathered people broke out in cheers. It lifted the High Septon’s spirit to see the smallfolk, formerly unruly and afraid, now enthusiastic. And no hecklers had sneaked in!

“Team Ruby will punish the wicked!” someone yelled from the back. Well, he wasn’t a heretic who still doubted the Blessed by the Seven. Probably.

Lady Ruby shook her head as the people quieted down again. “We’re here to protect you, not to punish anyone. That’s what the courts are for. Might does not make right. The more powerful you are, the more responsible you have to be! You cannot just force your will on others, you have to…”

Lady Weiss, seated next to the High Septon, sighed and muttered something he didn’t quite catch - or understand. What was a ‘cartoon’? But the Maiden was still smiling when Lady Ruby finished her speech, so it couldn’t have been important.

Lady Ruby took a few deep breaths when she stepped down from the pedestal and turned away from the crowd. “Ugh!” she muttered. “I blew it!”

“You didn’t,” Lady Weiss spoke up. “You said what you wanted to, and more or less how we planned it.”

“More more or more less?” Lady Ruby asked with a lopsided smile that looked endearingly innocent on her face.

“I’d say about in the middle,” Lady Weiss replied before looking at him. “What do you think?”

Was he asked to judge the Chosen of the Seven? He smiled. “I believe everyone here took heart and felt relieved from fear and anger by your words.”

Lady Weiss grinned. “See? You did it.”

“Yes!”

“Thank you for letting us speak to your congregation, High Septon,” Lady Weiss said with a small bow.

“Yes, thank you again!”

“It was the least I could do,” he replied - honestly. As if he could refuse to let the Blessed by the Seven address the faithful! The High Septon knew he wasn’t a saint, not even a truly good man - he was too weak to the pleasures of the flesh for that - but he was still a man of the Faith, and he could see a messenger of the Seven when they appeared and do his duty.

How anyone, especially a member of the Faith, could doubt the divine nature of the Four Maidens was beyond him. They had power beyond a mortal’s ken - power beyond anything magic could achieve, as those who studied such matters had assured him. And yet, for all their power, they were humble and polite, never took anything for granted, and were friendly to everyone, no matter their station. They truly cared for the smallfolk and stood for what was right even when it went against the wishes of the most powerful nobles in the realm. And those who went against them were punished by the gods. Even if they were princes. The Maidens hadn’t told him so, but the High Septon had heard enough to know the truth about the Prince’s death.

How could anyone not follow their example, within the limits of their own means? Work together, protect each other, help each other - the Seven’s will was clear, and even a sinner like the High Septon would do everything to obey, be it sending faithful to Essos to investigate the slave trade or arm the faithful to better protect those in need.

Lady Ruby might not have ordered the return of the Faith Militant - the High Septon was well aware of how controversial such a decision would be - but neither had she forbidden the faithful from arming themselves to do their duties.

And if a man was in his right to fight under a noble’s order, how much more would he be in his right to fight on the orders of the Seven Above as told by the Divine Messengers?

The High Septon knew his duty. Should the Four Maidens have a need for men-at-arms, the Faith would answer.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys knew how to smile and hide his true feelings. He had honed this skill for decades, and it had let him survive the Mad King’s reign as well as the rebellion that ended it, with none privy to his true thoughts - not even his closest contacts. But it was getting a little more difficult than usual to keep up the facade when it seemed fate itself was conspiring against him.

Safely in the privacy of his office, Varys allowed himself to scowl.

That idiot prince had gone and blown himself up trying to copy the witches’ magic! Varys didn’t mind that the Prince had died - sooner or later, the spoilt brat would have had to die - but he very much minded that the idiot had died now. His mere existence had driven a wedge between the witches and the Starks and Baratheons, and once those bridges were truly burnt, it would have only taken the right timing and a few disposable minions to expose the boy’s depravity to the whole Court. That would have forced the witches to abandon the prince lest their facade of benevolence be revealed as the act it was, and so would have turned the Lannisters against the witches. Lord Tywin would have either stubbornly stuck to defending his grandson’s claim against all reason or disposed of Joffrey himself - and that would have turned him into a kinslayer. As a result, the Lannisters would have been isolated, and bereft of the witches’ protection, and the Baratheons would have made a move against them. No matter who won that war, the victor would have been weakened, and after setting both Baratheons against each other, Varys could have secured the support of the Martells for the Young Griff to move in and take over the weakened realm. (After disposing of the witches, of course, but that went without saying.)

But now? Lord Tywin would push Tommen onto the throne, Lord Eddard would have a much more malleable boy to marry to his daughters - the man might hold out a bit, but would cave sooner or later, with the witches protecting Tommen’s claim. And with Prince Oberyn so friendly with the witches - the rake was, no doubt, fooling himself into thinking he could seduce them so they would support his House - Varys couldn’t work on bringing the Martells into the fold as long as the witches were still ruling the court. Prince Oberyn was a fool, but not as much of a fool as to put his house against them no matter the prize.

Things would be bad enough if this were all that he had to face, but he knew that the witches were not content with ruling the court - they were also taking control of the Faith. Whether they planned to rule the realm through a reborn Faith Militant, using the crazed zealots to kill anyone they might not personally bother to hunt down, or wished to have the Faith and the Court destroy each other so they could install their own rule on the ashes, Varys didn’t know yet - the witches themselves might not yet be sure which would be the most appealing course of action.

But he knew they had to be stopped. No matter the cost. He had already reached out - through many proxies, of course - to the House of Black and White, but he wasn’t as foolish as to trust that this would suffice to deal with the witches. No, he had to use everything and everyone to do this.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Petyr Baelish was in a good mood going over his ledgers - after checking the window, of course; the odds of Lady Blake peering inside were low, it was barely after noon, but he hadn’t reached his current position and wealth by being careless.

He had reached it by grasping every opportunity that presented itself and holding on to it, then squeezing it dry. Just as he would with this opportunity. A funeral for the Prince of the realm, taken tragically from all of them before his time.

Before the time Petyr could have properly exploited the little sadist’s temper to further his ambitions. He hadn’t even yet decided whether he’d supply the Prince with suitable victims to build his influence on the boy or denounce him to Team Ruby to gain their trust. Or both, depending on how discreet the boy could be - the fact that he had managed to conceal his nature from the four girls proved that he had a modicum of discretion.

And that, for all their power, the girls were as naive as any other girl their age. His smile widened. Who better than honest Lord Petyr, hardworking Master of Coin, a humble Lord from a tiny landhold, doing his best to keep the realm afloat despite the spending habits of the Court, to help them see through similar facades? Certainly not Varys, the Master of Whispers, who kept failing to find the assassins and thieves riddling the court despite his decades of experience and network of informants.

But for that, Petyr would have to expose at least some of the late Prince’s inclinations. Or, perhaps, wait for the girls to turn to the cat-loving simpleton now suddenly being first in line to become king and hear from him and his sister just how cruel their elder brother had been.

He leaned back, rubbing his chin. Maybe he needed to be a bit proactive about that. Approach the girls, voice his concern about some rumours going around about the dead Prince, inquire about his siblings… Yes, that should present the correct mix of informed and concerned. The kind of person foreigners with more power than sense or knowledge about the Court could trust.

He nodded at his thoughts. Yes, he would arrange for a coincidental meeting, as he had before, and point them at the prince and princess, now more isolated than ever, with only their grandfather and their uncle, both unsuitable for consoling them in their grief, to support them in their time of need.

Right after he finished his preparations to skim as much gold as possible from the money Lord Stark had ordered set aside for the funeral. Between the businesses he controlled, he could already get the lion’s share of the allotment, and if he played his cards right, he could perhaps even get Lord Tywin to pay for a grander funeral, one more befitting his grandson. That would not only net Petyr more coin but also pit Lord Tywin against the Regent, who obviously had been unwilling to pay enough for a ‘properly respectful funeral’.

And if the naive Regent wouldn’t realise that he had made an enemy in Lord Tywin, then honest, hardworking Petyr would not hesitate to point it out, and earn even more of the fool’s trust.

Smiling, he started to write down bills and expenses, both factual and fictional.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Brienne, as tragic as the death of Prince Joffrey has been, and even though it might be a bit disrespectful to talk about it on the eve of his funeral, I doubt I have to tell you that his death affects the whole realm.”

Brienne Tarth nodded. Lord Renly, clad in finest silk that complemented his handsome face and hair, was stating the obvious, as Lady Weiss would put it - the death of the future King had thrown the realm into… not turmoil, but it had caused some unrest. Of course, Lady Ruby’s speech at the Great Sept of Baelor had managed to calm the waters somewhat, but the currents had not disappeared.

“Prince Joffrey had seen two and ten years. It would have been three more years until he could have taken the throne,” Lord Renly went on.

“At least. More like four or five if what we heard about him is true,” Ser Loras muttered as he put down two flagons with wine and three goblets on the table in Lord Renly’s quarters.

What had they heard about the Prince?

“Well, he’s dead, and so we might never know if there was any truth to the rumours,” Lord Renly took one goblet, filled it and passed it to Brienne.

“Thank you, my lord.” She nodded, still wondering about the rumours they mentioned - should she ask?

But Lord Renly was already going on: “However, Prince Tommen is just seven years old. We’ll be looking at a regency of almost ten years until he can take the crown.”

“Yes, my lord.” Brienne nodded again. Anyone who knew their numbers was aware of this.

“Ten years over which the boy will grow and learn to be a king.” Lord Renly raised the goblet Ser Loras had handed him in a toast.

Brienne raised hers almost out of reflex, drank with the others - and then had to school her features. That was arbor gold! Or a wine of similar quality - she was no connoisseur; she might be able to afford it occasionally, but a knight should not get drunk, and neither should a Huntress, as Lady Ruby and Lady Yang had mentioned once. Still, if Lord Renly went to such an expense, it would be rude to refuse.

“That is, if he is raised right. Cersei was said to have spoiled Prince Joffrey rotten, and who knows what she did to her other children?” Lord Renly shrugged with a lopsided smile that made him appear even more handsome.

She realised he was waiting for an answer - fortunately, he was still smiling, so she hadn’t angered him with her lapse - and nodded. “Lord Eddard is said to be just and honourable, and from what I know of his children, he’s a good father as well.” Lord Bran, Lady Arya and Lady Sansa all agreed on that, as did Jon. “He will raise the Prince right and teach him how to rule fairly and honourably.” Team Ruby might have some issues with Lord Eddard, but they didn’t deny that he was honourable to a fault - ‘according to the custom of the realm’, as Lady Weiss liked to put it.

“But as Regent, and not merely Warden of the North, can he truly spare the time to raise another child?” Ser Loras tilted his head. “My own father did his best, but there were many times he was busy with the duties of a ruler.”

“And,” Lord Renly took over before Brienne could say anything, “Lord Eddard would not be the only one to influence the boy. His grandfather undoubtedly will do what he can to mould the boy in his image; he tried that with Prince Joffrey already. And Lord Tyrion has already spent much time with his nephew and niece - when he’s not carousing in brothels, that is.”

Brienne blushed. She was aware of Lord Tyrion’s… inclinations. He was a drunkard as well, according to Team Ruby.

“So…” Lord Renly smiled at her, and she felt her heart skip a beat. “Do you think we can count on Lady Ruby and her friends to look after the boy? It would remove quite the weight from my shoulders if I knew he was in good hands.”

Ah… Brienne resisted the urge to bite her lip. “Team Ruby has not said anything about raising the Prince.” Lady Yang had joked about already having raised Lady Ruby, but that was not the kind of comment Brienne would tell anyone else. “They are planning to return to their world. I doubt they will stay ten years here.” That was - or should be - known. They certainly didn’t attempt to hide it.

“Of course. But as long as they are here?” Lord Renly cocked his head to the side. “Do you think it would be too much for you to ask them to spend more time with our future King?”

“Certainly not!” Brienne replied, and his smile widened. It would be no burden at all to ask them in the morning, when they trained together. But then she wondered. Why wouldn’t Lord Renly ask them himself? It was a perfectly reasonable request, after all, and Team Ruby was known to care for children, whether they were nobles or smallfolk.

Why would he want her to ask them?

She found no answer to the question during the rest of the afternoon, while Lord Renly and Ser Loras chatted with her about a variety of topics - not a few of them related to Team Ruby.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Jon Snow - Jon Snow, not Jon Waters he reminded himself - waited until he had left the training yard before rubbing his aching limbs. They were just bruised, and he didn’t want to look weak in front of Lady Yang and the others. Or give them the impression that he couldn’t train with them. He could! Bruises were the price you paid for getting better, as he had been taught. Whatever Team Ruby did in training, he could take it!

As long as they held back, of course, but that went for everyone who trained with them, including Ser Barristan. Jon just had to keep at it and keep getting better so he wouldn’t slow them down. He didn’t want their pity, he wanted… Well, what he wanted from Lady Yang he wouldn’t get. She might tease him - though she had cut back on that, quite a lot, actually, since they arrived in King’s Landing - but she wasn’t interested. He knew that. If only his heart accepted it as well! But except for that, he wanted to help them. Meaningfully.

And he could. He knew that as well. He was a very good swordsman. That wasn’t childish pride talking - or his ‘ego’, as Lady Yang called it - but true; Ser Barristan himself had told Jon that he had a rare talent. As long as he trained hard and honed his skill, he could expect to become a master with the blade.

He couldn’t expect to hold a candle to Team Ruby, of course, but he could make a name for himself. An honourable name. If he found an honourable position, at least. But with his uncle staying regent, at least for a few more years, it wasn’t unreasonable to expect some opportunities to open up. Although he would not…

“Jon! Here you are!”

…stop paying attention to his surroundings, he vowed as he turned to face his… cousins. Lady Blake had made it clear that any of their friends might be in danger and should be alert. “Arya. Bran.”

Arya grinned. “We sneaked up on you!”

“We didn’t,” Bran disagreed. “He was lost in thought.”

“Still counts! Lady Blake said if your opponent makes a mistake, you should capitolise on it!”

“That's capitalise!” Bran corrected her.

She ignored her brother and smiled at Jon. “Anyway, were you daydreaming about Lady Yang again?”

“No.” Jon hadn’t been. Not really. That he had been thinking of her was only natural when she had given him most of his bruises.

Arya snorted but, for a change, didn’t push. “So, what were you thinking about?”

“My future,” he told her.

“Oh!” Bran smiled. “Were you thinking about the offer to squire for Ser Gerald?”

“I won’t accept it,” Jon told them.

A year ago, he would have jumped at such an offer. Now, though? He knew better than to think a knight who had barely exchanged more than a greeting with him would be impressed by his skill; Ser Gerald wanted to use him to get closer to Team Ruby and his ‘father’ the Regent. Or rather, Ser Gerald's family wanted to use them both. And Jon wasn’t interested in playing these games.

No, if he were to squire for anyone, it would have to be for someone who wanted Jon Snow, not Jon the friend of the Four Maidens. Or the bastard of Lord Eddard. 

“Good!” Arya nodded firmly. “That would have taken you away from King’s Landing. And you can’t leave us!”

“He will have to leave us sooner or later,” Bran pointed out. “That’s how it works. Jon can’t stay with us forever; he’s almost a man grown.”

“Many men stay with us forever! Like Ser Jory!” Arya told him with a scowl.

“Ser Jory left to squire as well.” Of course, Bran would be aware of that; Jon’s cousin had been planning to become a knight since he had been able to talk.

Arya huffed. “If Jon leaves, I’ll go with him!”

Jon winced. Lord Eddard would not be amused, as Lady Weiss would say, if Arya tried to run away with Jon - and he would blame Jon since Jon was the eldest. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You can’t be a squire,” Bran spoke up before Jon could. “Only boys can.”

“That’s stupid! And I’ll be a Huntress, anyway.”

“You can’t be a Huntress either; Team Ruby said so,” Bran said.

“They said they can’t give their power to me - but they didn’t say I couldn’t become a Huntress!” Arya sniffed. “I’m learning how to fight! And I’ve got talent!”

“There is no need for Huntresses in Westeros,” Bran said with a frown. “We don’t have Grimm.”

“There are other monsters I can hunt. And there are a lot of people to protect!” Arya stuck out her tongue.

That was true; Lady Ruby had mentioned it herself. But still… “Westeros isn’t used to Huntresses,” Jon tried to explain. “You wouldn’t be able to get ‘missions’.”

Arya, of course, shrugged. “I can take my own missions. I’ll be a Huntress in Westeros and protect the innocent. Like a knight, just better!”

Bran pouted at her. “That’s not how it works!”

“That’s how it will work!” Arya sniffed again, stuck out her tongue again and left with a huff.

Bran shook his head. “Father won’t be happy about that.”

“She’s not going anywhere for years,” Jon said. Team Ruby had said she wasn’t nearly ready for, well, anything yet.

“You think that will stop her?” Bran sighed. 

Jon knew better than to think that. But Bran was right - Westeros wasn’t like Team Ruby’s home. Things didn’t work like that here.

On the other hand, Lady Brienne proved that women could become warriors, and she was planning to do the same as Arya. To travel the land, go where she was needed and protect the innocent.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Ah! Lady Melisandre.”

“Lord Varys.” Melisandre didn’t tense when she turned to face Varys, but she was ready for anything. Varys presented the image of a weak, effeminate man who could barely hurt a fly without needing help, but no such man would have survived as long as he had as Master of Whispers. He might not have slain as many as Melisandre had, but his hands were not clean; Melisandre was certain. Though it was unlikely that the man would try anything next to the Great Hall. They were too far from others to fear being overheard, but not out of sight.

“What a lucky coincidence to meet you here,” he lied. “With both of us so busy in these troubling times.”

She slowly nodded again. She doubted he knew everything that she was up to - she knew how to be discreet - but he certainly knew she was not merely spreading R’hllor’s word. Though, of course, in a way she was. The Red God had sent her a vision, and she was doing what she could to understand it so she could heed his call. Sooner or later, she would succeed. “The death of the heir affected us all,” she said.

“The death of Prince Joffrey, indeed. Though it seems everyone has already accepted Prince Tommen as the new heir.”

Was he trying to see if she would betray anything about Stannis’s intentions? “He is next in line,” she said.

“Of course. No one would dare challenge that, not with the Four Maidens backing him. Who, no matter how just their cause, would dare face their powers in a trial?” Varys smiled. “It certainly makes my duties easier; fewer nobles will plot against the throne.”

“I am glad to hear that. Unrest often spells disaster for a kingdom.” Melisandre kept smiling, though she could not help wondering what Varys’s goal was. His blatant hinting that Team Ruby was all that stood between Stannis’s claim to the throne was nothing more than stating what everyone at Court who paid the slightest attention to rumours already knew. And Varys would be aware of that. Was that a veiled offer of support? But who would trust a man who had served both the Mad King and King Robert? Varys obviously was only loyal to himself.

“Of course, few have the knowledge to understand just how dangerous those powers are,” Varys went on. “And what price they demand. Otherwise, many would be plotting anyway.”

Ah. “Indeed.” Melisandre nodded once again. She was well aware of what price magic demanded - she had paid it herself, many times. And she also knew that Team Ruby was not using trickery and sleight of hand to make themselves appear more skilled at magic than they were - quite the contrary, actually. And yet, was Varys truly unaware that the girls’ magic was different from the arts Melisandre had learned herself? Or was that what he wanted her to deduce?

She had to consider this carefully. Though not as carefully as her visions from R’hllor. She still needed to find out whether she was meant to help or hinder Team Ruby and the flood they were supposed to bring that would wash over the land. Though she was now all but certain that the four girls were genuine about their stated aims, which made her task a little easier.

“Good day, Lady Melisandre.”

“Good day, Lord Varys.”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Lord Renly Baratheon, Master of Laws, sighed. “Why couldn’t Joffrey have blown up Clegane alongside himself? That would make my life a lot easier.”

Loras, his love, looked up from the letter he was reading in his favourite seat in Renly’s chamber. “Are you still working on his trial?”

“Yes.” Renly sighed.

“I thought there were no doubts about it,” Loras said. “He has killed the thief when she approached the Prince with the stolen magic powder, and while he carried the corpse away, on the prince's orders, the prince must have mishandled the powder. Did he tell another story?”

“No.” Renly shook his head. “But witnesses who saw him with her days before the incident - in Fleabottom - have appeared.”

Loras blinked. “That’s… unusual.”

Renly knew that. Usually, anyone from that part of the city avoided coming to the attention of the guard, much less the court, and for good reason. “It’s the fault of Team Ruby.”

“Did they find the witnesses and take them to you? Or did their presence encourage them to contact you?”

“A bit of both, I assume.” Renly shook his head. “So, it looks like the trial won’t be as smooth as Lord Eddard hopes for.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Loras looked puzzled. “It means Lord Eddard will be publicly casting doubts on our dear departed prince’s reputation, angering the Lannisters further.”

“He will assume that Renly, Stannis, Lord Eddard and Team Ruby are behind this,” Margaery spoke up, putting her needlework down. “But he also knows that without Team Ruby, House Lannister would lose all claims to the throne.” And more besides, Renly knew. “So, he won’t make a move. And if he did, he wouldn’t move against us but against Stannis.”

Renly wasn’t quite so certain. Margaery was cunning, but she didn’t have that much experience at Court or with Lord Tywin. And he didn’t know what was her grandmother’s opinion and what her own.

“Either way, if Tywin makes a move, he loses.” Loras shrugged, and Renly took a quick breath at the supple ways his muscles moved his shoulders.

“As long as Team Ruby doesn’t support him,” Margaery said. “Did you manage to get Brienne to talk to them?”

Renly grimaced slightly. “She said she mentioned my concerns.” But she had been a bit distant lately - from him, not from Team Ruby or her other friends. If he lost her loyalty…

“Well, the trial will only serve our interests. The more people hear about how mad Prince Joffrey was, the more damage the Lannisters’ reputation suffers,” Loras said. “And the more doubts about the other bastards’ legitimacy will spread.”

That was true. But… “Not as long as Lady Ruby defends them.”

“Then we work on splitting her from the Lannisters.” Loras shrugged again. “Grandmother will know how to do it.”

Margaery nodded in apparent agreement.

Renly didn’t share their trust in Olenna Tyrell. The Queen of Thorns had a formidable reputation as a plotter, but she lacked direct experience with Lady Ruby and her friends. And she was said to be stubborn and quite convinced of her own judgment. If she misjudged them and didn’t listen to others… The last thing Renly wanted was to drive those girls into the arms of the Lannisters. Maybe he needed to take some steps to ensure that wouldn’t happen.

He should talk to Clegane and see if he could impress on the man that the trial could have a wide range of outcomes depending on Clegane’s testimony. After all, even if Tommen took the throne, he was a little boy and pliable - Renly knew his ‘nephew’ and how to talk to him. 

The problem was Tywin.

*****

Harbour District, Pentos, Essos, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and then the fool turned around, and screamed louder than a newborn baby - his voice was higher too.”

Loswell laughed with the sailor telling the crude and most certainly untrue story and refilled the man’s cup to the brim while he faked filling his own. “A truly great experience, my friend. Did the fool survive the experience?”

“The seal was only after the fish I had slipped into the fool’s pants, and so he survived with a few holes in his pants and a few more scars on his arse!” The sailor - Brodrick, according to him - downed his cup, and Loswell was quick to fill it up again. 

“That must have been a memorable voyage. Do your passengers often cry out like that when they discover that the sea is not just a great lake?”

“Oh, all the time!” The man chuckled, and downed the next cup, then burped. “Well, those who can still cry, you know.”

Loswell hoped the sailor was too much in his cups to notice how he had suddenly tensed. That was what he was after. Now to prod the drunk without being too obvious about it. “There are passengers who cannot cry? Those ‘Unsullied’ I heard about?”

“What? No! We never transported those cockless freaks.” More chuckling, and another cup of wine vanished. Loswell wasn’t worried about the cost - the wine was cheap, and their funds were generous; the High Septon had made it clear that this was a mission directly on the Four Maidens’ request. “But we’ve been transporting mute… passengers.”

Yes! Just what he had hoped - this was the third ship they were investigating that regularly travelled west from here. “Mute passengers? An order, like the Silent Sisters?”

The sailor laughed out loud. “No, no. Just a bunch of children with their tongues cut out so they can’t talk anymore. They can still scream, but it sounds weird. Pretty funny sometimes.” He shrugged.

Loswell forced himself to laugh. “You are joking! Who would want to send children without tongues to Westeros?”

The sailor frowned. “Oh, I don’t know who wants them, but I'll have you know that there’s a decent demand for such children. Every few years, we ship a dozen over, straight to King’s Landing!”

Loswell held up his hands. “Alright, I’ll believe that - that city is a cesspit bereft of all gods and justice,” he lied before he added more liquor to the wine.

It was better that the sailor was too drunk to return to his ship - one less pair of ears and eyes that might spot Loswell and his friends when they investigated the ship later. They needed more proof than a drunken tale, after all, for the Four Maidens. They already knew who mutilated and ‘trained’ the poor children, and once they had the transport papers…

*****

Haunted Forest, The North, Westeros, 298 AC

“No! Joffrey! My poor boy! They have murdered you, and soon your siblings will follow! And then they’ll come for me! With dark magic and vile curses! They will kill my children and then me! Why? Why are you letting this happen? Let me out! I need to flee!”

Brynden closed his eyes as he withdrew from the crow that was peering through the narrow, barred window of the former queen’s room - a prison cell in all but name. The woman hadn’t taken the news of her eldest child’s death well. Not at all. Brynden had watched as she had tried to run in the middle of the night, only to be caught by her fellow Sisters. For all her arrogance when she had been queen, Cersei seemed to have no dignity left at all.

But that wasn’t his problem. Whether the woman stayed or fled, whether she lived or died, she wasn’t of any consequence any more.

Unlike those girls who were responsible for sending her to her current lodgings. The girls who had defeated the Others.

“Did you see anything new?”

He opened his eyes and smiled emptily at Leaf as he shook his head - as far as he could move his head, at least. “No. I watched the former queen debase herself, but that was it.”

“Nothing of the messengers?”

He frowned. They didn’t know if those girls were messengers of the Seven. A lot hinted at that, not the least the support from the Faith of the Seven, but, as was usual with the New Gods, there was no straight confirmation.

And yet, what else could they be but instruments of the Seven? They appeared in the North and killed the Others before going straight south, to King’s Landing - the heart of the New Faith - and quickly established themselves there not only at Court but in the Faith as well. They certainly weren’t messengers of the Old Gods.

But Leaf was waiting for an answer. “Nothing,” he said. “They went training with their followers but I couldn’t observe any important meetings.” And he couldn’t risk getting too close; they knew he was watching through the crows and had killed one bird already when Brynden had flown a bit too low to get a look at their weapons. He had to assume that whatever he saw of them was what they wanted him to see. “Have you found out anything?”

Leaf hesitated, and he raised his eyebrows. “We have… remembered parts of a legend. Said to be older than time, mentioning that the Gods used to visit certain places,” she said.

“But where those places were…” She shook her head, her big eyes meeting his. “The knowledge was lost to us in the invasion.”

He slowly nodded. Perhaps that was well - if they knew such a place that the four girls sought, they would have to decide if telling them would lead to them leaving or playing into the hands of the Seven. It might be cowardly, but Brynden couldn’t help feeling a bit of relief.

And then Leaf went on. “But we’re reaching out to others, who might have preserved the knowledge.”

And Bryndon winced.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Sit straight and look me in the eyes when I talk to you, Tommen! You’ll be King one day, and a king does not cower like that!”

Tommen - Prince Baratheon, heir to the crown, as people kept telling him - flinched. He tried to look at Grandfather, but the man was scary. And Angry. Even though Tommen hadn’t done anything. Actually, he was angry because Tommen hadn’t done anything, and that made no sense. Tommen had never gotten into trouble for not doing anything in his life!

“I said look me in the eyes, boy!”

Tommen sniffled and raised his eyes, whimpering a bit at the cold expression. Grandfather was not nice. Not like Mother was. Or father had been. He was scary. Almost like Jofrey had been.

Joffrey, who had killed Tommen’s fawn and said he’d kill Tommen’s cats. Joffrey, who had hurt him often when Mother hadn’t been watching. Joffrey, who was dead.

Tommen shuddered. Joffrey was dead. Killed by magic. Uncle Tyrion said it was an accident, but Tommen had overheard people saying it had been the punishment of the gods for stealing. Or murder.

Grandfather grabbed his chin and lifted his face, forcing him to stare into his eyes. “Don’t test me, boy! We cannot afford any such foolishness. If you wish to keep your throne, you need to do as I say!”

Tommen felt his eyes grow wet. Grandfather kept saying this, and it made no sense! Keep his throne? He had no throne! Joffrey had been the heir! And Joffrey was dead! As dead as Father was. As Uncle Jaime. And Mother was gone as well! But Grandfather wasn’t listening!

But Grandfather was talking. “You’ll need to be nice to the Stark girls. Talk to them, make them smile. Compliment them. They are the key to this. You need to win them over if you want to be king.”

Win them over? Tommen didn’t understand. But he understood that he was in danger. Like Joffrey had been.

And he didn’t like it.

“But I don’t want to be king!” he yelled. 

“What?”

He blinked, he was crying, everything was blurry, and he sniffled before saying: “I don’t want to die like Joffrey! I don’t want to be king! I don’t want to…”

His head flew to the side. Then came the pain, and he gasped, holding his cheek.

Grandfather had hit him!

“Don’t talk nonsense, boy! I won’t tolerate any more of this foolishness! You will be king! Do you understand?”

Tommen couldn’t stop his tears, couldn’t stop the pain, but he could nod. Anything to keep Grandfather from hitting him again.

*****

“Prince Tommen? You have a visitor.”

A visitor? Grandfather! Tommen tensed and tried to curl up. He didn’t want to meet his Grandfather. Not again.

But before he could find the words to tell the servant that, someone entered.

“Prince Tommen?” That wasn’t Grandfather.

He glanced up and froze. That was Lady Weiss! One of the Maidens! Her powder had killed Joffrey! They had made Mother go away and killed Uncle Jaime! What was she doing here?

“I wanted to visit you and…” He heard her gasp. “What happened to your face?”

Once more, a hand grabbed his chin, but gently. He tensed up anyway and looked away, trembling. He didn’t want to get hit again! He didn’t want to die!

“Tommen…” she whispered. “Who hurt you?”

*****

 

Chapter 32: Fear

‘While it is a popular convention amongst the uneducated, and even amongst some scholars too enamoured with convenient portents and omens, to mark the day the dragons returned as the start of the rise of magic, magic had never completely left the world. That the first dragons were hatched after over a century, right when magic began to grow more powerful again, does not mean that their birth was the cause of this. On the contrary, it's obvious that magic had to grow stronger for dragons to hatch again. As other, thought lost, mythical feats of magic became available again to those who had never forgotten the ways of magic, so was raising dragons suddenly possible again for those with the talent and lineage for it - such as Princess Daenerys Targaryen. Neither did the Ruby Order bring back magic to Westeros. That their arrival overlapped with the return of magic was, given their demonstrated lack of magic powers, pure coincidence.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Lord Tywin Lannister frowned at his wastrel of a son. Even this early in the day, Tyrion already reeked of alcohol. He either had started drinking early or had come straight to him after returning from his nightly debauchery in the city to accost and distract him while he was busy saving their family from ruin. “What do you want?”

“Ever the gallant, Father, huh?. How the minstrels do not sing epics about your chivalrous attitude, I'll never understand.” Tyrion snorted and turned to squint at the side table. “No wine?”

“Unlike others, I do not feel the need to dull my senses when there's work to do,” Tywin told him. With his grandson dead - apparently through his own foolishness by stealing from Team Ruby! - he had to work even harder to ensure his family and legacy survived this crisis. “Now speak - why are you disturbing me today? It better be a good reason.”

“Oh, it is!” Tyrion's grin twisted his ugly face into a grimace. “It's such a good reason that you will probably want to ‘dull your senses’ with wine once you hear it.” He chuckled. “I certainly could do with a bit of wine.”

“Stop acting like a mummer entertaining peasants and talk, boy!” Tywin spat. He had no time for this.

“Very well.” Tyrion chuckled again. “Apparently, you managed to fuck up, Father.” He met Tywin's eyes. “According to the servants, you hit Tommen when he dared to voice his thoughts.”

Of course, he had! “He's the heir to the Iron Throne - he needs to learn discipline and obedience.”

“He's a little boy who has barely reached his seventh nameday,” Tyrion shot back with a snarl.

“It's best to start his education as early as possible so I can correct what mistakes your sister must have made,” Tywin retorted. It was obvious that Cersei had spoiled all her children far too much. Obviously, Joffrey had died because she had never taught him how the world worked, and Tywin would not let Tommen fare the same. 

“Raise him like you raised Jaime and Cersei?” Tyrion shrugged with a snort. “Hope that this time, it will work out?”

Was that his jealousy speaking? Tywin scoffed in return. “Are you here to complain about my lesson?”

“Actually, no.” Tyrion climbed into a free seat. “I'm here to warn you that Lady Weiss visited Tommen after you'd already left. And she took offence to your treatment of him.”

Tywin stared at him. What did he say? That was… “That girl took offence at me teaching my grandsons his duties to the realm and to his family?” How dare she!

“It's less the content and more your methods, as far as I understand. The servants said she was enraged about the blow he suffered.” Tyrion grinned again, “As I said before, father, you fucked up.”

Tywin blinked. That… surely, even foreigners from another world would not see any fault in educating your family, would they? Or… “Is that the pretext they plan to use to move against me?” he spat.

“Pretext?” His worthless wastrel of a son had the audacity to laugh at him. “It's not a pretext, Father. As maddening as it may seem to the likes of you, they truly care about children getting beaten. Expect them to visit you to discuss this soon.” He shook his head. “Are you sure you won't order some wine brought up?”

Tywin ignored his feeble attempts to mock him. If Team Ruby truly was enraged over teaching Tommen how to comport himself… He clenched his teeth. This made no sense! He knew they were foreigners, they certainly acted like it, but even foreigners raised their children!

Had Team Ruby truly been raised without any discipline? Left to their own devices by their parents? It certainly would explain some of their behaviour, but no - Lady Ruby's group showed all the markings of having been gathered to provide her with loyal followers who could support her in all fields and endeavours, at least in their home.

So why would they have issues with Tommen's punishment?

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Tywin remained seated at the head of the table when they entered his room, with Tyrion to his right, presenting a united front. Or as united as Tywin could be with a drunkard dwarf. But the girls were somewhat fond of his waste of an heir, and any advantage, no matter how small, could be crucial when dealing with women barely grown who had the power to topple kingdoms on a whim and the maturity of children - and who were foreigners who had not been raised in Westeros.

“Lady Ruby.” He nodded at her.

“Lord Tywin.” She returned the nod in a curt, almost insulting manner. Almost. “Lord Tyrion.” And her glare… all of the girls were looking at him as if they could barely hold themselves back from attacking him. As much as he hated to admit it, it was a fairly good attempt at intimidating him.

“Lady Ruby!” Tyrion flashed a twisted smile at her and her friends. “Team Ruby.” Fortunately, he refrained from making a tasteless jape or crude wordplay.

The other girls followed their leader's example, nodding at Tywin and Tyrion before taking their seats, though Lady Weiss’s usually composed expression was quite a bit hostile today.

At a glance from Tywin, the servant who had opened the door for his visitors moved to serve them wine. Watered, of course - the last thing Tywin needed was his guests getting drunk; he had no intention of becoming another victim of Lady Yang or anyone else losing their temper.

The girls stared at the goblets for a moment - did they expect an attempt to poison them from him? He would have to be a lackwit to try what had failed already - before Lady Yang grabbed hers and downed the wine. A moment later, the others followed suit, albeit all stuck to small sips.

Tyrion, of course, had matched Lady Yang and had his goblet already refilled. Tywin took a sip from his own to hide his frown.

“So…” Lady Ruby stared at him. “We're here to talk to you about not hurting Tommen. Or Myrcella. Or any child.”

“I didn't hurt Tommen,” Tywin retorted. 

“What?” Lady Weiss glared at him. “I could see the mark on his cheek! You hit him!”

“I slapped him,” Tywin corrected her. “I didn't hurt him.”

“My dear father means that no blood was spilt nor did Tommen lose any teeth,” Tyrion added.

Tywin glared at him for his insufferable manners but nodded. “That is correct.”

“You… you really think children aren't hurt unless they bleed?” Lady Ruby, standing with her palms on the table, gaped at him as if he had said something inconceivable. Were they truly as naive as they acted?

“I very lightly disciplined him for an unseemly outburst unworthy of a member of his family, much less someone of his station,” Tywin said. “Any parent would have done the same in my place.” Any sane, competent parent, at least.

“Mom and Dad have never hit us!” Lady Ruby said. Her half-sister nodded in obvious agreement and with a scowl matching Lady Ruby’s.

Lady Blake, Tywin noted, nodded as well, with a deep frown, but Lady Weiss's nod seemed a little hesitant. Interesting.

But he couldn't focus on that potential weakness right now. He had to convince those girls that discipline was good. “Tommen will be King,” he said. “Do you wish to have a spoiled boy on the throne? He needs to be taught how to rule, how to stand fast, or the Court will take advantage of him.” He had seen that happen with his father, and he would not let his family suffer another such shameful weakness. And Joffrey might still be alive if he had been properly raised.

“He doesn’t want to be King,” Lady Ruby said. 

“...” Tywin stared at her. Was she serious? “He is the heir to the throne! It is his duty to become King!” He wouldn’t let a stupid, spoiled boy ruin his family!

“But he doesn’t want to be King,” the girl repeated herself. “Why do you want to force him to become King against his will?”

“He is a little boy of seven namedays!” Tywin managed not to add ‘you foolish girl’, but it took some effort. “Do you let children make decisions about their lives when they have barely been weaned?”

“Weaned?” she asked.

“That seems hyperbole,” Lady Weiss said in a clipped tone. “He is far older than a toddler. And if he doesn’t want to be King, hitting him will not make him into a king. Physical and psychological abuse will make it far likelier that he will escape your grip at the first opportunity. Or he will play along until he is crowned and then either abdicate or take his revenge.”

“Abuse?” What was she talking about?

“Hitting him, forcing him to bend to your will, trying to control his life and shape him into what you think he should be.” She sneered at him! The girl openly sneered at him. And in the presence of his useless son!

“Yes!” Lady Ruby glared at him again. “You won’t hit him again!”

“How do you expect me to discipline him?” Were all children spoiled in their home? They certainly acted like it!

“We don’t want you to ‘discipline’ him at all! He’s a little boy, not a soldier!” Lady Weiss snapped. “He’s afraid of dying like his father or his brother, and your reaction was to make him afraid of you?”

Tywin swallowed his first answer. The girl seemed livid. “I have not treated him any worse than I treated my own children.”

“That explains a lot,” Lady Yang said with a scoff.

Tyrion snorted at that, and the four girls looked at each other before staring at Tywin again. 

Had they planned this together?

His wastrel of a son chuckled once more, then spoke up: “Although my father has a point. Tommen is a little boy, and I don’t think he should be making important decisions about his future - or the future of the realm - at his age. I remember my fancies at that age, when I dreamed of becoming a knight or hero. Let him make a decision when he is a man grown, not a scared child.”

Lady Ruby frowned but didn’t immediately contradict him, and Tywin held back from scolding Tyrion. He could not afford to make enemies out of those girls, no matter how many insults they heaped on him.

Not yet.

“That doesn’t mean you can hit him - or scare him,” Lady Weiss said. “We won’t let you hurt him any more.” 

He didn’t miss how her hand gripped the hilt of her sword during this. A far too blatant, yet still effective, threat.

“Or anyone else,” Lady Ruby added.

“I think it would be best if I oversaw the education of Tommen and Myrcella,” Tyrion said, refilling his goblet again. “Of course, together with what Lord Eddard, as the regent, deems suitable as education, though I do think they should be raised by family - preferably family without a clear interest in denying them their rights in order to take the throne for themselves. In any case, I’ve been comforting them to the best of my ability since their father died, and they certainly don’t fear me. ”

Tywin clenched his teeth. His traitor of a son was trying to use this to control the future king! It was an obvious play to increase his influence and station - and to ensure that Tywin couldn’t get rid of him before he brought more shame on the family by inheriting the Rock. How dare he exploit the current crisis!

But Team Ruby seemed to favour this proposition, judging by the nods they exchanged.

Tywin wanted to curse out loud. He couldn’t afford to oppose them, and Tyrion knew it. House Lannister depended on good relations with those girls.

For now. Tywin would not forget this insult. He had never been humiliated like this! He would get his revenge on them - a Lannister always paid his debts.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose turned to face Lord Tywin again. “Yeah, I think Lord Tyrion would be a good choice to raise the kids - I mean, Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella. Together with Lord Eddard.” Although they would have to talk to Lord Eddard as well, to ensure he didn't hit kids. They hadn't heard or seen anything that would hint at child abuse, but they had seen him watch people getting tortured, so it was better to check.

Next to her, Weiss mumbled something about a Grimm being a better parent, but Ruby ignored it since she was pretty sure neither Lord Tywin nor Lord Tyrion had heard her. 

Lord Tyrion smiled at her and lifted his goblet in a toast.

Lord Tywin glowered at her, but Ruby had faced way scarier people. Uncle Qrow, for example, when she had taken away his flagon before they worked on Crescent Rose (she couldn’t risk her baby suffering a scratch if someone wasn’t at his best!) - and she knew he would never hit her (outside training, of course). Or Weiss when she was freaking out about a team test or her grades. Or Weiss when she wanted to ‘teach this abuser that his behaviour is completely beyond the pale’. And Weiss when Ruby told her that she had been the one to tell everyone that they couldn’t force their own views on the local people and that they couldn’t just beat nobles to a pulp for having sexist, patriarchal, cruel, evil or just stupid views (it was a long list).

Lord Tywin didn’t scare her.

And he nodded, though it looked like he had to force himself to do it. “I suppose that would be… acceptable.” He sounded as if each word hurt him, too.

Though Ruby didn’t have too much sympathy for someone who hit kids. None, actually.

Lord Tyrion’s smile grew even wider, and he refilled his goblet.

“Provided you will moderate your alcohol consumption, Lord Tyrion,” Weiss said in a clipped tone.

Ruby blinked - was Weiss mad at Lord Tyrion as well? He hadn’t hit the kids, had he? No. Weiss would have told them that. Oh! The drinking. Weiss had some… history, Yang would say, with drinking parents as well, Ruby remembered from a few remarks about the beer here. Hopefully, she would never meet Qrow when he was really drunk.

But Ruby’s partner was correct - drinking and teaching didn’t mix. Unless it was cacao. Or coffee or energy drinks, but that was more for studying. Or grading, according to Dad. So Ruby nodded. “Yes. Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella deserve better than drunk lessons.”

Lord Tyrion wasn’t smiling any more, though Lord Tywin showed a hint of a smirk while he sneered at him. “Yes, I do agree - we can’t have the future king of the realm be taught by a drunkard.”

Wait - that was going a bit too far! Everyone drank here - even children. Ruby frowned. “I’m sure Lord Tyrion can, ah, cut back on the drinking. Alcohol, that is. You could drink lemonade instead.” They had that here. But no coffee or caffeinated sodas. “Or honeyed tea. Or milk - warm milk with honey is great!” The closest thing they had to cacao. If only Westeros had chocolate!

Lord Tyrion didn’t look like he liked any of her suggestions. Well, his loss! Ruby was just trying to help. And there was no way Weiss would let a drunkard raise kids. Well, not like a parent - drunk uncles were OK.

“Anyway, no meeting them drunk, no neglecting them and absolutely no hitting them. Or scaring them.” She nodded firmly at the two men.

Lord Tyrion coughed. “Ah, if we’re talking about scaring children… You are aware that they are afraid of you, my lady?”

Ruby winced. She was aware of that. But hadn’t the children grown used to Team RWBY? Maybe a little bit? Weiss knew them well, didn’t she? She looked at her partner and saw that she was wincing. Ack!

“You killed their uncle and took their mother from them,” Lord Tywin told her with a sneer.

She glared at him. “Jaime forced me to kill him. And Cersei has only herself to blame!” She hadn't wanted to kill him - or exile the Queen. Well, maybe a bit of the latter. But none of Team RWBY would ever hurt a child!

“I fear that the children don't quite understand such nuances,” Lord Tyrion said. “They have an idealised view of their family - with certain exceptions, of course.”

“It's not a nuance, it's the truth.” Ruby shook her head. But they had to fix this anyway. “We'll talk to them about it.” She smiled. “We can invite them to our training sessions!” Talking to kids their age would do them good. And Bran and Arya were their age. More or less.

“An excellent idea,” Lord Tyrion said.

Lord Tywin did that ‘slow, reluctant and totally unwilling nod’ thing again, though he was smiling more than he was sneering, even though the difference wasn't that big.

“Good. Then that's settled.” And they'd show Tommen and Myrcella that Team RWBY was harmless!

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“And… done!” Ruby smiled as she finished her spare spare part for Crescent Rose. So, if she had to replace that part of her baby, she would still have a spare part, in case it happened somewhere without a smithy. If you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail and all.

Though it had taken her half a day just to file the last few millimetres down so it would actually fit within the tolerances, and it wasn’t a part for the mechashift core of her weapon. Even with her maintenance kit and the micrometre measurer there, she couldn’t get the tolerances for that. If she ever lost part of that… She grimaced. She didn’t want to think about that. Sure, if she were absolutely desperate, she could lock Crescent Rose in her scythe mode - she didn’t have too many bullets left - but that would leave her baby all but disabled. 

And the compact mode was great for carrying her around.

“Done, my lady?” Gendry asked.

“Yes!” She smiled at him. “Thank you for letting me use the smithy!”

“We have to thank you for letting us watch you work, my lady.”

She blushed a little. It was very flattering that they valued her skills so highly. She hoped that Gendry and Tobho did learn enough from watching her craft the piece to compensate them for the loan of the smithy - she had been busy for hours! Yang never took so long! And a lot of that time had been spent filing down the part’s edges, and she didn’t think that could have taught the two anything new.

“So!” she said, after carefully storing the piece she had worked on. “I was wondering…”

“Yes, my lady?”

“You’re not afraid of us, are you?” she asked.

“What? Of course not, my lady! I am a pious follower of the Seven!” Gendry said, shaking his head.

Ruby blinked, then bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t scowl. That would have been rude. Even though she wasn’t a divine messenger! She was just Ruby, a normal Huntress. It wasn’t her fault that they didn’t have Huntresses here. Or Aura. Or Semblances. Or chocolate, scrolls and TV, and… She sighed. “But would you be afraid if you weren’t?”

“Ah… I don’t think so.”

That sounded way less sure than Ruby would have liked.

“Why do you ask, my lady?”

She sighed again. “I heard that some children are afraid of us.” She couldn’t say who, of course.

“Ah… Children are afraid of many things. It doesn’t always make sense. And you wield great power, my lady, more than any noble wields. People have seen you fight and ascend to the sky on holy symbols.”

That was… Ruby didn’t want to go into how people reacted to her team fighting right now. People got used to that, like Ser Barristan proved. “But still! We would never hurt a child!” She frowned. “In fact, we take offence at people hitting children!” She blinked again - she sounded like Weiss using those words.

“Oh.” Gendry looked confused. “You take offence at people hitting children?”

“Yes! You don’t hit kids!” She clenched her teeth, thinking about Lord Tywin’s actions. “That’s not right!”

“Ah.” Gendry nodded. “Of course not, my lady.”

She nodded as well. “Some people even think it’s OK to hit kids to punish them or to ‘teach them a lesson’!”

“But they’re wrong?”

That sounded like a question. “Of course it is!” she told him. “You don’t hit children! Not your own and certainly not other people’s kids!”

He nodded, more firmly this time. Good. 

But Ruby really needed to tell Tommen and Myrcella that they were safe around Team RWBY. They wouldn’t hurt them or let them get hurt. Not by anyone!

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Hello, my prince, my princess!” Weiss Schnee smiled as gently as she could - and she could smile very gently, what Yang claimed about her being an ice queen notwithstanding - at the children. 

“Hel-lo, my lady.” Prince Tommen cringed and his voice hitched while he returned her greeting, and Weiss wanted to wince as well. That abusive bastard had done such harm to them! If she ever had the opportunity or excuse… No, she was here for the children. They deserved support.

“Hello, my lady.” At least Princess Myrcella was not cringing in fear, even though her smile looked a bit forced.

“Hello!” Ruby, undaunted, beamed at both. “How are you doing? We’re going to have a lot of fun today!”

Weiss suppressed a sigh. Her partner, team leader and best friend - and who would have expected that after their first meeting? - was overdoing it. Ruby was great, idealistic, friendly, had a heart big enough for what seemed to be an entire world, but she was often a bit too enthusiastic for those who weren’t used to her. Yang would say she was an acquired taste, if she would make such jokes about her little sister, which she wouldn’t, of course.

However, the two children were looking scared, and the goal of this visit was to show them that they had no reason to be scared. So Weiss cleared her throat. “What my friend means is that we would like to ask you to join us and the Stark children in the gardens for the afternoon to get to know each other better.”

“And have fun!” Ruby added, still beaming at them. And scaring them.

“We would eat cakes and some snacks, share stories and play games,” Weiss said.

“And train, if you want. Lady Arya and Lord Bran like to train with us, and while we usually do it in the morning, we can do some training in the afternoon.” Ruby blinked. “I mean, not sparring, just some training for moves. No Semblances!”

“You don’t have to train,” Weiss took over, sending a frown at her friend. “Lady Sansa doesn’t train. But she likes to sit with us. And you can pet their dire wolves!” Weiss smiled at them - who wouldn’t want to pet those little darlings? They were so fluffy, even if they had their summer coats on, according to Lady Sansa.

“Ah… we would love to,” Princess Myrcella said after exchanging a somewhat dubious-looking glance with her brother.

Ruby had the grace to wait until Prince Tommen nodded before pumping her fist. “Yes!”

*****

“So, you’ve met before, I know, but this is the first time we’re all together out here - well, out as in outside, we aren’t really out of the keep or the city. But it’s almost like a picnic anyway, right?”

Weiss softly sighed. Ruby was still trying too hard. Her friend just couldn’t accept that anyone - at least anyone who wasn’t a ‘bad guy’, though Weiss wouldn’t really take a bet on that, either - was afraid of her.

“What’s a picnic?” Bran asked.

“It’s when you eat outside, without a table and chairs,” Ruby told him.

“It’s just eating outside. Some people do use tables and chairs on such occasions,” Weiss corrected her.

“Yeah, if you’re like the Schnees.” Yang grinned, and Ruby pouted slightly, which made her look adorable, but not even that seemed to make Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella more likely to relax.

“We rarely had picnics. The climate in Solitas isn’t suitable for outdoor dining,” Weiss said, more for the benefit of the children present.

“What do you mean?” Princess Myrcella asked, then drew back a little as if she was surprised by her own question.

“Solitas is a very cold continent,” Weiss explained.

“Like the North?” Lord Bran asked.

“More like the lands beyond the Wall,” Weiss told him.

“Oh!” He slowly nodded. “That’s very cold indeed.”

Yang chuckled. “That’s why we call Weiss…” 

Weiss cut her off before she could make a stupid joke, “No nicknames that could lead to misunderstandings, Yang.”

“Why would… Ah, right!” Yang chuckled again, this time at her almost-mistake.

Weiss nodded. The absolute last thing she needed was some rumour about her being royalty started by Yang calling her Ice Queen.

“Anyway!” Ruby clapped her hands together. “I convinced the kitchen staff to make honey cookies for us. But we also have lemon cakes and honey cakes! And sweet tea - both hot and cold.”

Weiss coughed and pointedly looked at the good wolves sitting around them.

Ruby nodded. “And we have sandwiches as well, and sausages, to feed to the wolves. Or eat yourself, if you want.”

All the wolves, except for Lady, were eyeing the baskets with the food. Weiss caught Nymeria trying to sneak to the closest basket inch by inch - it was so adorable!

“They can have my food!” Prince Tommen obviously loved them as well!

“And mine!” And Princess Myrcella did as well!

Though Lady Sansa was smiling, it was obvious that she was still grieving - it hadn’t been too long since the funeral.

“So, let’s dig in and share some stories!” Ruby declared.

*****

“...and then the whole house came down around us.”

Weiss remembered Yang’s story a bit differently - a fair bit more brutal, and she was not sure that the club had actually been destroyed in the fighting - but she couldn’t fault her friend for those changes - they were talking to children, after all.

“You destroyed a tavern?” Lady Arya was, as expected, impressed. And probably inspired.

“Well, it was a tavern of ill repute, as you would say, but I didn’t really destroy it. They had it repaired later,” Yang said.

“You fought dozens of people by yourself?” Lord Bran asked.

“Yep.”

“So, they weren’t all as strong as you are?” 

Right. Weiss should have realised that they shouldn’t underestimate children. Fortunately, they had prepared for this.

“No. I’m a Huntress. Those were like… normal people. Still stronger than most here, but not on my level.” Yang flexed her right biceps. “Most couldn’t take a single punch.”

Lord Bran and Lady Arya nodded, though Weiss noted that the others weren’t really enthusiastic. Well, Lady Sansa wasn’t very fond of fighting, and Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella were very shy - it had even taken a bit until they had petted Lady, and the Prince loved animals.

Unfortunately, they were still wary of Team RWBY. Maybe Weiss should share some stories from her childhood. They might relate more to growing up in Atlas as a Schnee than to Ruby and Yang’s carefully curated childhood adventures.

She cleared her throat. “Well, I have a story to share as well. It’s about my grandfather, Nicholas Schnee. He is famous for personally ensuring the safety of the mines in our family holdings by fighting the monsters threatening them, but I think we all heard enough stories about fighting.”

“Speak for yourself!” Yang said with a grin, but Lady Sansa, Prince Tommen and Princess Myrcella nodded in obvious agreement with Weiss.

“So, I’ll tell you about a treasured gift he gave me - Stardust, my favourite bike when I was a child.”

“Oh!” Ruby was staring at her with wide-open eyes.

“Never took you for a biker, Weiss!”

“A bicycle,” she corrected her. “Not a motorbike.”

“What’s a bike?”

“What’s a motorbike?”

Explaining the difference took a few minutes and some sketches, but they managed without Ruby having to fetch a cart and dismantle it to use the pieces for a model.

“Anyway, I got a bike - my grandmother’s favourite, apparently. Unfortunately, I never met her, but I still treasure the bike.”

“Bet you were a right terror and drove it around inside the house, Weiss!” Yang said.

Of course, she had ridden it inside - it wasn’t made for snow, and she hadn’t been allowed to ride it in Atlas, much less Mantle! “We had plenty of space inside to ride a bike,” Weiss said. “Especially when I was little.” And she hadn’t broken any valuable piece of decor, though Klein had had to replace a few knick-knacks, or so she recalled. “Anyway, I was so proud of it, I tried to take it into my bed with me. Mother wasn’t amused, but Grandfather just laughed.” And how her Father had reacted wasn’t important any more.

Her friends laughed at that, and the children joined, though they didn’t seem to quite understand the humour. Still, it was progress. A few more such outings, and the Prince and Princess should lose their fear of Team RWBY.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Now that was interesting! Blake Belladonna narrowed her eyes as she saw that the secret door into Lord Baelish’s office was open. Was that…? Her ears twitched as she picked up the sound of someone moving inside the room. And since Lord Baelish was currently in a meeting of the small council - the reason why Blake was here in the first place - and the secret door was open, it must be a spy who had the same idea as Blake had had.

For a moment, she considered hiding here and waiting for the spy to finish. That would be safe - but it also wouldn’t get her any more information. And her team desperately needed information, with all the plots going on at Court.

So she quickly sneaked to the door, listened - the sounds of stone scraping against stone came from further in the room - and peeked around the frame. It was a calculated risk, and it paid off - she saw a little child standing on a chair and struggling to pull out an apparently loose stone in the, currently not used, fireplace of the office. After a bit of effort that had the child teetering on the edge of the chair, almost falling down, they managed to pull the stone out, revealing a small, hidden space in it. 

Blake narrowed her eyes as the child pulled out a small package and stuffed it into the fireplace, then struggled to push the stone back into place, moving more hastily now. Obviously, the child was afraid of being discovered and would leave as soon as they had wiped any trace of their presence from the office.

Was this a dead drop? Blake wondered while she withdrew down the secret passage. Was Varys communicating in secret with Lord Baelish? No, that made no sense; they met regularly as members of the small council, and both could easily chat about anything away from prying eyes without garnering any suspicion thanks to their offices. And a package as small as this one could easily be passed on during a ‘chance meeting’. Especially considering the risk that the spy might be intercepted or surprised inside the office.

No, this had to be something else - something more sinister than merely secure communication. Why would Varys have something hidden in Lord Baelish’s office? If this were back on Remnant, Blake would consider an assassination through a hidden bomb. But this was Westeros, and an assassin would not have access to a bomb but could easily use poison - and contact poison could be placed on a variety of items and furniture in the office, if they wanted to kill Baelish. Now, if they had swapped something inside the hidden spot, the likelihood of this being an assassination attempt or a heist went up, but since Blake had seen that the hidden space had been empty, another conclusion seemed far more likely.

Varys wanted to place something incriminating in Baelish’s office. Either to frame him or to expose him. And had succeeded for now. 

Blake would have to get back and borrow Weiss’s scroll to take pictures of whatever was inside the package. Just in case.

*****

“So… what was it?” Ruby asked, cocking her head to the side as she bent over the scroll to try and read it upside down.

Blake turned the scroll around for her and said: “It’s a note that reads ‘Sareo Droz’ and ‘casa ferra’. I believe the first line is a name - it does sound like the names of other people from Essos of whom we have heard. - and the second line could be another name or maybe an address or family.”

Weiss nodded. “We don’t know enough about Essos, especially about their naming conventions and language, to tell. We can only read this - phonetically - since it’s written in the local script.”

“And if we ask someone else who knows more, we risk revealing that we know about this,” Blake added. “Whether we trust them makes no difference since they could be compromised without their knowledge.” She couldn’t keep an eye on everyone, after all, and the Court was riddled with spies. Going outside the court, on the other hand, ran into the problem that they didn’t know anyone they could even trust in the city with this. Maybe Tobho Mott, but dragging the old smith into what was certainly a court plot would be a bit too dangerous for her conscience - she didn’t want to see another shopkeeper get murdered like Tukson…

“But you said that this might be a plan to frame Lord Baelish for something,” Ruby said. “So, it needs to mean something..”

“Yes,” Blake agreed. “But it doesn’t mean it’s incriminating by itself. That would be too blatant - no one would believe that Lord Baelish kept a ledger with an order for a thief or assassin in his office. But something more subtle, which, if taken together with this letter, would indicate a tie to a crime? That would be more believable. Varys has decades of experience with such plots and wouldn’t be too crude about it.”

“That depends.” Weiss frowned. “If there’s something incriminating, and with Lord Baelish a minor nobleman, even a blatantly placed piece of evidence might be enough to get him tortured into a confession - he would have made a lot of enemies who would want to use any excuse to move against him, either because he offended them or because they want his position to fill their own pockets. But Varys would have to be ready for an intervention from us since we made it clear that we require proof beyond doubt and do not condone torture.”

“Lord Baelish is friends with Lady Catelyn and Lady Lysa, and on good terms with Lord Eddard,” Blake had to point out. “That provides him with some influence and protection at Court.” Lord Eddard, as Regent, wouldn’t bend the law for him, Blake was certain of that, but he would not let him be tortured under feeble pretexts, either. Although if Lord Eddard knew about the corruption and the brothels… The question was whether Varys had considered that, or was taking steps to reveal that as well. No. “The real question is: What does Varys want to frame Lord Baelish for?”

“If this is an attempt to frame him, and not something else. Varys could be planning to expose some of Baelish’s corruption or other crimes that he committed instead of framing him for something he hasn’t done. We need to keep in mind that we don’t know for certain,” Weiss added.

“Yeah. To both of you,” Yang said.

“This sucks. We really need more people we can trust - and can trust to be safe from assassins,” Ruby said.

“Just having some people we can trust to remain safe would be progress,” Yang said. “Our performance so far isn’t really impressive. First, the King is murdered under our eyes, and then the Prince manages to blow himself up with our Dust.”

“That wasn’t our fault!” Ruby protested.

“One could argue that we, meaning I as the resident expert and main user of Dust, should have been better prepared against pickpockets,” Weiss said.

“It’s the fault of the thief,” Yang said. “We can’t blame ourselves for the crimes of others. We did our best.”

But it hadn’t been enough so far. Blake was aware of that. “Let’s see if we can find out more about Essos on our own,” she suggested. It would be hard - most works she couldn’t read since they were written in the Essosi language and script - but there should be some works in Westeros written by locals about their neighbours.

“We can do that. You need to check what else is going on,” Ruby told her. Suddenly, she gasped. “And we need to ensure that the spy who placed this note doesn’t disappear!”

Blake winced. “I’ll keep an eye out.” She hadn’t considered that whatever the child had been doing might be so sensitive as to warrant their death, but she should have! The child was in danger! They still didn’t know who had murdered the child she had found; Varys for keeping him from talking - not literally, of course - about the assassination, or, if it hadn’t been Varys, the assassin because the boy had seen too much. But if what they suspected about the older spies’ fates was true… 

But if this was a move by Varys to frame Baelish instead of incriminating him, it might already be too late. If the kid was dead, it was her fault… But unless she found another body floating in the sea, she couldn’t know - Varys could also send the kid somewhere else.

Could. Her gut didn’t think so. But she couldn’t kill someone on her gut feeling. She had to be certain. She had to know.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Dodge this!”

Yang grinned at Ruby’s exclamation and did exactly that. She stepped to the side, just enough for Ruby’s charge to miss her, blocked Crescent Rose’s swipe with her bracer like Ser Barristan liked to do and swept her leg out. Ruby barreling full-speed into her lower leg took a toll on Yang’s Aura even without her sister using her Semblance, but it was worth seeing her plough a furrow into the training ground when she faceplanted in mid-charge.

“Ow…”

Yang chuckled, which earned her a glare when Ruby lifted her head from the ground. “That was mean!”

“I just obeyed your command!” Yang shot back with another chuckle.

“You weren’t supposed to dodge!”

“Actually, she was - that’s what we’re training here,” Weiss commented.

“Weiss! You know what I meant!” Ruby scoffed while getting up.

“I do, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.” Weiss sounded smug as she checked the cylinder on Myrtenaster.

“Bah!” Ruby gripped her scythe and faced Yang again. “Alright, don’t dodge this!”

And there she came again, this time not quite as fast, but she was swinging Crescent Rose wildly, trying to box in Yang.

Yang met her with Ember Celica, blocking several cuts and sweeps while placing kicks whenever Ruby’s guard was open - which wasn’t as often as it used to be; she was much better at blocking with her scythe’s shaft. Still not good enough to fend off Yang completely, but good enough to trade several blows before Yang managed to disarm and knock her down with a block and kick combo.

“Whew! Good fight, Ruby!”

Ruby grumbled something about how she should have won if they were going all-out that Yang chose not to hear. They were working on technique today, mainly blocking, parrying and combo moves. Ser Barristan had given them a few more pointers that were surprisingly effective - in fighting people with weapons. Grimm would be something else altogether. But Yang was the last Huntress to complain about that, not after fighting Junior’s thugs as well as Roman Torchwick and the White Fang. She was pretty sure they would be fighting at least the White Fang again, once they were back - her partner was determined to deal with them, and Yang wouldn’t let Blake go at it alone. Over her dead body!

She ran her fingers through her hair - carefully, washing your hair was a bother here, what with the lack of blow dryers - and walked over where the rest of the class - or audience, in this case, was sitting. Well, standing and leaning against the fence, in Arya’s case. But the others were sitting. Bran with Hunter’s head in his lap, Lady Sansa with Lady next to her, the direwolf lying on her back so Prince Tommen could rub her belly, and Princess Myrcella on Lady Sansa’s other side, doing the local version of a tea party - apparently, eating in your own yard didn’t count as a picnic. 

Jon was still in the training yard, sparring with Brienne. Yang checked that both were doing OK - they were - and vaulted over the fence to grab a sealed water flask and sit down with the kids.

The prince and the princess barely flinched at that, a far cry from the first such ‘outing’, but they still grew tense in her presence. Well, she couldn’t blame them for that - she had accidentally killed a knight, after all. And they weren’t frozen with fear any more either. “So!” she said after emptying half the flask, “how are you doing?”

“We’re doing quite well, thank you, my lady.” Lady Sansa was doing better as well - or had learned to act as if she were; Yang didn’t know her well enough to care. She hoped it was the former, and that the upcoming trial of Clegane wouldn’t undo some of that.

Yang looked at the Princess, who blushed a little. “Yes, what Lady Sansa said.”

The Prince was still busy petting Lady. “And you, my prince?” Yang asked.

“What? Oh, I’m doing well,” he said. He didn’t sound like he was doing well, though.

Yang frowned. “Your, ah, family didn’t hurt you, right?” She couldn’t see any mark, but people could hurt kids without leaving such marks.

“What? No. Uncle Tyron is very nice!” the prince quickly assured her.

She nodded - that sounded convincing, at least. Blake had listened to one such lesson and hadn’t heard anything suspicious either. And Tywin hadn’t visited his grandchildren since their talk. “Good. If anything happens, anything at all, tell us at once, OK?”

“Of course!” That sounded a bit too eager.

“Good.” Yang nodded. “There shouldn’t be anything since you’re under our protection, but some people are too dumb to consider that.” Tommen winced again, and Yang grimaced. “You’re safe with us, trust us.”

“Ah…” He grimaced.

Yang closed her eyes for a moment, forcing herself to smile confidently. “We improved our guarding since, you know…” She trailed off, wincing. Way to go, Yang - remind the kid of his father and brother’s deaths, will you?

The prince nodded. “I know.” He was looking at the ground and had stopped petting Lady, who flipped on her belly and nudged him with her nose.

He kept staring at the ground but started petting her again. “I was just…” He looked up, and Yang could see that his eyes were wet. “Uncle Tyron told me that you were planning to leave.”

“Yes. We want to return to our world,” she told him. “Not immediately, of course. But we won't stay here forever.” They would return home!

“And what will happen to us then?” He looked at his sister. “Father died, Joffrey died, the Mad King died, his sons all died…” He shook his head. “I don’t want to become King.”

Yang winced. “You’re still a boy. Think about that when you’re older,” she told him with an encouraging smile.

“Will I even grow old enough?” He shook his head. “Joffrey died before he became King, and he was far older than I am. The other prince was much younger and died as well.”

Maybe they should have a talk with Lord Tyrion about what he was teaching his nephew and niece. This sounded a bit… well, everyone knew who had had the children of the Mad King murdered some twenty years ago or so. It was a good thing Lord Tywin hadn’t visited, then.

“We’re doing what we can to find the murderer,” she said.

He hunched his shoulders. “I just… I don’t want to die, and every king or prince died.”

If she were just talking with her team, Yang would have made a joke about everyone dying sooner or later, but she was talking to a seven-year-old boy. A boy who apparently was afraid that he’d die long before he’d grow up.

A boy whose cheeks were wet with tears.

Damn. Yang knew that he was a boy and shouldn’t be making decisions about his future at his age, but… Neither should he have to live like this, constantly afraid he would die.

She had to talk to the others about this. And to Lord Eddard as Tommen’s regent. And then to Tommen’s family.

*****

 

Chapter 33: Flare-Up

‘Contrary to most laypersons’ impression, transportation back in the age of the Ruby Order was quite a convoluted affair. While the fastest way to travel was generally by horse, that was only true in most situations - such as a single rider, or a small group, travelling with either replacement mounts or along a route where horses that had thrown a shoe or suffered an accident could be replaced quickly and when travelling light. Larger groups, or people travelling with a lot of supplies, such as most cavalry formations of the time, took decidedly longer than a similarly sized infantry unit to cover the same distance, although both usually were limited by the speed of their supply train's wagons, which was exceedingly slow, doubly so because of the deplorable state of the roads at the time. Ships were the preferred method of transportation for everyone except those who suffered from sickness at sea. Though this changed in the same year the Ruby Order arrived in Westeros, and in this case, we have sufficient proof that the correlation is causation.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and then the Prince told me that he needed a thief. He didn't tell me what for, but… He was the Prince. I wasn't about to question his orders. So I went and got him a thief from Fleabottom.”

Unlike Father, Tyrion Lannister didn't openly scowl at Clegane's ‘confessions’, but he shared the sentiment. Clegane was painting a very unflattering picture of Joffrey. Not a wrong one, of course - Tyrion was well-aware of his oldest nephew's character and temper - but certainly not how a noble and sworn sword would be expected to describe the King he served. Why was he doing this, then? 

He glanced at the Regent presiding over the trial. Lord Eddard was listening with a grave expression, and while he didn't seem to be very surprised by the tale Clegane told, neither did he seem to have expected this. 

Lord Stannis, of course, was showing an open disdain not merely for the accused but for at least half the people present, or so it seemed. But that was his usual expression when he deigned to appear in Court, so that didn't tell Tyrion either whether he was behind this sudden urge of Clegane to expand on his experiences with the late Prince.

Lord Renly, on the other hand, and Ser Loras couldn't look any smugger if they tried. So, Tyrion's money was on them being behind this barely-veiled attempt to weaken House Lannister even further.

Well, Tyrion might be the smallest Lannister, but he would not forget this. And neither would Father, of course. If things continued, Father would be making plans for feuds with every house and Lady Ruby and her friends. And likely the Faith of the Seven as well.

You didn't have to be as cunning as Lann the Clever to realise that this wouldn't, couldn't end well.

“And what did the Prince order the thief to do?”

“To steal magic powder from the Four Maidens.”

The entire hall was filled with whispers at that, even though you'd have had to be a lackwit to have missed - or dismissed - the rumours that had been circulating at Court ever since the night Joffrey had died.

Lord Eddard scowled as he leaned forward. “Did you do anything to stop this?”

Clegane shrugged. “I didn't bother. Those were the Prince's orders, and it wasn't my place to question him.” He snorted. “I didn't expect the thief to succeed, anyway. Not against the Maidens.”

Tyrion glanced at Lady Weiss, whose cheeks were flushed at that. Tyrion had expected that - it would be embarrassing for a lady of her power and position to have been the victim of a pickpocket from Fleabottom. Any other noblewoman would be suffering some veiled and not-so-veiled comments about this, but Tyrion didn't think anyone would be as foolish as to openly attack her. Not with Cersei serving as the best example of what awaited those who did.

“And when she succeeded, what did you do then?” Lord Eddard went on with the questioning despite the murmurs filling the hall.

“I was with the Prince when she arrived,” Clegane replied. “And when she tried to attack him, I struck her down at once.”

“Why would she attack the Prince?” Lord Eddard's tone showed a hint of how little he believed this. “Why would she betray him?”

But Clegane shrugged again. “I don't know what the Prince did to her while she was here. But he had a cruel side. Wouldn't surprise me if he hurt her, and she wanted revenge.”

It wouldn't surprise Tyrion, either. But it would surprise him if the thief had dared to attempt anything in Clegane's presence. The whole story was riddled with lies, but there was enough truth to it to utterly ruin Joffrey's reputation - and, by extension, damage House Lannister's even further.

“Renly and the Tyrells look awfully pleased,” he muttered. Prince Oberyn as well, but that was a given.

Father scoffed. “Don't state the obvious, boy. We will get through this, and we will pay them back,” he whispered.

Tyrion nodded, but he couldn't help doubting this. Even with Tommen being completely unlike Joffrey, people would try to paint him with the same brush. And the rumours of his illegitimacy would not die down, either. Not even with Team Ruby's public support for his claim.

No, he thought as Clegane chose the Black before Lord Eddard could call out his sentence, we're in the greatest crisis since Aegon's Conquest. And Father might be too blinded by his pride to realise that his usual measures won't solve this.

Tyrion, on the other hand, knew that the key to saving his family lay with Team Ruby.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Nephew. Niece.” Tyrion nodded at them, smiling as he looked them over. 

“Uncle Tyrion!” 

“Uncle Tyrion.”

Myrcella seemed happy - Tyrion knew the difference between her putting on a smiling face and being genuine - but Tommen… He wasn't quite sulking, but he seemed moody. “Is something wrong?” Perhaps this was a bit too blunt, but Tyrion was a bit too tired of putting on an act with his family. Or he had been spending a bit too much time with Lady Ruby and her half-sister.

“Ah…” Myrcella glanced at her brother.

“Nothing,” Tommen said in an almost sulking tone as he petted one of his cats. Tyrion raised his eyebrows at him, and the boy caved. “I… I don't want to be King.”

Tyrion suppressed a sigh. Not that again. “That's not a decision you need or should make today, Tommen. Wait until you're older and understand what it entails. What it means for you.” And for their family. 

“I won't grow older!” Tommen blurted out, startling the cat on his lap. 

“What?” Tyrion frowned at him. What had he said?

Tommen looked down at the cat and started petting it to calm it down. “I'll be dead before I become King. Or after I become King. Like Father. Like J-Joffrey. Like the M-Mad King and his sons.”

Tyrion grimaced. Perhaps his history lessons had been, in hindsight, a little inappropriate. But then, surely, King Robert would have told his children the tale of how he took the throne? He loved to talk about the Battle of the Ruby Ford. Or some courtier, trying to flatter their family, would have done so. And all the gossip during the trial of the Mountain, bringing up his past deeds… No, this wasn't Tyrion's fault.

But it was his duty to fix this. “You think that you're in danger because you're to inherit the throne,” he said, nodding solemnly.

“Yes! Like everyone else!” Tommen blinked and then sniffled, clutching the cat against himself. 

The animal must be used to him since it didn't try to squirm out of his grasp, Tyrion noted before he frowned - he couldn't get distracted! Smiling ruefully, he nodded at his nephew. “Unfortunately, Tommen, you'll be in danger whether you want to become King or not. As King Robert's son, you have a claim on the throne.”

Myrcella gasped, but Tyrion ignored her and focused on Tommen.

Who was shaking his head. “But I don't want to become king!”

“Some people won't believe you. And some won't care because they'll expect others to push your claim anyway,” Tyrion told him. And some would want to kill him just for being a Baratheon and a Lannister.

“But… That's not fair!” Tommen complained with a wail.

“Life isn't fair.” Tyrion shook his head. If it were, his mother would be alive, and he wouldn't be a dwarf.

“That's what Grandfather said,” Myrcella cut in.

Tyrion scowled at that. He wasn't like his father! Then he noticed Tommen and Myrcella cringing and leaning away from him.

Fuck!

He smiled again. “The important thing is that whether you're King or not, you'll be in the same danger. But as King, you'll have the Kingsguard protecting you. And Team Ruby.” The girls would probably protect him anyway, but that wasn't important right now. Not that they had been able to protect King Robert, anyway. But as the King to be, Tommen was valuable. To Father. As a Maester or a member of the Night's Watch, he'd be an embarrassment.

And Tyrion knew very well how Father treated embarrassments.

“They c-couldn't p-protect F-Father. Or Joffrey,” Tommen stammered.

Tyrion swallowed his first answer. Sarcasm or cynicism wouldn't help. Tommen was a little boy. He wouldn't understand. “That doesn't mean they'll fail you.”

“B-But…”

Tyrion hesitated a moment. This was low. Very low. But it wasn't… well, it was not quite correct. But neither Tommen nor their family could afford to lose their claim to the throne. “If you don't become King, then Myrcella will have to become Queen.” Probably by marrying the next King or his son.

Myrcella gasped and hunched over, her hands clenching around each other.

“But…” Tommen glanced at her, then at Tyrion. “She's a girl!”

“She's a princess. And if you don't become King, she'll have to step up.” As a bride, of course - male heirs took precedence. Though with Team Ruby around, even that might change. Father would certainly attempt to make it so if he were left with only Myrcella as a path to the throne.

Myrcella trembled, Tyrion noted, and seemed to bite her lower lip.

He focused on Tommen again. His nephew shook his head.

“Do you want that?” Tyrion leaned forward, putting a hand on his shoulder. “She's your sister.”

“I…” Tommen sniffled. “I have to protect her. I’ll become King.”

“Tommen!”

“I have to! I’m your brother!”

Tyrion smiled even though he felt guilty for manipulating his nephew. But the things you did for family…

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“You have decided to become King?”

Weiss sounded surprised and a bit annoyed - Ruby Rose knew that tone. Her partner always sounded like that when she discovered something wasn’t going as she had expected. Weiss was the best partner you could wish for: smart and always composed. Almost always, Ruby amended her thoughts. There had been a few situations when Weiss had lost her cool and had shown her temper. Sometimes because of Ruby, but that was ancient history. But she still didn’t like surprises very much. Like surprise training sessions that upset her schedule. Or learning that all the plans you had made because of something were now useless, because something had changed.

Like Tommen suddenly deciding that he wanted to become King. Weiss had worked hard - brainstorming, she had called it - on finding ways how to handle that, what with everyone at Court so interested in the succession, and now everything she had thought of was pointless.

“Why?” Weiss frowned as she leaned forward, hands on her hips. “You were afraid of becoming King!”

And Tommen looked like he was currently very afraid of Weiss, Ruby noted. She glanced to the side, but both the Kingsguard (Ser Preston) and the servants standing at the wall next to the door seemed to ignore the scene - Ser Preston was looking at the window instead! Myrcella was fiddling with her doll and acting like she was ignoring it as well, but Ruby could see she wasn’t sneaking glances at her brother and Weiss.

She cleared her throat. “Weiss, you’re coming on a bit strongly.”

“What? Me?”

Ruby nodded and pointedly glanced at Tommen, who was looking a bit paler than usual.

“Oh!” Weiss flushed a bit. “Sorry, my prince. I didn’t intend to scare you!”

“You, ah, didn’t. It’s OK,” Tommen said with a very weak smile.

“It’s not OK!” Weiss shook her head. “I can only offer my apologies. I was taken by surprise by your recent change in opinion. What brought this on, if I may ask?”

That was polite Weiss-speak for ‘Tell me! Now!’ - Ruby was also familiar with that tone.

“Ah…”

“Did your grandfather make you do this?” Weiss narrowed her eyes, and Tommen cringed again.

But then he shook his head. “No! Grandfather didn’t say anything!”

“He’s doing it for me,” Myrcella said.

Ruby blinked. “For you?”

Weiss seemed surprised as well. 

Tommen nodded. “If I don’t become King, Myrcella will have to, ah, ‘step up’. And she would be in danger then. Uncle Tyrion said so.”

Myrcella nodded.

“But…” Weiss shook her head. “I read up on the succession laws. Your uncles would ascend to the throne before you, Myrcella. It’s very sexist, but you wouldn’t be forced to become queen.”

But even if she wanted to become a queen, she couldn’t. Westeros’s laws were really stupid, in Ruby’s opinion.

Myrcella nodded. “I would be expected to marry the next king or his heir, though. To reunite the lines.”

“And that would put her in danger!” Tommen said. “So, I have to become King to keep her safe.”

That sounded a bit… Ruby glanced at Weiss.

Her partner was trying not to scowl. And probably trying not to hit something. Ruby knew that mood of hers as well. “That’s… noble of you, Tommen. And brave.” She looked like she wanted to add something else, but didn’t.

Tommen nodded with a sad smile. Myrcella reached over to squeeze his shoulder.

“Yes, that’s really brave of you,” Ruby said with a smile. He was looking out for his sister. She could understand that. Siblings had to take care of each other. Especially if their parents couldn’t.

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “I am certain that Uncle Tyrion and Lord Tywin are also happy with your decision.”

But Weiss wasn’t happy, Ruby could tell. Well, at least she hadn’t actually talked to anyone else yet about all of this. If she had been talking to Lord Eddard, Lord Stannis or Lord Renly about this, it probably would have been a big mess right now. But what they didn’t know would…

Ruby winced and looked at the servants and Ser Preston. Yeah, they probably knew already about this, or would soon. That sort of news always leaked, as Blake had explained.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“A bicycle?” Ruby cocked her head at Gendry. “You want to make a bicycle?”

“If it’s possible, my lady.”

She frowned a little at the title. Only a little, though. Gendry was a friend, but he was supposed to talk to her as if she were a noblewoman, and those were the rules. Stupid rules, like the stupid laws. But that wasn’t any of her business - no one was going to be hurt or suffer for calling her ‘my lady’. “How did you hear about Weiss’s bicycle?” 

“I was told so at the Great Sept, my lady. Was it supposed to remain a secret?”

That had been a private conversation with the children of Lord Eddard and the late King. Of course, everyone would hear about it. 

She shook her head. “Naw. It’s OK. I was curious.”

“So is everyone. It sounded quite marvellous, and, well…” He blushed a little. “I was thinking I might try to build one, but I’ve never seen one, so…”

“Ah!” She smiled at him. That she could help with. “No worry, I know how bicycles work.” Somewhat. She had never built one, but how hard could it be, compared to designing and building and upgrading Crescent Rose? You just needed a frame, wheels - oh, wait, they didn’t have rubber here, so… Hm… what could absorb shocks like a tyre? Without that, any ride would be very bumpy. Unless… springs! They’d need springs! That would work. And to save weight, hollow steel pipes. And brakes - two sets, one for emergencies. Gears… five should be enough, and the changer would need some cables - did they have cables here? Rope might replace it, but maybe they could add a different system? And the chain would take some fine work to fit all the gears. Hm… “We’ll have to make every piece by hand,” she mumbled. That would take a while. But they could do it! “We’ll make the best bike ever!”

She beamed at Gendry.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So… turns out making a bicycle is harder than I thought, at least with the tools we have here.”

Weiss Schnee raised her eyebrows at her partner. Ruby was smiling in that adorable way of hers when she needed help but was embarrassed to ask. “You tried to make a bicycle? Why?” She had no doubt that Ruby was faster running than on a bicycle, certainly one constructed in this world.

“Gendry asked me,” Ruby replied. “He had heard about Stardust.”

Weiss sighed. Gossip truly travelled faster than anything else in this world and in Remnant. Although, to be fair, anything involving the royal family and Team RWBY was likely not mere gossip, but important news for the local population. Not unlike news about the movers and shakers of Atlas back home.

“So…” Ruby beamed at her with a bit too much effort - she was showing too many teeth.

Weiss sighed. “Yes, I will help you design a workable bicycle, Ruby.”

“Thanks, Weiss!”

And there came the hug. Weiss managed to brace herself so her partner and team leader’s enthusiastic reaction to what amounted to common courtesy didn’t bowl her over. Although she would be lying if she didn’t admit that getting hugged was comforting. “It’ll be a good distraction from trying to make sense of this latest development,” she said.

“Oh!” Ruby drew back and put her hands on Weiss’s shoulders. “Is that really that bad? We didn’t do anything yet, so there’s nothing to undo, right?”

They hadn’t talked to anyone about Tommen’s now withdrawn wish to abdicate, that was true. But… “The prince changed his opinion once after talking with Lord Tyrion. Who has a quite obvious incentive to support his claim to the throne. What if he changes his opinion again after talking to one of his other uncles?” Both had clear incentives to bar any child of the former queen from ascending to the throne.

“Lord Stannis and Lord Renly?”

Weiss nodded. “Lord Renly, I think - Lord Stannis doesn’t seem to consider Prince Tommen his nephew, and I doubt he could hide his opinion well enough to influence the prince.” The nobleman was blunter than a polished club. His younger brother, on the other hand, was far more charming. Weiss was familiar with the type - a few had tried their charms on her before she left Atlas for Beacon. She could see Lord Renly changing Prince Tommen’s mind again in a comforting and private talk. It would be harder, what with the boy so determined to sacrifice himself to protect his sister, but if Lord Renly offered to protect Princess Myrcella… 

“They would do this so they can take the throne?” Ruby scowled.

“Lord Stannis is next in line. And if he has no legitimate son, then Lord Renly would inherit the throne from him.” And Weiss had heard enough rumours and gossip to understand that not many at Court expected Lord Stannis to have another child. She clenched her teeth. It was such a sexist, misogynist rule! Par for the course for this realm.

Ruby huffed. “And no one cares about what the children think.”

That was, unfortunately, not uncommon in Remnant either, at least in the circles Weiss frequented. “Let’s go. Working in a smithy will cheer you up.” She checked that she had all her Dust on her - no one would steal a single vial any more if she could help it, and she could! - and gestured towards the door.

“And you!” Ruby flashed a smile at her.

“I’ll limit myself mostly to supervising, I believe.” Weiss smiled. She could maintain Myrtenaster - her tutors had ensured that she could that since she’d be a poor Huntress if she couldn’t keep her weapon working in the field - but she was not the engineer Ruby was. But maybe she could help her partner by curbing her tendency to overengineer everything. No one needed a mechashifting bicycle.

She blinked. “You didn’t try to make it shift, did you?”

“No! Well, not really. I did think about it, but only theoretically! But we can’t make the components for a shift, and we don’t have good designs, though I could probably copy and adapt parts of my baby, if I had a good forge. Which I don’t.”

She most certainly had tried to create a mechashift bike. Weiss smiled fondly as they walked out of their room while Ruby explained her thoughts about the design. Watching Ruby work on her projects, no matter how outlandish they were, was always enjoyable. She was so passionate about it.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

The sea beneath her was dark, not very calm, and empty. At least, Blake Belladonna couldn’t see anybody caught on the sharp rocks and reefs surrounding the cliff upon which the Red Keep stood. And she hadn’t seen or smelled anything that would indicate that someone had disposed of a body recently. No blood stains, no scent of blood or emptied bowels, no fibres caught on sharp angles and edges in the tunnels.

That didn’t mean that there hadn’t been a body disposed of here, though. Absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. She couldn’t prove such a negative. Not unless she could prove that the spy she had observed placing a potentially incriminating package in Lord Baelish’s office was still alive.

But she hadn’t seen the child since that day. Not inside the Red Keep, not in the safehouse the spies used in the city. That didn’t mean they were dead, of course - they could have been sent on a longer mission. Or to another city. Instead of being murdered in cold blood to hide the connection to Varys. Surely, children, even if they were young, would notice if their fellow spies disappeared after an important mission? They were trained as spies, and that must include the skill to recognise patterns. Would Varys really risk upsetting his spies - potentially turning them against himself - for a bit of added safety? If he suspected that the child might be observed or might talk to someone, would he have risked sending them out at all? Killing a child could draw attention to the very thing he wanted to be hidden, so it wouldn’t be implausible to assume that the child was alive but merely displaced.

Her gut feeling disagreed with that assumption. Varys used mute - mutilated - children as spies. A person who did this was far more likely to see them as disposable tools rather than people. And he was unlikely to trust them - children were manipulated more easily, as Tommen’s change of mind proved, and trusted more easily as well compared to adults. Especially spies. No, her gut feeling told her that the spy was dead. Either buried in a shallow grave or swept out to sea.

And it was her fault. If she had prioritised the child… But how could she have kept them safe? She would have had to kidnap them to keep them from returning to Varys. And that would have tipped Varys off. And might have driven him to cut his losses - or remove anything and anyone who could betray him.

And I don’t have proof that Varys killed anyone, she reminded herself. It sounded hollow, though. In her gut, she was sure the child was dead.

Of course, her gut feeling had also been certain that Adam was the love of her life and that following him was the best decision of her life.

She hissed a curse at the whole mess and turned away, walking back through the tunnel. Another trip to the safe house, to see if she could spot the missing spy, and then she would be done for tonight.

*****

“So, find anything?”

As Blake had expected, Yang was still awake when she returned to their room. She shook her head as she started to undress for bed.

“Ah.” Yang, stretched out on her back in her usual sleepwear, head turned toward Blake’s side of the bed, slowly nodded. She didn’t say anything - she didn’t have to. Blake was well aware of what the lack of any clues meant.

Sighing, she splashed some cold water on her face and then towelled it dry.

“I didn’t see anything in the brothels, either,” Yang said.

Blake froze for a moment, right after sitting down on their bed, and then turned to look at her partner. “In the brothels?”

Yang grinned. “Well, I didn’t enter. But I was tempted. I can’t really see what is going on inside.”

“You can watch the back door, though.” Blake moved onto the bed and lay down on her side, facing Yang.

“Hm. Watching the backside….” Her partner winked.

Blake snorted. Trust Yang to make a racy and silly joke about it. Then again, they were talking about brothels. “I doubt you’d see anything if you went inside, either. They wouldn’t dare anything with you there.” 

“Well… I would be in disguise, of course,” Yang said, flashing her another grin.

“In disguise?” Blake raised her eyebrows. “As a customer?” She better not try that!

“I think they would remember if a girl like me worked there, so it would have to be a customer.”

Blake shook her head. “You’d start a riot.” Either when some idiot drunkard tried to cop a feeling, or when she revealed herself. And they really couldn’t afford the scandal it would cause. One of the ‘Four Maidens’ in a brothel? There would be another riot at the sept, Blake was certain.

“Why, thank you!”

Blake rolled her eyes. “We can’t do much more than keep an eye on the brothels. If they abuse the women there, we will see some evidence sooner or later. Bruises, blackened eyes…”

“I know. And sooner or later, we’ll find some evidence about what Varys did.” Yang stretched on the bed. “Though we should sleep now. It’s almost morning.”

“Didn’t you say that was the best time to go to bed?” Blake asked with a slight grin.

“That was before I started at Beacon!” But Yang was grinning, reached over and patted Blake’s shoulder. “Good night.”

“Night,” Blake whispered, then curled up.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and so we need to protect the weakest and most innocent of us all, the children. Our children. We all know how fragile they are - how quickly they can be taken from us, through sickness or calamity. Why, then, should we make their life even harder by doing them harm? Why, then, should we cause them pain when life already is painful? To teach them? What lessons would they learn through being beaten? That violence is the answer to questions? To innocent mistakes? To childish foibles? No, we say to that! We are better than that! Violence towards children is never the answer! The Seven who Are One have taught us better! You should not hit children!”

Blake narrowed her eyes and glanced around while the High Septon spoke. The news about their reaction to Lord Tywin abusing his grandchild - the future King - had spread, it seemed. And, as they should have expected from past experience, the Faith had taken it upon themselves to spread the word. With quite the fervour - Blake had been at White Fang rallies with less passion and drive.

But they needed to know how this had spread, if only to ensure that no one could try to manipulate the Faith using their names. If a noble spread the rumour that a rival had attacked Team RWBY, the consequences would be ugly. Very ugly.

And since the number of potential suspects who had overheard them was far too large to go after, their best bet was to ask the High Septon; the man would want to talk to them after the sermon anyway.

Until then, Blake tried to tune the speech out and study, covertly, how the gathered people took it.

It looked like they took it to heart - she saw no one getting up and leaving, or openly scowling. They were nodding along, mostly - she saw a woman holding a child to her chest and crying, and a man closing his eyes, also crying with what looked like guilt.

This kind of fanaticism was quite concerning. It reminded her of the White Fang. If someone radicalised those people…

*****

“That was a nice speech, High Septon.” Ruby smiled.

“I merely voiced what you said yourself, albeit you did it in a much more poignant way, my lady. You should not hit children.”

“Well, you said that as well, didn’t you?”

“Of course! I just added a bit more, ah, context so people would understand the spirit and not just the letter of your words, my lady.”

The man used so much shameless flattery, Blake was surprised Ruiby was merely blushing furiously instead of stammering with embarrassment. Weiss, of course, kept her polite smile with ease - she would be used to sycophants from her life in Atlas. Blake herself managed to keep smiling, though it took a bit of an effort, and she was positively surprised that Yang didn’t openly roll her eyes. Her partner wasn’t generally too comfortable in such situations, and too prone to make unsuitable jokes as a result. But, so far, they were doing fine.

“So… I was wondering…” Ruby trailed off.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Where did you hear about our views on violence against children? We didn’t exactly, ah, proclaim it.”

“Oh! Did you wish to announce it yourself?”

“No, no, we’re glad you did - we were pondering how to pass it on. We’re just wondering who told you about it. In case someone wonders who overheard what.”

Like Lord Tywin, Blake thought.

“Ah, it was your friend, Gendry the Smith. I was under the impression that you talked to him…”

“Gendry? Oh, yes! I told him about it.” Ruby nodded and blushed again. “I should have remembered that!”

“Yes, you should have,” Blake heard Weiss whisper under her breath.

Well, they could have saved themselves an hour of listening to a sermon, but it wasn’t as if there had been any harm done. And some of Blake’s suspicions and fears had been laid to rest. Gendry could be handled far more easily than, say, some servants at Court who might be paid as informants by various nobles. So, it had ended quite…

She frowned and took a deeper breath. That smell… It was faint but familiar. Very faint. She had smelled that before. But where had it… Her eyes widened. The Dragonpit! That was the smell of old wildfire!

But here? In the Great Sept of Baelor? It was one thing to use a ruined structure no one used any more as storage for an unstable incendiary weapon, but the heart of the realm’s faith?

“Blake?” Yang must have noticed her reaction. “Is something wrong?”

“I fear it is,” she replied, taking another deep breath through her nose. Yes, she couldn’t mistake this. “Did you smell this as well?” she asked.

“Smell what?”

“High Septon,” Blake turned to address him. “Do you know of any jar with wildfire in your sept? Because I just caught a whiff of it.”

“Wildfire? Here? Perish the thought! We would never allow it into the sept! It is much too dangerous!” The High Septon shook his head.

Blake nodded. “It might just have been my imagination if no one else smelled it, but if there is a risk that someone brought a jar into the Sept…” She trailed off.

“We will search the entire Sept, my lady!”

“Carefully!” Weiss blurted out. “Very carefully!”

“Of course, my lady!”

“I will help. I’ve got some experience with the cache under the Dragonpit,” Blake said.

And she could literally smell the substance. If it was just one jar, it would have to be close.

*****

It wasn’t just one jar. Blake clenched her teeth as she stared at a few hundred of the jars, hidden behind a walled-off part of the cellar.

“By the Seven!” the High Septon - the man had insisted on following her - gasped behind her. “How… how and why would anyone store them here?”

“This isn’t a storage site,” Blake said. “There would have been enough room for them under the Dragonpit.” Granted, they might have wanted to separate the wildfire to not lose everything in one accident, but to store them under the Great Sept? “This was hidden here to burn the sept down.”

The High Septon gasped again. And the septons with him, as well as the workers who had torn the brick wall down on her advice, gasped and whispered something about heretics.

“These are old jars,” Blake quickly said. “Placed decades ago, I would say.”

“Oh. That means… That fool! That madman!” the High Septon spat. “It must have been the Mad King!”

That sounded likely, but who had done this didn’t really matter nearly as much as how they could get rid of this before it ignited and destroyed the Great Sept and probably half the city. Well, not half the city - the Great Sept wasn’t that close to…

Blake felt her stomach clench. “If they placed jars here and under the Dragonpit,” she said, slowly, “then where else could they have placed such jars?”

The High Septon wasn’t the only one to start praying in response.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So? Found anything?” Yang Xiao Long asked when her partner returned from her latest, and now open and official, venture beneath the Red Keep.

“The smoke from the lanterns and the fresh air from the sea make smelling anything hard,” she replied in a low voice. “We have to carefully knock on the walls and listen for the sounds of hollow spaces behind them.”

Which Blake could easily do thanks to her ears, Yang knew that. But they didn’t want to reveal just how good her senses were - they had already revealed that she had smelled the wildfire, but people would hopefully still not realise just how good her sense of smell was. “And?”

“That takes time. We have to check every tunnel and cellar for walled-off areas.”

“And the rock beneath us has more holes than cheese.” Yang nodded. “At least everyone realises how dangerous this is.”

“Yes.” Blake sighed and sat down on the bed. “But that also means I can’t take time off to hunt down other leads.”

“Them’s the breaks.” Yang shrugged and looked at the mark on the windowsill. “It’s going to be time for dinner soon.”

Blake snorted. “The sun’s setting, yes.”

Yang stuck her tongue at her. “The markings help with tracking time during the day.” She suppressed the urge to make a joke about Blake having done survival training in the wilderness, so she was used to tracking the sun. Her partner’s past in the White Fang was still a touchy subject. Although… “When we’re back home, we’ll have to get readjusted to living in a modern society. I almost forgot how to use a scroll!”

Blake chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll be back to making selfies and chatting and playing your weird games in five minutes.”

“Well, yes,” Yang said, grinning. “I’m on withdrawal, after all. But I was serious, actually. When we arrived, I always tried to grab my scroll to check the time or messages or anything. Now? I look at the sky. Or at our improvised sundial. And I stopped looking for the tap.”

Blake slowly nodded. “You get used to those amenities quickly enough.” After a moment, she added: “We had to stop using scrolls in some spots. Too easy to track. And we rarely had showers or running water in the field. But once you’re back in the cities, you just fit in again.”

“Not everyone is a trained spy,” Yang smiled to take any possible sting out of her comment. “Thanks for doing so much for us, by the way.” Without Blake, they would be in a much worse position. Probably dancing to the tune of some noble or the other who was lying to them. 

Blake flashed her a smile. “We all do what we can.”

Yang shrugged. “You ferret out plots, Weiss does the plotting, Ruby’s being Ruby, charming everyone. And I wait until some heads need knocking.”

Blake snorted again. “Don’t go fishing for compliments. You do a lot.”

Not enough, Yang thought. She dabbled with smithing, dabbled with spying, dabbled with trying to make kids feel better. The only thing she was really good at was fighting. And training, of course. “Anyway, did you smell what’s for dinner?”

Blake rolled her eyes. “There was no hunt, so it’s going to be the usual.” 

A wide range of good but meat-heavy dishes. At least for them - Yang knew the servants and the smallfolk didn’t quite eat as well. At least they had a lot of fish for Blake, thanks to King’s Landing set at the coast. So…

Blake suddenly freezing, head jerking to the side, interrupted her thoughts. “No!”

“What?”

Blake didn’t answer and rushed to the window, leaning out.

Yang followed her, looking over her partner’s shoulder as she pushed Blake forward. What was… She drew a sharp breath.

There was smoke rising from one of the poorer parts of the city. Smoke that seemed to glow greenish more than reddish.

“Damn!”

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

As Yang and Blake ran through the streets, dodging passers-by looking confused and guard patrols just starting to react, a cloud of red petals appeared next to them, turning into Ruby, who fell in beside them. “What happened?” 

“The people looking for wildfire caches in the city must have accidentally set off one,” Blake said. “I knew we shouldn’t have let them search on their own!”

“They probably would have searched on their own anyway - everyone heard about the wildfire under the Great Sept,” Yang pointed out. And even if they hadn’t, they would have heard about the search beneath the Red Keep. Couldn’t keep a secret at Court.

She passed a heavy-set man on his right side, Ruby whirled around his left side, and Blake jumped over him and then onto the closest roof.

“Good idea!” Yang used a barrel as a springboard and joined her. “Where’s Weiss?” she asked as Ruby followed and all three were running on the rooftops.

“I kinda left her behind because I wanted to catch up to you two and find out what’s happening. I’ll fetch her! We’ll need her glyphs!”

And Ruby was gone in another cloud of petals. One almost ended up in Yang’s mouth, but vanished right when it reached her.

“We’ll have to focus on evacuating people and causing fire breaks,” Yang yelled while jumping over a side alley. Their Water Dust reserves wouldn’t even dent such a fire - she could see green flames reaching past the roofs now. On the streets below, panicking people were starting to form a mob rushing towards the harbour. 

“Yes,” Blake said. “The Alchemists’ Guild uses sand to smother a wildfire.”

“We’ll need an entire beach to smother this!” Yang exclaimed as they reached the fire.

Green flames had already reduced one building to ashes - a second collapsed as Yang came to a stop - and were reaching for the neighbouring buildings.

“We can’t waste any time!” Yang yelled. “Let’s split up, clear the houses and then raze them! Dibs on the right!”

“Alright!”

Yang jumped down, past a gold cloak who staggered back, holding an empty bucket, and rushed to the building that was just catching fire. She broke through the door and yelled: “The house’s burning! Get out! Now!”

No answer. But she had to check anyway - she couldn’t demolish a house when people were still alive inside.

There was a shop on the ground floor, empty. As was the backroom. She rushed up the stairs. Kitchen and living room or whatever went for that - empty. One more flight of stairs - smoke was starting to fill the house; the fire would soon consume it.

“Shit!” Two kids were huddled in the bedroom upstairs. A little girl and a toddler. And Yang could see green flames through the dusty shutters.

Clenching her teeth, she grabbed both coughing kids and carried them under one arm, then smashed the window on the other side open. “Hold on!” she yelled, then jumped to the roof across the street.

The kids screamed, and Yang glanced over her shoulder. Behind her, green fire filled the room she had just left.

She landed on the roof, one boot breaking through a couple of shingles. A few more were ripped out when she started running to the edge and jumped off. “Get the kids to safety!” she yelled as she landed next to another gold cloak.

“But…”

“Now! Run!” She pushed them into his arms. “We’ll form a fire break!”

On the other side, Blake was already busy reducing the building she had cleared to rubble with Gambol Shroud.

But the wind was blowing towards Yang, so the fire was spreading faster on this side. Damn! 

“Yang!”

“Yang!”

Ruby and Weiss arrived! Just in time. 

“We need firebreaks - but there might be people in the houses here.”

Ruby vanished in another cloud, and a red lightning sped through the closest houses. A moment later, she reappeared. “All clear - start tearing them down, Yang! Weiss! Use your glyphs to block the streets!”

Yang jumped down and raced to the closest building, fist drawn back. She smashed into the wall. Repeatedly. After the fourth blow, the entire side of the house crumbled - the walls had been crushed. She jumped over the rubble and through the dust cloud that rose and smashed into the back part. On her side, the neighbouring building was just catching fire. She could feel the heat already. It wouldn’t hurt her, not at this distance, but the other people?

Blake reappeared next to her while Yang crushed the next house. “It’s spreading through firebreaks! They slow the fire down but won’t stop it!”

Shit. What could they do? “We need to smother it,” Yang yelled.

“Water won’t help!” Ruby yelled back.

“And we don’t have enough Earth Dust,” Weiss added in a tight voice, creating glyph after glyph.

“We need sand!” Ruby yelled.

Yang knew that. But they weren’t on the beach - they couldn’t just… “Ruby!”

“Yang?”

“Ruby, Weiss - there’s sand in the river.” Yang pointed at the river, a few streets over.

“Oh! OH!” Ruby gasped. “Weiss! We need your glyphs!”

“Ruby?”

“Come on! I’ve got a plan!”

“Rubyyyy…”

Ruby grabbed Weiss and sped off.

“What’s she doing?” Blake asked, coming to a stop next to Yang.

“Getting us sand,” Yang said, smiling. “Let’s break down more buildings so the fire won’t spread too far!”

They were halfway through demolishing their fourth and fifth building when the sounds of the fire - and the distant screams of panicking people - were suddenly drowned out.

Yang looked up and grinned.

A giant wind hose was rising over the riverbank, filled with water and sand. A wind hose created by a red flash running in circles.

“Like in the tournament!” Blake snapped.

“Yes!”

And at the top of the waterspout, a glyph appeared, larger than most Yang had seen - angled. Followed by another, also angled. And a third, placed above the fire.

The glyphs redirected the waterspout, forming an arc transporting water and sand over the streets between the fire and the riverbank.

Green flames reaching for the sky vanished beneath a muddy, sandy waterfall. Or landslide.

Yang laughed as the smoke and fire were buried under sand and mud.

Her little sister had come through.

*****

 

Chapter 34: Lingering Embers

‘The majority of the primary sources of the event agree that the Ruby Order was responsible for saving King's Landing from a wildfire-fuelled blaze. If not for their quick action in ordering fire breaks to contain the fire, the flames would have quickly spread through the densely built poorer quarters, causing panic and terrible loss of life. Indeed, although the claim that the entire city would have perished cannot be supported; while there is no doubt that the wildfire was placed by the Mad King Aerys II to burn down King's Landing should the rebels storm it, various studies have sufficiently demonstrated that the city would have suffered greatly but would have survived, countless people owe the Ruby Order their lives, something the smallfolk at least were quite aware of, and which greatly strengthened their position at court, if not to quite the extent modern readers might suspect; at the time, smallfolk had little to no influence in politics. Their quick reaction also prompted rumours to appear that they had set off the blaze in order to play the saviour, but all but the most biased sources dismiss such claims as fabrications. In any case, fiery conflagration did shock many who realised how close they had come to dying and was an important factor in the realm's political development during the rest of the year.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

One moment, Lancel Lannister had been running towards the fire - towards the wildfire, he could see green flames just reaching above the rooftops blocking his line of sight - and dodging panicking smallfolk running in every direction, one fat man almost trampling him before a guard struck and beat him away. 

The next moment, he froze in the middle of the street. Water was forming an arch above the city, from the river to… the fire. He gaped. That was… impossible! Magic! 

No, he realised. Not magic - it was a miracle! The water was shaped and guided by the holy glyphs of Lady Weiss. And the wind surrounding the waterspout… He had seen that before, at the Battle of the Maidens! That was Lady Ruby moving so fast, she formed a whirlwind! The Four Maidens had come to save them all!

“By the Seven Above!” he whispered.

“It's a sign!” someone next to him yelled.

“It's a Miracle!”

“Praise the Seven!”

The people who had just a moment before been rushing away from the fire and smoke had stopped to stare at the water arcing over their heads.

“Praise the Maidens!”

“Blessed be the Seven!”

“Blessed by the Seven!”

Some were falling to their knees, praying. Many were crying with relief.

Lancel among them. He had obeyed the orders to fight the fire, of course. He couldn't disobey Tywin - always Lord Tywin, never Uncle Tywin. Even though he had known that he couldn't do anything, not with the pitiful bucket of sand he had been carrying. Even though he knew how dangerous it would be to fight wildfire - Cousin Tyrion had been quite clear about that once the news about the Mad King's legacy had broken. 

Even though the tears in his eyes had not been due to the smoke in the air, but the knowledge that he might die.

But he wouldn't die. And he wouldn't be branded a coward for fleeing wildfire, either.

He was saved. Saved by the Four Maidens.

He stared up at the water - and the sand - above him, moving as if it were a waterfall after a flood upriver, hitting the fire ahead.

And he prayed as he had never prayed before.

No one interrupted him. Not even the old man-at-arms who had led the guards with him (and Lancel, even though he was nominally in charge).

Everyone was praying.

Until Lady Yang appeared, her hair aflame yet not burning, and yelled at them to help the smallfolk who had been hurt by the fire or while trying to escape.

Lancel leapt to obey. As did the men with him.

You didn't disobey the Messengers of the Seven.

Later, when he was too exhausted to move, long after the sun had set, when the last flickering flames had been smothered and the bodies collected from the rubble left behind, when even the Four Maidens had stopped sifting through the ashes to find survivors and his body wanted nothing more than to lay down and sleep in the warm mud covering the area, he walked instead.

Toward the Great Sept.

He was not the only one. Not even close.

The sept was packed.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and after Lady Ruby stopped the whirlwind, and Lady Weiss let the glyphs fade, I was busy helping to save people from the rubble,” Lancel said. “I was…”

He swallowed the tale of how he had worked through the night with the help of the Seven when Lord Tywin gestured with his right hand while looking out of the window of his room. 

“I see. So, they cannot control water as the old Rhoynar were said to do.” Lord Tywin commented.

“A rather academic difference, I think,” Tyrion added while glancing at his goblet before taking a sip from it.

Lancel cleared his throat. His tale had not been that long, especially with Lord Tywin cutting him off before he could cover most of the night, but his throat still felt the consequences of labouring all night in the middle of still-smoking rubble.

Lord Tywin ignored him, but Tyrion passed him a goblet of his own, although to Lancel's surprise, the wine was watered down.

Lord Tywin frowned at them both, though, when he turned his head. “It matters, Tyrion. It tells us the limits of those girls’ powers. They cannot control water directly - or anything else. Nor could they simply snuff out the fire. They had to gather water and sand from the river to smother it.”

Lancel hid his frown behind his goblet. The Four Maidens had smothered wildfire, and so quickly, the city had barely suffered any damage - less, if some of the gold cloaks he had met during the night could be believed, than an ordinary fire would have done.

“Well, yes, I suppose that is true,” Tyrion said with a shrug. “However, does it matter whether they can kill all our guards with a wave of their hand or whether they have to use a blade and take a bit more time, as long as neither will pose a challenge? And we also learned that they do not fear wildfire.”

Lancel cringed at the expression on Lord Tywin's face, and it wasn't even aimed at him. “They avoided wildfire,” Lord Tywin spat.

Tyrion, on the other hand, seemed unimpressed. “They did, but they did not seem overly concerned either. I think it wouldn't be prudent to assume that wildfire can hurt, much less kill, them.”

Why would they be concerned? The Seven had blessed them! Fire wouldn't hurt them any more than a blade would nick their skin!

“Every bit of knowledge about such a deadly threat to our family is important, Tyrion! Without such knowledge, we cannot defend ourselves.”

A deadly threat? Lancel opened his mouth to protest - the Four Maidens were not a threat but a divine blessing! - and coughed when a bit of wine went down the wrong pipe.

“They aren't a threat to us, Father,” Tyrion retorted. “Not unless you force the issue.”

Lancel coughed and tried to nod, but both men seemed to ignore him.

“‘The issue’? They killed your brother and exiled your sister, Tyrion!”

“Cersei did that herself, Father!” Tyrion snapped. “And it was she who lured Jaime to his doom.”

Lancel nodded emphatically. The Four Maidens had done everything to spare them, and yet, Cersei's own hubris had doomed her and Cousin Jaime. A lesson that should be in the Seven-Pointed Star.

“No one forced them to do anything - it was their choice to move against our family.”

“Against Cersei, and after months of provocation,” Tyrion said. “Months during which they already knew about her fatal weakness, yet did not move.”

“Exactly! They did not even attempt to use their knowledge to extract concessions from our family - they decided to strike at us instead.” Lord Tywin shook his head. “And they showed their true colour when they moved to control Tommen.”

“They don't ‘control’ Tommen, Father - they barely speak with him. I spend enough time with my nephew to know he is not under their control.”

“Don't be naive! As long as they remain immune to the entire might of the realm, they control the realm, Tyrion!”

Tyrion didn't answer and refilled his goblet instead.

Tywin scoffed again. “And they are tightening their control. That is why they did this - create a danger for the city, then save the city from it. The smallfolk will think of them as their saviour, and the nobles have been shown just what will happen should they resist: Another tragic accident, just this time, the girls will be too slow to save the manor affected.”

“Then let's hope the Court won't resist them - if they set off wildfire here, I fear most of the Red Keep will be gone and I live here,” Tyrion said.

“They will not set fire to the Red Keep. As the seat of the King, it's too valuable. They need this symbol for their puppet to rule, or there will be rebellions.”

“No! They do not want to rule!” Lancel realised he had blurted out his thoughts, unasked, when both Lord Tywin and Tyrion turned to frown at him. But he steadied himself and straightened. This was for the Four Maidens. “They didn't do this because they wanted to strengthen their ‘control’ or rule anything - they did this because it was the right thing to do!”

“Hold your tongue, Lancel, when we talk about things you do not understand!” Lord Tywin sneered at him, and Lancel couldn't help but cringe again in the face of his uncle. And yet, he knew he was right about this.

But Tyrion looked surprised as well.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“The city could have burned down!” Lord Eddard was angry. Not angry enough to hit the table with his fist, though, Ruby Rose noted. Though he wasn’t the type to do that, anyway. But he was talking more loudly than usual, and he was openly scowling, and his eyes were a little bit squinting in a glare.

Not at her or her team, though. Which would have been weird, anyway, since they had saved the city. But he was glaring at the others in the room, where the small council was meeting today. And her team, on his request.

“The city could still burn down - I doubt that that was the only location with wildfire stored.” Lord Renly didn’t look very angry, but he didn’t seem to be as secretly-but-not-so-secretly amused as he usually did, and he wasn't smiling at all, so he was definitely angry as well.

“I doubt it as well.” Lord Baelish (the pimp) nodded. “We need to prevent the smallfolk from looking for more wildfire before they set another part of King’s Landing ablaze. They are panicking and won’t listen to reason. If we don’t do anything, they’ll set off another such storage. The gold cloaks need to enforce this.”

Now Lord Renly was frowning. “The city guard is already strained just keeping order when half the smallfolk are trying to flee the city, and the other half is trying to loot it. We cannot spare more men to look for wildfire, or for attempts to find it, or there will be no city worth saving from fire left.”

Ruby frowned. That was… not a nice view at all.

“I am confident that the gold cloaks can look out for those who would rob their neighbours and those who would look for hidden wildfire depots at the same time while they patrol the streets,” Varys commented. “There cannot be too many of those caches hidden, or one would have been found before. I expect they were placed at locations which could be accessed without witnesses, and large basements to store the wildfire. Even in a big city like King’s Landing, there shouldn’t be an abundance of such locations.”

“There shouldn’t,” Lord Eddard agreed. “Of course, creating and hiding so many jars of wildfire would not have been simple. As we all have unfortunately found out, merely transporting wildfire is highly dangerous. However, transporting so many of them, in secret? In a city in the middle of a rebellion against the Mad King? How could you miss this, Master of Whispers?”

Ruby quickly looked at Varys. The man wasn’t startled - he slowly nodded. “My little birds were busy looking for traitors to the crown; as you have said yourself, the king was mad. Yours wasn’t the only family he had brutally harmed, and there were many who would have gleefully struck against him given the opportunity. I did not send them to look for those few who still were, amongst those who had remained in the city, enthusiastically doing his bidding. I confess I did notice that the Alchemists’ Guild was producing more wildfire than the King demanded for his cruel spectacles, but I assumed, in hindsight, wrongly, he planned to use it against his enemies, not his own city - I had to step very lightly or I would have risked being burnt alive myself.” He spread his hands. “I have missed this plot, this is true, but I dare say everyone else would have missed it as well - has missed it, in fact.”

Ser Barristan slowly nodded in grim agreement, Ruby noted. He had served the Mad King as well, she knew that.

“You are the Master of Whispers, though,” Lord Baelish said. “Finding and exposing threats to the crown is your duty. All of us have other duties.”

Lord Stannis nodded at that. “And you failed yours.”

Varys seemed unfazed. “I did, yes. Although I am merely a man, whereas it took someone blessed by the Gods to discover this - and even the Four Maidens didn't realise the extent of this plot before they found the second cache.” He glanced at Blake, Ruby noted. “If you expect a Master of Whispers to display such powers to do their duty, I fear you will have scant candidates who will make the cut. The most obvious would be Team Ruby, of course.”

“We're not going to replace you!” Ruby blurted out. Really! Neither she nor her friends wanted to deal with spies and all those plots! Or mutilated children spies.

“Then I think we should focus on the crisis at hand. King Aerys's madness was truly beyond belief,” Varys said. “It took madness that beggars belief to amass so much wildfire.”

“And what did he intend with it?” Lord Baelish asked. “Was it merely to see more people burn?”

“He could have been planning to use it should the city fall, to destroy the rebel army sacking it,” Lord Stannis said. “It would have struck a heavy blow against our host. Though it does not explain why he planned to destroy the Red Keep as well.”

“Well, it would have killed the Lannister army looting the city,” Lord Renly said with a chuckle. “The rest of us would have been fine. And the King was mad - he probably wanted to die.”

“Or he thought the death of so many people at his orders would be enough to grant him fantastic powers,” Varys added. “Other Targaryens who were not nearly as mad as he was had done similar things, if not on such a scale.”

Ruby frowned at that. That sounded like… 

“You think he had planned to use sacrificial magic?” Lord Stannis asked.

The Grand Maester frowned but didn’t comment.

“You are quite familiar with the term, my lord. No doubt thanks to being acquainted with Lady Melisandre,” Varys said. “It is merely speculation. Nothing that would have indicated an attempt at magic was found following the Mad King’s demise. Although, as he was mad, he might not have understood the need for such - or had yet to prepare it when Ser Jaime killed him.” 

He didn’t look at Ruby and the others, she noted. Weird.

“That was when the Lannisters were already sacking the city,” Lord Renly pointed out. “One would think he had realised that the time to use his despicable ploy had come.”

“He wouldn’t have been prepared since he believed Lord Tywin had come as an ally,” Varys said. “Ser Jaime might have killed him before he realised the truth.”

“I was there. Lord Tywin seemed surprised at Ser Jaime’s actions,” Lord Eddard said. “And neither he nor Ser Jaime said anything about having coordinated such a betrayal.”

“Well, I doubt they would have announced that they had planned to betray the king together,” Lord Baelish said with a shrug. “That is not something people wish to make known, not even when they did it to a mad king.”

“Uh…” Ruby tried not to blush when everyone turned to look at her. “Shouldn’t we focus on how to avoid another fire?”

Lord Eddard nodded. As did the Grand Maester.

“Finding out who we can trust is essential for that,” Lord Stannis said, glaring at Varys. “We cannot trust a crucial task to someone who will not do it, whether it be due to malice or incompetence.”

“If you do not trust my little birds to watch out for criminal or careless smallfolk, even though their own - and mine - survival depends on it, I will not insist, although Lord Renly did mention that the guard is already struggling,” Varys replied. “And as far as I know, although he didn’t mention it, that was with the help of the guards your house and others brought to King’s Landing already accounted for.”

Everyone was scowling deeply at that.

Ruby clenched her teeth. She had to remain polite, she reminded herself. Telling the most powerful noblemen of the realm to shut up and focus on saving the city wouldn’t help. It was immensely stupid, but they wouldn’t listen when their pride was hurt. Or annoyed. Or slightly poked. So, she smiled. “We’ll be patrolling as well, and we’ll tell them not to look for wildfire.” Blake would hopefully smell the wildfire if she came close enough.

“That will help,” Lord Eddard said.

“Indeed. The smallfolk might not listen to the Court, but they will hopefully listen to the Gods’ own messengers,” Lord Renly said. He sounded honest, but his smile didn’t quite fit.

“We might also prepare enough sand to smother another fire in advance at strategic locations inside the city,” Weiss added. “So we can intervene quickly.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. “That shouldn’t take too long.”

“Here are some locations I picked out based on their distance to the river and the heights in the city.” Weiss unrolled a map of the city.

Everyone leaned forward to look at it. Well, except for Ruby, Blake and Yang - they already knew the map; they had prepared it together. Not that it was a good map.

“That sounds… It will take a lot of men to transport so much sand. Can’t you just transport it yourself if you need it?” Lord Renly asked.

“We can, but it’s easier and faster if it’s already prepared,” Ruby told him. At least, she was pretty sure she could. Weiss would have to create a few more glyphs to cover longer distances, but Ruby knew her partner could do it.

Still, it would be easier if they could just grab sand from prepared locations. And when lives depended on something, easier was better.

“With that settled,” Weiss spoke up after everyone had agreed on half a dozen such spots, “why is no representative of House Lannister here? They represent a sizeable force and were quite active in fighting the fire last night.”

“This is a small council meeting, and currently, House Lannister has no representative here.” Lord Eddard said.

“We’re here, though,” Ruby said, gesturing at her friends.

“You’re a special case,” Lord Baelsih told her with a smile. “And, if I may be so bold, your presence not only greatly helped in fighting the fire last night but also helped us here focus on the task at hand.”

“And as prickly as Lord Tywin is, I fear we would not have achieved any agreement should he have been present,” Lord Renly said with a slightly smug smile.

“Nevertheless, I think we need his cooperation,” Weiss pointed out.

“Do you think he would refuse to help save the city?” Lord Stannis frowned some more - had he ever stopped frowning? Ruby didn’t remember.

“I would hope not,” Weiss replied, “but if he is so easily provoked, then it would behove us to be more careful not to make the current situation even more volatile.”

She heard Yang chuckle at the probably unintentional pun, but Ruby focused on the noblemen. Lord Eddard nodded in agreement. As did the Grand Maester, Ser Barristan and Varys. Lord Baelish too, if a little late. But the two Baratheons didn’t say anything. Lord Stannis kept scowling, and Lord Renly pouted.

Ruby managed not to shake her head. The city was in danger of burning down, and the nobles were still playing their games.

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Blessed be the Maidens!”

“My Lady! Thank you!”

“My Lady! Please bless us!”

Ruby’s smile had been frozen since she had started her patrol. The people were far too… worshipful. Was that a word? She didn’t know. But she knew she didn’t like it. But she had a job to do - like a mission. A very important mission. If she failed, people would lose their homes and probably their lives.

So she kept smiling, waved, and called out: “Thank you! We’re here to protect you. But remember: Don’t go looking for wildfire jars - leave that to those trained for this. And if you stumble on some, leave them be and tell us, we’ll handle them!”

“My lady!”

“Thank you!”

“I will!”

“Praise to the Seven!”

“Praise to the Maidens!”

She nodded and used her Semblance to vanish down the street. Maybe she shouldn’t have said that about telling them, that might encourage some people to look for wildfire… Well, it was better if they looked and didn’t touch than looked and touched.

But it would be even better if her team had found the jars still hidden in the city. So far, they hadn’t - not even Blake, who could literally smell the things. And Ruby felt pretty useless, speeding through the streets and looking if people were looking, or looked like they were looking for wildfire… She was a bit tired of looking, too.

But she finished her patrol before she made her way back to the Red Keep - by roof hopping. Just to do a bit of training even today, not because she didn’t want to meet more worshippers on the street. As Uncle Qrow had taught her, you had to keep training every day.

That was her story, and she was sticking to it.

She reached the gate to the Red Keep. It was guarded by more guards than usual. She briefly wondered if she should say something about them being more useful in the city, but…She shouldn’t try to, as Weiss called it, micromanage things. Especially since she didn’t know the reason for the stronger guard here (even though she suspected it was because half the Court didn’t trust the other half… or anyone).

So she just nodded at the guards, ignored how many of them made some praying signs or whispered something that sounded like the kind of things the people in the city yelled, and stepped into the Red Keep. Judging by the sun, she had a bit of time until dinner. It felt selfish to take a break, but she had been working hard all day, and not even Weiss would scold her for it. (Weiss would probably scold her if she didn’t take a break.)

But as soon as she had stepped into the main hall, she heard someone calling out to her. “Lady Ruby!”

Oh. It was Prince Oberyn. And his ‘paramour’. “Prince Oberyn. Lady Ellaria.” Oh, that wasn’t the correct title - Ruby must be a bit more tired than she had thought.

“Were you looking for more wildfire caches?” he asked.

Well, duh, that was obvious - who wouldn’t look for more potential fire bombs that could burn down the entire city? She didn’t say that. She nodded instead. “Yes.”

“To think we were living above such a danger…” Ellaria shook her head. “Who could think of something so mad?”

“The Mad King,” Ruby replied. “At least, that’s what people think.” And they seemed pretty sure about it - her team agreed as well. Meaning, Weiss and Blake, who had the most experience with such things. Like, politics and terror attacks.

They winced at that - right, the Mad King’s son had been married to Oberyn’s sister. Ruby winced a little; she should have been a bit more polite about it. But she was tired and a bit hungry, and Prince Oberyn was keeping her from her break. “Anyway,” she went on, “The Keep should be safe now.” Yang had helped with that. “The Great Sept is next, and when we’ve got that done, then we should have found the rest of the wildfire.”

“Disposing of all that wildfire will take a long time,” Prince Oberyn said.

Ruby nodded. Couldn’t drop it into the sea since it was lighter than water, burning it would burn a lot of land or take a long time… “The Guild is planning to bury it, I think, and then burn it under controlled circumstances.”

Both Prince Oberyn and Ellaria grimaced. Ruby wasn’t too sure about that plan either, but the Alchemists were the experts - and Lord Eddard had made it clear, or so she had heard, that it was their responsibility and he would hold them accountable.

“You know, when I saw the water rise above the roofs, I thought the Rhoynar’s magic had returned,” he commented. “They were said to control water like that.”

“Oh, that wasn’t magic!” She smiled, genuinely. “It was applied Semblances. I sent it up using my Semblance, and Weiss directed it with hers.”

“And what is the difference between Semblances and magic?” Ellaria asked.

“A semblance is the expression of your soul,” Ruby said. “It comes from within. Magic is something from without.” At least, that was how Grand Maester Pycelle and Weiss had worded it, though Marwyn had disagreed.

“That seems a bit academic,” Ellaria commented.

Ruby nodded. “Yep. It was an academic discussion.” She looked through the open door - the shadows had grown a bit longer. “So… I really need to, ah, check on stuff before dinner.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t want to hold you up,” Prince Oberyn said.

Ellaria smiled as she nodded.

“Alright!” Ruby nodded again and then used her Semblance to reach her team’s quarters without letting anyone else stop her.

She really needed that break.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and this is why the more power you have, the more careful and merciful you have to be,” Weiss finished her - quite succinct, Ruby’s opinion didn’t count - explanation.

Prince Tommen nodded, though she wasn’t certain if he had truly understood what she had intended to tell him.

Judging by the frown on Lord Tywin’s face, the nobleman clearly had, though.

“So, since a small gesture for us is a huge thing for the smallfolk, we need to be very careful about our actions and their consequences.” As had Princess Myrcella.

“Correct.” Weiss nodded at her and was rewarded by a beaming smile.

“Mercy can make you weak, though, and if you are weak, you cannot protect your family. People will exploit your generosity for their own gain. In the end, you will lose the very power and position that allowed you to be so… generous,” Lord Tywin said. “My father was almost bled dry by some treacherous bannermen of his because he couldn’t find the will to do what was right instead of what was easy.”

Tommen nodded to him as well, and Weiss hoped that he hadn’t understood too much of that very biased attempt to teach the boy the wrong lessons.

She smiled politely at Lord Tywin - why couldn’t Lord Tyrion have attended this lesson instead? - and shook her head. “Being generous also makes people loyal, and loyal people are more trustworthy and generally far more productive. If people fear you, you will have to fear them as well.” If her father hadn’t made the Schnee Dust Company into an exploitative employer, preying on those who could not get better jobs, the White Fang wouldn’t have gone after the company and her family.

“If your bannermen can insult you without consequences, they will soon lose whatever respect they had for you and your house and will attempt to topple you. No one respects weakness,” Lord Tywin said.

“If you cannot afford to be generous, you are not powerful to begin with,” Weiss retorted.

“Yes.” He nodded. “That’s when you need to rebuild your power. Before you lose everything.” He looked at Tommen. “Do you know what happened to the last Targaryens?”

“Uh…” Tommen blinked. “They fled to Essos?”

“They became beggars living on alms from others. Prince Viserys even married his sister off to the Dothraki in an attempt to gain power. Would you like it if you were forced to sell your sister to someone far beneath her station? Forcing her to live in the wilderness amongst savages?” Lord Tywin glanced at Myrcella, who cringed.

“As opposed to marrying your sister off to some noble because they offer you an alliance?” Weiss scoffed.

Lord Tywin glared at her. “That’s how things work, Lady Weiss.”

“That doesn’t mean that this is how things should work, Lord Tywin,” she retorted. “People shouldn’t sacrifice their happiness to empower others.”

“That’s the duty of every noble toward their house!”

“Be unhappy and make others, including your family, unhappy?” Weiss shook her head. “What good is all the power you have if you cannot even keep your closest family happy?”

Tommen nodded at that, she noticed with a faint smile. Good. He and Myrcella shouldn’t have their lives ruined by their family. 

“I don’t want Myrcella to be unhappy,” Tommen said. “As her brother, and as the King, I have to protect her and keep her safe. And happy.”

Weiss disagreed with some of the implications - Tommen was obviously already immersed in Westeros’s patriarchal culture - but his intentions couldn’t be faulted. “No one should. Family should love and care for each other.”

Lord Tywin scoffed at that. “To protect your sister, you need to be strong. You cannot show any weakness since that would invite attacks on you and your family.”

“If you do not show any mercy, you breed resentment, hatred and, ultimately, rebellion. As the Mad King demonstrated.”

“I knew Aerys. I was his Hand.” Lord Tywin scowled at her. “If he had been strong, he would never have fallen. But he grew weak. He trusted the wrong people, he failed to control his heir, and he had no power left to defend his throne. His entire family, but for two children, were killed because he was weak.”

“By your men,” Weiss snapped.

He scoffed once again. “They acted on their own. You cannot control your forces during a sack. Any man who has seen war knows that.”

She snorted in return, but refrained from calling out his lies. “If Aerys had been generous and kind toward you, would you have turned against him?”

Another glare. “If people had respected him, the Defiance of Duskendale would not have taken place - the Darklyns would never have dared to voice their demands.”

Weiss didn’t know enough about that event to contest his claim, but it was obvious that he avoided the question. Unfortunately, she couldn’t push him too far, not with the children present. They wouldn’t understand. Not yet.

But they would in the future. Weiss wouldn’t let Lord Tywin mould Tommen into another Whitley. 

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna would have preferred patrolling at night, when she could slink through the shadows and avoid witnesses (or worshippers). But that would risk exposing just how much better her senses were than a human’s, and she had already taken a risk by telling people she had smelled the wildfire in the Great Sept. Fortunately, one person smelling something another didn’t wasn’t uncommon. But doing it twice and at night? That would be too much.

So Blake would finish her last loop in the evening, before the sun set. Early enough not to miss dinner; the kitchen staff would fix her a meal if she asked - probably a feast, given how many people were literally praying to her team - but Blake wouldn’t exploit the situation. She was better than that - and she knew how it felt to be oppressed and exploited by the upper class; her time in the White Fang in Atlas had taught her that.

Still, just because she was getting hungry wasn’t a reason to cut her route short. Another thing her time in the White Fang had taught her. This was important; lives depended on finding those wildfire caches, and she would not fail. 

Though she would have preferred doing this without a tail, she amended her thoughts as she spotted the child trying to remain hidden in the scant shadows provided by narrow side alleys. They weren’t new at this - they were part of a team of three, alternating so she wouldn’t spot them easily - but Blake had gone up against Atlas’ security. After dodging patrols, drones and electronic surveillance, and learning how to fit in, spotting a tail in Westeros was child’s play. 

She snorted at her unintended wordplay - Yang would love it - and headed down the next alley. She had nothing to hide right now, so letting them track her might just lull them into a false sense of security that could be exploited later. Not that she would assume she would manage that; those kids were working for Varys, and after the loss of face the spymaster had suffered in the last small council meeting for missing the wildfire caches, she doubted that he would tolerate any slacking. And as long as he didn’t know she had made the spies, he had no motive to get rid of them.

She nodded at a man in rags who gasped a hasty prayer before she checked a bunch of broken boards that could have been an old entrance into a cellar but turned out to be merely the rotten wood of a collapsed barrel. In Mantle, this would have been taken and used as fuel by those who couldn’t afford Dust, and she would have expected the same to happen here, but maybe the area wasn’t quite that poor. Still, there was nothing here - which left one more alley to check…

She managed to keep walking despite catching a whiff of wildfire. It wouldn’t do to let the spies observe her sniffing out a cache. So she acted as if she was merely carefully looking around, as before, while she tracked the smell to an old, dilapidated-looking house. It was inhabited - or had been until the fire; she saw signs of a hasty flight - but someone had broken the door down and ransacked the interior.

Hopefully, that would be enough to justify her checking it out. She stepped over the broken remains of the door and looked around. Her ears picked up footsteps behind her - the spy was trying to sneak a peek. So she made a point of carefully checking the room’s furniture, then entered the kitchen; the cellar was often accessed from there since it served as a storage room.

As was the case here. She climbed down into a small room - smaller than the house’s ground floor would allow. So… She knocked on the wall across from her, and it rang hollow. She could break down the wall easily, but that might cause a jar to break, and that would be bad.

Instead of breaking through the wall like her partner broke through houses, she carefully started to loosen bricks with the edge of Gambol Shroud, then pulled them out once she had enough of a grip.

After the first, the smell grew so much stronger, anyone could smell it, and a glance through the hole showed her dozens of jars.

Time to inform the others and seal off the house.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Another meeting of the small council. Granted, they were in the middle of a potentially catastrophic crisis, but Blake could have done without attending another meeting. She trusted Weiss to keep them informed. But Lord Eddard had invited the entire Team RWBY. At least she could keep an eye on Lord Baelish and Varys that way.

“So, we’ve found three more wildfire stashes. It truly seems that the whole city was supposed to burn,” Lord Eddard said.

“I think we drew this conclusion after the wildfire was discovered under the Great Sept,” Lord Baelish commented. He was smiling, but seemed slightly on edge - Blake didn’t think he would take such a shot at the Regent otherwise; he usually was quite cordial with Lord Eddard.

“It was now confirmed,” Lord Stannis said. “Now that we know their locations, disposing of them is merely a question of time.”

“Provided we don’t suffer an accident that sets the whole thing ablaze,” Lord Renly pointed out.

“I am sure Team Ruby will be able to contain the blaze in such a case,” Grand Maester Pycelle said.

“We will.” Ruby nodded solemnly.

They would, but not before people died. Not with the size of the caches Blake had discovered. But everyone was aware of that. And, a small, snide voice inside her head added, the nobles don’t care about a few smallfolk deaths.

“As long as the fire doesn’t spread further than the last, the damage to the city should be minimal and the losses easily replaced.”

Not unless it involved their income, Blake corrected herself after Lord Baelish’s remark.

“Except for the dead,” Varys objected.

Lord Baelish nodded. “Of course. Every death is a tragedy,” he said - with a subtle glance at Ruby, Blake noted. She had seen less blatant attempts to influence people.

“Indeed. Every death counts,” Varys said. “We cannot allow ourselves to become complacent.”

“Such as you were when you missed this plot for over a decade?” Lord Renly raised his eyebrows.

“With everyone involved dead and the substance hidden, even the best spies would have missed this,” Varys defended himself.

Blake wanted to say that children, mutilated children, weren’t the best spies, but she couldn’t risk tipping off Varys about their investigation; he was already wary of them. If she started needling him, he might become desperate or paranoid enough for a drastic decision.

Best to keep silent and play along, she told herself as the meeting covered evacuations and schedules for moving the wildfire to the Guild.

And pay attention to how Lord Baelish and Varys both stared at Team RWBY when they thought they were not under observation. Lord Baelish sometimes subtly smirked, but Varys… He tried to look unconcerned, but she could see him occasionally trembling.

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Careful! The slightest drop can set it off! And you don't want to be burnt to ashes!”

Yang Xiao Long didn't think anyone working with wildfire wouldn't know that by now - it had been days since the ‘Night of the Fire’, as she had heard it called. Or the ‘Night of Flying Water’, even though it had been mostly sand. In any case, if a worker didn't understand how dangerous the jars were, they probably would have caused a mess and killed themselves already. 

On the other hand, it didn't hurt to repeat it regularly. Some people were just that stupid or oblivious. Sometimes even without having any Aura. She shook her head at some of the antics she had seen back at Signal and Beacon and picked up - carefully! - the next two jars. “Watch out, coming up!” she called out before starting to climb the stairs leading to the ground floor.

Upstairs, the workers hired to transport the jars to the Guild's headquarters were backing away from her, taking the rest of their lunch with them. Good. They knew just how dangerous this stuff was - if Yang tripped, which she wouldn't, it could set off the stuff. And with a wagonload of jars close by, that wouldn't end up pretty, whether or not the stuff was covered in wet sand. 

“Watch out!” one of the workers nearby called out. “Wildfire coming!”

She snorted as she approached the wagon. Two holes were left in the sand that filled the wagon which would take the two jars she carried. She carefully lowered the jars into the holes, one after the other, then called out: “OK! Cover them up!” to the Guild member waiting at the cart.

“Finally!” one of the workers moving towards the wagon commented. “Let's get this to the Guild!”

“Don't rush things!” another cautioned him. 

“I don't want to spend a moment longer than I have pulling this!” the first worker snapped. “It’s bad enough we aren't allowed to use oxen to pull it!”

“Don't be daft! One spooked ox later, and the things would explode!”

“Oxen don't get spooked! They ain't horses!”

“We're not going to take a risk just because you don't want to push a cart,” Yang told the man with a frown.

He flinched at her glare. “Yes, my lady!”

“Besides, if you don't want to handle the wagon, I can do it,” she added. It would be boring - she wasn't Ruby, but going so slowly was still annoying - but she could do it.

“No, no, my lady! We'll do it!” the other worker blurted out.

“We need the money!” the first added.

Well, that she could understand. Even Huntresses didn't work for free - well, they wouldn't ignore Grimm when they found them, or anyone who needed help, but they expected to get paid for missions. She grinned. “It's an honest living!”

The men chuckled and relaxed. They didn't look as afraid as they had been at the start, yesterday, either. Heh, Team RWBY was probably doing as much for the city by calming people down as they were by handling wildfire.

She dusted her hands off. “OK, let's get this on the road!”

“But it's already… Oh, alright, my lady!” The second worker nodded.

“But be careful! Too many vibrations and the wildfire can spontaneously combust!” The guild member meant well, but he probably didn't spend much time with the kind of workers here.

“That means it could start burning if you jostle it too much,” Yang translated. “Now get going - we're already the last of the sites, we don't want to be dead last!”

“Of course not, my lady!”

“But be careful!” the apprentice alchemist or whatever he was - he looked a bit young to be a master - called out.

“We're always careful!” The first worker snorted. “We've done this before! Without burning!”

“We can see that.” The alchemist scoffed. “You've heard the Maiden - start pulling!”

The men - four now - moved to the wagon, two gripping the rear end, two the front.

“Heave!” one of them yelled and pushed with his shoulder against the wagon.

“Watch out!” the Alchemist yelled. “Don't push too much!”

“The sooner we're there, the sooner we're done!”

“Yes, well-done!” another joked.

The workers laughed loudly at the weak joke.

“Heave!” one yelled again.

Yang frowned. They were a bit too eager. This was wildfire, not some dung cart. She was about to remind them when the first worker, the loud, brash one, stumbled. He tried to recover by gripping the wagon's front, but tripped the other worker at his side, and both fell down.

The wagon was heavy, loaded down with wet sand, but the street wasn't quite even, and the workers behind it had let go - and the wagon quickly started rolling down the street. 

“Watch out!” Yang yelled and started running. If the cart went too fast, with those cobblestones… Or missed the turn ahead and crashed into the house…

She reached the cart and grabbed the rear end with both hands, slowing it down. Yes! That would…

The wood she was holding on to broke off. Sand started to fall off the wagon. She rushed past the wagon. Once in front of it, she turned and spread her hands. Careful, can't stop it at once, she reminded herself as the wagon reached her.

It wasn't that heavy, and she managed to slow it down to a stop without setting off anything.

Except for her temper. She narrowed her eyes at the workers who had fallen back. “Get over here and take over!” she yelled.

“Yes, my lady!”

“At once, my lady!”

They rushed towards them - and one stumbled again, falling down, and almost tripping another.

What the…?

The alchemist apparently shared her surprise. “What is wrong with you?” he called out as he reached the fallen worker. “Are you…” He gasped. “Are you drunk?”

“Only had a few beers!” the man replied as he got up.

“Must be a lightweight, then,” Yang muttered - the man was unsteady on his feet now. But he had been quite fine before…

“Hold the wagon!” she snapped. “And let me check that beer!” They had been drinking beer with their lunch, like everyone in this kingdom. Weak beer, and they had shared one jar between them, but…

She walked over and picked up the jar, then sniffed and took a sip.

Her throat burned slightly. As if she had drunk some liquor instead of beer.

“Someone's spiked the beer!” she called out. “Where did you get this?”

“‘Twas delivered for lunch, my lady!” one of the workers yelled back.

Oh, really? She narrowed her eyes. Now, who could have done this?

She didn't know yet, but she and her friends would find out.

And then I'll have a few words with them, she thought as she cracked her knuckles.

*****

 

Chapter 35: The Patsies

‘When talking about the effects of the Ruby Order's deeds on society, as much as one would love to, one cannot avoid a most unsavoury topic: Prostitution. Several contemporary sources cover the Ruby Order's stance towards it, though the vast majority of them can and have to be dismissed as unreliable and biased. Those sources who were, at the time, supporting the Four Maidens show obvious attempts to either ignore or downplay anything related to both prostitution and the Order, lest the reputation of those girls might suffer by association, however faint, with fallen women. Those sources in opposition to them merely make up the flimsiest claims, often based on exaggerated depictions of their foreign garments, to portray them as morally corrupt and untrustworthy seductresses using their charms to influence notable members of the nobility - a claim I have already refuted earlier - barely better, if at all, than the prostitutes they are compared to.

The truth lies not in the middle, as some naive laymen who cannot handle scholarly research might assume, but in the sources often overlooked - the scant documents left by the smallfolk. Many of those, already scarce, were destroyed in various calamities or through ignorance and neglect, though from the surviving documents, especially the famous and not nearly as lurid as some naive students tend to assume records known colloquially as ‘Diary of a Doxy’, a term not used in the time it was written, one has to note, it's easily derived that while the Ruby Order had no direct involvement with that unsavoury business, their presence and general stance towards misogyny and hypocrisy significantly improved the fates of the women unfortunate enough to be working in the brothels of King's Landing by, likely by accident or as a side-effect of their stance against corruption, reducing the ways the authorities could exploit them through forced bribes.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Sabotage?” Lord Renly Baratheon, Master of Laws, raised his eyebrows and straightened in his seat. 

“Or an assassination attempt. Not that it would have worked.” Lady Yang shrugged. 

“Yang! Other people would have died!” Lady Ruby exclaimed.

“If they had been the target, the assassin would have put poison into the beer.”

Renly felt confused, “You said the beer was… spiked?” What did that mean? Team Ruby's way with words was often very confusing, a clear sign of their foreign origin. The context would imply it meant poison, but Lady Yang had just claimed it wasn’t poison.

“Yes. They drank beer, but it was spiked with hard liquor. They didn't even notice how strong it was and got drunk before they realised it.”

“Oh.” That was what ‘spiking’ meant. “And they were in charge of transporting the wildfire to the Guild?” His gut clenched a bit at the thought of what could have happened.

“Yeah.” Lady Yang nodded grimly. “I managed to stop the cart before it crashed into a house.”

“We're in your debt, then, my lady.” Renly smiled at her and noticed, once more, that his charm hadn't much of an effect, if any, on her. And, as usual, he felt a little vexed. He wasn't interested in women, but he was aware of his effect on them, and to be dismissed like that felt a little annoying. He couldn't even tell himself that Maidens blessed by the Seven might not be interested in men at all, since Lady Yang in particular was quite fond of flirting. But he had other, more important things to ponder. “I’ll have this investigated.”

“Good.” Lady Ruby nodded. “We already checked who took the beer to them, but that was a dead end - not a literal dead end, though, it's just that the beer had been left unguarded for so long, anyone could have spiked it. We have to find who is responsible - even if we moved quickly to smother it, many people could have died or lost their homes!”

Smallfolk, but Team Ruby had left no doubt that they cared about everyone. Very much, in fact, so Renly nodded.

“It would be helpful if we could ask Lord Tyrion to help us,” Lady Weiss added.

“Oh?” Renly tilted his head slightly, hiding his concern. Was the Imp even closer to Team Ruby than he had assumed? That would be a problem.

“Yes. He's an expert on alcohol and might identify the brand of liquor used,” Lady Weiss said.

“Yeah.” Lady Yang nodded. “I'm not really familiar with your booze, but if you can't easily taste it in beer, it probably is something special.”

“It's not methanol or something similar.” Lady Blake, who usually kept silent, used more unknown terms. “They suffered none of the usual symptoms.”

That would be poison, then. Still… “While I admit Lord Tyrion is likely the foremost expert on wine and other drinks, I would be neglecting my duties if I didn't point out that, at this stage of the investigation, we cannot exclude anyone except your group as suspects, and as an expert on the matter, Lord Tyrion would have know what drink to pick to get the desired result. Relying on him for the investigation might not be advisable.”

“Ah…”

“That can easily be remedied,” Lady Blake said. “We merely need another expert to independently verify Lord Tyrion's information.”

“It shouldn't be too hard to find someone not aligned with Lord Tyrion who is overly fond of drinking and rich enough to afford the most exotic brands,” Lady Weiss said.

‘Brands’ probably wasn't related to branding something, Renly thought. Probably. Out loud, he said: “Oh, I can think of a few people who are experts on wine and other drinks.” The Tyrells were the rulers of the Reach, where the best wine was grown. And most certainly not aligned with the Lannisters - quite the contrary!

“Good.” Lady Blake nodded. “Three would be even better, but that would also increase the risk of leaks.”

That must mean traitors or spies. Either way, Lord Renly agreed - it was already difficult enough to keep secrets at Court, the more people were involved, the harder it would be. “I'll do that, then. Will you ask Lord Tyrion?” As if the Imp would refuse a request from Team Ruby; the four were the only reason the Lannisters and their incestuous offspring hadn't been crushed yet, and the Imp at least understood that.

“I think that's a good idea,” Lady Weiss said. “I was about to visit the Prince anyway.”

Renly kept smiling as he nodded, though he wanted to frown. For all their power and the danger they represented, the four girls seemed to be blind to the Lannisters’ manipulations. Something the Imp and his father were exploiting. At least the regent was aware of that, and he and his family were close to Team Ruby as well. With his help, Renly might yet manage to prevent a Lannister bastard from taking the Iron Throne. And once Stannis was King, Renly would be his heir unless, through some miracle, his brother managed to sire a son. Which wasn't looking very likely given what he had heard from his sources in his brother's household.

If only Team Ruby were a bit more reasonable! Perhaps this latest assassination attempt, as convoluted as it had been, could be used to influence them?

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“There she is! Grandmother!”

Renly smiled at Margaery's outburst when the carriage entered the keep even though he had mixed feelings about Lady Olenna. But Margaery was very fond of her grandmother. As was Loras. If only Lady Olenna were as fond of them. And maybe a bit fonder of Renly than she was. The old woman had a tongue sharper than a Valyrian steel dagger and spared almost no one when she used it. As a matter of fact, if she were actually nice to you, you'd better worry. 

That made her often unpleasant company, although watching her deal with someone else could be quite amusing. Renly hadn't taken long to realise that the key to having a pleasant meeting with Lady Olenna was to provide her with more appealing victims for her wit.

Unfortunately, that wasn't always possible. In fact, during past visits to Highgarden, Renly had often found himself the only one in a gathering who wasn't related to the woman, which meant he had become Lady Olenna’s favourite target. Well, except for Lord Mace.

“Grandmother!”

“Margaery! Loras! Mind my old bones! I didn’t travel here for weeks merely to be broken in half by my own family.”

Still, Renly knew that making an enemy out of his love’s grandmother would not be conducive to his happiness, so he put his best smile on his face and greeted the old woman with a bow when she stepped out of her carriage. One always had to show good manners as a noble. “Lady Olenna. Welcome to King’s Landing.”

“I entered the city half an hour ago,” she replied. “And I smelled its stench from miles away. But I appreciate the effort.” She looked around. “Are you here for the Regent?”

“Lord Eddard will be receiving you formally in the Great Hall, Lady Olenna,” Renly told her. “Your grandchildren wanted to greet you before that. I merely tagged along.”

“As usual.” She made a slightly snorting sound.

Renly had significant experience in ignoring minor barbs.

“It’s OK, grandmother. Renly is pretty much family,” Loras valiantly defended him.

Lady Olenna sniffed. “Family is united by blood. Not merely… friendship. And what do you mean by ‘okay’? Did you learn another language here?”

“Ah… it means ‘alright’,” Loras said, flushing.

“‘Acceptable’,” Margaery added. “It’s something the Four Maidens say.”

That prompted another sniff. “The foreigners. Of course, they would use foreign words.”

Renly suppressed a wince. If Lady Olenna showed such an attitude towards Team Ruby, things might get even more complicated. “Many have adapted some of their expressions,” he said. “Especially amongst the smallfolk. But also amongst high nobility,” he added before Lady Olenna could mention that the Tyrells were not smallfolk.

He smiled at her frown. 

“I guess you mean the Starks. And the Lannisters.”

“Not just them,” he said. “Lady Ruby and her friends are very popular at Court.” And feared, of course.

“Oh, yes!” Margaery nodded. “And the High Septon named them Blessed by the Seven!”

“The fat fool would name a pig Blessed by the Seven if he were paid enough.”

“Rumour is that he has changed his ways,” Renly said. Rumours he had, discreetly, verified when the man had rejected his bribe.

“And the dragons shall return any day.” Lady Olenna shook her head.

Renly glanced at his love and Margaery.

“Grandmother, the Four Maidens are different,” Margaery said. “They have immense power - I believe they could easily slay any dragon - and they are the power behind the throne.”

“I am aware of that,” the old woman said. “Rest assured, I shall not antagonise them. Although, since Lord Tywin is at court and still alive, those girls must possess a vast tolerance for abrasiveness, so I do not think I am in particular danger of making enemies out of them if I don’t attempt to drown them in flattery. Unless they have fooled all of you, they probably have grown as sick of courtly flattery months ago as they have grown sick of betrothal proposals.” She scoffed. “Enough; my old bones need to rest. Let’s meet with Lord Eddard so I can sit down in my room.”

“Of course, Grandmother!” Loras hastened to say, offering her his arm.

Renly smiled and did the same for Margaery. Even though he didn’t feel like smiling.

Lady Olenna was one of the most dangerous women he knew, and he was certain that her presence would complicate things. He just didn’t know yet how.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose straightened as the old woman entered their room, followed by Lady Margaery, and smiled at both. It was a bit unusual to receive guests in their quarters, but as a distraction from worrying over the still unknown assassin and where they might strike next, it worked. Or so she hoped.

“Lady Ruby, Lady Weiss, Lady Blake, Lady Yang, this is my grandmother, Lady Olenna,” Margaery said. “Grandmother, these are the Four Maidens.”

“Hello!” Ruby smiled at her. “We're Team RWBY!” She wanted to present everyone with their full names, but that would probably make Margaery think she did something wrong.

“Team Ruby.” Lady Olenna stared at her, then looked the others over. “I have heard a lot about you.”

“Only good things, I hope,” Yang joked.

“Concerning things, mostly.”

“Grandmother!” Margaery hissed under her breath.

“Oh, be calm, Margaery.” Lady Olenna snorted, briefly, before turning back to look at Ruby. “I doubt you are unaware of the effect you've had on the realm.”

Ruby's smile froze a little. “It wasn't our fault,” she said before she could help herself.

“Dolt!” Weiss whispered next to her before addressing their visitors: “We're aware of the power we possess and what it means for your realm.”

“And if we weren't, the marriage proposals would have taught us better,” Yang added with a chuckle.

Ruby nodded. “But all we want is to return home to our families and friends.” She blinked. “And to avoid a war here. Or any other catastrophe.” Couldn't forget that. “We don't want to rule the realm.”

“Whether directly or as the power behind the throne,” Weiss said. “We do not seek power here.”

Lady Olenna looked around. “You probably would have demanded better, more luxurious quarters otherwise. It is not very representative. Nor suited to receiving guests - or supplicants.”

Was that a criticism of their rooms? Ruby frowned. They had wine here - watered down as usual - for their guests and some cakes Ruby had fetched personally from the kitchen. And personally tested for poison as well. And they had enough seats for everyone, arranged so they all could talk without having to raise their voices. What else did Lady Olenna expect?

“It suits us well,” Weiss said before Ruby could answer her question. “Compared to our home, the difference between this room and the royal quarters is rather meaningless, anyway.”

“You'd know more about the royal quarters than I do,” Lady Olenna said. “And about the royal affairs, of course.” 

Was she talking about the affairs, as in the affair between Ser Jaime and Cersei? Ruby saw how the lips of the woman twisted into a smirk. Probably, then.

“Not by choice. Events forced our hand,” Weiss said.

Lady Olenna nodded while she made a humming noise that somehow made Ruby think she didn't believe Weiss..

She frowned. She couldn’t let that stand. “It’s true,” she said, staring at the old woman. “But you don’t believe it.”

Lady Olenna nodded. “I’m an old woman. I’ve seen many things. I’ve seen people who didn’t want to rule. Only a scant few, of course, but none of them stayed in power against their will or increased their influence by accident.”

“And how would you know if anyone who didn’t abdicate their throne truly wanted to stay? They might feel they had no choice, be it because they felt they had a duty to do so, or because they feared what their successor would do.” Weiss shook her head. “This seems a case of confirmation bias. Not a deliberate case of ignoring evidence, but an inability to get the information you need to make an informed decision.”

Lady Olenna was frowning openly now. Well, Weiss could be pretty abrasive if she turned on her ‘Ice Princess mode’ - Ruby knew that from experience - but it was the old noblewoman’s own fault for acting as if she knew better.

Ruby nodded. “Yes. We know what would happen if we left the Court: People would fight over the throne. Lord Stannis and his allies would fight Lord Tywin. A lot of people would die.” Like Tommen and Myrcella.

Lady Olenna sniffed. “The Lannisters have no allies, and Lord Tywin has made many enemies. It wouldn’t be a long war.”

Was she serious? Ruby scowled. “I never said it would be a long war. But many people would die!” Everything they had heard and read about war here was clear about that.

“Team Ruby doesn’t want anyone to die,” Margaery said. “They want to protect everyone.”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded at her. “We’re Huntresses; that’s our duty.”

“Yeah,” Yang echoed her. “Protecting people, kicking ass and looking hot!”

Lady Olenna snorted again, but probably not at Yang’s comment. “You cannot protect everyone. And you said yourself that you don’t want to stay forever - you want to leave this country as soon as possible.”

“This world, actually,” Weiss said. “And yes, we have never made a secret of our intentions.”

Ruby nodded. People just didn’t seem to believe them.

“Then whatever war you wish to prevent will merely be delayed until you leave,” Lady Olenna said. 

Ruby pressed her lips together. That was… Well, it wasn’t wrong, but it wasn’t set in stone either. They could shatter stone, anyway.

“Only if things stay the same,” Blake spoke up.

Lady Olenna looked at her. “The players might change, but the game remains the same.”

“It’s not a game!” Ruby blurted out. Games were fun and didn’t get people hurt or killed!

Lady Olenna looked at her as if she had said something dumb. “What do you think it is then?”

A stupid fight for an ugly throne in a stinking dump of a city! Ruby didn’t say that, of course - that would have been rude.

“A blatant power struggle without care for how the fighting undermines and diminishes the prize they are fighting over,” Weiss said. “The more they fight, the less legitimacy the eventual victor will have left.”

That, too, Ruby thought, nodding.

“An interesting insight for someone so young. Then again, you’re not little boys who often dream of glorious battle and famous deeds,” Lady Olenna said, smiling again. 

Well… Ruby had such dreams. Occasionally. Who didn’t?

“Often even after they have grown into men. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that; you’ve met enough boys and men yourself,” Lady Olenna went on.

That sounded pretty sexist to Ruby. Would Lady Olenna say the same if her grandson Loras were here? Or another man? Ruby wasn’t sure, but she was leaning toward ‘yes’.

“It’s not a question of gender,” Blake objected. “Men and women can lose sight of what they are fighting for while they fight and don’t realise that they are becoming their own worst enemy.”

“Men more than women,” Lady Olenna said. “At least here. Although with your power, your world is probably different.”

“Very different,” Ruby said with a nod.

“We do not have the same sexism as you suffer here, my lady,” Weiss said.

“We’d beat up anyone trying to treat us as women are treated here,” Yang said with a toothy grin while she slammed her fist into the palm of her hand.

Everyone nodded at that, even Weiss, who had glanced at Yang with a frown. “Indeed,” Ruby’s partner said.

“One of the reasons you’ve rejected every betrothal, hm?” Lady Olenna grinned. Her teeth didn’t look good, Ruby noted. “Although if you can beat up not merely your husband, but his entire host, I guess you wouldn’t worry about him trying to beat you.”

“We don’t fear that, no,” Weiss said. “But the expectations with which a man would have grown up here would certainly make any marriage quite difficult.”

“Yes, a man’s pride is a fragile thing; easily crushed,” Lady Olenna said. “Even or especially if it’s done by accident.”

Was that another barb? Ruby couldn’t tell.

Weiss inclined her head. “Pride is often poisonous.”

“As Lord Tywin will hopefully learn one day,” Lady Olenna said. “He carries grudges, you know. Never forgets a slight to his honour, no matter how minor.”

“We’re aware of that,” Weiss said.

Ruby nodded. And she knew that Lord Tywin didn’t think that killing his eldest son and sending his daughter into some order of nuns in shame wasn’t a minor slight.

“And you trust him to value his position and influence over his pride?” Lady Olenna slowly inclined her head.

“And his continued well-being,” Yang said with another toothy smile.

“That might be a mite optimistic,” Lady Olenna said with a twisted smile. “But you might be proven correct. I don’t know what would be more satisfying - seeing him be forced to swallow his pride until he chokes on it, or seeing him lashing out and destroying his own house.”

She seemed to carry a grudge against Tywin herself, though Ruby didn’t know why. Prince Oberyn hated him because of the murder of his sister, but she didn’t recall anything like that involving the Tyrells. “Well, Lord Tyrion would take over,” she said. “And he seems pretty smart - and he isn’t like his father.” His humour was a bit darker than Ruby would like, but he could laugh at himself.

“Is that so?” Lady Olenna smiled again. “I think he might be far more like his father than you - or Lord Tywin - think.”

*****

Ruby sighed when Lady Margaery - who had been pretty silent during the meeting, now that she thought about it - and Lady Olenna had left Team RWBY’s quarters. “I don’t think I like her,” she muttered.

“She wasn’t very nice, no,” Yang agreed.

“Which is concerning,” Weiss said. “She is aware of our power, as she said so herself. While she hasn’t observed a demonstration in person, she is Lady Margaery’s grandmother and, therefore, likely has been in correspondence about us with her. To be so antagonistic seems suspicious.”

“Actually, she just claimed that she had been nice when Lady Margaery berated her about it in the hallway,” Blake cut in.

Ruby blinked. “That was her being nice?”

“She claimed so,” Blake replied. “She might have been lying, of course.”

“I doubt that she treats her own family like this,” Ruby said.

“I could see that,” Weiss said, “She seems old enough to be set in her ways, and I doubt that there are many, if any, in her family who could make her change. Though, according to what I heard, she has a reputation as a skilled politician.”

“And she decided that talking to us like that was a good idea?” Yang snorted.

“Like what?” Blake asked.

“Well…” Yang trailed off, blinking.

“She was pretty…” Ruby frowned. “Direct?” That wasn’t a bad thing, was it?

“Exactly.” Blake nodded. “Not flattering like everyone else except Lord Stannis and Lord Eddard.”

“She might bet that we value honesty, even if coupled with harsh words, more than dishonest flattery,” Weiss said.

That sounded good. But… “If she was honest,” Ruby said. “We don’t know that.”

“Yes.” Weiss nodded. “She might just have played the part to manipulate us.”

“Guess we’ll have to keep our eye on her. So, business as usual,” Yang said with a snort.

Ruby nodded. And hated it. She was so sick of those stupid games - no, not games; plots and intrigues and politicking - at the Court!

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lord Eddard. Everyone. You called for us?”

While Ruby greeted the regent, Weiss Schnee glanced around. The whole small council was present. And there hadn’t been a meeting scheduled as far as she knew. That wasn’t a good sign. Something must have gone wrong again if they not only met outside the schedule but called in Team RWBY as well.

“I did, yes, my lady,” Lord Eddard said. “Varys has uncovered information about the recent attempt on your life, Lady Yang.”

“Oh?” Yang bared her teeth. “Great!” She punctuated the comment with a smack of her fist against her palm.

Weiss noted that everyone but Lord Eddard, Ser Barristan and Lord Stannis slightly flinched as the metallic sound of Ember Celica rang out through the room.

“And we found it would be best to have you present when he reveals what he knows,” Lod Baelish said. “We all hope we haven’t made you interrupt your day for nothing, of course.”

“Oh, it isn’t nothing,” Varys said with one of his faint smiles. “I have looked into the liquor that was used to, ah, ‘spike’ the beer for the labourers. Lord Tyrion was quite helpful - thank you for your suggestion, my ladies. He identified it as a liquor from Pentos - a quite expensive one, very strong, and notable for its smooth, faint taste. According to him, one can drink oneself into a stupor without ever realising it, making it a popular drink amongst those who drink to distract themselves from their lives.” He spread his hands, rings sparkling in the light of the afternoon sun. “I confess to not quite understanding the appeal.”

“Of the drink or the drinking yourself into a stupor?” Lord Renly asked.

“Both,” Varys replied.

“Well, it seems the assassin has quite the means if they used an expensive imported liquor,” Lord Baelish said.

“Indeed,” Varys said. “The only known customer is the Dancing Dagger, a rather high-class brothel - not on par with Chataya’s, as I was told by those who frequent both, but respectable.”

Weiss schooled her features. That was a familiar name - one of the brothels that Blake and lately Yang were observing because they were owned by Lord Baelish.

“Oh?” The man in question raised his eyebrows. “Do you think they employ assassins as well as whores?” Weiss had to admit that he knew how to keep his cool. Then again, whether he was behind the assassins or was being framed, he had spent years at Court and must have skimmed off a fortune from the King’s coffers. Weiss still hadn’t found definite proof amongst his ledgers, but she was certain that she would; just too many entries didn’t quite add up.

Varys smiled; he probably knew that as well. “My little birds couldn’t tell me - yet. Although it could also be that the assassin merely stole the liquor from the closest known source.”

“We’ll interrogate the entire staff,” Lord Renly declared with a firm nod. “We’ll find out who is behind this, my ladies!”

“Without torture!” Ruby blurted out. “Varys said that they could have been robbed. You can’t torture victims!”

“Of course.” Lord Renly smiled, but Weiss could tell he wasn’t happy. 

“I’ll check the brothel’s books, if they kept books,” Lord Baelish said. “It might offer us insight, and I think I am the best qualified to do this.”

Except for me, Weiss thought. The man was good at thinking on his feet, it seemed - or he had prepared for such an event.

“Very good, Lord Baelish. If we all work together, we can get to the bottom of this and finally capture the assassin who took Robert’s life,” Lord Eddard said.

Lord Baelish lowered his head. “It’s the least I can do.”

And the best way to erase any evidence of his ownership of the brothel. However, replacing or altering the books wouldn’t be sufficient. Weiss and her friends would have to move quickly to ensure that the staff of the brothel who knew about Baelish owning it were not moved out of the city - or murdered. Actually, if he had access to wildfire, she wouldn’t put it past the man to use it to destroy both the evidence and murder the witnesses and blame it on the assassin. It certainly wouldn’t be too outlandish an event in the current crisis.

Weiss glanced at Blake. Her friend nodded. Good.

“Very well. Let’s secure the brothel and its staff, then,” Lord Eddard said.

“I have taken the liberty to, ah, have the madam of the brothel followed. Just in case they might be warned once the guards start moving,” Varys commented.

Lord Baelish tensed for a moment, Weiss saw. So, he had been planning something. Or he just realised that Varys was about to destroy him.

“Good thinking,” Lord Eddard said.

“It doesn’t make up for your previous failures, but yes,” Lord Stannis grunted.

Lord Renly, though, was smiling. “Excellent. Let’s raid the brothel. At this time of the day, not too many clients should be around, so there shouldn’t be too much trouble with innocent notables caught up in this, either.”

Lord Stannis scoffed, no doubt at the idea of caring about the effects of such a raid on the clients of a brothel. Weiss could understand the sentiment, of course - whoever frequented such places should know the risk to their reputation - but she was also aware of the consequences of embarrassing people with money and influence at court. Not even Lord Eddard or the Lords Baratheon were immune to that.

Lord Eddard cleared his throat. “If you would assist us in securing the building, my ladies, I believe that the whole affair could be handled without incident.”

“Who would dare against the Blessed of the Seven, indeed?” the Grand Maester asked rhetorically.

Weiss once again had to school her features. If Team RWBY were publicly involved, it would make it easy to blame everything that embarrassed a notable on them. She wondered if that had been Lord Eddard’s plan or if someone else had suggested it.

“Of course, we’ll help!” Ruby announced, nodding firmly.

“We’ve got something to settle with the assassin and their helpers,” Yang added, flashing her teeth in a feral grin again.

“Then let us not dawdle and move as soon as we have the guards ready,” Lord Eddard said.

“That won’t take long,” Lord Renly promised. “I’ll have them assemble at the gate.”

“And we’ll be waiting there!” Ruby said.

*****

“I’ll observe Baelish,” Blake whispered as they left the room before vanishing at the next door. Weiss made a mental note to study the layout of the secret passages a bit more, once she had the time. Which wouldn’t be too soon, alas.

“So… we are going to raid a brothel,” Ruby said.

She was blushing slightly, Weiss noted.

“I’ll handle the private rooms, no worry!” Yang had noticed it as well. “You focus on the kitchen and the cellar and stuff.”

“Are you talking to both of us?” Weiss asked, narrowing her eyes.

“Why? Do you want to interrupt people in their beds?” Yang grinned.

Weiss felt herself blush. It wasn’t that she wanted it, but she didn’t need to be coddled. She was old enough to handle such things, even if she would prefer not to. But she wanted to be a drag on her friends even less. All of them had already sacrificed so much - killed people - how could Weiss not do her part without feeling as if she let her friends down? And yet, she also knew that the important objectives were securing the witnesses, the ledgers and the liquor. And, of course, the entire building so it wouldn’t burn down ‘accidentally’. If Lord Baelish had left instructions should a raid happen - and he likely had; the man was a pimp but not stupid - then they would have to prioritise. 

“We’ll have to be prepared for arson and other sabotage as well as attempts to flee - or silence witnesses,” she told the others.

“Yep. Should we skip waiting and rush forward? I know the way,” Yang asked.

Ruby pondered the question as they approached the gate. Then she nodded. “Yes. Let’s move. We can outrun any courier from the keep.”

And so they would arrive before any warning could reach the brothel. One advantage of the lack of modern communications in this world. “They’ll blame us for the raid anyway,” Weiss said.

“Right!” Ruby nodded, then looked at the guards at the gate. “Once the others arrive, tell them we went ahead!” she called out.

“Uh… what others, my lady?” the commander of the detachment asked as they sped past him.

“You’ll know when you see them! They won’t be long!” Ruby yelled over her shoulder.

Then they were off.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna easily tailed the man Lord Baelish had sent out as soon as he had reached his office. He was so focused on making the best time to his destination without drawing too much attention, he didn’t pay enough attention to being pursued himself.

As soon as they reached the Street of Silk, he entered a side alley - not one that led even roughly in the direction of the ‘Dancing Dagger’, she noted as she let him gain a bigger lead so she wouldn’t be spotted. It was much easier to trail someone at night, when she could hide in the shadows and on the rooftops. Even the narrow side alleys here were too bright for that.

But she could still track him just fine with just a few glimpses and by the sound of his hasty steps. So she noticed at once when he stopped, even though she couldn’t see him. A creaking noise a moment later, almost drowned out by the noise of the bustling main street not too far away, made her rush forward just in time to catch a glimpse of his back before the door closed behind him.

Now, why would Baelish send a courier to this building, and not to the brothel? Blake could think of a few reasons, and none of them good. One in particular stood out, though.

She quickly approached the building, checking for witnesses. This was a back alley, though, and few people used those if they could help it. Not unless they had something to hide. So she reached the building quickly and unseen, then slipped under the overhang there and climbed the wall until she reached a shuttered, narrow window.

“...lord wants us to clean up?”

“No loose ends.”

“Fire won’t take. Not with the Maidens around.”

“It doesn’t have to take. It just needs to flush them out so we can take care of Becca and Brun.”

“Shame to kill Brun.”

“Shame? You hate him.”

“He still owes me a stag.”

“This pays better.”

“A stag is still a stag.”

“Stop blathering, you two louts! Grab the oil and the crossbows and get going! The guards will arrive soon.”

“What if they’re already there?”

“Then we wait until they come out. Either through the backdoor or in chains.”

“Easier shot if they are chained up.”

A laugh followed.

Blake scowled - these men, three - no, four, she heard another set of steps as they came down the stairs - were the scum of the city. Joking about murdering people, willing to set a building on fire with dozens of people in it - people they obviously knew! - just to get to their targets without regard for anyone else… She was reminded of someone else and clenched her teeth at the thought.

She had to focus on the situation here, not her past. She dropped silently to the ground, bending her knees to absorb the impact, then moved to the wall next to the door. Here they came.

As soon as the door opened a gap, she kicked it, sending it smashing into the man right behind it. She dashed into the house, drawing Gambol Shroud from her back, and swept the legs of the next man, then kneed him in the face, breaking his nose as he fell forward.

The door had bounced off the first man, and her kick sent it right back, hitting him as he struggled to rise. The two men on the stairs had dropped the bags they were carrying, a crossbow peeking out, and were turning to flee.

She barrelled into them before they could take more than one step and slammed one into the other, then both onto the stairs. One was still moving, so she grabbed his head and smashed his face into the rough board covering a step once more.

All four down, all still alive, though a few noses were broken. And a few concussions were caused. She closed the door and quickly tied them up with their own ropes, then searched them, liberating a few hidden knives, some coins and a garotte. The house was next. Upstairs were a few rooms, messier than some of the worst dorms at Beacon, and a kitchen so greasy and smoke-stained, her nose almost made her gag. She wouldn’t eat anything that had been in there, or just near it.

But the cellar… apart from a pantry filled with questionable food and unquestionably rotten food, she found a barely hidden cell - obviously used to hide captives, as blood stains on manacles dangling from the back wall showed.

She briefly pondered, then decided that the risk was acceptable and dragged the four thugs down into the cellar, where she dropped them into the cell. They would keep there until night had fallen and she could move them into a safer place without anyone, especially Baelish, knowing. And she would be back soon anyway - she just had to inform her friends that they now had four prisoners and future witnesses to guard.

Whether Baelish was behind the assassination attempt or not - Blake was leaning towards not; the man didn’t strike her as reckless enough to risk tying his brothels to such an attack, and she didn’t think he had a motive to do this in the first place since his position had only worsened with the King’s death - sending his thugs to kill his employees was crossing a line that would see him on the wall or dead. Blake assumed he’d pick the wall; as his accuser, she would fight for the court as she had done before, and she doubted Baelish would risk death like Ser Jaime had.

*****

Street of Silk, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Nobody move! We’re here to secure the building!”

As Ruby yelled from the front of the building, where the main entrance was, Yang Xiao Long hit the back door of the brothel. Literally - Ember Celica punched through the boards, splintering the wood. She kicked it, and it broke apart around her gauntlet. “Don’t run!” she yelled. She wanted to add ‘you’ll only die tired’, but that would cause a panic.

Well, the panic started anyway - two girls, barely older than Ruby, or so they looked, were staring at her with horrified expressions. “We’re here for your employers,” Yang told them with a smile. “Don’t worry!”

“The Blessed!”

“The Maidens!”

“Please, my lady! Mercy!”

“Mercy!”

More shouting from the main entrance, glass breaking, and…

“Don’t try to flee! I covered the entire house with glyphs!”

…yeah, that was an annoyed Weiss yelling at people being stupid.

But Yang had an objective: to ensure that no one set fire to any evidence. Ruby had already swept through the ground floor - Yang saw some petals fade as they were blown into the hallway in front of her - and was headed upstairs to the office of the front man of Lord Baelish.

That left Yang with securing the cellar. Once the door was secure. In hindsight, she shouldn’t have smashed it quite so thoroughly, maybe. But that was easily remedied. “Weiss!” she yelled. “Lock up the back door, too!”

“Yang!”

Weiss would survive it. Grinning, Yang shook her head. “Best stay put, girls,” she told the two cowering women, then entered the kitchen. The cook and a helper were staring at the glowing glyph covering the open window, and Yang was at the trapdoor leading to the cellar before they even noticed. “Don’t move,” she told them while she opened the trapdoor with one hand. It was lighter than she had expected, but she didn’t break this door even if the wood creaked some as she let it drop to the floor.

The cellar was empty, and she didn’t notice any obvious secret door. She did notice the extensive stash of wooden beer casks, wine bottles and some tall and slim clay casks that probably had even fancier names.

No one was here, and no one was trying to set fire to it, so she climbed up the steep stairs again and looked around. The building was secure, and Weiss could hold out until the gold cloaks arrived with Lord Renly and the others. Mission accomplished.

“Cover up! And get back into the room! Don’t run around naked!”

Yang winced at Ruby’s shriek. Well, almost accomplished. 

*****

“I thought we had agreed to wait for my guards, my lady.” Lord Renly didn’t sound annoyed, and he was smiling, but that didn’t have to mean anything - he was usually smiling when he was talking with them or anyone else.

“We wanted to rush in case there was a leak and they tried to flee or burn the evidence before we arrived, my lord,” Ruby told him.

“Yep,” Yang added. And as Blake had informed them, that had been a good decision, not that they wanted to tell anyone that right now. Wouldn’t do to let Baelish know that they had caught his killers. Though he would quickly know his plan had failed, he wouldn’t know why or what exactly had happened. At least, that was what Team RWBY hoped.

“No harm done,” Varys said, smiling as he wiped some sweat from his brow with what looked like a silk handkerchief. “As long as the building is secure. The Madam didn’t escape, which is essential to finding out who owns the brothel.”

“Yes!” Lord Baelish nodded, though Yang could see his smile wasn’t as confident as usual. Or maybe she was just imagining that, since she knew that this was his brothel.

But she wasn’t imagining how he looked at the woman being brought out, glaring at her while she flinched. Well, he wasn’t the only one glaring at the staff being led out of the building - a crowd had gathered, and Yang didn’t need Blake’s fluffy ears to hear all the ‘Maidens’ and ‘Blessed’ muttered around them. “You probably need to make another speech at the Sept, Ruby,” Yang said. “Before people start attacking brothels in our name.”

“Ugh.”

“Indeed,” Weiss said - she had recovered some of her Aura spent on maintaining all those Glyphs since the guards had arrived, and with it, her attitude. “It seems our presence is leading to quite a few misunderstandings.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded. “Weiss, I need a glyph in the air!”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow might be too late!”

Weiss frowned but wriggled her fingers, and a glyph appeared above them.

A moment later, Ruby jumped and landed on it, unfolding Crescent Rose.

Yang smiled. Her little sister would claim she did it to look more imposing, but Yang knew it was mostly because she felt more confident with her scythe out.

“Everyone, listen!” Ruby’s voice rang out. “We didn’t raid this house because it is a brothel! We did it because we heard that there was evidence about the wildfire plot in the cellar! So, please don’t attack other houses!”

The crowd gasped.

“Wildfire!”

“There’s wildfire in the house!”

Soon, most people were stepping back and leaving with only a few remaining.

Ruby looked a bit confused, but Yang flashed her a thumbs-up. That kind of misunderstanding would probably keep the people from forming mobs to storm other buildings. “Good work, sis!”

Yang glanced to her side. Lord Baelish the Pimp looked like he wanted to leave as well. They’d have to keep an eye on him, in case he tried to flee the city. Or someone tried to kill him and fake such an escape.

Dead men made good scapegoats, after all. Varys was certainly looking a bit too smug.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So?” Yang asked when she heard her partner slip into their quarters through the secret passage.

“As expected,” Blake said as she closed the door. “There are new documents in the hidden space in Baelish’s office. Receipts showing more liquor bought than in the records we recovered.”

“So, Varys is trying to frame him,” Weiss said. “Probably hopes he’ll flee so his office will be searched and the hidden ledgers discovered - preferably by someone not connected to him.”

“Like us,” Blake said. 

“So… is Varys behind the attacks?” Ruby asked. 

“It’s possible,” Weiss said. “But he could just be using this to get rid of Baelish and improve his own reputation. He has mentioned that the liquor could have been stolen from the brothel by the assassin. As long as he sticks to that and doesn’t blame Baelish for it, it’s not his fault if people assume Baelish was the assassin. And Baelish was the owner of the brothel, so once the prisoners talk, he’ll be ruined anyway.”

They would probably still blame Varys for missing the assassin, though - people were like that, Yang thought. But more importantly… “So, Baelish will do a runner?”

“Or he’ll try to silence the prisoners who know him,” Weiss said.

“Lord Eddard replaced the regular guards in the Black cells with his own men,” Blake said. “They should be safe. We’ll have to keep an eye on Lord Baelish, though. And there’s something else, though.”

“Yes?” Yang asked.

“There was also another ledger there. I couldn’t decipher too much, but the word for ‘gold’ was mentioned a lot. Not gold dragons - gold.”

Weiss sat up. “We need copies of that ledger! If that’s another fake ledger… The most well-known source of gold in Westeros is the Westerlands.”

“Is Varys trying to frame the Lannisters?” Ruby asked. 

“That’s what we need to find out,” Weiss said. “As soon as possible before this blows up.”

“And I thought the city was safe with most of the wildfire gone now…” Yang muttered.

*****

 

Chapter 36: Fatal Failures

‘A common view is that the period of the Ruby Order was the most turbulent in the history of Westeros since Aegon’s Conquest. That is, of course, demonstratively false. Compared to the infamous Dance of the Dragons, even the Succession with all the upheavals it brought to the realm and the plots and intrigues that it fuelled didn’t cause as much damage and uncertainty as a civil war involving dragons on both sides. However, if we’re looking at the effects of any period on the realm, then we would be hard-pressed to name a more influential time; the consequences of the changes that started during this period still influence the lives of everyone in Westeros even today, though as much as one would like to - and many of the the Ruby Order’s members have - one cannot lay everything at the feet of the Four Maidens. In fact, their presence was often a stabilising influence on the realm, as evidenced by the crises that broke out after they left. For all that they shook up the Court, as many contemporary records show, they also prevented, through diplomacy and personal influence mainly, as well as shrewd use of their reputation as peerless warriors, several conflicts at Court, although, as every scholar knows, only to a point.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

He was ruined. Ruined! Framed for a crime he didn't commit, Lord Petyr Baelish knew that if he didn't escape, he would not only lose his position but his life as well! A life as an exile, forced to hide from his enemies, bereft of his position, influence and power, but it still beat death - provided he could escape this trap.

But he couldn't allow himself to panic - that was what his enemies wanted. He had contingencies; any man in his position would have them. He had prepared for a hasty flight from King's Landing ever since he had started as Master of Coin - you couldn't climb a ladder without stepping on some rungs, and the greater the height, the more dangerous the fall would be.

He closed his eyes for a moment, taking deep breaths. He’d had contingencies prepared, but they had been foiled - Becca and Brun were still alive. They were currently in the Black Cells. Worse, the regular guards had been replaced by Stark's men; Petyr couldn't have them killed in their cells.

That meant they would talk. Sooner or later, they would talk. Fortunately, Team Ruby had made it clear that they couldn’t be tortured, so they might talk later rather than sooner, but talk they would. Petyr had no illusions that they were loyal to him. The kind of people he had running his businesses in the city knew how the game was played. None of them would stay loyal to a loser.

And he was currently losing. 

He clenched his teeth and balled his hands into fists, barely managing to resist the urge to hit something, anything. He had underestimated Varys. The damned eunuch had chosen to frame him to cover up his own failures. And he had known more about Petyr's plans and businesses than Petyr had thought.

So, Petyr couldn't assume his other contingencies would work, either. If he tried to reach the boat waiting for him in the harbour through the secret passages below the Red Keep, he would probably be dead halfway before he passed beneath the walls. Or he'd find the crew waiting for him with blades drawn. Varys couldn't afford to let him live if he was to serve as a scapegoat.

Or could he? Was the evidence manufactured so vast, no one would believe him in a trial? Not even to cast doubt on Varys? It would be the perfect plot when not even the truth would set him free. But, no, Varys wasn't the sort of man to take such a risk. He would ensure Petyr wouldn't live to talk to anyone. He might even vanish without a trace… No. That would paint Varys as incompetent. The eunuch needed a success to keep his post.

Petyr hissed in frustration. He wouldn't be the reason that scheming cockless bastard restored his position! That would be too much! If he was about to die, he would at least ensure his enemies would go down as well!

But how? He could feel the jaws of this attack closing in. His front men arrested, the thugs he had kept on retainers to clean up such messes either dead or paid off, his escape plans compromised… How could he escape?

By improvising, of course! He had to do something unexpected - something Varys hadn’t thought of, hadn’t prepared for. Something that would allow him to escape. He had money in Essos, enough to live well for the rest of his life, if he only could escape this city.

But how could he manage that?

He looked around in his office. Maybe he should just walk out of the Keep, through the gates. Bold but simple. None of the idiots in charge yet suspected him. If he could leave the Keep and reach the harbour, he could take a ship - any ship - and leave. He had enough money to pay for a passage to Essos from anywhere. All he needed…

…was Varys to be an idiot and not keep eyes on the gate. No, if he tried to brazen through this, he would be knifed in the back in the harbour district at the latest, now that he couldn't trust his own men not to betray him.

Maybe he could disguise himself? But that would require a disguise good enough to fool a spy. And if he were caught in disguise, everyone would think him guilty. 

No, that wouldn't work.

He frowned when he felt sweat run down his sides. There had to be a way out of this! He just had to find it! He was smart - the smartest man at Court! He could outthink Varys. He could find a way to turn the tables, and…

He blinked. He needed protection. And who could offer better protection than the Four Maidens? Varys wouldn't expect that, would he? And even if he did, what could he do? Those girls could defeat the entire city guard! A few paid assassins wouldn't be able to make them sweat!

He took a deep breath. Yes. He had to meet Team Ruby. As soon as possible.

But he needed something to steady himself. The girls were naive but not entirely witless. He reached for his bottle of arbour gold. A glass or two.

He inhaled the scent before drinking. Yes. He could do this. He wasn't beaten. He would survive this. No, he would… He coughed.

He couldn't breathe! His throat felt like…No! He grabbed his throat.

Help! He could not breathe! Could not scream!

He stumbled toward the door. He had to get help! He had to… He had to get up! Had to…

Everything went dark. The last thing he heard was the door creaking and a whisper.

“Oh, shit!”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose bit her lower lip. Lord Baelish the Pimp was dead. As they had feared. And he hadn't died quickly - he looked like he had been strangled to death. At least, how the TV showed such deaths.

“I wanted to ask him about the ledges and found him convulsing on the floor, hands on his throat,” Ruby heard Blake say behind her. “I thought his airway was blocked by something he had swallowed, but his neck muscles were so tense and rigid, they clenched his windpipe shut, and there was no way to conduct a tracheotomy.”

“A what?” Lord Eddard asked.

“It means cutting a hole in the throat to open a direct path to the windpipe so people can breathe even if their upper airways are blocked.”

“You wanted to cut his throat, my lady?”

“It's actually an exotic surgical procedure I've heard about,” Pycelle cut in. The Grand Maester was rising from where he had knelt to check the body. “It wouldn't have saved him, alas. That was no obstruction, but a rare poison known as the Strangler.”

“How rare is this poison?” Blake asked.

“I'd never heard of it before I conducted extensive research on the matter after the late King's poisoning,” Pycelle replied.

“So, this was the work of the unknown assassin?” Ruby asked. Another person dead under their watch!

“Or someone who wishes to make it appear so, my lady,” Varys said. “The Strangler isn't unknown. Rare, yes, but most experts on such matters in Essos would know of it, and I am certain that any modestly affluent noble from Westeros could procure a dose of it from there.”

“In any case, Lord Baelish was doomed the moment he drank it,” Pycelle said. “If not the lack of air, then the bleeding from all blood vessels in his head would have killed him - albeit likely with less suffering.”

Ruby winced. Lord Baelish had been bleeding from his mouth, ears and eyes. That was a nasty way to die.

“I see,” Lord Eddard said. “Is there an antidote?”

“There is - but is to be swallowed, so…” Pycelle winced and shook his head. “It's generally used before imbibing the poison, by those who are aware of its presence and wish not to fall victim to it. Mostly assassins and their accomplices.”

“Ah.”

“And the assassin poisoned Lord Baelish’s drink?” Varys frowned. “Could they have known you were about to meet with him and expected him to be a generous host, my lady?”

“I don’t see how they could have expected this,” Blake replied. “It was a spontaneous decision.”

“Then Lord Baelish was the target, and not merely a bystander struck by poison meant for you, my lady.”

“I don’t think the assassin would be stupid enough to try the same thing against us that already failed,” Yang said.

“I would want to say the same, but I have seen more foolish things,” Varys said.

“But why would they strike him?” Lord Eddard said. “He was looking into the ledgers we took from the brothel. Was he about to expose them and had to be silenced?”

“The ledgers are still here, though,” Varys said. “Of course, the assassin might have planned to remove them as soon as Lord Baelish perished, but his plan was foiled by Lady Blake’s timely arrival.”

“A thorough examination of the ledgers should prove or disprove that hypothesis,” Weiss said.

“But who would dare do this, knowing it might mark them for death?” Varys asked.

“Who would refuse to do their duty in the face of such obvious need?” Lord Stannis spoke up.

“Many would, I fear - keeping books is not a profession that attracts the brave, my lord.” Varys cocked his head to the side.

“I’ll look them over. The system is not quite as advanced as I am used to, but I should be able to make sense of it,” Weiss said.

Ruby’s partner was the best! They would be able to compare these ledgers with the copies they had made from the ones Varys had placed in the secret compartment in the chimney here. Those were fake, but they might still learn something about Varys’s plans.

Like, why would he kill Lord Baelish? If it was him - it could have been someone else, of course.

“Thank you, my lady.” Lord Eddard nodded, then sighed. “I’ll have to write to Cat. Tell her her childhood friend was murdered.”

“And Lady Arryn as well,” Varys added. “The three were quite close, or so I heard. Lord Baelish liked to tell people how happy he was at Lord Tully’s court.”

Ruby winced. Lord Baelish hadn’t been a good man, not according to what they had known - as Blake had discovered, he had ordered his own employees in the brothel murdered to keep his involvement secret - but she wouldn’t know that. If she found out, would that feel even worse?

*****

Back in their room, Ruby paced. “This is getting worse and worse!”

“Well, Lord Baelish isn’t exactly a big loss,” Yang said, shrugging and then leaning back on the couch. “He tried to have at least two people murdered.”

“Indeed.” Weiss nodded. “I cannot claim that I feel bad about his demise. Not after what we found out so far.”

Ruby was aware of that. That didn’t make it OK, though. “But he was another person murdered because we couldn’t catch the assassin! He was killed on our watch! We expected someone to go for him!”

“We didn’t expect the poison. Perhaps we should have expected that, but…” Weiss said.

“Yep,” Yang cut in. “Since poison is kinda the assassin’s go-to method.”

“Even the attack on you was done by tampering with the beer,” Blake added.

Weiss frowned. “...but we cannot feasibly check every drink for poison - or watch everyone’s quarters. We cannot save everyone. It’s not possible.”

She was right, though Ruby couldn’t help feeling that they should have been able to save Lord Baelish. Still… “Then we have to catch the assassin before he kills someone else.”

“Well, everything points toward Varys being the assassin. We know that he was trying to frame Baelish,” Yang said. “And we know his spies sneaked into Baelish’s office at least twice so far.”

“That could have been unrelated to the assassin’s attack,” Weiss pointed out.

Blake nodded. “We can’t assume he is behind the assassin. Or working for the assassin. But we also can’t assume he isn’t.”

“We need proof,” Weiss said. “We can’t move against him without proof.”

“We totally could. I don’t think anyone would disagree with us if we accused him,” Yang said.

Ruby gasped. “Yang! We can’t do that! We’re not… like that! We can’t just accuse and condemn and ruin people without proof! That would make us… the bad guys!” she said, frowning at her sister. “No better than a criminal!”

“Or any noble at Court,” Blake added.

Ruby nodded at her. “Exactly! We’re better than that!”

“I know,” Yang said, and Ruby felt relief that her sister hadn’t gone off the deep end, as Uncle Qrow called it once. “But it’s really not nice to know Varys is a crook and not being able to do anything about it.”

“We are doing something about it,” Weiss said. “We’re gathering proof. And once we have it, we can move against him.”

“Yeah. Unless he gets killed by the assassin before we can arrest him,” Yang.

“That would…” Ruby trailed off and pouted. “No, it wouldn’t actually prove anything about Varys. The assassin could kill him because he was a rival or whatever, or so he couldn’t reveal their identity.” She made a frustrated noise. “I hate this kind of plotting!”

“Welcome to politics and big business, Ruby,” Weiss told her.

“I don’t want to have anything to do with either!” Ruby blurted out. She was a Huntress (in training), not a politician or businesswoman.

Weiss frowned at her. “You - we all - don’t have a choice.”

Ruby scowled. That sucked.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, where does Littlefinger’s death leave us?” Lord Eddard asked.

“We need to go through his records to tell. I’ve arrested all his clerks to ensure no one would run, but they claim not to know much or anything about how he ran his office,” Lord Renly replied. “But they admitted enough so we know we cannot trust the man’s claims about the realm’s finances.”

He was glancing at her, Weiss Schnee noticed. She assumed he wanted to torture the clerks but didn’t dare to, but that wasn’t her problem. They had the records, and with them, they could make the clerks talk. It just took a bit more effort than they were willing to exert, or so it seemed.

“Did he steal from the royal treasury?” Lord Stannis asked.

“Every Master of Coin does,” Lord Renly said with a smile. “The question is: Did he steal more than usual?” He grew serious. “And as to that, we don’t know yet, but the way all his servants were either kept in the dark or claim to have been kept ignorant doesn’t fill me with confidence that Littlefinger kept to the usual amount of skimming off the top.”

“He was very skilled at handling money,” Varys added. “Although his greed might have outmatched his self-control.”

“Shouldn’t you know the answer to that?” Lord Stannis asked with a rather brusque manner.

Varys spread his hands. “He was very skilled and didn’t trust many, if any. I’m afraid to say that his employees likely didn’t know the extent of his machinations - I would have had to turn or replace all his servants to know his secrets.”

Lord Stannis scoffed, his expression clearly showing he considered this another failure. 

Weiss was inclined to agree - for a Master of Whispers, Varys seemed to have missed a lot of things at Court. Missed, or deliberately overlooked; Weiss wouldn’t exclude bribes or plans to blackmail influential nobles as a motivation to let such corruption go on. Like Lord Baelish, Varys wasn’t a rich noble and would be tempted to use his position to better his own finances - more than was customary, at least, she reminded herself; bribes and favours were very common here, after all, and only called corruption if someone in power benefited from it.

Unless Lord Stannis knew about it - Weiss wouldn’t be surprised if he called for a trial if as much as a halfpenny were missing. He was scowling almost as much as he had following his brother’s assassination.

“First the wildfire, now potential theft that leaves the realm’s coffers empty and in debt - deeper in debt than we thought… You do seem to have missed quite a bit, Master of Whispers,” Lord Eddard commented. 

For him, that was almost a condemnation, Weiss thought,

Varys inclined his head. His smile didn’t slip, as far as Weiss could tell. “Indeed. Although I have to point out that Lord Baelish was very skilled at generating revenue - so skilled, everyone praised his efforts at keeping the realm’s treasury full. To accuse him of stealing on such a scale would have meant proving that he was actually earning even more money for the crown than he was, and who would have believed this without records that proved it? Records we have trouble deciphering, I must add. And with Lady Lysa his childhood friend, and him having earned the former Lord Hand’s protection…”

“Lord Jon would have never protected a thief, had he known about his deeds!” Lord Eddard said sharply.

“Precisely - had he known. But would he have humiliated and insulted Lord Baelish on mere suspicion on my part? Suspicion that he was even more skilled than he appeared?” Varys shook his head. “I think not.”

“But did you have suspicions?” Lord Renly asked as he leaned forward. “Suspicions which you could have told me so I could have investigated them?”

“Nothing that would have convinced you, my lord,” Varys replied. 

And Lord Baelish would have known about the investigation at once - Weiss was well aware of how riddled with corruption the gold cloaks were; the tales she had heard from Master Mott were clear. Not that other departments of the court were any better; Father would have controlled the entire court with his money.

Lord Renly didn’t look convinced but seemed to let the matter drop - for now, at least; Weiss was certain he’d bring it up again; Varys’s position was growing weaker with each crisis. As a non-noble and a foreigner, he was the ideal scapegoat - and he would be aware of that as well and have made contingency plans. Plans that were likely not quite as simple as having enough money secured to live well for the rest of his life, especially since he must have made a number of enemies who would spend some effort to shorten his life.

So she cleared her throat. “If you need help looking through the records of Lord Baelish, I think I could be of service, Lord Renly. I have some experience handling a treasury.” That was overstating things a bit, though not by much, especially here. She had been trained to take over the Schnee Dust Company, and that required some skill in accounting to check numbers herself. And compared to the books of the SDC, the records here were not very complicated - in fact, the lack of sophistication was the major obstacle to overcome.

If her offer surprised Lord Renly, he didn’t show it. “We’re grateful for any assistance,” he said. “It’s as if Lord Baelish never considered, or cared about, the possibility that others would have to take over his duties.”

“I think he planned on being irreplaceable,” Varys said. “Which, of course, is part of the reason for our current crisis.”

“As long as we have enough to continue paying for our needs until we have sorted out his records, we will be fine,” Lord Eddard said. “Thank you, my lady, for your generous offer; we’ll be happy to accept your help.”

Weiss bowed her head in return, smiling politely. It was a bit duplicitous to offer her help when she had already been analysing the pictures she took of those records, but it seemed clear that they did need her help.

Father would agree - and ask for a hefty favour and financial benefits in return, but Weiss wasn’t her Father. Besides, she knew that Lord Eddard would feel honour-bound to reward her anyway.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Lady Weiss.”

“Lady Olenna.” Weiss turned to nod at the noblewoman, wondering, not for the first time, if she should start to avoid the common routes through the Red Keep to avoid those ‘chance meetings’ with courtiers. Though she would probably have to use secret passages to avoid them completely, and if they couldn’t accost her, they would accost the others, and Ruby didn’t deserve having to deal with those vultures any more than she absolutely had to and Yang was a bit too fond of inappropriate jokes and a bit too hot-headed to be trusted with this while Blake would never be caught anyway.

“Headed to the Great Hall for a meal?”

“Yes.” Ruby and Yang were visiting Gendry, and Blake was off investigating Varys’s spies, and none of them would be eating lunch at the Keep. Weiss could have had food delivered to their quarters, but she had spent hours going through Lord Baelish’s records there, eating somewhere else had looked very appealing - a judgment she was about to revise right now.

“So am I. Shall we walk together?”

It was worded as a question, but refusing would be an insult. “I’d be happy to,” Weiss lied.

“So, you volunteered to study Littlefinger’s records?” Lady Olenna said when they started walking, two of her attendants trailing them.

“I have some experience with accounting,” she replied. “My father was quite clear about the fact that blindly trusting your clerks with your money is a recipe for disaster.”

“As opposed to trusting your wife, right?”

Back on Remnant, that could have been taken as speculation about Weiss’s preferences, though here it was likely a comment about how a noblewoman could gain power and influence over her husband. “Every marriage should be based on trust,” she replied. “If you cannot trust your partner, why would you marry them?”

“Because you need heirs and alliances.”

“An alliance you cannot trust is not very useful.”

“That still leaves heirs.”

“Heirs raised by someone you don’t trust, to whom they have an emotional attachment?” Weiss shook her head. “That doesn’t sound like a wise course of action.” Father had learned that with Winter and was likely trying to ensure that Whitley would not follow in her footsteps should he come to the conclusion that Weiss wasn’t going to be what he’d consider a dutiful heiress either.

“Men are rarely as wise as they think - and often not wise at all.” Lady Olenna cackled a bit.

“I do not think wisdom, or the lack thereof, is tied to a specific gender,” Weiss said. She certainly knew as many foolish boys as girls.

“Oh, but boys can often get by without much between their ears while girls need to rely on their wits should they aspire to anything beyond motherhood, so they are far more incentivised to actually use their wits and learn. Mere brawn and bravado won’t let them succeed.”

“Brawn and bravado won’t be enough for a man with ambitions, either,” Weiss replied as they entered the Great Hall.

“That depends on their ambitions. A good sword arm has won many a man land and titles.”

“And lack of wits has lost even more their land and titles, I presume.” Fools certainly didn’t last long at court - or anywhere amongst nobility, Weiss thought.

“It would have to have been a distinct lack of wits, and bad luck as well, likely coupled with ambition beyond their station,” Lady Olenna said. “Otherwise, even an oaf can prosper as long as he knows how to fight and act like a noble.”

They were headed to the high table, and it was clear Weiss wouldn’t be able to eat alone without giving offence. “The same could be said about a noblewoman. As long as she knows how to act as a noble and give birth to children, she will do just fine in most situations.”

“I would not call being entirely dependent on her husband prospering, though - especially if said husband is an oaf.”

Weiss almost asked if she was speaking from experience, but that would have insulted either Lady Olenna or her family. “I suppose so.”

“Not something you have ever faced, is it?”

“No.” Weiss’s life would be decidedly easier if Father were an oaf and Mother had dedicated herself to being what Atlas society considered a proper pastime for a woman of her status instead of dedicating herself to alcohol.

Judging by the faint twist of Lady Olenna’s lips, Weiss hadn’t managed to school her features enough to entirely hide her thoughts about this.

Time to change the topic, then. “So would you consider the late Lord Baelish a fool?” she asked as they sat down.

“I would. He overreached and paid the price. A wiser man would not have been so blatantly corrupt - or flaunted his wealth like he did.”

That sounded like some of the remarks ‘old money’ in Atlas used to say about Weiss’s family, before the SDC had become the most powerful company in the world, of course. Afterwards, none had dared to say so openly; Father would have made an example out of them.

“So, do you think he was killed because of his ambitions and the actions he took to realise them?”

“He made a lot of enemies and not enough allies. When Lord Jon died, Littlefinger lost the protection he had enjoyed. He tried to ingratiate himself with the new Hand, but it wasn’t enough.” Lady Olenna shrugged and then reached for some meat, cut into bite-sized pieces already, from the plate brought by a servant, and started eating. She apparently didn’t worry about poison, unlike many other nobles - Weiss saw even fewer courtiers eating in the hall than after the King’s death.

“I am so old, if anyone poisons me, they’ll have wasted their gold when they could have just waited a bit.” Lady Olenna cackled, and Weiss noted that she had deduced Weiss’s thoughts just from her glancing around - or guessed quite luckily.

She didn’t comment on that topic, though. “And yet, if he had been a dutiful Master of Coin, what are the odds he would have been murdered anyway?” she asked instead as she filled her own plate. “Either as a plot to weaken the current regent, the Master of Whispers, or to serve as a distraction for another plot?”

Lady Olenna laughed in a slightly cackling manner. “And some people think you’re naive! Indeed, what are the odds? I fear only those who murdered him can answer this, but it’s quite interesting to speculate, is it?”

Weiss smiled politely at the backhanded compliment. Did the noblewoman and others really think Weiss and her friends were as naive as Ruby sometimes acted? If that was true - though Weiss wouldn’t bet on it - that was both a potential advantage and a potential problem. If they were underestimated, people would try to manipulate them and cause more problems. But if they assumed they were used to such intrigue, they would see plots where RWBY honestly just wanted to go home.

Weiss could have done without either. It also made it harder to determine what Lady Olenna’s intentions were. Weiss had a feeling that misjudging the old but not nearly as frail as she pretended noblewoman would cause even more problems for her team and, likely, the realm as well.

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna carefully peered through the crack in the roof, which she had widened a bit with Gambol Shroud one night. Below her was the attic, where most of the kids spying for Varys slept - as often during the day as at night due to their varying schedules. She checked the familiar sleeping spots and noted which spots were empty last night and empty now.

Three so far. Of course, they could have gone to bed after she had gone home last night and gotten up before she returned today, but how likely was that? Most of the kids slept longer than that - had to sleep longer than that due to their young age.

She pressed her lips together. If more of the children had been removed - killed, a small voice seemed to whisper in the back of her mind - while she had been debating whether or not to intervene…

But she couldn’t just sweep in and grab all the kids. Many would run, scattering, and those she caught would attempt to escape as soon as she left them in what holding area they could prepare. And, short of putting them in a dungeon cell or keeping them under guard around the clock, they would escape.

She wasn’t naive; she knew how those kids thought. Had thought so herself, when she had been a member of the White Fang. When Adam had manipulated her. It had taken her years to see through his lies, see him for what he was, and she had been older and had been able to access far more information.

Those kids? They were far too young. Some of the youngest kids down there wouldn’t even have entered school back home. And they wouldn’t have had good lives before Varys got them; no life where you lost your tongue was good in any sense of the word. So, it didn’t take much for Varys to win their loyalty. A roof over their head, a safe place to sleep, enough food, a few treats from time to time… She hissed under her breath. It would take a miracle for them to question him.

No, she couldn’t just sweep in and save them. They wouldn’t let her save them.

Not to mention that Varys would be warned if she did that and cut his losses. Literally, in this case. Still… Blake really didn’t want to leave the kids there. Could she maybe ask the Faith for help? They were already tracking down the origin of those poor kids; certainly they would help the children here?

But they would run into the same problems her team would have.

She hissed under her breath, checked if she heard more kids - only those she had noticed before, puttering away in what passed for a kitchen here - and then left. As much as she hated leaving, there was nothing she could do here, not right now. And she had other areas to check, other threats to spy on.

At least she told herself that.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So? Did you find out how much was stolen from the treasury?”

Weiss scoffed, clearly annoyed - at the question, Blake thought, not at Yang. Maybe a bit at Yang for asking the question. “We still lack exact numbers, and, seeing how utterly disorganised and sloppy the records are, by design as much as by neglect and sheer ignorance, we are unlikely to ever know the full amount.” And she was clearly annoyed at the state of accounting in Westeros.

“Got a rough ballpark figure?” Yang asked.

“A fortune. More than the crown receives in a year from taxes and customs.” Weiss shook her head. “Of course, it was spread out over his entire time in office, but still! Such a vast sum should have been noticed by even the most superficial oversight!”

Ruby blinked. “So… there was no oversight at all?”

“Apparently, as long as the court’s expenses could be paid on time, no one cared about any surplus.” Weiss bared her teeth in a snarl. “They didn’t have a budget that deserved the name! Even though they took loans from both House Lannister and the Iron Bank!”

“They don’t have the means and tools we have back home,” Blake pointed out.

“That’s no excuse for the appalling lack of oversight! All Littlefinger had to do was provide more money than his predecessor, and he could do what he wanted, without any effective safeguards, checks or documentation! He didn’t need any authorisation for any expense!”

“Well… King Robert didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who worried about such things - or wanted to deal with that stuff,” Yang pointed out.

Blake nodded in agreement with her partner.

“That’s still no excuse! Someone should have kept an eye on Littlefinger! Someone with a bit more sense!” Weiss shook her head. “This realm isn’t just divided into seven kingdoms and two other provinces; its government is so compartmentalised, the members of the small council could probably create their own kingdoms without anyone noticing until the realm runs out of money altogether!”

That was hyperbole. Blake knew how people in an organisation struggled for funds, both from what she remembered from her parents’ table talk when they thought she wasn’t listening and from the White Fang’s internal divisions over funding. They had not merely raided SDC’s transports and storage houses to hurt the company, after all, but mainly to finance their activities because every other cell hoarded their own funds, including Sienna’s in Menagerie, which was the most affluent thanks to all the donations they received there. Still, Weiss had a point about the lack of oversight. If Sienna had kept an eye on Adam’s activities in Vale…

“So, are they running out of money?” Ruby asked.

“Not any time soon, unless they wish to hold even more tourneys,” Weiss replied. “Although lord Eddard is unlikely to continue that practice, and even Lord Renly seems to have realised that until we know the correct state of the realm’s finances, we cannot spend the treasury frivolously.”

Ruby looked at Yang, who shrugged, and Blake leaned forward. “Without the necessary seriousness.”

“Ah.” Ruby nodded. “So… it’s not as bad as it could have been? The realm won’t go bankrupt?”

“They can always raise taxes to keep themselves afloat,” Weiss said. “However, Lord Tywin’s loans to the crown have become far more important now, granting him more influence, especially since the yet-to-be-chosen successor as Master of Coin might not be as adept as Littlefinger was in earning money for the realm. And refinancing anything from the Iron Bank will be far more difficult and costly, given the embarrassment this has caused for the crown.”

Yang shrugged. “So, sounds like a financial problem, nothing we can punch. And the court needs to cut down on their expenses - it’s not as if they can’t afford it.”

Weiss looked aghast at the comment, but Blake nodded. Unlike Weiss, Yang and Ruby hadn’t grown up as the heiresses of the Schnee Dust Company and weren’t used to such financial issues; they were likely used to cutting down on expenses, though, if times were lean. Their father was a teacher at a combat school, and his pay, while decent - Blake knew how much it would cost to get such a school going and keep it going in Menagerie - it wouldn’t make them rich, either.

“That’s… That’s not the point! A fortune was embezzled! If we can track it down and recover it, we could drastically improve the finances of the realm - reducing the debt and with them, the interest payments, or investing in infrastructure. It would also increase the crown’s own power and independence, which would stabilise the Court, at least to some degree!” Weiss explained.

“So, where’s the money?” Ruby asked.

“Did he blow it all on booze and boobies?” Yang grinned.

Weiss scowled at Blake’s partner, which made her grin grow wider. “He couldn’t have done so even if he wanted to - the sum he took is far too vast to be spent on such indulgences. Besides, Littelfinger didn’t spend money on such things - he invested in that… business.”

“So, where’s the money?” Yang repeated Ruby’s question.

Weiss scowled at her again, and Blake glanced at Yang, silently asking her to cut down the jokes; their friend had been working hard on this, too hard in Blake’s opinion, and she wasn’t that able to take a joke at her best to begin with.

“Sorry,” Yang said with a slight grimace. “I’m just curious. We’re kinda involved in this, so…”

“I am aware of that as well. The issue is, while we are certain that the money didn’t disappear - some of it was likely hidden somewhere, of course, for emergencies, but this kind of wealth will not have been kept in coin - Littlefinger will have invested the majority of his ill-got wealth, likely under fake names and in foreign countries, which makes recovering the money difficult if not impossible. It depends on what documentation we can find. Obviously, he didn’t keep records of those investments with his official records - and he was smart enough not to keep them in his chambers. So, we’re trying to track the money trails through his couriers, but we might be missing some of them, and those currently confined to cells have yet to deliver actionable information,” Weiss said. “Except for the brothels we already knew about, at least.”

“Think he kept it all in his mind? No paperwork at all?” Yang asked.

“No. The scope of his activities is simply too large to keep all information in his head.” Weiss sounded confident. She could be overconfident at times, but Blake was inclined to trust her judgement in this.

“So, he must have hidden them somewhere,” Ruby said. “Blake, do you think you can find them?”

“I’ll try my best,” Blake said. It was the least she could do. However, she knew how difficult it would be to find such documentation. When records could damn the owner, they tended to take great care in hiding them.

Still, nobody was perfect.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long charged ahead - and through Blake’s latest clone, shattering it on impact. Two more came at her from her flanks, but a spinning kick took both out. And that left… Another clone dropping on her head, which she punched away - and caught an Aura Slash in the stomach. Ugh. “Shouldn’t have left myself open like that,” she muttered, rubbing her midriff. Especially without her Semblance working. Or even with it activated. As her fight at the tournament had proven, her Semblance wasn't a sure way to win, and once spent, Yang was seriously weakened.

“You can’t exactly punch upwards while keeping your guard up with both hands,” her partner commented as she joined her, sheathing Gambol Shroud. “You OK?”

“I’m fine.” And she was. Sparring, even if you lost, was much, much better than stressing yourself out. That was why they were doing this every day, no matter the crisis. Yang stood, stretching briefly. “Let’s try that again.”

She did better in the next spar, though, as long as Blake could keep sending hordes of clones at her, Yang would sooner or later leave an opening; her partner was just too fast and skilled to outlast easily. Of course, the clones couldn’t actually hurt her, but they were stand-ins for the kind of opponents who could. Though using the moves she had learned from - well, developed with would be more fitting - Ser Barristan made blocking and parrying attacks much easier, which meant she could last longer anyway. Just not long enough. Not yet.

“You know, I was wondering how to use my clones more offensively,” Blake commented at their next break. “Not just as distractions and feints, but actually hitting my opponent.”

Yang frowned a little. “Doesn’t Dust make your clones more solid?”

“Yes, but they still can’t really hurt anyone,” Blake said. “Unless I use Fire Dust and turn them into bombs, but we canˆt really train that here. I was looking for something less explosive.”

Something more subtle, as fitting for a catgirl Ninja - not that Yang would call her that. Well, maybe to tease her. Still… “Even without Dust, send enough of them in at once, and you blind your opponent,” Yang said.

“It would be better if they physically hindered them…” Blake made a humming noise as she pondered the issue, wrinkling her nose in thought, and Yang couldn’t help smiling at her expression. Blake often kept a mask on, and it was always a treat to see her like this.

“Ready or not, here I come!”

Yang turned to watch Ruby and Weiss’s spar. Ruby had just vanished into a cloud of petals and was racing at Weiss, who was creating a literal wall of Glyphs to try and stop her. Emphasis on try - Ruby managed to slip through the gaps left by the glyphs and then appeared right in front of Weiss, shattering the last-ditch glyph Weiss managed to create with a swing of Crescent Rose before hitting Weiss herself and flinging her back.

“Oops! Sorry!”

“I’m fine,” Weiss replied as she got up. “You still didn’t hit while using your Semblance.”

“I tried, but… It’s hard to hit anything like that.” Ruby shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s possible.”

“It should be. We just need to train harder,” Weiss said.

Yang wasn’t quite certain it was possible - the limits of Semblances were not always logical - but if Ruby could attack using her Semblance, even experienced Hunters would be hard-pressed to stop her; Yang didn’t know anyone who was as fast as her little sister.

Well, they would find out sooner or later as long as they kept trying, and there was no reason not to. The entertainment in this world was pretty limited, unlike at home. She snorted.

“Hm?” Blake looked at her with her eyebrows raised.

“Oh, just thinking that while we’re missing an awful lot of lessons, at least we won’t be too far behind in combat lessons when we’re back at Beacon,” Yang said. “We’re sparring as much as we did there.”

Blake scowled. “We’ll be forced to repeat the year. There’s no way we could catch up to the others after all this time.”

That was probably right. Well, Weiss might be able to study hard enough to catch up - though only if they returned next week and she managed to go without sleep for a month - but Ruby and Yang? “Well, on the positive side, no matter how long we stay here, we won’t lose more than the current year,” Yang said with a grin.

Blake frowned at her, but Yang kept beaming at her partner until Blake started smiling as well. 

Of course, the longer they took here, the greater the chance that their friends and families would think they were dead. And Dad and Uncle Qrow… Yang didn’t want to know how they would react to this. If Dad started drinking like Uncle Qrow…

Ruby appeared next to them out of a cloud of petals and grabbed the jug of water. “Whew! Sparring is thirsty work - oh, lemon!”

“Yeah, it’s flavoured today. And not poisoned,” Yang told her.

“It may be a slow-acting poison,” Weiss said as she joined them.

Yang shrugged. “It’s not as if it’ll kill us. And as long as we act confident, the assassin might not even try to waste their money.”

“I doubt that,” Weiss said as she drank a few glasses herself. “But there’s not much we can do about that yet.”

Not until they found the assassin. Or whoever had hired them.

“I think I ate too much,” Ruby said.

“Did you eat before sparring?” Weiss scowled at her. “I told you not to!”

“I need the calories! Especially if I use my Semblance as much as today!” Ruby defended herself. “But I didn’t eat that much!”

“You just said you overate, dolt.”

“Well… I might have gained some weight. My clothes feel a bit tight lately.”

Yang narrowed her eyes and took a closer look at Ruby before she chuckled. “More like you gained some height, Ruby. You’re growing up - and growing out,” she added with a grin.

“What?” Weiss scowled some more as she stepped closer to Ruby. “It’s true. You’ve grown even taller!”

“That makes you the smallest now,” Yang told her with another chuckle. She almost added ‘and not just in height, but also in size’, but that would probably have been too much right now - Weiss was already blushing.

And Ruby’s sudden growth spurt reminded everyone how long they had been here already. And that was a pretty depressing subject.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Think this is about another speech to the Faithful?” Ruby asked as they walked up to the Great Sept. “I haven’t heard about any trouble with a brothel.”

“I haven’t heard anything, either.” Yang had visited Gendry earlier - he was still working on a bicycle model that could be built with the tools available here, and they had tried to work on a simpler chain-drive - and he hadn’t mentioned anything earlier today. And since he was usually up to date with everything related to the Church, and gossip about their team in general, she didn’t think anything had happened.

“Perhaps we need to clarify more of our views,” Weiss said. “Before differing interpretations of a careless comment cause another fight.”

Ruby blushed. “That wasn’t my fault! I just said I liked crafting weapons, not that the Smith was superior to the other six gods!”

Yang snorted. Gendry had been disappointed to hear that, of course. But they couldn’t appear to favour any of the Seven without causing trouble for the Faith. Not that they favoured any to begin with, of course.

Then she noticed that Blake had grown tense. “Something wrong?” If this was a trap…

“I think I know why we were called without any details,” Blake said, tensing up.

“You do?” Ruby blinked. “But… Oh!”

She must have overheard someone - they were just about to reach the High Septon’s office.

Before Yang could ask what it was about, the door was opened, and the High Septon greeted them.

“Come in, my ladies! I have good news - well, concerning news. These men have successfully concluded their mission in Essos.”

Their mission? Oh! Yang grinned.

They must have found out where the children Varys used as spies had come from.

*****

 

Chapter 37: The Spider Trap

‘One of the most defining cultural traits of Westeros, one that is shared by the entire continent despite the many regional differences, is the loathing of slavery. A sentiment so strong, even Aegon the Conqueror, born from a culture built on slavery, adopted the stance. Modern scholars occasionally wonder at this, citing the situation of the smallfolk, whose lives were often as hard as a slave's, as a cultural blind spot. Some go as far as to claim that the virulent hatred of slavery was mere hypocrisy or an excuse to distract the people from worse injustices in the Seven Kingdoms. That the Iron Islands used to practice slavery in all but name through the taking of salt wives and thralls in their raids is also counted as evidence of this, though any scholar will counter this claim by pointing out that it was ultimately exactly this disgusting practice that led to the Breaking of the Iron Shackles in the fourth century when the Church called for a holy war. Some historians speculate that the hatred for slavery is a result of cultural influence by those who fled the Valyrian slavers to Westeros, though the numbers and dates do not support that hypothesis. Others, often religious scholars, claim that the Seven themselves mandated this, and the faithful embraced it. Whatever the reason, no one can doubt that since ancient times, no crime was as detested, as dishonourable, in Westeros as slaving. Unsurprisingly, the Ruby Order shared that view, as their actions in King's Landing during the Coin Crisis show.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys looked at the report from his little bird. The four witches had been invited to the Great Sept of Baelor by the High Septon. Nothing too unusual - though the report stated that they hadn't known the reason for the invitation. And it had been urgent, judging by the fact that they had left soon after the message had reached them.

That was Interesting. Their influence on the Faith of the Seven had been a concern for a while - unlike most of the Court, Varys wasn't blind to the threat a mob of smallfolk whipped into a frenzy could present if one managed to aim them at the right target. Provided one could surprise said target, of course; a mob going up against any organised force, even the gold cloaks, would be slaughtered. Although they could still serve as a distraction, of course.

Not that the witches needed a mob to do their bidding - they could slaughter any force, organised or not, in the realm, no matter its size. And everyone at Court was aware of that. But control over the Faith still offered some potentially crucial advantages, especially when it came to gathering information. The Church might not have spies like his own network, but between the Septons and the more fanatical faithful, they potentially had eyes and ears literally everywhere. Naturally, they lacked the organisation and training to actually use those sources, but it was still an advantage, especially for a group of foreigners.

Of course, Varys had realised that as soon as he heard about the growing worship amongst the smallfolk and had had his agents infiltrate the Church - what better way to keep an eye on the witches than to watch their tools? It had taken a while for his agents to reach positions of trust, and he still had none close to the High Septon, but he was generally well-informed about the happenings at the Great Sept. And concerned, of course, about the influence those witches wielded there.

But they should be distracted for a while still by Lord Baelish's death. Longer once they found the fake records his little bird had planted in the oh so tragically late Master of Coin's office and they started investigating the subtly placed links to the Lannisters. With a bit of luck, that would occupy their attention long enough for Varys's other plans to come to fruition. And wouldn’t Lord Baelish, were he still alive, be rabid with rage at the thought that not only had Varys arranged his death but profited from it so much? 

The Faceless Men, should they accept his request, would either kill the witches or distract them further. He might even manage to use their own pet Septons against them - if they were away from King's Landing, say to deal with the Lannister troops, it would be easy to manipulate the septons in the city to move against ‘traitors’ and ‘heretics’ - they had fistfights every few days over what the witches expected from them, or so his sources claimed.

Best, of course, would be if he managed to lure those monsters far, far away from King's Landing. Perhaps he might plant some rumours about Princess Daenerys controlling a Dothraki Horde? None with any knowledge of the lands east of the coast of Essos would believe that, but the witches might believe it because it was so absurd, they might not think that anyone would invent such a far-fetched threat. And if he managed to sabotage their ship…

He nodded. He would have to ponder this, and keep carefully studying the witches and their machinations to decide what would work best. The Game of Thrones was a game that required patience and restraint. Once he received the report from the Great Sept later today, he would know more.

Until then, he was free to consider alternative options. That would…

A knock at his door interrupted his thoughts. “Lord Varys?”

He recognised the voice. One of the regent's servants. “Yes?” He walked over and opened the door.

“Lord Varys! The regent requires your presence.”

That was… unexpected. “Do you know the reason for this summons?” he asked.

The servant shook his head. “No, Lord Varys.”

His tone and expression belied his words, though. The man was annoyed - no, angry at Varys. He was a Northener, but even those usually cold school their features better than this. That meant the regent was annoyed or angry at Varys.

He nodded. “Have the Four Maidens returned already?”

His eyes widened a moment. “I wouldn't know, Lord Varys. I was just ordered to fetch you.”

Another lie. 

Varys hesitated a moment. Had his attempts on the witches’ lives been exposed? He couldn't fathom how it would have been possible, but magic offered all sorts of unnatural means. Still… Could he risk abandoning his position based on such flimsy hints? Could he risk not fleeing while he still had the chance?

If the witches had turned the regent against him… He nodded. “Of course. Please wait, I have to safely store a few scrolls detailing secret matters.”

“Yes, Lord Varys.”

He closed the door and went to the secret door behind his desk. He didn't have much time, but he didn't need but a moment to open the door, slip through and close it behind him. Ah, if he had had more time, he could have faked his death to throw off pursuit by making it look like he had fallen to his death by taking another secret passage near the ramparts, maybe he could have asked for a detour on the way to the regent to get some fresh air…

But no - the servant was too suspicious to be easily fooled and would only need to call for guards to foil such a ploy. While Varys was not nearly as helpless in a fight as he appeared, he wasn't the kind of fighter to take on two, much less three enemies at once and get away.

He shook his head as he quickly walked through the tunnel - he didn't need a light here, but he would have to briefly stop at the alcove where he had hidden a lantern and a change of clothes before continuing down the next tunnel; it wouldn't have done to expose his escape route by using it for other means after preparing it. Not even his little birds were aware of it - none who were still alive, at least.

A few twisted turns later, he stopped. Was that the sound of footsteps? He cocked his head to the side and held his breath, but he couldn't hear anything. Nerves, he thought - even though he had been preparing for this ever since he had first seen the witches work their magic, it was still quite a shock to actually have to implement his escape plans. And a thrill, of course. To outwit four witches who were likely all much older than he was? It was no mean feat. Too bad he couldn't brag about it. Not until he reached his friend in Pentos.

He would have to change his plans, of course. Mayhap see if he could use the little princess to send the Dothraki at the realm. The barbarians would die in droves against the witches, but they could force them to split up to deal with such an invasion, and once they were separated, the Faceless Men might find a way to kill them, paving the way for the Young Griff. Perhaps he could wait until the princess was pregnant or had borne her barbarian husband a son and have her assassinated? If he could frame the Regent for such a crime, not that hard with the assassins dispatched before in King Robert’s name, that should be enough to turn the Dothraki against Westeros…

He reached the alcove and felt around for the lantern and the flintstone to light it. It took a few tries to get a spark to ignite the wick, but soon the soft light illuminated…

…familiar boots and breeches. He gasped, feeling his stomach drop as his gaze travelled up, revealing the slim but deadly form of Lady Blake, staring at him with her yellow eyes. 

Had she been a guard or knight, he would have snuffed out the lamp and taken his chances in the darkness. But against this unnatural witch? That wouldn't be dignified. Besides, as long as he could talk, all was not lost. 

He managed a smile despite the despair filling him. “In hindsight, it was naive of me to expect that mere darkness would hide me from dark magic.”

He half-expected her to cut him down with her cursed blade, but instead, she snorted.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“As expected, he did a runner, but Blake caught him!”

Her sister sounded as proud, or more, as if she had caught Varys herself, Ruby Rose found.

Blake herself merely nodded as she held the bound and gagged Master of Whispers - now or at least very soon former Master of Whispers, Ruby corrected herself - up with one hand in the small council's chamber.

Lord Eddard and the other members of the small council (minus Varys) were staring, though. Well, except for Ser Barristan and the Grand Maester. Had they really thought they would let Varys escape? Her team had been chomping at the bit to finally get proof to get him!

“He was trying to flee through a secret passage,” Blake said.

“I don't think I am prejudiced if I say that such an attempt to avoid meeting us strongly indicates his guilt. Innocent people do not attempt to flee,” Lord Renly said.

That was true! Ruby started to nod, then frowned. No, it wasn't true. Innocent people tried to flee all the time if they were facing torture! “That's going to be decided at his trial,” she said.

“Innocent until proven guilty and all,” Yang added. “But we got proof that he was buying slaves in Essos.”

“So you said,” Lord Eddard said.

“Witnesses for whom the High Septon can vouch,” Weiss replied. “And records they found. And we can search Varys's chambers now.”

“You couldn't do that before?” Lord Renly asked.

“We lacked sufficient cause,” Weiss kinda lied.

“And if he noticed the search, he would have been suspicious,” Yang added. “And we didn't want to risk that he'd hurt others before escaping, as a distraction or to erase his traces.”

“Ah.” Lord Renly nodded. His brother nodded as well, though with a pretty satisfied expression. For Lord Stannis, at least - he wasn't scowling as much as usual.

“And we need to move quickly to ensure that his spies won't be hurt,” Blake said. “He might have had contingencies to kill them if he had to flee.” She dropped Varys to the ground.

Lord Eddard nodded. “You said you feared he might murder the children he brought to Westeros.”

“The children he bought,” Weiss corrected him. “And had mutilated so they couldn't talk.”

Lord Eddard nodded with a grave expression. Lord Renly also nodded, and Lord Stannis scowled harder.

“We suspect he had killed some of them before already,” Blake said. “There's a lack of grown men and women missing their tongues in Westeros, and I doubt he had sent them back to Essos when they were too old to work for him.”

“Yes,” Lord Renly said, with a scowl that clearly showed he was Lord Stannis's brother, “One can but wonder why Varys wanted little children as his spies - and not adult men. Wonder and worry, given what we found out about Littelfinger.”

Ruby blinked. What was…? Oh! She grimaced. Ew!

Her friends glared at the man on the ground.

“I do not think that should be a grave concern, my ladies,” Ser Barristan spoke up. “Varys is a eunuch, after all.”

Right. Ruby nodded. At least, they didn't have to worry about that. He was still a child-abusing villain, though. And probably a child-murdering monster.

“Questioning him will be a challenge, though,” Lord Renly said. “He will not break easily.”

“No torture,” Ruby said out of reflex. That was the rule! Even for child murderers. And even if they were good liars and might be hiding even more crimes. Well, maybe there were exceptions in such cases… No! She shook her head. Innocent until proven guilty, she reminded herself. It was always the most difficult to stick to the rules when you were sure you were right. Because you were likely to overlook or ignore things.

Lord Renly frowned at her, but slowly nodded.

“So, keep him under guard - multiples, from your households - while we secure the children?” Ruby asked.

“Yes, I think…” Lord Eddard was interrupted by a knock at the door, quickly followed by a servant - a panting servant, Ruby noted - entering. “My Lord Regent! There's a mob of smallfolk advancing on the Keep!” he blurted out.

Ruby blinked again. What?

*****

There really was a mob marching on the gates of the Red Keep - well, they had stopped before the gates. Ruby stared at the gathered people from the top of the rampart. They were armed, though mostly with makeshift weapons - improvised weapons, to be precise, like clubs, and repurposed tools, such as hammers, pitchforks, and cleavers and large kitchen knives. But she could see spears and swords as well. 

And they were shouting about ‘the vile slaver’. Oh. “They must have heard about Varys,” Ruby said.

“That is obvious,” Weiss commented. “It seems the Sept’s discretion was not as trustworthy as we were told.”

“Can’t beat rumours,” Yang said. “School or Sept, stuff travels fast even without scrolls.”

“Yes, yes,” Ruby said. “But we need to deal with this before something happens.” The people were keeping their distance, but they looked angry.

“Didn’t they trust us to handle this?” Weiss sounded insulted. “We didn’t ask for such a demonstration.”

“Well… It’s nice to have support?” Ruby asked.

“It is not nice or advantageous for us if the Court thinks we wanted this to happen,” Weiss disagreed. “Or if the people down there think we wanted this. It doesn’t take a lot for such a mob to spin out of control.”

“The gold cloaks might overreact,” Blake added. “Or the Court might feel threatened and decide that they want to make an example out of them.”

“Not with us here, they won’t,” Yang said.

Weiss shook her head. “We can discuss the ramifications of this display of popular support later - we need to deal with this now.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded. “Weiss, I need an air bridge!”

“You… right.” Weiss moved her hands, and glyphs appeared in the air, forming stepping stones in front of them.

Stepping stones for Huntresses, at least. Ruby jumped on the closest and then kept jumping until she was standing above the first row of the crowd. 

That didn’t sound right. She shouldn’t be standing above them. But she had to address them all, and that worked better if everyone could see them.

“Hello, everyone!” she shouted. The crowd grew silent, which was a bit… impressive. And kinda concerning. She cleared her throat. “Don’t worry, we caught the slaver! And he will be tried in court!”

The crowd cheered. A lot. Mostly about ‘Blessed’ and ‘Maidens’ and the Seven.

“But!” She forced herself to smile widely. “We have a lot of things to sort out, and that will take time. So, you don’t need to wait for news out here - we’ll tell you more tomorrow, at the Sept.”

Should she have said that without checking with the High Septon first? It was kinda rude, to just announce it like that, right?

But the crowd cheered again and then started dispersing, and that was the main thing, so Ruby counted that as a success.

Though while her friends smiled when she returned - Yang joked about Weiss better not dropping her - the small council, whose members had arrived on the rampart as well, now, looked kinda unhappy. And not just because they had probably had to run some.

They had lost their Master of Coin and Master of Whispers, discovered a huge sum of money was missing and that there was a spy network that a traitor had controlled in the city. Anyone would be unhappy in their place. But they seemed unhappy with Team RWBY.

“We need to check on the kids,” Blake said. “They will know that Varys has been arrested now.”

“Right!” Ruby nodded. “We’ll be back,” she told the others before jumping off the rampart.

They had some kids to catch. No, that sounded wrong.

They had some kids to save!

*****

King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake was very… worked up. Weiss Schnee could tell. Her friend was too tense, too impatient, as they raced through the streets and over the roofs to reach the lair of the children used as spies by Varys. Too… not focused, fixated. 

Based on what Weiss knew about her past, she was likely seeing herself in those kids - children too young to know better, used for dangerous purposes by adults who manipulated them for their own gain.

Weiss could understand this, to some degree; Father had used his children for his own purposes as well, usually to improve his image and impress his acquaintances. Especially those who foolishly considered themselves his friends just because Weiss had performed a few songs at a private gathering.

But Weiss hadn't been used for dangerous tasks. She hadn't been sent to spy on people who would silence witnesses with lethal means to keep dangerous secrets. She had not been ordered to steal documents and plant falsified records in rival hands. Or poison someone's wine. Perhaps that had been the reason Father had thought she would back down when forced to fight an Arma Gigas to earn the right to attend Beacon; if he had been using her for more violent and dangerous tasks, he might not have made such a mistake.

But… Her eyes widened when Blake suddenly veered off, jumping down into a side alley instead of across it to the next roof.

“Blake?” Ruby asked a moment before she disappeared in a cloud of petals.

Weiss jumped down as well before she could consider the situation and landed next to Blake, who was holding a screaming and kicking child by their arm.

“Whoa.” Yang joined them.

“They've begun to scatter already,” Blake hissed.

“How… Oh.” Weiss trailed off as she spotted the bag on the ground. It had fallen open, and clothes and food were visible.

“Varys must have left contingency orders in case he was captured,” Blake all but growled.

“Fan out and move on to the house from all directions so we can capture the kids on the way! Let's go!” Ruby disappeared again.

“Yeah!” Yang jumped onto the roof. 

Weiss looked at them disappearing in different directions as they split up, then at Blake. 

“Can you keep them corralled with your glyphs?” Blake asked.

Could she? Of course! But she didn't say that out loud - she nodded instead.

“Let's stay together then!” Blake grabbed the kid around his chest and jumped.

If the child hadn't been mute, they would have surely screamed. Even so, they tried to yell as they cleared the last few buildings with a series of jumps until they reached the spies’ hideout. One small kid was just leaving through the front door and froze for a moment, paling, before they tried to run.

They managed two steps before Blake grabbed them with her free hand.

Weiss was already summoning glyphs to form a holding area, though she couldn't help fearing that they were a little too late to save the majority of the children.

She pressed her lips together. Blake would be devastated.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“More than half of the kids escaped!” 

Yes, Blake wasn’t happy as she paced in their quarters, Weiss noted.

“Most fled as soon as they heard about the mob targeting Varys,” Blake went on. “We only caught those who were either late to return or took too much time getting out since they had no bugout bag ready. Those were mostly the youngest.”

“Well… if the older kids had a bugout bag ready,” Rub said, “doesn’t that mean they were expecting to flee?”

“Yes, Ruby.” Blake was frowning, and Weiss wasn’t certain herself what their friend was angling for by stating the obvious.

“So, does that mean the missing older kids we can’t find had a bugout bag ready as well and left before, uh, they could get disappeared?” Ruby smiled a bit forcedly.

Blake frowned some more. “It’s possible, but it could also be that they only did that because Varys gave them orders to be ready to flee.”

“Drat.”

Weiss nodded. That made more sense.

“And they didn’t help the youngest get ready?” Yang scowled. Of course, she would resent that, having done her best to take care of Ruby as the older sibling, Weiss knew.

“They… might have been told that those would be taken care of,” Blake said, but it was obvious to Weiss that she was reaching for excuses.

“Or they were raised not to care for those weaker and younger,” Weiss said.

“No!” Blake shook her head. “They lived together. I saw them cook for the younger ones. They wouldn’t just… abandon them like this.”

Weiss wasn’t as optimistic about the loyalties of kids who had been enslaved, mutilated and then trained and used as spies - and possibly assassins, but she nodded. “Whatever the reason, they have fled. And I am not sure that the gold cloaks can find them. They might not even be able to stop them from leaving the city.” Lord Renly had said so, but Weiss doubted it; the noble seemed to overestimate the competence of the men serving him in order to please her team.

“They will make it harder for the children to leave the city, at least. That will stall them for some time. But we still need to find them before they vanish,” Blake said. “Who knows what orders they have and try to obey?”

“Varys does,” Yang said. She bared her teeth in a fierce grin when Weiss and the others looked at her. “Maybe we need to ask him.”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded. “If anyone can stop this, it’s him.”

But would he be willing to help? Perhaps if they could offer him a deal, though, with the crimes he had committed, even taking the Black, as they called joining the Night’s Watch, might not be possible for him. Could he be trusted to keep the oath, anyway?

“Let’s go and talk to him!” Ruby said.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“We’re still checking the black cells for secret passages,” Lord Eddard explained when they were waiting for Varys to be brought to the small council’s chamber. “So, we’re keeping him under heavy guard.”

Blake Belladonna nodded together with the others, but she couldn’t help feeling as if she was sitting on needles; if Varys managed to escape… Maybe she should head out and escort him herself? It wasn’t impossible that a handful of his kid spies might attempt to free him. Blake had shown the secret entrances to the Red Keep that she had discovered to the guards, but she couldn’t be certain that she had found them all. Even months of searching were not enough to guarantee that.

Of course, children attacking trained, armed and armoured men, even from ambush, was a losing proposition. Still, it was not impossible, merely highly unlikely, that such an attempt would not only be made but succeed; even if they had contingency orders for such a case, the children would not have any up-to-date knowledge of the situation at court, they would not know the new schedules and routes, and they would have to improvise from the start.

Still…

Her attempts to calm herself down were interrupted by Varys being led inside by eight guards - Northeners, Stormlanders and gold cloaks, she noted, led by Ser Arys Oakheart of the Kingsguard.

“They would need a small army to get past them,” she heard Yang whisper next to her as if she had read Blake’s thoughts. 

Blake glanced at her and saw her partner smile - not grin at her own comment, but smile warmly at her. She nodded in acknowledgement, feeling better for the moment. Varys wouldn’t escape.

Two guards sat him on a chair and removed his gag; another precaution everyone had agreed on; if he couldn’t talk, he would have a harder time trying to bribe his guards into helping him escape. Of course, it was more than a little cruel to keep him gagged unless he was eating and drinking, but the man had been the spymaster of King Robert and the Mad King before him; he had spent decades at court and would know too many secrets of too many people. Even with eight guards from three different houses and the gold cloaks guarding him.

Varys coughed a few times, for show, Blake thought. 

“You must really fear what I could say to treat me like this. Should I feel lucky that you haven’t ripped out my tongue already?” he asked with a wry smile.

Blake froze for a moment. He dared to make a complaint - or, worse, a joke! - about cutting people’s tongues off? She glared at him, baring her teeth, almost hissing as she felt her ears flatten against her skull under her bow.

“What?” Ruby jumped up. “You cut the tongues of children! We’re not like you!”

Vary’s smile widened a little, but it remained more twisted than his usual, almost subservient expression. “Oh, I am certain that you aren’t like me - or like anyone else present here - at all. Except, perhaps, Lady Melisandre.”

“What?” Ruby blurted out.

Blake was as surprised as her friend, but not quite as vocal. What did the man mean? They weren’t priestesses. Although… 

“Because the Faith considers us divine messengers and Lady Melisandre has visions from her god?” Weiss echoed Blake’s thought.

Varys laughed. “That is a pretty weak attempt at obfuscation, my lady. I know what you are.”

“We’re Huntresses,” Ruby said. “We’ve told everyone that from the start.”

Varys laughed again. “Unlike those fools who believe you, I know better. I know what price you paid for your power.”

Ruby blinked and glanced at her friends in obvious confusion. Blake shared the sentiment.

“What do you mean?” Lord Renly asked.

“Magic demands sacrifice.” Vary’s smile twisted into a grimace as he leaned forward. “I know that better than most. I know how much even a small magic boon has cost people. How many lives have you sacrificed for your powers? Hundreds? Thousands? How much blood have you spilt to command such magic? How many people have suffered under you?”

“Are you… crazy?” Ruby stared at him.

“I know magic, witch!” Varys spat. “You may have fooled those simple minds in the Sept, and the naive at Court who cannot see past their own ambitions, but I know better! I have suffered such sacrifices myself - I know what you did!”

“Yep, he’s crazy,” Yang said, but Blake could tell that despite her flippant tone, her partner was shaken by the display.

“The man’s mad,” Lord Renly said.

“Our powers - Aura and Semblances - come from our souls,” Weiss said. “That is a well-documented fact in our world. There is no sacrifice involved at all.”

“Only the obligation to use your power for the good of everyone,” Ruby added. “It’s not magic!”

Varys chuckled in response. “Of course you would claim that - the truth would ruin your plans, won’t it?”

“Our plans?” Ruby scowled at him. “We just want to go home!”

Varys shook his head. “If you merely wanted to go home, you would have left already instead of taking over the Court.” He sneered at the assembled men. “Not that it took much to wrest what powers you thought you had from you, not when those witches wield such magic, but if you had had more wits than a fool, you might have offered more resistance.”

“Mind your tongue or you might lose it!” Lord Stannis snapped. “This is the Lord Regent you’re insulting.”

“And us,” Lord Renly added.

Varys scoffed. “What do I have to lose? I knew from the beginning that if I were ever caught, my life would be forfeit.”

“There will be a trial,” Lord Eddard said.

“A sham of a trial. The verdict is already set in stone,” Varys retorted. “If there is even a trial and I won’t simply be found dead in my cell - or disappear without a trace!”

“Do you expect to be saved?” Lord Renly asked, frowning.

Varys laughed in his face. “From anyone else, I would consider this a great jest. From you? Proof of how witless you are. You think you are a powerful Paramount, and yet, you are merely a tool easily manipulated by your desires and ambitions. And you cock, of course,” he added with a cruel smile.

Lord Renly jumped up, hand going to the dagger at his side, but his brother held him back with a hand raised in front of him. “Have a care, Renly. He’s trying to provoke you into murdering him.”

“And that would break the law, wouldn’t it?” Varys scoffed again. “You’re no better than him. As rigid as a stone statue - and as smart. You think you would be a good king? You would ruin the realm with your blind zeal for what you call justice when it’s actually naked ambition. If you were the man you think you are, you would have realised that you are not fit to be king and would have abandoned those desires. And if you were truly as dedicated to justice, you would have told your brother about your knowledge of the Queen’s treason instead of going to hide on your rock in the sea when Jon Arryn was murdered. And you wouldn’t have abandoned your gods for a witch!”

“Jon was murdered?” Lord Eddard gasped.

“You didn’t know? Well, how could you have known when you trusted Littlefinger!” Varys laughed. “Lord Eddard, the honourable? Lord Eddard the fool! What do you think your friend Robert would say when he knew you were serving as regent for a Lannister bastard, betraying your friend’s trust just because you fear those four witches? Where is your honour, my lord? Did you leave it in the North?”

Lord Eddard went rigid, and Blake could see the knuckles of his left hand go white while he gripped his sword.

“And you, Grand Maester. Sworn to serve the king, yet serving Lord Tywin! How much did it cost to sell yourself? And how much did you regret it when you realised where his pride will lead him and his? You think so highly of yourself because of your knowledge and wits, yet you tied yourself to a doomed cause out of greed!” Varys laughed again.

Ruby shook her head. “You try to make everyone look bad, but it only shows how bad you are. If you knew all these things and believed them, why didn’t you say anything? If you knew Lord Jon was murdered, why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Because he’s a sad old man who would rather see the entire realm burn than accept he lost,” Weiss said. “You berate others for their pride and decisions, but you’re no better - you’re worse! And your own words prove it.”

“How’s that for being proud of your wits?” Yang chuckled. 

Others chuckled as well, though it was obvious to Blake that they were not really amused. Varys’s words had struck a chord in them.

“What do I have to lose? My verdict was already decided the moment you moved against me!”

“That was the result of your decision to buy child slaves and have their tongues cut out before you used them to spy on people here!” Blake hissed. “You brought that on yourself!” She stood and walked over to him, teeth bared.

He flinched back for a moment before sneering at her.

“What orders did you give them?” she asked. “They fled before we could gather them. Where are they?”

“As if I would betray children to you witches!” he spat.

“You risked their lives when you sent them to spy on nobles and others! Children were murdered as a result!” Blake yelled at him.

“Compared to their fates should they fall into your hands, that was a mercy!”

Blake blinked. “Did you just admit to murdering them? How many did you murder? Did you kill all of them once they grew up and were no longer useful? What did you do?” she shouted into his face.

“Blake…”

She blinked as she felt a hand on her arm and realised that she was holding up Varys by his tunic - that her fingers had ripped the fabric.

“If you kill him, we won’t get any answers.”

He wouldn’t talk anyway. And the children deserved justice. She could just…

She let him drop on the chair and stepped back, taking a deep breath.

Yang wrapped her arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug.

After a moment, Lord Renly spoke up. “Speaking of answers…”

“No torture,” Ruby said with a frown. “We’re better than that!”

Blake wasn’t sure she agreed. If they had to torture Varys to save the children he had mutilated… No, that was a slippery slope. She knew better. She had to be better.

She forced herself to slowly breathe out and relax, then step back from Yang and sit down again.

“You can torture me. I won’t break. I’ve gone through worse.” Varys smiled.

Blake wasn’t sure if he was bluffing. But they wouldn’t stoop to torture.

“Well, I think it has been amply demonstrated that the prisoner is uncooperative. For now,” Weiss said. “Maybe we should talk to him later, when we have sifted through what records we found and what information we have.”

Lord Eddard nodded. “Yes, gag him again and take him back to his cell.”

“Silencing me? As if…” The rest of Varys’s words were cut off when the guards jumped to push the gag into his mouth again.

Once Varys had been dragged out - somehow managing to sneer at them despite the gag - Lord Eddard sighed. 

And Lord Renly spoke up: “Well, that was to be expected. Varys has been Master of Whispers for decades and would know exactly how to needle people and spread lies to manipulate them.”

“Yes,” Lord Stannis agreed.

Lord Eddard nodded as well, followed by the Grand Maester.

But Blake saw that Ser Barristan, who had remained silent until now, had that stony expression he usually wore when he didn’t want to disagree openly but did so silently.

That didn’t bode well for the future.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“That could’ve gone better,” Yang Xiao Long said as they returned to their quarters. 

Weiss scoffed. “It could have scarcely gone worse. We didn’t get any answers we wanted, and the small council was obviously rattled by his words.”

Words that had had more than a bit of truth to them, at least that had been Yang’s impression. Of course, she wasn’t an expert at spotting lies, and Varys was good at lying, but the reactions of the men there… “And there’ll be rumours spreading. About everyone,” she said. She wasn’t an expert on politics and nobles plotting, but she knew how the rumour mill worked.

“About us,” Ruby said. “People will say we’re bloodthirsty witches!”

“They were already saying that after the tournament. That’s what the riot in the sept was about,” Weiss pointed out.

“And our side won,” Yang said with a grin. 

“Still…” Ruby bit her lower lip, clearly worried.

Yang went over and gave her a one-armed hug. “Hey! Those who know us won’t believe them. And you know how many people believe us - they came to the keep for us!”

“And Varys proved he cannot be trusted; why would anyone believe him when he told us himself how he knew so many important secrets yet didn’t tell the King or anyone?” Weiss shook her head.

Yang grimaced. She didn’t like to do it, but her friend was a bit too optimistic. “Some will believe him because they want to believe him. And others won’t but claim they do to harm us. But as long as the majority believes in us, we’ll be fine,” she added with a smile aimed at Ruby.

“But we still don’t know what orders he left for the kids,” Blake said. “We searched their home, but they must have burnt all records - as they were trained to.”

“Well, they can’t have left the city yet,” Yang said. “But once they do… how hard can it be to find mute children? A simple question will betray them.”

“Not all mute children were spies for Varys,” Weiss said.

Yang shrugged. “Yeah, but that should be easy to sort out.”

“I think you overestimate the competence of the local law enforcement employees and underestimate their motivation to report a successful capture to the crown,” Weiss replied. “We need to ensure they understand that we are not looking for just any mute children, and we cannot offer a reward, or some unscrupulous criminals might attempt to mutilate children to turn them in for a reward.”

That was… “Really?” Yang stared at her. That was too… That sounded like some cheap, stupid horror movie!

“Economic incentives have caused worse developments,” Weiss said. “There was a scandal in Atlas a few years ago when a Hunter was revealed to deliberately attract Grimm to settlements so there would be a mission to hunt them down.”

“But…” Ruby gaped. “How could he do that? How could anyone do that?”

“Greed,” Weiss replied.

“Did they catch him?” Yang asked.

“They found his scroll and determined the events after he fell victim to his own success in attracting Grimm, so to speak,” Weiss said.

Yang grimaced. Even if he had it brought on himself, no Huntress would make light of dying to a Grimm. Except when joking about their own death, of course. Couldn’t dwell too much or too long on that.

“Whatever! We need to find the kids,” Blake spoke up. 

“They have survived as spies, I think they will be OK for a bit,” Yang said. Her partner was a bit too worked up to be objective about this. 

Blake frowned at her, so Yang’s attempt to make her worry less had failed. “Yes, if they were ordered to hide or escape. But what if they had other orders? We need to ask the kids we saved.”

“We mostly recovered the youngest kids,” Weiss said. “Would they have gotten any orders? Would Varys have trusted them with such orders?”

“He probably wouldn’t,” Blake said, and Yang smiled. “But they were trained and worked as spies. They might have caught a glimpse of such orders anyway.”

That sounded a bit far-fetched to Yang - the kids had to communicate in writing since none of them could speak, and, as Weiss had been vocal about, paper was expensive here. But it wasn’t as if they had had anything better to do.

“Let’s go talk to them, then,” Ruby said. “The Septons will have treated them well, so they might be more open now.”

“Can’t be less open than they were,” Yang commented. Those kids had been a pain to corral and gather. RWBY had been trying to help them, but they had reacted as if they were about to get murdered. Of course, if they had been told that they would be sacrificed in dark rituals if caught… Yeah, Yang would also have fought like hell in their place. It wasn’t their fault, but Varys’s.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys’s fault or not, mutilated tongue or not, Yang didn’t think this was working out. Those kids were more stubborn than Ruby when she wanted cookies as a toddler.

And speaking of her sister… “Look… we aren’t witches. You were lied to by Varys. We know what he did to you - he had your tongues cut.” Ruby was trying to appeal to the kids’... whatever.

Looking at how they were glaring at her and making those weird, creepy noises, not even Ruby was getting through to them. 

“You were trained as spies. You should be able to spot the lies you were told merely by comparing them to the facts.” Weiss was still trying as well. “Varys exclusively bought mute children as spies. That means he is responsible for your ordeal. Without buyers like him, you wouldn’t have been mutilated.”

More glares. The kids were not buying it.

“He manipulated you,” Blake spoke up. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. He picked you when you were hurting, helped you, gave you a few gifts and treats, and so you latched onto him as a saviour. But it’s all a lie. He doesn’t care for you.”

“He has been doing this for a long time. And yet, there are only children here,” Weiss went on. “What happened to those of you who grew too old?”

“We want to help you!” Ruby sounded almost desperate. “But we need you to tell us what Varys wanted. Err, write it down for us. He wants everything to burn down since he lost, and that would hurt everyone!”

Yang narrowed her eyes. One of the children had flinched at that - at the ‘burn’ comment.

She pushed off the wall she had been leaning against and walked up to the kid in question. “Hey!”

“And you can…” Ruby trailed off. “Yang?”

“You know something,” Yang said, leaning forward, both palms on the table. “What do you know?”

The kid shook their head. They were about five - well, probably six; kids like them had to go hungry often here.

The other kids were looking at them. One, the most stubborn, shook his head and made a hissing noise.

But Yang was focused on the kid in front of her. “What did you see?” she asked. “What is Varys planning?”

The kid shook their head again, avoiding her eyes.

“Burn…” Yang gripped their chin and made them look into her eyes. “Is he planning to set something on fire?”

The kid flinched again. Right. Varys had ordered the kids to set something on fire. Or… “Is he trying to set the city on fire?”

The kid stared at her. Probably not.

“Are your friends trying to set fire to the Red Keep so they can use the chaos as a distraction to free Varys?” Blake asked.

The kid winced.

“But… we removed all the wildfire,” Ruby said.

“He might have procured some himself,” Weiss pointed out.

“Too dangerous to transport.” Blake shook her head.

“Varys wouldn’t care about that,” Yang said.

“He wouldn’t need wildfire. You can do arson with oil,” Blake said. “If he just wants a distraction and doesn’t want to risk suffocating in his cell, that would serve him even better.”

That sounded logical. But Varys had been crazy.

“But they would need to sneak in through the secret passages - and those are now guarded,” Blake said. The kids gasped - all of them. “If they try to force their way in…” She stood. “We need to hurry to stop them before the guards hurt or kill them!”

“Right! Let’s hurry!” Ruby jumped up. “We have a keep and kids to save!”

*****

 

Chapter 38: Juvenile Delinquents

‘The Coin Crisis is touted by some scholars of the era as the greatest threat to the realm in its entire existence. That is, of course, factually wrong. Not even if you counted the Succession as part of the Coin Crisis - which would be like counting the keep as part of the drawbridge - would it be true; the Dance of Dragons is but one period that easily eclipses this crisis. In addition to that, the common view of the Coin Crisis misses several crucial factors. Of course, Lord Baelish’s embezzlement was of such a scale, it affected the economy of the realm. However, the money he embezzled wasn’t, at least for the most part, hidden away in some cave or smuggled to Essos, as some myths that today still see people risk their lives diving into submerged caves in the Fingers searching for Littelfinger’s Lost Loot claim. No, the vast majority of the money was invested in the realm itself, turning a profit for Lord Baelish, and, therefore, the realm’s economy still benefited from the money - more, some accounts claim, than if it had been left in the treasury, though this remains speculation. So, while the Court was suddenly missing a lot of its treasure, the economy of the realm could absorb higher taxes to recover the missing gold without too much upheaval as a side effect.

Nevertheless, the Coin Crisis had a lasting impact on the Seven Kingdoms in that the scandal’s infamy was responsible for the fast adoption of double-entry bookkeeping across all of the Seven Kingdoms’, a practice that cut down on such embezzlement and formed the base for later financial reforms that allowed the Seven Kingdoms to achieve its current dominance over Essos.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

It was far too dark in these tunnels. The lanterns they had didn't do much - they just allowed them to see enough to avoid walking into walls or stumbling. But the light didn't reach far - Bryant couldn't even spot the stairs behind them. All he could see were the walls to his sides and a few yards of some rough stone floor ahead and behind him. “Really, we're useless here. We can't see shit,” he complained.

“We aren't useless,” Harden replied. “No one will be able to sneak past us here.”

“Because the tunnel is barely wide enough for us two to stand side by side,” Bryant told him. He clenched his teeth, thinking about how deep underneath the Red Keep they were. So much stone and rock and dirt above them. So little space around them. No light at all. If their lanterns went out, they would be left in complete darkness. Like buried alive.

Worse, actually - back in Winterfell, he had visited the crypt there once or twice, and this post here was far worse. If anyone got lost here, who would be able to find them? Hell, who would want to search for them in the bowels of the mountain? He couldn't help shuddering. It was far too dark, far too narrow here. The air was stale as well - even with lanterns instead of torches, the air smelled stale and thin. Oh, how he missed the clean air in Winterfell! What a fool he had been to go south with Lord Eddard!

But he had been so keen on seeing the sights of the South, fool as he had been, and now he was stuck guarding a tunnel darker and deeper than a tomb, feeling as if he had been buried alive. And for nothing - who would be as foolish as to try to sneak through those tunnels, now that the Maidens had revealed them? He'd rather stand guard in the middle of Winter on the ramparts at night; at least there, you had the stars looking down on you and fresh air, even if it made your lungs feel as if you were breathing ice. “I hate it here,” he muttered.

“At least the stench from the city isn't reaching down here,” Harden the fool commented. “Imagine if we smelt as if we were standing guard in a cesspit?” Bryant glared at him, but his fellow guard laughed. “Cheer up, it's only for an hour or so longer until we're relieved! Soon, we'll…”

“Silence!” Bryant cut him off. “I've heard something!”

“What?” Harden did stop talking and seemed to listen. Finally!

But as the silence continued, Bryant didn't hear anything. No scraping sound that might have been a misstep. No hiss that might have been a stifled gasp. Nothing.

“Nothing,” Harden said. “And who would come down here, anyway? We'd see the light of their lanterns from afar!”

“Not if they came without light. They could…”

“...sneak up on us? Through pitch black darkness?” Harden laughed again. “That's…” He jerked with a gasp, turning around himself, and Bryant caught a glimpse of something sticking out of his back.

A moment later, he felt a blow to his breast plate and stumbled back as something hit the wall next to him.

Crossbows, he thought. Someone's shooting at us. 

He dropped the lantern on the ground as he ducked. Was that another bolt passing over his head?

“My back! Someone stabbed me!” Harden cried out.

Bryant grabbed him. “Move! They’ll reload!” They had to get out of the lantern's light! 

“AH!”

Bryant started to pull Harden with him. They had to fall back, get out of the light, hide in the…

Something hit the lantern, and he heard the sounds of something breaking. 

Then it seemed that the entire tunnel lit up as flames spread from the lantern over the ground.

“Wildfire!” He froze for a moment. They were doomed! They were dead!

Harden was still screaming. “NO!!!!” He pushed away from Bryant and turned, starting to run.

Bryant reached for him, trying to grab his arm, but missed in the flickering light from the burning oil - oil, not wildfire! 

And another bolt took Harden in the back. Bryant saw him freeze and fall with a hissing groan.

“Harden!” Damn! He rushed forward, reaching down, grabbing the manŝ arm to pull him up. “Harden! Come on!”

Harden didn't react. Didn't move. 

“Harden!” Bryant bent down, letting go of Harden's arm to raise his head to look at him.

Then he saw the blood flowing from the man's mouth.

No! He let him drop again. He had to get away. Alert the other guards - hadn't they heard? Where were they? Harden and he hadn't been alone here!

His leg gave in, and he fell. Then saw the bolt sticking out of his calf. And felt the pain. 

Another bolt missed him - he heard the sound of its passing. He had to get out of the light! “Help!” he screamed. “Help!”

With a working leg and two arms, he started to scramble away. He just had to get away before they could reload. Just had to get out of the light. Just…

A figure rushed towards him, through the fire, a blade in hand. Bryant managed to raise his sword - when had he drawn it - and thrust it forward. It wouldn't have hit anyone or anything, but the figure drew back, hissing, and tried to flank him.

Bryant lashed out with the blade again, swinging it in front and to the side of him, forcing the figure to jump back. “HELP!”

Something - a crossbow bolt! - hit the ground next to him, missing his good leg by inches.

“HELP!”

He heard terrible screaming from afar, echoing through the tunnels, and cursed under his breath. There were more such assassins in the tunnels!

The attacker with a blade tried to circle around him again, and Bryant threw his body to the side so he could force the bastard back with another swing. “HELP!” he screamed as he felt his leg tear up more - the bolt had caught on something. “Argh!”

“Help!”

The figure - smaller than a man, he realised - hissed again and darted forward. How had they managed to get past the flames? Bryant wondered, absurdly, as he lashed out to hold the bastard at bay with wild swings. 

But the other would be reloading his crossbow, and Bryant was still exposed and in the light - and even if he managed to crawl away with his leg torn and bleeding, the other would get him.

He would die here, he realised. Alone and in the dark, beneath thousands of tons of rock and dirt.

A garbled sob escaped while he clenched his teeth as he lashed out again, fruitlessly. “Die, bastard!” he screamed as the figure jumped back again.

And to the side.

Bryant froze. The crossbowman! He would have reloaded! No!

In the sudden silence, he heard the sound of a bolt being shot. No!

And then something flashed in front of him, he heard a cracking sound, and a bolt clattered against the wall next to him.

And in front of him, her back to him, stood another, taller figure, the blade that had struck the crossbow bolt in mid-flight still stretched out, its sheath held in a guard position.

Even in the dim, flickering light of the oil fire, he recognised her easily.

Lady Blake. The Dark Maiden.

He was saved! He wouldn't die here! The gods had sent help!

His attacker hissed and darted forward, blade raised. 

A moment later, the blade flew through the air, and the figure - a boy, Bryant realised, now that he could finally see him clearly - cradled his hand with another hiss. Lady Blake sent him to the ground with a sweep of her foot, then seemed to vanish. One moment she was there, the next she was gone. 

Bryant gasped again.

And then she reappeared, carrying another figure with her. The crossbowman. The one who had killed Harden and had almost killed Bryant.

It was another boy, he saw while Lady Blake tied up both before checking Bryant's wounds.

He couldn't help it - he laughed. Even though it hurt. 

But he was alive. He was safe. He wouldn't die in this damned tunnel.

He was still chuckling a bit later, when the tunnel lit up from whatever magic the Maidens used, and more people, guards and Maidens, arrived.

He would have to thank the Old Gods at the Godswood here, he felt. If they had a Godswood here - he would have to ask.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, either Varys had standing orders for his spy kids to break him out should he get jailed or they decided to do this themselves,” Ruby Rose said. “We captured a dozen of them, but they haven't talked.” She blinked, then grimaced. “I mean, they haven't told… written anything. They refuse to cooperate.” Damn! She was so bad at this! The poor children couldn't talk even if they wanted to because Varys had had their tongues cut out.

“Does it matter?” Lord Stannis asked.

“It does,” Weiss spoke up. “If they were merely following orders, that's certainly a show of loyalty, but if they independently decided to risk their lives in an attempt to free him, that would indicate they are significantly more loyal to him and, therefore, it's going to be much harder to break that.”

Lord Stannis looked surprised. Was he going to ask about torture again? “And yet, either way, they are loyal to Varys.”

“If they were brainwashed into following his orders, it will be much easier to break that programming than if they actually love him,” Blake commented with a scowl.

“‘Brainwashed’?” Lord Renly cocked his head to the side.

“Taught and trained to become blindly obedient tools,” Blake explained.

Ruby nodded. 

“In this context, at least,” Weiss added.

Ruby rolled her eyes. This wasn't the time to be pedantic. “Anyway, I think we got all the oldest kids.” At least, Blake didn't remember anyone currently missing who had been present in the spies’ lair when she had observed it. 

She frowned again. Sheesh, the eldest of those kids were just a few years younger, tops, than her! She sounded old.

Lord Stannis was still frowning, though. “And you intend to question them about further plots Varys might have been instigating?”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. “They might not know much, but they were not just his spies, but also his couriers. At least, they would know more of his friends or their contacts.”

“So, it seems our cells will be quite crowded for a while,” Lord Renly said.

“Not for long,” Ruby said. Lord Stannis wasn't the only one who looked surprised this time.

“Only until better accommodations for the children are available,” Weiss explained before Ruby had to.

“They attempted to free a prisoner!” Lord Stannis snapped.

“They attacked and murdered guardsmen,” Lord Eddard added. “My own amongst them.”

Ruby grimaced again. “Right. They did that. But they are still children.” 

“They are guilty.” Lord Stannis scowled. “Whether a child or an old man, they committed crimes.”

“And their victims deserve justice,” Lord Renly added.

But…

“They are children manipulated by a spymaster - slaves he bought, mutilated and then trained to serve him with blind loyalty! Most of them probably never knew anything else!” Blake all but hissed.

“Are you planning to execute them?” Ruby shook her head. They weren't really planning to… The sudden silence answered her question better than any explanation. “What?” she blurted out. 

“You want to kill children?” Yang sounded as sick as Ruby felt.

“They will be offered the opportunity to take the Black,” Lord Eddard said. After a moment, he added: “Or join the Silent Sisters in case of the girls amongst them.”

“You can't! They didn't know any better!” Ruby protested. 

“They attacked the Red Keep - they killed guards. Guards posted there on the orders of the Regent.” Lord Stannis glared at her. “They most certainly knew what they were doing.”

“That's…” Ruby shook her head again.

“I don't think you can expect children raised like they were to question such orders. Would you punish a guard for following the orders of their liege?” Weiss asked. She sounded calm, but she was as mad as the rest of them. Ruby could tell by how her cheeks were twitching a little. They only did that when her partner was really mad. Not ‘I accidentally left crumbs in your bed, which I used for a little nap cause it looked more comfy than my own’ mad, but really mad.

“Yes.” Lord Stannis nodded quickly.

“It depends on the orders, actually,” Lord Renly said. “If they were orders a decent person wouldn't give - say, burn down a Sept or rape a woman - then following them would make the guard a criminal.”

“Attacking the Red Keep and its guards and attempting to free a traitor leaves no doubt about that,” Lord Stannis said.

They were really going to kill kids. Ruby stared at them. Or send them to the wall or the Silent Sister, where Cersei was. That was… “You can't do that!” she repeated herself.

Lord Stannis opened his mouth, but Lord Renly was quicker. “Are you going to fight for them, then, my lady?”

“They aren't of noble blood and do not have the right to demand a trial by combat,” Lord Stannis said.

Ruby didn't know how to answer the question. And she couldn't ignore it, either. “You cannot treat children like adults!”

“And there's precedent for that,” Weiss came to her help. “Even when families were punished for crimes against the crown, children were often spared.”

“If they had done nothing to support the criminals,” Lord Stannis objected. “Anyone who raises arms against the lawful king, no matter their age, deserves punishment.”

“So you would execute a toddler for trying to kick you to defend their mother?” Blake asked. Her bow was twitching, Ruby could see that - her friend was tense like… like a drawn bowstring.

“Of course not!” Lord Renly said before his brother could - probably - nod. “But we're faced not merely with a bunch of small children, but also almost-grown boys who were able to, and did, murder guards. There's a difference between a toddler's kick or blow and a crossbow bolt between your ribs. Or a burning flask of oil splattered over you.”

Ruby winced. Yeah, she wouldn't easily forget that sight. Or the screams. But… “They're still children, though!” she blurted out. “And they were manipulated by Varys.” Blake was right, Varys was responsible for this, not the kids he had raised to work for him!

“He was likely the only parental figure they had, even though he was obviously manipulative and exploitative,” Weiss said. “Do you expect children to betray their parents' wishes?”

“If their parents are traitors, yes,” Lord Stannis said.

“And we must not forget that while they were children, they were raised and trained and worked as spies. They were roaming freely through the city, they were listening to nobles and smallfolk alike, and were privy to Varys's plans,” Lord Renly added. “They had ample opportunities to realise that what they were doing was against the law.”

“They were working for the realm's Master of Whispers,” Blake retorted. “He had the right to use and command spies.”

Ruby nodded.

“Even if we accepted that,” Lord Eddard finally spoke up, “they tried to free him after he was arrested on my orders - at which point it was obvious that he was no longer acting in the interest of the realm.”

“But…” Ruby bit her lower lip. What could she say against that? She wasn't good with words and stuff.

“Or they assumed he was loyal and the victim of an intrigue, wrongly accused by enemies of the realm,” Weiss said.

“That doesn't make their actions legal by any means,” Lord Stannis said. “They still broke the law - and murdered people - instead of trusting that the truth would be revealed at his lawful trial.”

Blake scoffed at the last word, as did Yang. Ruby agreed with them - they knew how much, or how little in this case, you could trust the law here.

The Grand Maester cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should retire for the evening? We have a great number of problems to tackle and tasks to complete. Varys needs to be interrogated, the realm's finances are still in disarray, we just realised that the Master of Whispers, on whose services we relied for making decisions about the realm itself, was a traitor, and it is getting late while tempers are starting to fray. Surely, it would not do harm to revisit this at a later date?”

“I agree,” Lord Eddard said. “There is a lot to consider, indeed.” He sighed. “I would have never imagined how many problems plague the realm before I arrived here.”

Well, that was (at least partially) his own fault, Ruby found. But they were right that discussing this further wouldn't help anyone - everyone was getting more worked up. “Alright,” she said. “As long as the children are treated well.”

“Well by the standards for children, not by the standards applied to suspected traitors and other criminals,” Weiss added.

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. Several times. No damp and dark dungeons for children!

“Of course,” Lord Renly said with a smile.

Ruby narrowed her eyes at him. He sounded a bit too smooth for her. But he met her eyes without flinching, and telling him they would check would make her seem petty.

Not that they wouldn't check, of course - Blake was probably already mapping out the best path to spy on the whole thing.

But there was no need to tell the men that.

“Good,” she said.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“I've heard you've clashed with the small council over the fate of Varys's spies.”

Weiss Schnee turned her head to look at Lady Olenna while the woman stepped out of the hallway. She half-expected her to comment jokingly about ambushing her, likely to see how she would react. “Your grandson must care for you a very great deal,” she replied. Weiss was certain that the noblewoman didn't rely exclusively on her grandchildren to gather information about the latest developments at Court, but if she thought that Weiss assumed so, it might gain Team RWBY an advantage should the Tyrells ever decide to make a move against Weiss's friends. And, of course, Ser Loras was the most obvious source of information about the small council - everyone could see how close he and Lord Renly were. Especially those not blinded by the local bigotry towards same-sex relationships, such as Weiss and her friends.

“He is a dutiful grandchild. And unlike other boys, and those who think themselves men, he doesn't think a cock grants someone more wisdom than a woman could ever gain, no matter how long she lives.”

“A very foolish stance, indeed, but, as I've come to know, not uncommon in Westeros,” Weiss said. Should she mention that the Martells and the Starks did not seem to share that view? It might prick the woman's pride… No. It was better to avoid giving even a minor offence without cause. Weiss generally didn't like to be underestimated, her views dismissed on account of her age, but as a representative of what was undoubtedly the greatest military power on the continent right now, it was more advantageous to be thought naive instead.

“Unlike your homeland.” Lady Olenna nodded. Currying favour? Or merely making an obvious observation? 

It didn't matter right now. Weiss nodded again as she started walking, a little more slowly than before, to allow the older woman to match her pace. Not as slowly as Lady Olenna liked to walk, though - she didn't fool Weiss with the frailty she affected. “A result of one's attitude and talent, not one's sex, defining one's potential, both on and away from the battlefield,” Weiss said.

“Indeed. And yet, despite such a difference, it seems that even in your world, women are still more soft-hearted than men - or so I was told.” Lady Olenna chuckled. “By a man, of course.”

“You are, of course, referring to our stance against treating children as adults,” Weiss said. Of course, some people, Lord Renly in this case, as Lady Olenna seemed to imply, and likely Ser Loras as well, based on Weiss's experience with the knights native to this country, would blame their gender for that.

“Yes.” Lady Olenna sighed. “Although it isn't your heart that's ruling your actions in this matter, is it? It's how you were brought up.”

“Yes.” The old woman was as perceptive as always. Likely more than she let on, Weiss reminded herself. “We do not believe in punishing children as if they were adults.”

“A kind-hearted view. A little naive, though.”

“In this matter, I do not mind being seen as naive,” Weiss replied.

Lady Olenna smiled again. “In other areas, though, you'd mind? I see you have the kind of pride fit for someone raised with the sword in hand.”

Weiss shrugged. “That depends on the circumstances. I mind it when such an attitude will cause trouble for my friends and others.”

“And what when your attitude is the reason for causing such troubles?”

“You think treating children as they should be treated is a mistake?” Was that a threat?

“Oh, no!” The old woman smiled, showing a hint of teeth. “I merely disagree with your view about how children should be treated.”

“Would you see manipulated children executed?” Weiss asked, narrowing her eyes.

Lady Olenna made a point of shrugging. “I've seen it happen too often already - as I grow older, it becomes harder to see the line between a child and a man grown. They all look so young and naive to me. So easily manipulated. Of course, some of them spend great efforts to appear so even well into their own old age.”

Weiss snorted. “Age does not necessarily bring wisdom.” She flashed a toothy smile of her own.

Lady Olenna cackled. “Those who consider themselves wise are often fools. And yet… have you considered what precedent your stance will set?”

“By not murdering children for the deeds of their elders?”

“How do you think people inclined to break the law will react if they learn that children will be exempt from punishment?”

“By considering that using children in such a manner will be punished more harshly?” Weiss shot back.

“What could be harsher than death or the Wall, now that you've banned torture?” Lady Olenna asked.

“If the threat of death or exile will not frighten someone off committing crimes, then the threat of torture won't do it either,” Weiss retorted. “They would have committed the same crimes anyway.”

“Some, yes. But those who would have shied away from risking their younger siblings or children for their crimes won't have any reason any more to continue that stance. And some might consider that children are less likely to betray you than men grown - at least amongst those already inclined to break the law.” Lady Olenna chuckled again. “And they tend to work for less pay as well.”

Weiss glared at the woman. “Do you claim that people like Varys would shy away from using children for their crimes if we let Varys's spies be executed?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Things might be different in your world. But there is one thing I am certain of: That in this world, children will be encouraged to commit crimes if they think they will not suffer any punishment. And that their victims, if they expect the same, will take it upon themselves to mete out such punishment.” The old woman nodded,

“That's not a reason to execute them!” Weiss managed to say before the woman took her leave. 

Weiss ground her teeth. Lady Olenna might not have gotten the last word, but Weiss still felt as if she had. Her last argument had been very weak as far as rebuttals went - barely more than a stubborn refusal to yield.

And she didn't like it.

*****

“You look annoyed,” Ruby commented when Weiss entered their quarters. “More annoyed than usual when some noble pestered you, I mean,” she added before Weiss could claim that she was fine.

Her partner had gotten too perceptive, indeed. Although upon briefly considering the issue, Weiss found she didn’t want to keep up her facade anyway. “I had another ‘coincidental encounter’ with Lady Olenna,” she said as she sat down.

“Oh? What did the old bat want this time?” Yang asked. “And what did she say she wanted?” she added with a smirk.

“I can only guess at her true motive. Apart from a few disparaging remarks aimed at the patriarchy here, likely to appeal to the fact that we are women, she primarily talked about the children Varys had mutilated and made a case that not punishing them would provide an incentive for others to follow his example and exploit children for criminal actions as well,” Weiss replied.

Blake hissed at the last part. “We can discourage that by punishing Vayrs for his crimes.”

Weiss nodded. “I said that as well. But she said children would exploit that themselves if they learn they won’t be punished due to their age. And that their victims would take the law into their own hands should they feel that they were being denied justice.” She took a deep breath. “I fear her arguments have some merit. While vigilantism can be disincentivised by punishments - though there will always be those who will not let that stop them, either because they do not consider the punishment or because they are unable to suffer the thought that those who hurt them will not pay for it - I don’t think we can dismiss the idea that children will act on their own.”

“Street kids already break the law every day when they steal food,” Blake said with a scowl. “And they are punished if caught.”

“Not executed, though,” Weiss couldn’t help retorting.

“It’s not the point, anyway,” Blake said, pushing off the wall against which she had been leaning and starting to pace. “Those kids didn’t decide to steal to survive; they were bought and mutilated, and then indoctrinated to become spies. That’s not the same.”

Weiss agreed with that in principle, but… “Varys is responsible for that, no doubt. But as Lord Renly said, shouldn’t the older children have learned enough through their work to realise that they were breaking the law? At least when it comes to murder?”

Blake scowled at her for that, as expected. And it was a bit of a cheap shot to remind her friend that she had been indoctrinated as well, by Adam, yet decided to leave the White Fang rather than murder helpless workers. But it was true nevertheless. The kids had committed murder.

“Yeah, that’s been bugging me as well,” Yang said, and Weiss noted the way Blake looked at her, as if she was betrayed. Yang hadn’t missed it either. “Hey - I’m not saying that they should be treated as fully responsible, but… they murdered people for Varys. Burned one of them alive.”

Weiss winced at that reminder. As did her friends, including Blake.

“So…” Yang shrugged. “There should be a sort of middle ground between letting every kid go unpunished and executing them. You don’t kill kids for stealing cookies, but you don’t let them eat the cookies and not suffer any punishment, either.”

That was a quite specific example, and Weiss raised her eyebrows at her partner, who blushed in response.

“I was a little girl!”

“You were thirteen.”

“You weren’t sharing!”

“Because those were a gift for me!”

“We aren’t talking about cookie thieves,” Weiss reminded them.

“We’re talking about children who were the victims of trafficking and abuse of the worst sort, and then indoctrinated to become criminals,” Blake said. “They need help, not punishment.”

If Team RWBY insisted, the kids would go free - at least officially. Unofficially, the threat of their victims, or the relatives of their victims, taking revenge, was not negligible. And there was another potential problem. “Where can they get help? And how do we protect them against revenge from their victims - or against attempts by various nobles to murder them before they escape and continue their work? Or recruiting attempts?” Weiss asked. “It’s quite clear that the nobles don’t agree with our views.”

Blake scowled again. 

Weiss felt for her, but that didn’t change the fact that despite their power, they couldn’t be everywhere. They could not ignore the wishes of the locals.

“The Faith does, though,” Ruby said.

“At least, they will if we ask,” Yang added.

That was true as well. “But the court won’t. The nobles have been spied on and betrayed, and won’t let that go,” Weiss said.

“That was Varys,” Blake retorted.

“Yes, but the children worked for him,” Weiss pointed out. “And if the Faith opposes the Court, the situation could escalate beyond our or anyone’s control.” All it would take was one bad reaction from either side, and a massacre might take place.

Ruby frowned. “So… we need to find a compromise everyone can live with? With the kids’ lives at stake?”

Weiss nodded. She looked at her friends. Ruby was biting her lower lip, visibly ill at ease with that. Blake hadn’t stopped scowling, and Yang was grimacing.

But none of them disagreed with her take on the problem.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Peering around a corner in the bowels of the rock beneath the Red Keep, Blake Belladonna had to admit that while Varys, likely because of his delusions about her team’s supposed magical power and their origin, had been mostly ineffectual as far as any actions he had taken against them were concerned, he had nevertheless managed to succeed, albeit unntentionally in her estimate, in making life harder for Team RWBY.

The revelation of how Varys’s spies had been using the network of secret passages inside the Red Keep to spy on others had resulted in every noble being far more conscious about this kind of threat, which in turn meant that Blake couldn’t as easily spy on anyone any more, either.

The fact that Lord Tywin had posted guards in the tunnels beneath the part of the keep where he was staying showed that clearly. Of course, it was also obvious that the red cloaks she could see huddled around the dim lanterns ahead of her were not meant to actually stop an assassin but to raise the alarm should they be attacked. And, Blake was certain, to deter attempts to spy on him unseen - such as she was planning to do. And, annoying despite being expected, given Lord Tywin’s known temper and intolerance for incompetence among his underlings, the guards had been posted at all entrances to the tunnels and shafts leading to his quarters. Even Blake wouldn’t be able to sneak past them without being detected - not without a lot of luck, at least, and she wouldn’t count on being lucky.

And yet, as her chosen spot, from where she could watch the guards while they couldn’t spot her in the darkness, demonstrated, since no one here except for her team knew about her nature, they had not taken her Faunus senses into account. She might not be able to sneak past those guards, but she could listen in to conversations from a distance none of them would expect.

Of course, she would still need to sneak closer to Lord Tywin’s quarters, and unlike others, the guards he had watching the walls and roofs nearby had never relaxed after that particular habit of hers had become widely known at the trial of Cersei and Ser Jaime, so the most obvious alternate route was blocked as well - not that it would have been suitable to use during the day, anyway.

But there were still alternatives. She would have to climb through a chimney or two, and use passages too narrow for anyone but a child or someone as flexible as herself, but Lord Tywin wasn’t beyond her reach yet. However, she would have to adjust her timing, of course.

And she wouldn’t be able to spy on him, as she had planned, in hindsight, too optimistically, before the meeting with the small council and Lord Tywin later today.

Which meant she could use it to distract herself from… Not brooding; her sometimes too meddling partner’s partner’s claims to the contrary, she didn’t brood, and certainly not like Jon! 

…from growing frustrated about the issue with the children Varys had exploited and abused. To think they should be punished for never having known better! It was not the same as her own situation in the White Fang. She had been able to use her scroll, talk to people - in and outside the White Fang - and she had grown up with a loving family and an education that prized critical thinking. If she had taken so long to realise that what the White Fang was doing was wrong, despite all her advantages, how could she expect a couple of children who had never known anything but what their owner had taught them? Who couldn’t even talk with each other, much less people not in Varys’s employ?

And now they should pay for what wasn’t their fault? She clenched her teeth at the thought as she made her way back to her team’s quarters to get ready for the meeting.

*****

“So.” 

If it hadn’t been Lord Eddard, Blake would have expected him to follow with a statement or a question. But the man was both, if not quite laconic, so, at least, fond of using fewer words when those would suffice, and from those present - the small council and Lord Tywin, whose presence was owed to both his relation to Prince Tommen and his financial stake in the kingdom - he knew Team RWBY the longest and arguably the best. Including how their leader acted.

“Well…” Ruby bit her lower lip as she took a deep breath before blurting out: “We need to decide what to do with the captured children - those mutilated by Varys and exploited as spies!”

“You mean you will decide,” Blake heard Lord Renly mutter under his breath - too softly for anyone else to overhear.

“The law is clear about this,” Lord Stannis grumbled.

“The law has a lot of leeway,” Weiss corrected him at once. “There are a lot of factors to consider that influence how to handle this. I think the similarities between the situation in which the children find themselves and the one a lord would be in if their liege calls on them to fight a rival, even if that means breaking the King’s peace in the process, should be considered.”

“Those who break the King’s peace are usually sent to the wall,” Lord Renly said.

“Really? Even the low-ranking nobles?” Weiss tilted her head to the side. “As I was told when I asked about such cases, it’s usually the leaders that get punished in such a manner, or more harshly, and those beneath them were usually let off.”

“That depends on their involvement,” Lord Eddard said.

“And we’re talking about smallfolk children, not nobles sworn to their liege,” Lord Renly added, sounding slightly annoyed.

“The principle remains the same. While we concede that those children who assaulted the Keep and killed guards should not get off without punishment…” Weiss glanced at Blake as she spoke, and Blake pressed her lips together. She didn’t agree with that. “...sending children to the wall, especially children who were mutilated, seems excessive.”

“They burned a guard to death and murdered more!” Lord Stannis snapped.

“They attacked the Court! They were planning to set fire to the Keep to free the traitor - endangering everyone here!” Lord Tywin snapped. “We need to make an example out of them so no one else will dare to even think of doing the same!”

“They’re children!” Ruby snapped back, and Blake bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t add a few choice insults aimed at Lord Tywin.

“Age aside, I think letting murderers escape justice will set an example for others that we would rather also avoid,” Lord Renly said. “Surely we can find a solution that doesn’t, ah, set the wrong example in either direction?”

He would have spoken with Lady Olenna. Probably at length, Blake knew. Just as she knew where this was headed. A foul compromise that left no one satisfied. Of course, as her father had once commented, no compromise left anyone completely satisfied; if one did, it was no compromise but the result of one side winning the negotiations.

But this wasn’t about trade rights, zoning laws or fishing limits. This was about the lives of mutilated and abused children who had never known freedom. And knowing that the oldest would be sent to the wall just so the court would accept sending the rest to the Faith so they could be raised properly galled. Once they found the rest, of course - many of the kids were still missing; only the youngest and the oldest, those too young to get away in time, and those old enough to assault the Red Keep, had been captured so far.

And that Lord Tywin was apparently feeling even worse while the negotiations continued was not much of a consolation. She still felt as if she were betraying those children. If her team really wanted, they could force the issue… But Blake knew as well as Weiss that such an act would have even worse consequences than this, for everyone, including her team and likely the children in question. If the law - or what passed for it in this world - was revealed to be a facade without any power to restrain the powerful, naked force would decide every conflict.

And not even her team could afford that. Not with so many lives hanging in the balance. And, of course, Team RWBY still needed help from the people here to find a way home. Help that would likely vanish, or become attached to demands they didn’t want to or couldn’t afford to meet, if everything broke down.

She knew all that and still hissed under her breath as things started to settle. Not even Yang patting her thigh under the table in silent but welcome support helped much.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake heard Bran and his beast’s footsteps before he turned around the corner in the yard, and she briefly thought about quickly leaving her spot. She wasn’t in the mood to talk much, not after abandoning the children Varys had exploited to the tender mercies of the local justice. But she reconsidered. Bran had nothing to do with that, and it would be wrong to blame him for it. And it would be immature as well.

“Lady Blake?”

“Lord Bran.” She nodded at him with a smile, then narrowed her eyes at the beast walking at his side. Hunter met her eyes, its large tongue hanging out of its mouth, teeth gleaming in a veiled threat, and barked once.

She didn’t jerk and kept staring until Hunter finally looked away and started sniffing the ground.

“So… I’ve heard you were unhappy about the small council,” Bran, ignoring his beast’s antics as usual, said.

She didn’t ask where he had heard it. Likely Lord Eddard making an idle comment in his son’s earshot. Probably without realising it. “Yes.” She nodded.

“Why?”

She suppressed a sigh. Hunter barking at a large crow eyeing them from the roof of the stable nearby gave her a few more moments to consider her answer. “I don’t think children should be held responsible if they are just obeying their parents because they don’t know better.”

“Ah.” He frowned. “But those children were obeying Varys, not their parents.”

“For all that matters, he was their parent. He raised them into who they are now,” she explained.

He frowned, apparently thinking about that. “Wouldn’t that make Father Theon’s father?”

“In some manner, yes,” she replied with a nod. The comparison was quite apt, actually. 

“I’m not sure Mother would like that,” Bran said.

Once more, she reminded herself that Bran might be a small boy, but he was quite smart. Sometimes, at least. She shrugged. “I don’t think Theon would like it, either.” Nobles here were very proud of their lineage, after all. And Theon was the heir to the Iron Isles. She didn’t think he would want to abandon that for being Lord Eddard’s fourth or fifth son, depending on how you counted Jon. He certainly didn’t show any such humility.

Bran laughed. “No, he wouldn’t!” Then he cocked his head to the side, briefly glanced at the beast that was chasing the crow - well, following on the ground while it flew from roof to roof - and asked: “So, how did you manage to find Varys in the secret tunnels? Jory said no one could navigate those mazes without a dozen lanterns.”

How to answer that without giving away her Faunus eyesight? “I already knew where he was going,” she said. “I just waited until he reached his stash.”

“Oh!” He stared at her. “You were already investigating him?”

“We were investigating the children we had seen spying on us,” she replied. “It’s why we asked the Faith to investigate their origin.”

He beamed at her. “Can you show me how you did this? Lady Blake? Like you taught me climbing? I want to be able to hunt like you!”

She blinked. She couldn’t show him how to see like a Faunus. And she wasn’t a good tracker, at least in the wilderness. But perhaps she could teach him how to investigate people. That would be a useful skill for him - and, she couldn’t help thinking, for the realm as well. Someone had to do a better job in the future about uncovering plots and threats.

So she nodded. “I can give it a try.”

“Thank you! Lady Blake!” He went to hug her, and she almost jumped when his beast barked again, far too close - how had it gotten so close without her noticing?

*****

Street of Looms, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...and you will love Mistress Ally’s! She’s the best tailor in King’s Landing. If anyone has the skills to clothe you, Lady Ruby, it’s her!” Lady Margaery gushed as they approached the shop in question.

Yang Xiao Long fought the urge to shake her head at the whole display. She still didn’t know how Lady Margaery had managed to hear that they were looking for a tailor to get a new outfit for Ruby - or to resize her current one, if the locals could handle that - though she suspected Ruby had been complaining a bit too publicly about her clothes getting too ‘tight to fight’. In any case, the noblewoman had approached Ruby earlier today and apparently not only persuaded her to visit this particular tailor but to let her tag along.

Lady Olenna probably was behind that, in Yang’s opinion. Or Lady Margaery was trying to mend fences - Blake was still carrying a grudge about the spy compromise. 

Of course, Lady Margaery wasn’t the only tag-along. Lady Sansa and, to everyone’s but Yang’s surprise, Lady Arya, had joined them as well, though that was likely just luck on their part.

Yang grinned at the fact that the others didn’t know why Arya was tagging along. To her, it was obvious that the little firecracker was hoping she could get an outfit like Ruby’s made. A combat outfit.

At least Blake had an excuse for missing that obvious plan. Two excuses, actually. Lady and Nymeria, who shadowed the two girls. Yang’s partner was still a bit unnerved by the two furballs, even though they were completely harmless - at least to her. Hell, Zwei was more of a danger, technically, since he had his Aura awakened.

But Ruby and Weiss? Well, Ruby was still being talked at by Lady Margaery and probably couldn’t pay attention to anything else, but Weiss really should have seen through Arya’s sudden interest in dresses.

“Well, it looks nice,” Ruby said when they reached the shop.

“Of course!” Lady Margaery nodded several times.

It looked like every shop in the street to Yang. Maybe a bit spiffier than most - but that was probably just the fresher paint coat.

They entered the shop, leaving the guards who had come with them outside. It did have a few dresses on display - no, Yang corrected herself. Those were working pieces. Of course, in this world, all dresses were tailor-made. They didn’t have normed sizes and mass-produced clothes, so there wouldn’t be racks of dresses to try. And no chance to tease a little sister by offering dress after dress to try on.

“Mistress Ally!” Lady Margaery called out.

“Lady Margaery! How…” The middle-aged woman stepping into the room from the back gasped as she saw the rest, and Yang flashed a smile at her. “My ladies! The Four Maidens! In my shop!”

It looked like she was about to kneel down, at least Yang had the impression, but Ruby quickly stepped forward, trailing a few petals. “Hello! I need a new combat dress - or my old one altered, whatever works best!”

“And I suggested you, since you’re the best tailor in King’s Landing, Mistress Ally,” Lady Margaery added with a sweet smile.

The woman looked like she was even more overwhelmed now. “Me? Working on Lady Ruby’s dress?”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded emphatically. “It has grown a bit tight lately - well, I have grown a bit, so it has become tight. Too tight to fight.”

While Ruby turned around in front of the still gaping woman, showing her outfit’s ‘problem zones’, Weiss grumbled something under her breath that had Blake grin, so Yang made a mental note to ask her partner with the best ears in the world later what she had heard.

“And these are Lady Sansa and Lady Arya. Of House Stark.” Lady Margaery was perfectly polite, but Yang wondered if mentioning them now, when the tailor was already struggling with keeping her composure, as Weiss would call it, was helping any.

“So… what do you think? Can you, ah, ‘loosen’ this some?” Ruby asked.

Yang had to bite her lip to keep from making a joke about Ruby loosening up.

“If not,” Weiss, smooth as always in such situations, cut in, “a dress in the same style, preferably as durable as you can make it, would be acceptable as well.”

“Ah…” Ally nodded several times and finally started calming down as she focused on Ruby’s outfit. “Well… maybe if this seam could be moved… but the stitching is so fine! I don’t think any mortal could replicate that!”

“Oh, I also need new underwear,” Ruby added. “Err, undergarments, you know.”

Weiss grumbled something probably amusing again, Yang noted.

Not as amusing as Mistress Ally’s reaction (and Lady Magaery and Lady Sansa’s reaction) when Ruby showed her what kind of ‘undergarments’ she wanted. “That’s… I don’t know, I mean…”

“I want the same!” Arya blurted out.

“Arya! Certainly not! It’s…” Lady Sansa trailed off with a gasp.

“If it’s good enough for the Four Blessed Maidens, it’s good enough for anyone! Surely the Seven wouldn’t have you dressed in indecent clothes, right?” Arya beamed at Yang and her friends, and Yang smiled right back, showing her teeth. The girl had guts.

“Err…” Lady Sansa looked at Lady Margaery. Who looked at Mistress Ally. Who was averting her eyes and… was she praying?

Yang narrowed her eyes and stepped a bit closer to Blake. “What’s she saying?” she asked in a whisper. If the poor woman was praying, then they had to dial down the antics. And probably send half the group outside before she had a breakdown.

“She’s mumbling about cloth and prices,” Blake whispered back.

“Ah!” Yang grinned again. That was fine. And, hey, if they managed to get a bra and panties fad going so the girls here didn’t have to wear whatever they were currently wearing - at least the noblewomen; Yang didn’t know what the smallfolk wore under their dresses - then that was something she could get behind.

“Everyone should be allowed to wear what they want,” she said. “Back home, we had to fight a war over that, you know.”

“A war, my lady?” Mistress Ally asked, gaping again.

“It wasn’t just over clothes. But they were part of the reason, yes,” Weiss said.

Lady Sansa looked a bit too surprised for someone who should have remembered that. Lady Margaery as well - she might not have been told that story herself, Yang couldn’t recall if it had come up in talks with her, but she surely would have been told by others, right?

Arya, however, had remembered that. At least if you went by the triumphant smile she wore.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Hello!” Yang yelled out as she landed in a crouch on the ground inside Master Mott’s yard, close to the smithy’s entrance.

“Lady Yang. We have a door.” And there was the old smith.

She grinned at him. He might be grumpy, but he certainly didn’t kneel to her. “And you have a wall, which I just used.”

“Lady Yang!” Gendry appeared next to his master.

“Lady Yang.”

Oh? Jon was here as well? “Hi, Gendry. Hi, Jon.” She nodded at both. “I thought I’d check up on how things are going with you.”

“They’re going,” Mott grumbled.

“We’ve been working on the bicycle. Well, a ‘redesign’, as you called it, my lady,” Gendry said.

Right. Because Ruby was a great engineer and weapons designer, but she wasn’t that great about designing stuff you could create with the tools here. Yang nodded. “And how is that going?”

Gendry grimaced. “Well…”

“The chain isn’t working,” Jon said.

Gendry frowned at him. “It’s almost working.”

“It ripped up my boots when I tested it.” Jon frowned right back.

“The scratch in the leather is barely visible!” Gendry protested.

“If I hadn’t been wearing my riding boots, my skin would have been ripped off, my lady,” Jon said, turning to her.

So, Jon was helping Gendry? Yang hadn’t known that. Then again, with the whole mess with Littlefinger and Varys, she hadn’t been able to check with everyone. Some days, she had barely managed to get enough training time to stay sharp.

“I just need to make the chain links more precise and match the sprockets better,” Gendry said.

“And stop wasting so much steel on this toy!” Mott added.

“It’s not a toy - it’s a tool that could alter the world,” Gendry protested. “The Septon said so as well - called it a blessing from the Smith.”

Mott grumbled something Yang didn’t quite catch.

Gendry, though, frowned. “My work is honouring the Smith. I will finish this!” He turned to smile at Yang. “Although it would be a great help if you could give me a few more pointers, my lady. You’re the only one who has seen such a bicycle before, after all.”

Yang and her friends, actually, which Gendry knew. But he also had learned to put on a bit of flattery, she supposed. Not that that was a bad thing. Jon could do with some of that; he was, like his uncle, far too often far too honest. And moody. Like now - he was frowning again at Gendry.

Well, she had come to check up on things, and she could help. “Well… have you thought about building a bike without a chain, first?”

Gendry blinked. “What do you mean, my lady?”

“The earliest bikes didn’t have chains - they had the pedals fixed straight to the wheels,” she explained. Well, the bikes for toddlers did. Although, speaking of toddlers... “And the very first versions didn’t have pedals at all - you used your feet on the ground to push.” Ruby’s first tricycle had been like that. Best not to mention that she was talking about children’s bikes, though - Mott was already calling the bike a toy, and she didn’t think either Gendry nor Jon’s pride would take that well. “Let me show you what I mean,” she said as she entered the smithy proper.

A bit of tinkering would do her good as well. She could worry about Varys, and how her partner was taking the whole mess, later.

*****

 

Chapter 39: Growing Roots

‘As much as any scholar of the epoch has to acknowledge the lasting effects the Ruby Order, despite their relatively short time in Westeros, has had on the society and history of the Seven Kingdoms, there is - as I have mentioned before - a tendency to attribute far too many historical developments to them. While they have influenced the Faith in significant ways, most notably in influencing the High Septon of the time to start his famous reforms, as proven by his own accounts, there is no evidence that they were responsible for the judiciary reforms of Westeros and a lot of evidence against that claim. First, those changes began much, much later - decades, even according to the most generous interpretations of what was such a reform - than their visit. Second, while the members of the Ruby Order were demonstratively much kinder when it came to punishments than their contemporaries, they were by no means what a modern reader would call ‘progressive’. The idea that they were aware of modern concepts of criminology can only be called preposterous. The society of their time lacked everything that could have served as a base to develop such concepts. Just because they were kind and merciful does not mean they were proponents of reforming criminals rather than punishing them, as evidenced by their documented involvement in numerous trials.’ 

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Terese stared at the bars in front of the window of her cell. They were thick and sturdy. She had checked for rust and weaknesses and had found none. They were also solidly set in the stones of the wall, not merely set in mortar that maybe could be scraped off with a metal tool. Not that she had a metal tool, anyway. And her fingernails couldn’t do anything to the mortar - she had tried.

The hinges of the cell door were on the hallway side, so she couldn’t do anything about those either. And the door was made of thick oak planks, held together with iron bars. The window in the door was too small to wriggle through, even for her, and barred anyway.

And there was no secret passage leading out of this cell - she had known that, yet searched anyway. Fruitlessly. 

She was truly trapped. And an utter failure. 

That hurt the most. More than her fingertips. More than the bruises on her ribs and arms. Lord Varys counted on them, depended on them to save him, and Terese had failed. Had failed him.

That all her fellow little birds had failed as well - she knew that from overhearing the witches and guards tallying them up while she had been beaten and tied up in the tunnels - made it even worse.

They hadn’t been able to save Lord Varys. And they had been his last hope. No one else would help him. Everyone was in the thrall of the witches - the stupid smallfolk, the foolish nobles, even the childish king. Not that he could do anything, anyway - he was too little to know or do anything. 

All of them hated Varys. The smallfolk had come to kill him, as if he had done anything wrong. The nobles wanted to kill him so they could hide their plots and crimes. And the witches wanted him gone because he was the only one who knew what they were.

Lord Varys and his birds.

She sniffled and felt her eyes grow wet. Again. She wiped them with her sleeve - the one that hadn’t been torn away by the witches. He couldn’t die! He was all Terese and the others had! He saved them from the evil slavers who had prepared them for sacrifices. Who had cut out their tongues for their evil rituals. He cared for them. Taught them how to read or write. Gave them a home. A life. A mission.

No one else had done that. No one else had done anything for them. Those who didn’t ignore them like they ignored slaves back in Essos looked down on them. Cursed at them, chased them away, out of sight. Called them rats and thieves and scum. Or tried to catch them, for their wicked, warped designs.

Not Lord Varys. He cared. He was one of them - a slave child, mutilated for magic. They had not cut out his tongue, though - they had cut his manhood. And that was worse than losing your tongue. Terese knew that from the others. The boys. Without a tongue, you couldn’t talk. But you could write. And listen. And the birds understood each other, anyway. They knew each other.

As Lord Varys knew them. He had been one of them, and he had managed to escape, and then he had started saving them. As many as he could.

He was so kind. Made sure they had enough food. Arranged a home for them - a house where they were safe. Where no one could abuse them. Where it was just them. His little birds. No one else.

She sniffled again and realised her cheeks had grown wet. She missed him. She missed his kind voice. His kind smile. His praise when she had done well. The sweets he gave them as a reward.

She swallowed. She would never get a sweet again. She would never see Lord Varys again. She would never see her family again. Because she had failed her most important mission. Hadn’t been good enough. Not strong enough. Not quick enough. Not skilled enough. Not good enough to save Lord Varys.

She pressed her face into the crook of her elbow and cried. The witches had won. They would kill Lord Varys, sacrifice him for their evil magic. And they would do the same to Terese and her friends. They would be gone. Killed for magic. Because they had failed.

Because… She tensed. Steps. People were coming. For a moment, she held her breath. Was today the day they would be killed? Sacrificed? But wouldn’t that happen in the dark of the night? The witches couldn’t act openly, could they? She couldn’t see much of the sky outside, but it was pretty bright, so… close to noon? Was it time for the food already? 

She sniffed the air, but there was no way she’d smell porridge that far. Much less hard bread and cheese, or whatever they fed them today. But she heard the doors open - the guards were here. And she heard the clatter of the wooden bowls. Food, then.

The door to her own cell opened, and a guard in chainmail entered. He was wearing a tabard with the sigil of House Baratheon - Lord Stannis’s branch, she noted out of reflex. He sneered at her and put down the bowl containing bread and some cheese, then pushed it towards her with so much force, a piece of bread fell out. He kicked that towards her as well.

She got up, and he tensed. It felt good to see that. But the chain that tied her ankle to the wall behind her wasn’t long enough to let her reach him. Not even if she threw herself forward - she had measured the distance when she had been alone.

She grabbed the bowl and the bread from the floor and quickly started to eat before the guard could take it away.

“Should let you starve, you filthy murderer,” the guard spat. “The Four Maidens are too kind. Far too kind.”

She shuddered. The witches were evil. Monsters that had bathed in the blood of countless children to toughen their skins and stay young. Lord Varys had told them so, and he knew all about magic.

Chewing, she looked at him. Maybe he would lose his temper and step too close? If she could get his dagger… If she cut his tendons, she might take him hostage.

He took a step closer, but not close enough and crouched down. “You burned my brother. He was in so much pain… I wanted to give him the Stranger’s mercy. Kill my kin just so he wouldn’t suffer anymore. The Maester tried to save him, but it only made him suffer longer, even with the milk of the poppy. The stench of his flesh… And you did that! You killed him!”

She hissed at him. His stupid brother had been guarding Lord Varys! She’d burn the entire city if it would save Lord Varys!

He made a weird noise, like a scoff and a sob mixed together. “My brother. Burnt to death by a filthy rat serving a traitor!” He wiped his eyes with his hand and glared at her.

Terese hissed again, wishing she could talk. Lord Varys was her family! He was the only one she had! And they had taken him from her! Of course, she would fight for him!

“And yet the Maidens spared you.” He shook his head. “They are too kind for this world.” 

She glared at him, baring her teeth. They weren’t kind! They were monsters! Evil witches who would kill Lord Varys for their power! 

“Trying to curse me?” He laughed. “You need a tongue for that.”

She threw the empty bowl at him. It was too light to hurt him - they had learned their lesson after the first time - and bounced off the arm he had raised to shield his face.

He sneered again as he grabbed it and got up. “I hope you suffer as my brother did!” he said when he left the cell.

She clenched her teeth and tried not to cry again. She was already suffering for her failure. Her and all the others.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Terese heard steps again - many steps. The guards never came alone to the cells so that they could assist each other should Terese or one of the others manage to get to one of them. But she knew how the guards sounded, and this sound was different. Somehow.

She scuttled as much towards the cell door as her chain allowed and heard the door to the stairs open.

“...and we’ve treated them as you said, my lady. But we, ah, had to chain them to the walls after one of them attacked a guard during feeding time.”

“You chained them to the wall.”

Terese froze. That voice… cold, tense… she had heard it before.

“They’re dangerous murderers, my lady.” That was the guard whose brother had burned. He sounded as if he were afraid, now. And he should be. “They’ve killed my brother, my lady! Burned him alive!”

“You have my condolences. We were too late to save him.” 

“It wasn’t your fault, my lady. It was theirs.”

“It was Varys’s fault. He ordered them to do it.”

“But they did the deed, my lady.”

“They didn’t know any better. We know that from the others.”

‘We’? Terese held her breath as she realised where she had heard the voice before. Lady Blake, the silent witch. The stalker. 

She couldn’t help it - she rushed back, to the wall, and pressed herself against it. The witches were coming for her. Today, she would die. As much as she hated it, and knew this was the just punishment for her failures, she still couldn’t help hoping that they would pick someone else.

Then her door opened, and she cried.

Footsteps came closer. Soft, but deliberate. The witch wanted her to hear it. 

She pressed her eyes shut and lowered her head, holding her breath. She couldn’t face this. 

“Hey.” A whisper. Again, deceptively soft. 

Terese swallowed.

“Don’t be afraid. I know what happened to you.”

Of course, she knew! She had done this to Terese and the others. She and the rest of the witches! She had arrested Lord Varys!

“I know what Varys did to you.”

He had done nothing to them! She found herself staring, hissing at the witch before she realised what she had done and froze again, caught staring at those yellow eyes.

“I want to help you.”

She shook her head. Lies! The witches wanted to kill them. Them and Lord Varys!

The witch reached out and touched her shoulder. 

Terese’s entire body froze. Would she snap her neck? Cave her head in? Rip out her heart?

“We know what happened to you. But we don’t know you. There was a boy. He went missing a few days after the attempt to poison my friends at the smithy.”

What was she talking about? Terese hadn’t done anything about that.

“He was killed - murdered - in the Red Keep. And his tongue was missing. Did you know him? I’ve brought chalk and a slate. If you would write down his name, so we can bury him properly?”

Bren. It must be Bren. He vanished around that time - caught by the witches! Killed by them. Like Terese would be killed.

Terese shook her head. She wouldn’t give the witch any information about anyone!

“Varys murdered him because he knew too much.”

No! Terese shook her head. The witch was lying. She had had Bren murdered!

She shook her head again, squeezing her eyes shut. She would die here, but she wouldn’t fall for the witch’s lies.

“I want to help you.”

She was lying. Witches didn’t care about anything but their power. Lord Varys had told Terese that.

“I know what Varys did to you. He raised you to obey him without question. But he lied to you from the beginning. You were manipulated. You and all your friends.”

Terese felt her heart skip a beat. None of the others in those cells had been taken away - she would have heard that. This monster must have taken the youngest, those who hadn’t been able to get away!

Those she and the rest had left behind. But they couldn’t have protected them and saved Lord Varys at the same time.

But now the witch was coming for her. And she was helpless.

She did her best to curl into herself, to look away, to try to shut out the witch’s voice. 

And hoped that when death would come, it would be quick.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ruby Rose had to admit that, in hindsight, interrogating someone who couldn’t talk hadn’t been a good idea.

“Did Varys give you contingency orders? I mean, did you have orders on what you should do if he were arrested?” Weiss asked again.

The girl - they didn’t know her name - shook her head. She had done that since they had started asking her questions, no matter what Ruby had tried. And she had tried a lot. 

“So, did you decide on your own to attempt to free him?” Weiss went on. She was clearly frustrated; Ruby knew the signs well enough to tell. Not that that was hard at this point.

The girl shook her head again.

“What were you planning to do then when you tried to storm the Red Keep?” Weiss leaned forward, both palms on the table between them and the girl. Like in a police show, Ruby thought. 

The girl shook her head once again and tried to lean away from Weiss. Since she was tied to the chair - it had been the only way to keep her sitting there and stop her from trying to escape, attack Ruby and Weiss, or try to run into the wall to hurt herself - she didn’t get much of a distance.

Weiss leaned further in, almost leaning on the table. “What were you planning to do?” She nodded at the piece of chalk they had brought. “Write it on the table.”

Ruby made a mental note to reimburse the castle servant who had given them the slate to write on; it had broken bouncing off her forehead when the girl had thrown it at her. In hindsight, maybe they should have expected that after hearing about the reason for he wooden bowls the prisoners got. And the lack of cutlery.

The girl kept shaking her head and crying. Ruby wanted to wince. It felt wrong to scare the girl so much. The girl who had burned a man to death, she remembered - the brother of one of the guards, Kev, who had brought them here. That was horrible. But… she was still a little kid. Not even old enough to enter Signal, Ruby would guess. Or maybe old enough - kids were smaller here than back home, at least smallfolk children.

“We know you can write,” Weiss said. “All of you were taught how to write. You can answer my questions in writing.”

The girl was shaking her head so hard, Ruby saw a tear flying to the side. This couldn’t go on!

She stepped up and put a hand on her partner’s shoulder. “Weiss… let off a bit.”

Weiss narrowed her eyes at her, then at the girl, whose whole body was now shaking, then stepped back with a frown.

Ruby smiled as reassuringly as she could at the girl. “Hey!”

The girl looked away. 

Well, that was to be expected. Ruby wouldn’t let that discourage her. “We don’t mean you any harm. We’re here to help you.”

The girl stiffened, and Ruby thought she heard a hiss. Not… well, not like Blake, when she was abruptly woken up from a nap with a whistle, but more like a gasp.

“Really,” she went on. “We know what you were going through. We want to help you.”

The girl hunched over, leaning away from her as she had from Weiss.

“Can you write down your name so we know how to address you?” Ruby asked. “It’s a bit weird to talk to you without knowing your name.” Even if they had been doing this for what felt like a long time now. Maybe she would open up now?

The girl shook her head again, and Ruby could see that she was clenching her teeth. So, no, she wouldn’t.

“Please,” Ruby said. “We won’t harm you - I promise you. I’ll give you my word.”

The girl still refused to look at her. And she still looked terribly scared. Of Ruby.

She didn’t like that. She shouldn’t be scaring anyone, much less children. Did she think that Ruby and her friends were witches? Like Varys had claimed? “We aren’t witches,” Ruby said. “We didn’t ‘sacrifice’ anyone for our powers. If he told you that, he lied.”

The girl shook her head, and she was crying again.

“This isn’t working,” Weiss commented behind Ruby. “It seems clear that she wholeheartedly believes what lies Varys has spread.”

“But…” Ruby trailed off. Who would believe such… such stupid lies? Her team had never done anything to make people think they were witches who sacrificed people! “Why would anyone believe his lies? All we have done is help people!” she asked Weiss.

The girl behind her hissed again, but when Ruby turned to look at her, she whimpered and flinched, and Ruby winced.

This wasn’t working. “Let’s… talk to another child,” she said. They couldn’t all be that scared, could they?

*****

“So, not even your good cop/bad cop routine worked?”

Ruby frowned at Yang’s question. “What do you mean?” she asked while she did some checks on Crescent Rose.

“Yes, what do you mean by that, ‘good cop/bad cop routine’?” Weiss asked, though in that sharp tone of hers that showed she was annoyed. Or insulted. “I’ll have you know that we were perfectly professional.”

“Good cop/bad cop is a professional method to interrogate suspects,” Blake said, looking up from the book she had borrowed (or ‘borrowed’, Ruby hadn’t asked and wasn’t going to ask if she had asked first) from the royal library. Apparently, it was a relatively new book, so Blake could read it without problems, but it wasn’t about magic, so that didn’t help them get home. Though it helped Blake feel better after her failure to connect to the kids, so that was another reason Ruby wasn’t going to ask about the book’s origin. Or what it was about - she had learned that lesson back in Beacon. “We were taught about it in the White Fang so we wouldn’t fall for it in case we were ever arrested.”

Yang grinned and pointed at her partner. “Yeah! And Ruby and Weiss make the perfect good cop/bad cop duo.”

“Excuse me! Why would I be the bad cop?” Weiss protested.

Ruby wasn’t going to answer that either. Instead, she shook her head. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the kids didn’t talk to us - well, didn’t write to us. Or answer with a nod. Like when you talked to them, they just kept shaking their heads or ignored us. And they were shaking with fear, too.”

“All of them?” Blake frowned, putting her book down. 

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. “We tried everything, and nothing worked.”

“It seems Varys’s indoctrination was very thorough,” Weiss added.

Blake nodded. “If every child of the thirteen we’ve captured in the tunnels refused to talk, then that’s true. Although neither of you is a trained interrogator, so that relativises the results somewhat.”

She was right, Ruby knew. Even Weiss couldn’t claim to be a trained interrogator. She grumbled some, though. Still… “We can’t just give up on them, though.” They had to do something! They couldn’t just abandon the kids! And they couldn’t help the kids if the kids didn’t believe them.

“There’s Varys to be interrogated,” Weiss pointed out.

Yes. If they could get Varys to confess how he had manipulated the kids, maybe that would convince the children…

“If he survives until the interrogation,” Blake said. “He knows too much about the nobles here.”

Ruby stared at her. “He’s guarded by at least six guards, taken from three different noble houses.” They had insisted on that so that even if one guard - or one noble - turned traitor, they couldn’t free or kill Varys.”

“And it is very likely that all of them have a vested interest in silencing Varys,” Blake replied.

“They also have a vested interest in finding out what he knows,” Weiss objected.

“Yes,” Blake said. “But do you think Varys will actually talk about his plots? Instead of sowing as much chaos and strife by revealing as many secrets of the noble families at Court as he can.”

Ruby winced. Varys seemed the type to do that - he had already tried to do it. “So… you think everyone will work together to kill him?”

Blake shrugged. “It’s possible, but I think it’s likelier that someone finds a way around the guards and kills him in his cell.”

“You seem remarkably blasée about this possibility,” Weiss commented.

Blake nodded in return but didn’t say anything.

Ruby winced again. 

“He’s not a big loss,” Yang said instead. “He took those kids, had them maimed, then raised them as his spies - and probably killed them off when they knew too much or grew too old to believe his lies.”

“We don’t know if he killed the children when they grew up,” Ruby said. They couldn’t just assume this. “And if he dies, we might never know.”

“You think he’ll tell us anything?” Yang snorted. “He claims we’re bloodthirsty witches who will kill the children.”

“We don’t know if he actually believes that or if it’s just something he told the children to make them fear us and obey him,” Weiss said.

“He won’t tell us the truth - not unless he thinks the truth will hurt us most,” Blake said with a scowl. “Not even if it would help the children. Especially not if it would help the children to realise how he abused them.”

“That doesn’t mean we should let him get murdered,” Ruby said.

“He’ll be executed anyway,” Yang said. “For slavery.”

“And treason,” Weiss added. “And since he’s not a noble, he can’t ask for a trial by combat.”

Right. Ruby nodded. He wasn’t a lord, even if people - smallfolk mostly - called him that.

“If he would get a trial by combat. I’d fight him or his champion,” Blake said.

Right. Ruby should have expected that as well. Still… “It’s not right to let him get murdered in his cell.”

“We would have to guard him around the clock,” Blake retorted. “That would mean we couldn’t do much else. And that would put others in danger.”

“We could call for more guards,” Weiss suggested. “That would reduce the chance that an assassin can get to him.”

“They’ll probably use poison anyway. We’d have to eat everything he does, so we won’t risk someone else as a food taster who cannot survive a poison,” Blake said.

That sounded… Ruby bit her lower lip. It would be selfish, terribly selfish, to let someone get murdered because you didn’t want to spend your day guarding them and tasting their food, wouldn’t it?

“Ruby, we can’t sacrifice our lives for Varys.” Yang seemed to have read her mind again.

“I most certainly won’t abandon everything else we need to do here to keep this kingdom from collapsing just to keep this manipulative slaver alive until his execution,” Weiss said.

Blake nodded in obvious agreement. And Ruby could see Yang shaking her head at her.

She sighed. It wasn’t right. But doing all that for Varys wouldn’t be right either. “I hate this,” she said. 

“We all do,” Yang replied. “But what else can we do?”

Ruby had no answer to that. It was so frustrating! They couldn’t help the children - except for keeping them from being executed. They couldn’t get Varys to confess what he had been doing. They couldn’t even keep him from getting murdered. They could ask for more help from the nobles or the faith, but as Blake had said, if someone used poison, they would put a foodtaster at risk by asking for them. And no number of guards would stop the still unknown assassin who had murdered the King and poisoned Yang. 

She blinked. “Do you think Varys was behind the poisonings?”

The others frowned.

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Blake said.

“He is an obvious suspect, though I wonder what his motive would have been. For the murder of the King - we know the assassin wanted to murder you and Yang at Mott’s smithy,” Weiss said.

Ruby sighed again. If Varys was behind those murders, he might take the knowledge into his grave.

“Even if he claims to be the culprit, we couldn’t trust him - he might be trying to get us and the Court to lower our guard so the real assassin has an easier time with their next target,” Blake said.

Right. Ruby really missed school. Compared to trying to make sense of the plotting here at court, even Professor Oobleck’s lessons were easy to understand.

“And we still need to address the other urgent problem that we need to deal with related to the kids,” Weiss said.

Right. They had talked about that already, but they hadn’t told the others yet. Well, Blake probably had realised that already. Ruby sighed again. “They’re too dangerous.”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...so, while it was decided that the boys who attacked the Keep will be sent to the Night’s Watch and the girls who were with them will join the Silent Sisters, you have developed more concerns about this.” Lord Eddard frowned as he summed up the situation. 

He wasn’t the only one, Weiss Schnee saw. Lord Renly was frowning as well, and Lord Stannis was scowling, but he was doing that so often, it was almost normal. She had expected that, anyway. “Yes, my lord regent,” she said. “You are undoubtedly aware that the children were thoroughly indoctrinated by Varys.”

“Yes. You have explained that at length,” Lord Eddard replied.

“However, we have talked to - or at - them all, and we think that currently, they might be a flight risk,” Weiss went on.

“If they desert the Watch, they will be put to death,” Lord Stannis growled. “You cannot demand an exception for them in that case.”

“The Night’s Watch cannot afford deserters,” Lord Eddard agreed. “It relies on this.”

Weiss was aware of that. “We’ve met the Night’s Watch, my lord regent,” she said with a slightly toothy smile. Indeed, she wouldn’t really trust every member of the Watch with anything. “However, those children were also trained as spies - trained so expertly, they spied on most members of the Court without being exposed, and almost overcame the guards you posted in the secret passages despite their age.”

“They’re as dangerous as grown men, in other words,” Lord Renly commented.

The insinuation was clear - they should be treated and tried as adults - but Weiss nodded anyway. “Indeed. And they will likely use every opportunity to escape, and might hurt or kill people while doing so.”

“The Watch has handled worse,” Lord Eddard said.

“A lot of their numbers are made up of thieves, rapists and murderers,” Lord Renly added.

“And of traitors to the realm,” Lord Stannis said.

“Good, honest people still volunteer for the Watch,” Lord Eddard said with unusual sharpness. “Such as my brother, Benjen Stark. And the Lord Commander.”

“Of course, my lord regent,” Lord Renly was quick to reply. “I was merely talking about those taken from prisons and jails in the South.”

It was a weak apology, but better than Stannis’s non-existent one, in Weiss’s opinion. But they were straying from the topic. “Are you certain that the Watch can handle those children? And that the Silent Sisters are up to this challenge as well?” She knew the locals were prone to underestimating girls - even though some of those girls had killed grown men.

“Yes,” Lord Eddard said.

Weiss didn’t think so, but she was certain the Council’s minds were made up. So she nodded. “I will talk to the High Septon, though, about reaching out to the children. They need care so they can realise how they were lied to and abused.” And some tips on how to deal with dangerous children.

Still, Weiss wouldn’t bet that this would go well. The boys at the Wall might not be familiar with the environment and geography, and might be easily caught if they deserted, but if they managed to escape on the way to the wall, in more familiar regions, or if they were smart enough to play the long game, as Blake called it, and waited until they knew how to survive in the North… She could only hope that this wouldn’t end up hurting someone else. Or, a small, nasty voice in the back of her mind added, someone she cared about.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

It felt good to ambush someone instead of being ambushed by someone. Well, figuratively, not literally, Weiss thought as she moved in on her target, who was just entering the Great Hall. “Lady Melisandre. Good morning.”

“Lady Weiss.” If the priestess was surprised, she didn’t show it. Then again, most people at court were able to hide their reactions and emotions very well. And of those who seemed to lack the ability, half were probably exaggerating or straight faking it to be underestimated. “How may I help you?”

“I was wondering about magic - specifically, magic used in Essos and the East,” Weiss said. She had asked Archmaester Marwyn about this, and he had confirmed that some magic used sacrifices, but she wanted a second opinion. The Archmaester was still convinced that their Aura and Semblances were magic as well, after all.

“Oh? Have you a reason that your way home might be found there?” the woman asked, raising her eyebrows.

“No, unfortunately, our search for a place similar to the ruins in our world has not yet borne fruit,” Weiss explained. They might have to move to Old Town to search the library of the Order there, if the royal library turned out to contain nothing of use. “But a recent event made me wonder about how magic is practised there.”

“You are talking about the accusations Varys levelled against you, I presume.”

“Yes.” Weiss had expected the priestess to be aware of that - the rumours had spread throughout the Keep and city, according to Blake, and had been distorted significantly in the process, as had the rumours about the things Varys had said to the small council. “I was aware that some magic required sacrifices - the legends we heard in the North spoke about such magic being done in the Godswoods of old. But it seemed Varys had some personal experience with such acts, not merely knowledge of some tales.”

“No doubt he had a personal encounter with a sorcerer or witch,” Melisandre said. “Many of the more powerful arts require a sacrifice. Although we shouldn’t talk about such matters where people might overhear us and draw the wrong conclusions in their ignorance.”

Weiss nodded. “Shall we talk in the yard, then?” No one except for Blake would be able to come close enough to overhear them there without Weiss noticing.

“Yes.”

Outside, the weather was overcast but not rainy. “Autumn is coming,” Lady Melisandre commented.

Weiss nodded. It was growing a bit colder - at least, according to her friends. For someone born and raised in Atlas, it was still quite warm. Not that the seasons in this world made much sense. Years-long summers and winters? Her astronomy tutor would probably have fits if they knew about this. But that wasn’t why she had sought out the woman. “So,” she said once they had walked to the middle of the yard, well away from prying ears, “powerful magic requires a sacrifice?”

“In general, yes. Magic demands a price. The more powerful, the more expensive. The Valyrians were infamous for the mass sacrifices of slaves that some of their rituals demanded. Though back in those days, magic was generally more powerful, and far more could be done back then without killing or maiming someone than today.”

The smile on her face could almost be called nostalgic, Weiss thought. Was she lamenting the fact that she hadn’t been born in the past? “So, Varys was correct?”

“About the magic he knew, yes. But your magic is different. I am quite knowledgeable about the art, and yet, I do not know a way to achieve the powers you possess.”

“It’s not magic but Aura and Semblances,” Weiss corrected her. “It’s our souls made manifest. Augmented by Dust in some cases,” she added for correctness’s sake.

“And achieved without any sacrifice.”

“Unless you count many, many hours spent training,” Weiss replied. “Those who do not spend the effort, those who do not dedicate their lives to this, will never use such power.” That was a bit of hyperbole - you could achieve such power, and more, and then spend the rest of your life in a drunken stupor. But you had to make the effort to gain it. “We have legends of magic, but those were fairy tales. We have found no proof that they were ever real, and I don’t recall any such sacrifices, either.”

“You sound like you do not fully believe that. Not any more.”

Weiss snorted. The woman was even more perceptive than she had anticipated. “Yes. Something transported us to this world, and I do not think that was a Semblance. And we know that magic is real here. So… it might have existed once in our world as well.”

“And might have waned, like in this world, until only legends thought tall tales remained. Many in Westeros did not believe in magic, either. At least amongst those who fancied themselves educated,” Lady Melisandre said. “They have, since your arrival, been forced to correct their assumptions.”

Weiss nodded. That hadn’t been her or her friends’ fault. They hadn’t wanted to come here. So, Varys’s lies were based on facts. And yet… “You know a lot about magic. More than anyone we have met so far.” Even more than the Archmaester. Which was why she was talking to her in the first place. “And you wield magic as well.”

Lady Melisandre nodded.

Weiss didn’t ask if she had used sacrifices herself. She was pretty certain she knew the answer now, and it matched the Archmaester’s suspicions.

Just as Lady Melisandre seemed to be about to say something else, she suddenly turned, and a crow who had been picking at worms or spilt seeds - Weiss didn’t care about either - cawed and then flew away.

“Maybe we should have sought the privacy of a chamber in the Keep,” Lady Melisandre said.

Weiss narrowed her eyes. She knew crows were very smart birds, almost as smart as ravens, which were used as mail carriers here, but to be used as spies? Was the priestess trying to pull her leg? Or make her paranoid about birds? Should she ask straight away? Or look into it herself with her friends?

She was still wondering about that when they parted ways again.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna gripped the wooden post next to her tightly as she watched the children be loaded onto wagons - shackled and pushed into cages - on the other side of the yard, next to the entrance to the dungeons. A man in the black leathers of the Night’s Watch, apparently, one of their recruiters, was watching. He was used to transporting dangerous prisoners, or so she had been told, and this wasn’t supposed to be out of the ordinary for him. Just another trip transporting prisoners to the Wall, where they would serve until death claimed them.

Children. The oldest was barely fourteen, a small fifteen at most - they had no way to know their real age, so it was just guesswork - the youngest was twelve or thirteen. They hadn’t gotten a trial, just a sentence handed down by the regent, Lord Eddard. A life sentence seen as merciful. No one had cared about their lives except for Team RWBY. All that mattered for the people ruling Westeros was that they had committed a crime. If they knew what Blake had done…

She clenched her teeth, remembering other cages holding people, including children - Faunus held like animals in some working camps. She had helped free those, and now she was watching as a group of children was treated the same - shipped off to work until the end of their lives. And in a frozen wasteland like Solitas, even. 

A cracking sound and the feeling of wood crumbling in her hand made her blink. Oh. She had crushed the wooden pole without realising it. She scowled as she let the upper part of the pole drop to the ground and shook the wooden splinters off her hand. 

“Whoa! Don’t bring the castle down, partner.”

She turned to glare at Yang. “This is wrong.”

“I know. So do Ruby and Weiss.” Yang didn’t shrug but calmly met Blake’s eyes. “But no one knows what would be right.”

Blake clenched her teeth again. Yang was right about that. They couldn’t just let the children go - they were fanatically loyal to Varys. As long as Varys was kept in the dungeons, they would make another attempt to free him, and who could say what kind of plan a group of abused children trained as spies would come up with? And if - when - Varys was executed or killed? Blake had some idea how people who lost everything they lived for tended to react. More than one member of the White Fang had lashed out violently, without care whether or not those they killed were guilty or innocent, as long as other people suffered.

But sending the kids to the wall - and the Silent Sisters for the three girls amongst the group - wasn’t right either. “They need help, not punishment,” she said. Help Blake had failed to give to them.

“And who can help them?” Yang asked. She still didn’t shrug. “The Wall seems actually the best thing they have here to turn criminals into upstanding citizens,” she added with a snort - her partner knew as well as Blake herself how little that meant.

“So they turn from child spies into child soldiers.” Blake didn’t bother to hide the bitterness in her voice. It was a bit hypocritical - technically, she had been a child soldier herself. But that had been her decision. Mostly. None of those kids had volunteered for this.

“Better than assassins with a grudge against the kingdom,” Yang said.

“You mean terrorists.” Blake narrowed her eyes. 

This time, Yang shrugged with a weak smile, and Blake huffed. 

“I know it’s not the same,” she said. 

“But it’s too close anyway, right?” Yang reached out to pat her shoulder.

Blake let her. That would be answer enough. She turned to look at the wagons again, just as the last kid was pushed into the cage. Usually, a single member of the Night’s Watch would handle such a transport, but Lord Eddard was sending a few guards from his House with them. People who wanted to return home to their families. That might help keep the kids from escaping and being hunted down as deserters.

The threat of execution wouldn’t be enough; Blake knew better than most how little harsh punishment did to scare people into following the law, especially when they had nothing to lose and felt the law was unjust. It generally just made them more determined and desperate, and more violent, and…

Her thoughts were interrupted when Yang’s hand slipped from her shoulder to her waist and pulled Blake into her side into a one-armed hug.

“Hey!” Blake protested. But she didn’t push her partner away. She could use a hug.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yes, Lady Blake, we have instructed the Silent Sisters to take care of the girls. They will be treated well,” the High Septon said. “And watched as well - we have passed on your concerns about their, ah, disposition.”

Blake nodded. That, at least, was something. Not much - the order of the Silent Sisters lived an ascetic life and, as far as she could tell, didn’t take part in the society of Westeros except for handling their dead. But at least, having taken vows of silence themselves, they should know how to work with mute children. “As long as they are kept away from the former queen.” She didn’t know whether the children would try to kill or free Cersei, but nothing good would come of that.

The High Septon winced. “Ah, yes. Cersei is not adjusting well to her new station in life.”

Blake heard Yang, next to her, stifle a snort under her breath. Everyone who knew Cersei had expected that. “Is she under guard?”

The High Septon nodded. “It’s not usually done - the Sisters are used to taking care of, ah, recalcitrant new members, but Cersei is a special case.”

“And you have to worry about someone trying to take her away or kill her,” Yang said.

“It’s not the first time the order has had to deal with such a situation.”

That was good. “And can they deal with the children’s needs?” Blake asked. “They have been traumatised and indoctrinated.”

“Many of the Sisters have suffered from tragedies and violence before joining,” the High Septon said with a deep nod. “The children will be taken care of to the best of the Order’s ability, my word on it.”

That was probably the best she could expect. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, but this wasn’t home - this was Westeros. The locals knew not much about psychology. Though they must have a lot of experience with traumatised people, given the violence so common to their lives. Not unlike some of the stubborn villagers in Grimm-infested areas who clung to their homes through multiple deaths of neighbours and families.

“And the younger children?”

“They will be taken in by Septas and Septons with experience caring for orphans,” the High Septon said. “Their unique circumstances have been explained to them, and as soon as we have set up homes for them, they can be moved in.”

Blake wasn’t sure if splitting up the kids was the best way to care for them - it was effectively removing them from what was their family - but if they were kept together, odds were they would end up a gang, united against everyone else. Again, not a good solution, but she didn’t know a better one. “Did you hear about mute adults?” she asked.

The High Septon slowly shook his head. “No. We have sent ravens and put out the word, but, so far, none of the Faithful have sent word about such people. We’ve sent people to Essos, but news from there will take even longer to get back to us, I am afraid.”

And since the people who had discovered the slavers behind the mutilated children had not found many mute adults, the odds that the child spies who had grown up were sent back to Essos weren’t good, either. Varys might have sent them to another city so they wouldn’t discover his slave trading partners, but Blake didn’t think Varys would take the risk that his former ‘little birds’ might discover the truth behind their fates.

No, he most likely had them killed before they became a problem. 

She nodded. “Thank you, High Septon.”

“We are merely doing the Seven’s bidding, my ladies,” he replied with another deep bow of his head. “You deserve our thanks for having exposed all this so we could help.”

Blake felt her cheeks flush a little. She hadn’t done nearly enough, in her opinion. 

“We do our best,” Yang said with a wide smile.

“Indeed. I’ve heard about your work with young Gendry as well,” the man went on. “He is visiting the Sept regularly to pray to the Smith in particular, and thank him for your help.” He chuckled. “After hearing about the marvels he is working on, I have noticed many of the city’s smiths visiting more frequently as well, hoping for a similar blessing from the Smith.”

“Well, it’s not as if we’re trying to keep our knowledge hidden,” Yang said. “I’m sure it will spread soon enough.”

Blake held her tongue at that. She was quite certain that Master Mott would love to keep whatever knowledge he gained from Team RWBY as a trade secret. But Gendry probably didn’t share that view - or was too naive to keep his secrets when other smiths approached him in the Sept.

Well, if more advanced techniques and ideas spread, it could only help this kingdom. The realm certainly needed all the help it could get.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Yang Xiao Long looked out for crows as she entered the Kingsguard’s training yard. Of course, as every day, there were half a dozen of them hanging around. They were smart birds, as smart as the crows back home. They knew that there would be some crumbs and morsels left over when the people training took their breaks and someone dropped a piece of food from slightly numbed fingers. Or was just a bit too tired to pay enough attention. Any of them could be a spy - if Melisandre was right and wasn’t just trying to prank Weiss. Or was paranoid about birds or something.

She waved at them anyway. “Hey! Pay attention, will you? We’re gonna put on a good show!”

As expected, none of the birds reacted to her. Others did, though.

“Did you talk to the crows, my lady?” Brienne asked.

“Yep!” Yang grinned. “They’re smart birds.”

“I see, my lady.” Brienne smiled, but Yang could see she was just humouring her. Well, Yang was used to that - at least, unlike Yang’s friends, Brienne didn’t wince and complain when one of Yang’s jokes might be a bit less than perfectly timed.

“Anyway!” Yang rolled her neck and stretched a bit. Damn, after all that mess with those kids and the politics and compromise stuff, she really needed to punch something. Repeatedly. And drag Blake into it as well - her partner needed that even more, Yang was sure. “How are you doing?”

“Quite well, my lady.”

That was about as informative as Jon’s ‘I’m doing fine, my lady’. Yang raised her eyebrows at her. Brienne could do better than that!

Blushing a little, Brienne winced before smiling a little ruefully. “Well, we - I mean, Jon and I, were thinking about… Well, we talked to one of the Lannister squires, Lancel. The eldest son of Kevan Lannister, the oldest of Lord Tywin’s younger brothers.”

Yang nodded. She didn’t really care for all that stuff, but it was important here. And Lancel was important. Not as important as Lord Tyrion, but pretty important. If anything happened to Lord Tyrion, he would probably be the next heir after his father. Unless Lord Tywin married some much younger wife and tried to get another heir or something - he wouldn’t be the first noble here like that.

“And, well…” Brienne suddenly perked up and waved. “Jon! Come over!”

Ah. Yang grinned. So that was it. “Good morning, Jon.”

“Good morning, my lady.” He bowed, and Yang rolled her eyes with another snort.

“We were just talking about you,” she said.

He blinked, obviously surprised, at that. “You were?”

“Brienne was about to tell me what you two came up with.”

“My lady!” He actually frowned at Brienne before turning back to Yang. “It was just idle talk. We haven’t decided on anything - not that we would make a decision, anyway. That is your prerogative, of course, my lady.”

“Hm?” Yang looked at Brienne.

“I actually didn’t tell Lady Yang yet about what we were talking about with Lancel,” Brienne said, frowning back at Jon.

“Oh.” He blushed. “I’m sorry, I thought…”

Yang shook her head. “As amusing as this is, out with it: What were you cooking up?”

“Cooking up?” Jon looked confused for a moment. “Ah, we were talking about, well… You are very important nobles, yet you lack a, well, a retinue.” He glanced at Brienne again.

“You have no guards or men-at-arms, no sworn swords or knights,” Brienne explained.

Yang wondered where they were going with this. Were they actually asking what she thought they were asking? Well, time to find out. “And you would like to change this, uh?” She smiled.

Both were blushing this time. “Well… We know you don’t need protection in battle, or anywhere else, my lady,” Jon said. “But you said yourself, you can’t be everywhere at the same time. And you also said I have the markings of a decent swordsman.” He hesitated a moment. “And, it might not be my place to say so, but you could use more people loyal to you above anyone else. Everyone else at court has their own retinue.”

Brienne nodded. “I would swear myself to your service, my lady, if you’ll have me. To Team Ruby, that is.”

“So would I, my lady,” Jon added.

Oh. That was a bit more than the ‘we could help you if you need help with guarding someone’ that Yang had been expecting.

“And Lancel would as well, in a heartbeat,” Jon went on. “He said you - Team Ruby - saved his life during the Night of Flying Water. He is a Lannister, but we talked to him at length, and he would swear an oath.”

“And there are more who would serve you, my lady,” Brienne added. “If you’ll let us.”

“Gendry would help as well, though he’d need weapons training. He is very strong, though, and he knows how to wield a hammer very well, so…” Jon trailed off.

What could she say to this? She couldn’t tell them no; Jon would be crushed and brood forever, and Brienne wouldn’t do much better. And both were friends. Well, the answer was actually obvious, wasn’t it?

Yang nodded. “I’ll talk to Ruby about it. But I’d love to have you around.” She spotted her sister and the others arriving and added: “After the training session, of course. That’s not something to be discussed in the training yard where every crow can listen in.”

The two chuckled at her joke, but one of the crows gave her the evil eye - well, it was probably eyeing Yang’s snacks, which were safely stored in a sturdy basket with a wooden lid. No crow could get at them; they had tested that. There wouldn’t be a repeat of the Great Cookies Tragedy.

She cracked her knuckles. “Now, let’s get some training done.” A few rounds with Ser Barristan, for starters. He still had some tricks to teach them, and his parries and counters, especially the wrestling moves he knew, were incredibly useful. And she would see if she could badger Weiss into using her glyphs to speed up a few arrows again to train dodging and deflecting them. Yang was getting better at that, but she could always improve some more.

Sure, her Semblance allowed her to tank hits and grow stronger in the process, but nothing was better to crush someone like, say, Cardin Winchester than winning a fight without being hit at all. 

And that would make the surprise even better when they managed to hit you and only succeeded in making you hit back harder!

Yang grinned as she called out to Ser Barristan and stepped into the ring.

*****

 

Chapter 40: Spreading Out

‘The Succession is often reduced - by laypersons and, unfortunately, some scholars who ignore how many later developments had their roots in this era - to a string of murders and accidents following the death of King Robert Baratheon I that left the realm leaderless. The King was murdered, his heir died in an accident, the Queen had already been deposed and sent to the Silent Sisters in disgrace, and then the Master of Coin was murdered by the Master of Whispers, leading to the loss of both. However, that common view is far too reductive. In reality, the realm had been tethering on the edge of such a crisis practically since King Robert's Rebellion for while the new King was generous and charismatic, easily charming former enemies, the rifts that had broken open during the Rebellion were never truly healed, with nobles on all sides carrying grudges about the various deeds and crimes that had been done in the Rebellion. The deaths of King Robert I and Prince Joffrey and Queen Cersei's infidelity were not the cause but merely the symptom of the underlying issues that affected the realm. And in the same way, there was no single reason for the fact that the realm emerged stronger from this crisis than it had been before. Lord Eddard Stark’s contributions as the Lord Regent cannot be overstated, for without his prestige and reputation for honour, as well as his experience in ruling, the realm might have broken apart. And yet, without the influence of the Ruby Order, even this experienced leader might not have been able to do his duty. According to all reliable sources, it was them who rallied the Faith to stabilise the realm in a manner not seen before. Without that backing during the Succession, Westeros would undoubtedly not be the same realm it is today.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Varys had to die. As soon as possible. Lord Tywin Lannister knew that beyond any doubt. The traitor knew far too many secrets about every House, including Tywin’s own. And as his brief interrogation had shown, he was all too ready to spill them to cause as much chaos and strife as he could. So, he had to die before he could be interrogated properly.

The other lords were in agreement with this course of action, Tywin knew that as well. They might claim publicly that Varys would be put on trial, they might complain and condemn if Varys were to suffer a sudden death before his trial, but that was for appearances’ sake. A mummery farce everyone could see through - even Team Ruby. Those girls were not nearly as naive as some of Tywin’s foolish kin thought. They were steadily expanding their influence, building their power base and had all but taken over the realm as the power behind the throne.

He clenched his teeth as he leaned back in his chair, goblet of watered wine in hand. They were trying to take Tommen from him. His own flesh and blood. They dared to restrict him from doing what was needed to raise a strong King! The gall of them! He knew the Court was whispering behind his back - never to his face - and mocking him for this humiliation. They thought he was weak. Unable to defend what was his.

They were wrong. And Tywin would prove it. Eventually. A Lannister always paid his debts.

He took a deep breath. He couldn’t let his justified anger overtake him. Team Ruby was - currently - too strong to be fought openly. Any army he could raise would be destroyed by them. And they were too entrenched at Court to be easily dispatched - he knew that House Lannister’s rivals, the Martells, the Tyrells, the Baratheons, were just waiting for the opportunity to take action against him. Should there be an open rift between his family and Team Ruby, the vultures circling would descend to feast.

He had to bear this humiliation, grit his teeth and swallow his anger, all but bend the knee to those girls, to protect his family. But not forever. Things would change. No one was perfect. No one had no weaknesses. Team Ruby would pay for the insults they had dared to give to Tywin. He would see them broken and crushed. As soon as the opportunity presented itself. No one was allowed to insult him like they had without paying for it.

But first, Varys had to die.

A knock on the door of his quarters made him turn his head. “Enter.” 

After a few moments, the door opened and a servant appeared. “Your son has arrived, my lord.”

Tywin nodded. “Send him in.” He looked at the sky outside. The boy had taken long to answer his summons. Too long, though not long enough to be too obvious. A petulant if vexing gesture of defiance. As Tywin was used to seeing from his embarrassment of a son.

“Father.” Tyrion nodded at him. Curtly. At least, he didn’t seem to be drunk.

Tywin waited until the door had closed behind his son, then gestured at the chair across his desk.

Tyrion walked over and grabbed the bottle of watered wine from the desk, as well as a goblet, before climbing onto the chair. “What do you want, Father?” he asked while he filled his goblet. “I was just about to read the most interesting tome about ancient Essos politics.”

Tywin scoffed. “You can get back to your whores once our business is concluded.”

“Have a care with your barbs, Father. You wouldn’t want Team Ruby to mistakenly think you were insulting them.”

A predictable and pathetic threat. Tywin scoffed again. “They know you well enough to realise I am talking about your actual whores.”

Tyrion snorted, as if Tywin had made a jest. “Only by reputation. They never actually joined me for some drinking and whoring. Maybe there is something to the claims of the Faith about them being blessed maidens. They certainly have not shown any interest in men nor great fondness for wine.”

Tywin didn’t roll his eyes at his wastrel of a son’s irreverence. “The fact that they haven’t spread their legs for you doesn’t mean they are blessed maidens. It merely means they aren’t whores.”

He scoured the brief sneer and glare that flashed over his useless son’s face before Tyrion schooled his features, grinned and took a large swallow. 

“Perceptive as ever, Father.” Tyrion chuckled. “Truly, your understanding of everyone else is astonishing.” With a nasty smirk, he added: “Except for my dear and partially departed siblings, of course. You didn’t understand them at all. But then, they were only your children, so why would you know them?”

The gall of the boy! Tywin sneered at him. “I understand them well enough. All of them.”

They stared at each other for a moment before the boy scoffed and emptied his goblet. “Watered down? Is our house as bereft of coin now as it is of allies?”

“We would be, had I the habit of drinking enough wine to dull my mind,” Tywin shot back.

“I always found that a bit of wine liberates the mind. But I fear there isn’t enough wine in the Reach to free yours, Father.”

Tywin scoffed once more. “I didn't call you to trade barbs with a drunkard.”

“Of course not! You'd have provided proper drinks in that case.”

Always trying for one last jibe or barb. So predictable. “I called you to discuss our current situation.”

Tyrion sat straighter. “Team Ruby or Varys?”

“As if we could discuss anything important without discussing those girls,” Tywin said. As much as he loathed it, he would not ignore reality.

“And you need my opinion, since they like me more than you. Of course, they probably like everyone currently not imprisoned in the Black Cells more than you.” Tyrion chuckled.

That, too, was an unpleasant fact, though even if it was through his wastrel of a son, having ties to the girls at all was a boon Tywin could not do without. That didn't mean he had to acknowledge it. “You have known them longer. You have insight into how they will react to certain events.”

“Events related to our Master of Whispers turned traitor and prisoner, I assume.”

He sounded proud of having deduced that, as if it were anything but obvious. Even a dullard like Lancel could have done it. “How will the girls react to the traitor dying in his cell?”

Tyrion tensed up for a moment, narrowing his eyes at him. “So, you have decided to silence him.”

“Every noble of any importance will see him dead before he can spill their secrets or slander them with his lies.”

“Oh, but our need to silence him is a bit more urgent and crucial than just anyone else’s, isn't it, Father?” Tyrion chuckled. “After the most embarrassing affair between a Queen and a Kingsguard the realm has ever seen, our family cannot afford another scandal, no matter how small.”

Tyrwin clenched his teeth. The boy understood that much, at least, but the implied suggestion that this slander about Cersei’s children was correct could not be tolerated. If Tyrion ever said anything like that in public, it could spell doom for their entire house. Fortunately, for all his drinking, Tyrion seemed aware that even a joke about that would threaten Tommen’s life. Still, Tywin loathed relying on something as fickle as his disgraced and deformed son’s common sense.

His son leaned back in his seat, looked at the ceiling and sighed. “They will not like it. In their own fashion, they are as much a stickler for following the law as Stannis is. They merely disagree about which law has to be followed - ours or theirs. But in this matter, they will be in agreement. They want Varys to have his trial.”

Because that would further weaken every faction at court, and especially Tywin's family. He clenched his teeth. “Varys won't have a trial. He knows too much. The question is how those girls will react to his death.”

Tyrion frowned again. “They will want it investigated. Thoroughly. They are, to say the least, not happy at all with the fact that the assassins who have murdered the King and tried to murder them as well have not been caught yet.”

“Will they accept that this was because Varys was responsible for both the assassinations and the investigation into it?” Tywin asked. 

“Do you know that or do you want them to think that?”

“Varys has been responsible for murdering Lord Baelish with an exotic poison,” Tywin explained.

“It's an obvious deduction, I'll grant you that, but I am not certain if they will accept it without further proof.” Tyrion shrugged. “Lady Blake and Lady Weiss both are rather… dedicated, you could say.”

Stubborn, in other words. 

“And, of course, should Varys succumb to poison, they won't assume that it was suicide. They will assume that the assassin they seek murdered Varys to silence him.” Tyrion stared at him.

Tywin nodded. So, he would have to ensure that this could not be traced to him and his at all. That… would make things a bit more expensive. But when the fate of your house was at stake, no price was too high to pay.

“You're risking a lot on this.”

Tywin scoffed. As if there was an alternative. The players had changed, but the game remained the same. And as of now, Tywin would either win or die. There was nothing in between.

“Have you been talking with Lancel?” he said.

Tyrion blinked. “Cousin Lancel? No more than usual. He has been spending his time either in the training yard or at the Sept.”

Tywin already knew that. “And who is he training with?”

“Whoever is available. Usually, those who are similarly fixated on such things. Given my unfortunately small stature, I am not very fond of such training, but it's a popular pastime among many. That you might catch a glimpse of Team Ruby demonstrating their blessed powers and might even cross blades with them if you are fortunate - or unfortunate, should you be partial to your pride as a swordsman - helps, of course, especially with the younger noblemen.”

“Such as Lancel.” Those girls were turning his own family against him. First, Tommen, now Lancel.

And, judging by the frown on his son’s ugly face, maybe even Tyrion.

He wouldn’t allow that. Couldn’t allow that.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...so, Jon, Brienne, Gendry and this Lancel want to become our retainers?” Ruby Rose summed up what Yang had just told them while cracking another nut. Tasty, and good training for her grip.

“Yep.” Yang, sitting on the couch in their quarters, nodded. “I told them we’d have to discuss that.”

Well, that was obvious. This was an important decision for the team. 

“Did you speak with all of them?” Weiss asked.

“Just Jon and Brienne,” Yang replied. “Gendry and Lancel weren’t in the training yard.”

“I remember Lancel,” Blake spoke up from her usual spot at the wall, near the secret door to the secret passage in the walls. “He’s Lord Tywin’s nephew.”

“Yeah, he’s a Lannister, but Jon and Brienne said he’s OK,” Yang said. “Apparently, we saved his life from the Wildfire breakout.”

“Oh.” Ruby couldn’t help feeling a bit guilty about having saved someone’s life without even remembering them. Saving someone was supposed to be important. On the other hand, they had saved his life, and that was what counted.

“Anyway, what do you think?” Yang rolled her shoulders.

“They have a point about us not being able to be everywhere at once,” Weiss said. “And - with the exception of Lancel Lannister, whom we have to meet and vet still - they are people we know and trust.”

Ruby nodded. “We do need people we can trust, and it wouldn’t be fair to just expect them to help us for free.”

“And thanks to Blake, we can afford to pay them for a long time,” Yang added, smiling at Blake.

Blake snorted. “If I hadn’t won, you’d have won. The result would have been the same.”

“But I didn’t win, you did. Beat us all!”

“Can we focus on the matter at hand?” Weiss cut in. “We can afford a retinue - quite a sizeable one, as long as we don’t plan to stay here for years and years.”

“Which we won’t!” Ruby said, nodding firmly. They would go home!

“Yes, of course,” Weiss quickly agreed. “However, as generous as our funds are, currently, ultimately, they are finite. We could invest some of it, and turn a profit, though most of the best opportunities for investment here are also quite risky.”

“That’s the same back home,” Blake said. “High rewards tend to come with high risks.”

“Yes. Trade in particular is a very dangerous business to engage in, unless you can diversify your investment so much that you can absorb the loss of a cargo or two and still turn a profit. We could invest in local businesses, though the legal framework for partnership is, generously judged, quite basic, and I don’t think we would want to become slumlords to make a profit.”

Ruby frowned. “Slumlords?”

“People who rent out shabby buildings to those who cannot afford better or any other shelter and squeeze them for every Lien possible,” Blake explained. “It’s quite common in Atlas - most of the buildings in Mantle are owned by people who live in Atlas.”

“Yes.” Weiss frowned. “But that’s not the point. The point is that if we accept our friends - and potentially other people - as retainers, we have to consider what they will be doing once we are going home. It would be irresponsible to leave them without prospects for their future after us. In fact, their close association with us will already put them in danger from those who resent us but won’t dare to take any action out of fear of our retaliation once they do not have to fear that any more.”

“Since they are known as our friends - most of them - and Gendry, at least, has already barely escaped being poisoned once, I think that ship has sailed,” Blake replied. “In fact, formalising their relationship with us would make it easier to ensure their continued protection.”

“‘Formalising their relationship with us’?” Yang grinned and wiggled her eyebrows.

Weiss rolled her eyes, and Blake shook her head, though she was smiling a little.

Ruby cleared her throat. “Anyway, I think we should accept their offer.” Yang opened her mouth to make another joke about marriage, but Ruby threw a nut at her that shut her up. “But… What exactly do we do to make it formal? Have them swear an oath like a sworn sword?”

“That is one possibility,” Weiss said. “Though that would be limited to the time we are in this world, since it is a personal relationship. If we want to leave a lasting structure for our friends that will offer them protection, we need something else.”

“Usually, that’s where noble or merchant houses come in,” Blake pointed out. 

“Yes. Almost the entire society is based on family relationships.” Weiss nodded.

“We can’t exactly found a noble house,” Yang said.

Ruby agreed with several nods. They weren’t noble, for starters.

“We could, actually.” Weiss didn’t. “They already consider us nobles. We could claim we are splitting off from our original families and founding new houses. But such houses wouldn’t last any longer than our presence here. We couldn’t have heirs - they do not recognise adoption here, I’ve checked.”

“And we aren’t going to have kids. And we wouldn’t leave them,” Yang added with a deep scowl.

Ruby nodded. That was out of the question. Both having a kid and leaving them.

“Indeed. I have no intention to engage in such an activity with any of the locals here,” Weiss said with a scowl.

“You can say ‘sex’, Weiss,” Yang said with a grin. “But you only exclude the locals? What about us?” She leaned forward and pressed a hand on her chest. “Is that some veiled proposal?”

“What? Certainly not!” Weiss gaped at her, her cheeks flushing. 

“Yang!” Ruby cut in before Yang could rile up her partner and derail their discussion. “We have an important matter to discuss.”

“OK, OK.”

Weiss huffed, but disaster was averted. Success! 

Ruby nodded. “Anyway, if we can’t found a noble house - or can’t pass it on if we could - we need to leave something else. Something that can help all our friends. An organisation, like… like… Huntresses!” She nodded at her own idea. Huntresses back home protected others and fought Grimm - or criminals. And they were respected. More importantly, there was a general ‘mess with one Huntress, mess with all the Huntresses’ rule to the whole thing. Of course, it wasn’t official or perfect - Uncle Qrow had told them enough stories so Ruby knew that there were always exceptions and bad stuff - but it would help keep their friends safe.

“Huntresses?” Weiss sounded sceptical. “I think the closest thing to Huntresses would be mercenaries - sellswords. They are not held in high esteem here.”

“Not mercenaries!” Ruby objected. “More like… Knights!” That was it! “Knights sworn to protect people!”

“Knights already swear such oaths,” Yang said.

“But our friends would mean it!” Ruby defended her idea.

“An order of knights…” Blake, at least, seemed to like the idea. “That would be a massive undertaking.” Or not.

“We can ask the Faith for help,” Ruby said. “Knights are already tied to them.” They swore on the Seven, after all.

“That would be a possibility,” Weiss said. “Though even so, funding would be an issue, and, of course, we would need to define the rules, the charter, a structure that can function without us…”

“Yes, it’s hard and all, but!” Ruby smiled. “If we can do this, we’ll have solved a lot of problems for our friends! They’ll have protection and employment!”

“There are no Grimm to hunt here, though,” Yang said.

“But plenty of bad guys!” Ruby nodded.

“And the locals have stories about wandering knights opposing all sorts of enemies,” Blake added. “Most of it is probably myth or exaggerated, but the ideological foundation to build an order exists.”

“So… let’s do it!” Ruby beamed. “Let’s see how we can found an Order of Knights! For men and women!”

“I think that part will meet with some resistance,” Weiss said. “The locals aren’t fond of warrior women.”

Ruby scoffed. “We can change that. Now we need a good name!”

“The Order of Beacon?” Weiss suggested.

Ruby frowned. “We don’t actually represent Beacon, though. Well, not officially.” It would be a bit… what was the word, presumptuous, to do that.

“The Order of RWBY?” Yang giggled, and Ruby rolled her eyes.

“Actually, that wouldn’t be too bad as a name,” Blake said. “We’re Team RWBY, and the order would be associated with us anyway - taking the name would make the association even clearer.”

“And cement the legacy,” Weiss added.

“Well… let’s ask our friends. Once we have everything worked out,” Ruby said. Naming an order of knights after them felt a bit - more than a bit, actually - egoistical.

*****

Street of Looms, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“I once again apologise for having taken so long, Lady Ruby. But I had to ensure that your, ah, ‘combat skirt’, was as perfect as these hands could provide, insufficient though they might have proven to the task.” Mistress Ally bowed deeply.

Weiss Schnee studied the tailor while Ruby looked at the dress. That had sounded like a prepared speech. Overly elaborate and not quite correct - the woman hadn’t spoken like that when they had visited for the first time and had commissioned Ruby’s new dress. It seemed that Weiss had still underestimated just how much the smallfolk looked up to her team.

“I am sure it will be perfect, Mistress Ally.” As expected, Lady Margaery was quick to assuage the woman’s fears. 

Though Weiss was certain that she was not merely motivated by compassion for the tailor’s obvious nerves, but also because she had recommended this shop to Team RWBY, so any fault in the dress would be blamed at least partially on her. Of course, Team RWBY wouldn’t blame either, absent obvious and unacceptable faults, such as seams that would break at the slightest strain and leave the dress falling off at the most inopportune or embarrassing time, but it wouldn’t hurt to ensure that Lady Margaery had no reason to take out any misplaced annoyance on the woman. “It looks very nice indeed,” Weiss commented. “It matches your theme and seems sturdy enough.” 

“Yeah!” Ruby beamed. “Let’s try it on!”

Weiss looked around the shop while Ruby went into the backroom to change, guided by the tailor. There were a few more… she wouldn’t call them combat skirts, they were too long for that, but the cuts matched Ruby’s dress, at least, in style, somewhat, on fitting mannequins in the corner. It seemed that Mistress Ally had already taken commissions from other noblewomen. “Do you think this will come into fashion?” she asked Lady Margaery.

“I cannot say,” Lady Margaery replied - a bit too demurely and evasive, in Weiss’s opinion. “It’s certainly a very daring style, even the, ah, less combative cuts.”

“You mean less revealing,” Yang cut in with a grin.

Lady Margaery conceded the point with a nod and a slight blush.

“You should see the swimwear collections back home,” Yang said.

“Swimwear?” Lady Margaery blinked.

“For the beach,” Yang explained. “Or the pool, if you’re living in Atlas.” She lifted her eyebrows in a manner that Weiss recognised as teasing. “You don’t think we’d go swimming nude in public, do you?”

Weiss sighed while Lady Margaery’s face flushed redder than Ruby’s scarf. “Different customs, my lady,” she said. “Though most swimwear doesn’t really show that much skin. It would be impractical otherwise for competitive swimming.”

“Maybe in Atlas; Patch and Vale have different fashions,” Yang insisted.

“You have never been on Menagerie’s beaches, I see,” Blake spoke up. “Or on our streets.”

“Oh?” Yang had a worrisome glint in her eyes as she turned to grin at Blake.

“Look, guys!” Fortunately, Ruby interrupted the discussion before Yang, and probably Blake as well, managed to embarrass both Lady Margaery and Weiss.

Her partner did look nice, Weiss quickly concluded after a brief examination. Her new outfit fit her like a glove - unsurprisingly, since this was literally tailor-made for her. Although it was quite clear that it couldn’t match the quality of her original outfit. The stitching on the leggings and the sleeves was crude - no, not crude; it was perfectly even, and there were decorative hints of stitching added. It matched the laces of Ruby’s top and on her boots, Weiss corrected herself.

“It fits perfectly! Better than my old outfit, I mean, better than when I got it, not just now that I outgrew it! I can move perfectly fine now without any pinching!” Ruby beamed and demonstrated what she just claimed by stretching and posing.

Weiss nodded. As she had thought before, it fit her partner like a glove.

“I cannot say how it will, ah, handle a fight, my lady,” Mistress Ally said.

“Our Aura will take care of that, don’t worry!” Ruby reassured her. “It won’t take any damage!”

“Though it can still get dirty, so don’t go overboard,” Weiss said.

Ruby grinned. “Oh, but the leggings and the top - well, the corset part - are leather! That won’t stain easily!” 

Weiss saw Yang open her mouth and stepped on her foot before she could make an undoubtedly ribald and misplaced remark about leather fashion.

Mistress Ally, in any case, seemed both relieved and proud. “Your commission will be next, my lady,” she told Lady Margaery. “Now that Lady Ruby is satisfied.”

“Ah, thank you.” Lady Margaery seemed a bit embarrassed still - or again; Weiss couldn’t tell. 

“You’re getting a new dress as well?” Ruby asked.

“It seemed opportune,” Lady Margaery replied.

“Staying ahead of the pack, hm?” Yang asked, nodding at the fitting mannequins Weiss had noticed before.

“As a member of House Tyrell, it behoves me to lead,” Lady Margaery said with a perfectly composed expression.

It seemed that there was going to be a change in fashion at Court, Weiss concluded.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna knew that a few colder days didn’t mean that the season would change - certainly not in this weird world where seasons could last for years - but she could tell that the days had been getting a bit colder lately.

Not that they were cold yet. Even for someone who had grown up in Menagerie. But if the people here said autumn was coming, she’d believe them; for all their faulty views about pretty much everything related to women and justice, they knew more about their world than her team or Blake herself did.

Not that that changed anything anyway; Team RWBY had made it through the frozen ‘lands beyond the Wall’ without much trouble. In hindsight, the whining from Weiss about having to eat ice spiders had been the worst, and that had been more of an annoyance than an actual problem. Blake had gone through worse roughing it in the wilderness with the White Fang.

Slightly colder mornings actually made working out in the training yard more enjoyable. Less sweat, and less need to drink, she thought as she grabbed a new jug of freshly boiled water and broke the seal. Taking a swallow, she chuckled - the caution about poison had probably improved the health of most of the nobles, seeing as they took more care about what they ate and drank.

She put the jug down so it was clearly visible from the training area; keeping an eye on your food and drink was a great way to train situational awareness while sparring. Focusing too much on your opponent was a lethal weakness in a real fight. Then she stretched and vaulted over the fence. 

Across the yard from her, Yang was waiting with her customary, confident grin. If she hadn’t been wearing Ember Celica, she’d have been cracking her knuckles; Blake knew her partner. “Ready?” Blake asked.

“Always!” Yang called back, her grin growing a bit toothier - and cockier.

Blake dashed forward, drawing Gambol Shroud in a fraction of a second. 

Yang met her head-on, charging forward, hands trailing behind her like a scene out of Ninjas in Love.

Blake forced herself to focus on the fight and threw herself to the side an instant before they clashed, leaving a clone in her place. She hit the ground and jumped, her weapon rising as she flew through the air.

Yang smashed her leg into the clone and veered to the other side, sliding over the sand and twisting just in time to deflect both Gambol Shroud’s blade and sheath with her fists as her knee flew up to smash into Blake’s stomach.

Blake let a clone meet the knee and pushed back, somersaulting through the air to gain some distance, but only managed to clear enough space so she was back on the ground and in a crouch before Yang reached her. It was enough, though, to drop in a split and let both her partner’s left hook and the spinning kick that followed it pass over her head. She twisted on the ground, lashing out with her leg in a sweep, but Yang jumped over it and tried to tackle her.

Blake let her hug yet another clone and rolled away, then reversed course to tackle Yang from the back, trying to wrap Gambol Shroud’s ribbon around her neck.

It had been a mistake. Yang caught the ribbon with one gauntlet and used her greater strength to flip them around, ending up straddling Blake, one fist hitting her forehead hard enough to make her feel it. “Boom!”

Blake blinked. Technically, her Aura could take more than one such blow, even enhanced by a shotgun blast with Dust rounds. But that wouldn’t change that she had failed to pull through with her move while Yang had landed a direct hit. “Good fight,” she said.

“Yeah, good fight!” Yang beamed at her. “Almost had me choking with that ribbon.”

“Almost only counts with grenades and in boule,” Blake replied.

“Boules?” Yang looked confused for a moment.”

“A game where you throw steel balls so they land as close as possible to a target.”

“Oh?”

“It’s a bit boring for a Huntress,” Blake elaborated. “Mostly played by kids at the beach in Menagerie.”

“You need to take me there once we’re back,” Yang said.

“Sure. And you need to get off me now,” Blake reminded her.

“Heh, right!” Yang grinned some more and got off her with a smooth motion that looked like she was dismounting her bike and had her raise gracefully into standing.

Not to be outdone, Blake used a kipp-up move to join her.

“Come on, sis!” Ruby yelled. “Move so I can show Weiss a new move!”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t push!” Yang yelled back. But she did start walking towards the fence where they had kept the water - which no one had touched; Blake had kept an eye on it - and Blake followed her.

“Behold, Weiss, my latest special move! I call it the Scattering Reaper!”

Blake turned her head just in time to see Ruby vanish in a cloud of petals that surged towards Weiss, flowed around the three glyphs her teammate created at once, and coalesced on top of Weiss into Ruby with Crescent Rose already swinging down - and hit another glyph that appeared right above the ducking Weiss.

The glyph shattered, but it gave Weiss enough time to parry the scythe with Myrtenaster - a move Ser Barristan had taught them, Blake noted - and Ruby scattered into petals again to avoid the riposte from her partner.

“She’s getting better at conserving momentum when she uses her Semblance,” Yang commented. “But it makes her predictable if people can see her swing before she vanishes.”

“She can alter how she reappears,” Blake pointed out as Ruby did exactly that - the petals reformed into her, but rotated to the side so her swing avoided the next glyph Weiss had created and sent the girl flying across the courtyard into the already battered wall at the end.

“Sorry!” Ruby yelled.

“Not yet!” Weiss retorted. “You aren’t.”

The next exchange saw Weiss create three glyphs to cover herself from all angles - and a fourth behind Ruby that accelerated her jump back to avoid Myrtenaster into a flight which saw her plough through the ground for five metres.

“Ow!”

“Hah! Now you’re sorry!”

“Yeah, that move needs some more training,” Yang said. “But if you combine those two moves…”

“You mean have her scatter after being accelerated?” That would allow Ruby to use her Semblance to rapidly rush an enemy and then come out swinging her scythe with all the boosted speed from the glyph.

“Yeah. Ruby would probably call it Scatter Gun or something.”

And it would likely leave as much of a mess as a scatter gun using dust-enhanced ammunition. Blake slowly nodded. Overkill here, but useful back on Remnant. And maybe here as well, if they were ever facing some of those beasts from the East they had read about. Or magic users.

“That was so impressive!”

“Yes!”

“And here are the munchkins!” Yang grinned at Bran and Arya. “Are you talking about Ruby and Weiss or Blake and me?”

Blake tensed and kept an eye on Nymeria and Hunter - both of those beasts from the North were trying to appear harmless and distracted by the jerky in the basket next to the water jug, but they couldn’t fool her.

“All of you!” Bran replied.

Yang snorted while Blake shook her head at his apparent, yet transparently false, sincerity.

“Bran!” Arya frowned at her brother before smiling at them. “It was an impressive, if not as spectacular, display, my ladies.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to butter us up like that if you didn’t want something,” Yang told her with a chuckle while Blake used Gambol Shroud to retrieve the basket before the beasts could rip it open.

“Well…” Bran glanced at Arya, who nudged him with a frown. “We’ve heard about your retinue.”

Oh. Blake suppressed a sigh.

Yang didn’t. She shook her head. “Jon talked, didn’t he?”

“Not to us!” Bran replied at once.

“We managed to overhear him talking to Brienne,” Arya said. “He needs to work on paying attention, as you told us, Lady Blake.” She grinned.

Blake ignored the amused glance Yang shot her. Yeah, she had said something like that to them. And they had apparently taken it to heart. 

“You’re too young to join any such group,” Yang told them.

“For now,” Arya said. “But we won’t stay too young forever.”

“And squires serve their knights and train before they are old enough to fight,” Bran added. “If you have knights as your retainers, you need squires as well.”

“And female knights need female squires,” Arya said.

Blake felt like she was being tag-teamed here. A glance at her partner showed that she wasn’t the only one, though Yang seemed more amused than concerned about the potential conflict with House Stark over recruiting three of Lord Stark’s children for their retinue.

Yang seemed undaunted. “That’s right, but all those squires had permission from their parents to, ah, squire for a knight.”

“Of course!” A familiar grin appeared on Bran’s face, and Blake suppressed a sigh again. 

“We haven’t actually finalised what kind of structure our retinue will have,” she told the kids. At the puzzled expressions, she added: “Whether there will be knights and squires or something else, like a brother- and sisterhood. We’ll have to discuss that with Jon and the others first.” Before Bran and Arya ran to Lord Eddard and claimed that they had been offered to become squires, and how it would be an insult if he didn’t permit them to join. Or started a rumour about this and let Lord Eddard ask them about it. No, that kind of subtle manoeuvring was probably beyond the kids still. Probably - Bran and Arya had proven to be quite clever on occasion. “So, don’t go pestering Lord Eddard about this, you hear us?”

Both looked mulish - and their beasts growled a bit, causing Blake to tense up again, but after a moment, Bran nodded. “Alright. We’ll wait.”

“Bran!” Arya hissed.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her away, talking in a low voice that Blake had no trouble picking up. “Arya! You heard them! We can’t rush this!”

“But…”

“We’ll ask Jon to tell us as soon as he knows more!”

“Right.”

“They’ll be trouble, right?” Yang asked.

Blake nodded. At least, it was the kind of trouble Team RWBY could easily handle.

“Ow! Weiss! That was mean!”

“You were trying to take my head off!”

“I wasn’t!”

Once their leader and her partner had stopped tearing up the yard and scaring those not yet used to Huntresses sparring, of course.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“Yeah, that looks good.” 

Yang Xiao Long wasn’t lying. The foot-pushed bicycle Gendry had built was nice and seemed pretty practical. A metal frame with the seat and the wheels made of wood. “Did you test it?”

“Of course, my lady!” Gendry said quickly.

“The foolish boy crashed into the wall twice,” Master Mott added with a snort. “The yard is not the place to test this.”

“I didn’t want to make it public before showing it to you, my lady.” Gendry sounded defensive.

Mott scoffed. “The guards already saw you trying it.”

“Well… I had to test it somewhere…”

Yang snorted. “Well, if it survived two crashes, it should be sturdy enough to use on the street. That was what Dad told me about my bike, Bumblebee, when I was doing test drives.”

Gendry perked up at that. “Really?”

“Yes,” she replied. “I wiped out a few times testing her.” Which had been no big deal for Yang thanks to her Aura, but Gendry didn’t have Aura. And while this bike wouldn’t go nearly as fast as Bumblebee, it wasn’t exactly safe. “Though you better be careful testing the bike on the hills in the city. Especially the brakes. Maybe wear a helmet.” Head injuries were the worst.

“A helmet?”

Why was he confused? Did they only wear helmets in combat? They actually might do that… “So you don’t break your skull when you crash,” she explained. And as everyone riding a bike knew, that was ‘when’, not ‘if’.

Gendry looked a bit less happy now.

“Anyway, it looks good, and you should be able to test it outside.” She shrugged. “So… Jon mentioned you were interested in becoming a retainer.”

“Ah…” He blushed a little. “That was idle talk. I mean, I am a smith, not a warrior.”

She made a point of eyeing him, in all his towering, muscled glory, still sweaty from the heat of the forge. “I don’t think you’d have trouble learning how to fight.” The way he could lift and swing things, he had the muscles to overpower a lot of people. Anyone with experience would be able to take him out quickly, but raw strength counted for a lot; Yang knew that from experience. At least without factoring in Aura.

“You’re supposed to craft blades, not die to them, boy!” Mott snapped.

“But we’re not just looking for warriors,” Yang went on. “Warriors need people who make and repair their weapons and armour.” Huntresses learnt how to do that themselves at Beacon or earlier, but even so, not all did it. Many would prefer to hire an expert weaponsmith or gunsmith if they had the money.

“You can do that without swearing yourself into service,” Mott said.

That was true as well, Yang knew.

“But if I were serving as a retainer, I could save money to buy my own smithy at a later time,” Gendry pointed out.

Mott scoffed at that. “But you wouldn’t be able to build a reputation among your clients if you’re serving as a noble’s smith.”

“Serving as a smith for the Four Maidens would be all the reputation I need, Master!”

“You already have that reputation - you were almost poisoned for it!”

Yang winced, remembering that day. And that awful night. Worst cramps she had ever suffered. But this was about Gendry. “We could put you on retainer, too,” she said. “Pay you so you’re available if we need you.”

“You have but to ask and I’ll serve you, my lady!” Gendry blurted out. “It’s a blessing by the Smith to do so!”

Yeah… Yang winced again. “But it’s also a good idea to learn how to fight. If only so you can defend yourself. And I think your father would have wanted that.” 

“Oh.” Gendry didn’t seem to have considered that, and Yang felt a bit guilty about using the King’s name like that, but if Gendry learned how to wield the weapons he made, he would be safer. Between being the bastard son of the late King Robert and a friend of Yang’s team, he had enemies aplenty, as Blake would say.

Mott grumbled but didn’t comment, so Yang took that as an agreement about the training, at least. 

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So! We've been talking about your proposal…” Ruby started to say.

“It was just some idle thoughts, my ladies!” Jon blurted out.

He must have been brooding again, Yang thought. Probably convinced himself the idea was a mistake. She shook her head at him, but that only seemed to make him more sure that this was his fault or something - he was perched on his seat in their chambers as if he expected to be forcefully ejected any moment now. And through the window.

“...and we decided that we would get a retinue,” Ruby finished with that mixture of frown and pout that she did so well. Not that it would work on Yang, of course. Though Weiss and Blake hadn't been immunised yet.

She glanced over at her partner, who was standing watch for spies at the wall. And looking for crows or ravens listening in, however unlikely that was. Not that it mattered much right now - whatever they discussed here would be public soon enough. Probably.

“Really?” Jon asked.

“That is great news, my ladies,” Brienne said with a wide smile that showed her slightly crooked teeth.

“Yeah. We definitely need your help,” Yang said with a matching grin.

“Though we're not yet certain what would be the best way to organise our retinue,” Weiss added.

Both Jon and Brienne looked slightly confused.

“We're not sure if we should found an order of knights - well, we're pretty sure we want to found an order of knights, but we're not sure about the details, rules and name,” Ruby said.

“I thought we settled on ‘The Order of the RWBY’,” Yang said, looking as innocently as she managed as she smiled at her little sister. “Or the RWBY Order.” Kind of a nice counterpart to Team RWBY since ‘Order RWBY’ sounded like some four-way combo special move Ruby had come up with.

“I would be honoured to join such an order, my lady,” Brienne told Ruby.

“Yes, I mean, I would as well, if you'll have me,” Jon said. “But… I am no knight.”

“Nor am I.” Brienne's expression fell.

“You're close enough, as far as we're concerned,” Yang told them with a smile.

“That's actually an issue we would like to discuss with you, and then with the High Septon,” Weiss said. “It takes a knight to knight someone, as far as we know.”

Yang nodded. A knight - or a king, but they didn't have a king available right now. Tommen didn't really count - who would want to be knighted by a little boy? “So, we need a faithful knight to knight you. Can't have an order of knights without knights.”

“I am certain that the High Septon can help us out there,” Blake said with a slight smirk.

“You intend to have us knighted?” Jon looked surprised. Or shocked.

As did Brienne, actually.

“That's how it works, right?” Ruby smiled. “You're certainly ready to be knights - you've got the skills and training, Ser Barristan praised your technique, didn't he?”

“Well…” Jon bit his lower lip, blushing.

Ruby turned to Brienne. “And you can best him half the time when you spar.”

“But I haven’t done anything worthy of a knighthood.”

“You've helped us during the Wildfire crisis,” Weiss spoke up with a frown she usually aimed at Ruby when Yang's sister was a bit too self-deprecating. “That is certainly as worthy as the other reasons people get knighted for, like winning a tournament.”

The two still looked unsure, so Yang snorted loudly. “Besides, if we say you are worthy, are you going to argue?”

That shut them up.

“Then that's settled!” Ruby declared. “Now we need to settle on what exactly will be the rules for the RWBY Order!”

Weiss nodded and pulled out a scroll. Of parchment, not a real scroll. “I've written down a few thoughts about that.”

Yang winced. So, that was what Weiss had been doing yesterday afternoon. ‘A few thoughts’ probably meant an entire essay… Well, time to whittle all those rules down to something sensible! 

Yang couldn't really help found an Order she wouldn't be able to join, after all.

*****

 

Chapter 41: Oaths and Obligations

‘Many know the knightly oaths by heart, yet not so many are aware that they have changed considerably over time, and fewer still understand how that happened. A knightly oath was always tied to the customs of its time, and as they changed, so changed the oaths. Sometimes, the wording stayed the same for centuries, but the meaning changed - as should be obvious since what we consider a just punishment underwent a lot of changes over the centuries. A contemporary of the Ruby Order would likely consider our current laws shockingly merciful, for example, being used to a much harsher justice that routinely saw even children executed or sent to the wall for what we would consider petty crime these days. So, as this changed, so did the meaning of a knight's vow change. However, this was a gradual change that most people wouldn't have noticed in the past. 

Other changes were less subtle and slow, and one of the most significant was the change introduced by the Ruby Order to the knightly oaths sworn to the Seven-Who-Are-One. Many knights who were not members of the order still adopted those principles, and one has to credit this development with the Renaissance of Chivalry, as the period following the Succession and before the Age of Firearms is also called in some circles, even though most scholars prefer to focus on the changes to the Faith of the Seven when naming that period.’

• A Treatise On The Ruby Order, by Maester Kennet Bracken

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Ser Barristan Selmy checked his training sword for any nicks and breaks before storing it. Lady Ruby and her friends generally took care not to use their strength in a spar with him and his brothers from the Kingsguard, but sometimes, they were a bit too enthusiastic to fully control themselves. He knew how to parry blows from them - he, too, learned more and refined his technique during those spars - but he had lost two training swords in the months of sparring. 

Others, of course, had lost far more. And Ser Mandon, in a fit of misplaced pride, had sparred with a real blade until it had broken during one of Lady Yang's more reflexive parries when Barristan's brother had tried to be a bit too clever. These days, he was using a training blade like everyone else. Except, of course, Team Ruby when they sparred with each other.

They had done so today as well, and it had been both quite captivating and impressive - and instructive. After trying to follow the movements and attacks of Lady Blake and Lady Weiss when they clashed, keeping one's attention on an opponent without such divine speed and strength almost seemed like child's play.

Truly, he was fortunate to have such a good opportunity to not only keep his skills sharp but to seek ways to improve. As he had been told when he was a squire, no one who sought to become a master of the blade ever stopped learning. Or could ever truly claim to have mastered it. There was always room for further improvement, as Team Ruby so aptly demonstrated - their skill had significantly improved in the months that they had spent in King's Landing. Now, even without their strength and speed, they would fare well against most knights and not account themselves too badly against the Kingsguard.

To think that both Lady Ruby and her sister insisted that their father and uncle were far above them in martial prowess! Ser Barristan couldn't help wishing he could meet those men. Alas, for that to happen, not only would Team Ruby have to find a way home, but Lady Ruby's father and uncle would have to decide to visit King's Landing in return for Barristan’s duty as a Kingsguard kept him at the royal family's side and the home world of Team Ruby most surely was no place for either of his charges to visit. Not when even those much stronger than the four maidens were in danger there because they would be fighting monsters whose strength surpassed their own and whose numbers were legion.

Not for the first time, and despite the shame he felt at harbouring such selfish and dishonourable thoughts, Ser Barristan couldn't help wondering if it wouldn't be better for the realm if the four maidens never found a way home - as long as that meant that none of those Grimm ever found a way to Westeros.

But he had let his thoughts wander long enough; it seemed everyone else had already left the training yard. Everyone but young Jon Snow, he corrected himself - the boy was still fiddling with his sword in a corner of the yard. If Lady Yang were present, she would likely call him out for brooding; she disapproved of the boy's habit of spending time on thinking troubled thoughts.

But he wasn’t Lady Yang. And he understood that sometimes, a man had to ponder things, both good and bad, to sort out his life. And the boy needed to sort out his life. He was a bastard raised like a noble. Given the boy’s upbringing and talent for the sword, and his obvious loyalty to his family, Barristan would have expected Lord Eddard to grant him a position in his household. Maybe even a keep after honourable service.

But the boy spent more time with Lady Ruby and her friends than with his family, or so it seemed. Was he still pining after Lady Yang? Barristan didn’t care much for the wagging tongues of the servants and nobles that spread gossip, but even if he hadn’t overheard that particular tale, he would have known that this love was doomed to remain unrequited. Not because of the gap in standing between the two; anyone who knew the four maidens was aware of how little they truly cared for that, but because none of the four had shown any interest in marriage. Or men.

And yet, old as he might be, Barristan had been young once, and had trained many a young squire or knight, so he was aware just how much a boy might struggle with his feelings - and how desperate they might find themselves if left to their own devices - which, in hindsight, would also explain why Lady Yang took so much care to try and keep the boy from brooding.

Of course, for all her good intentions, her attempts to help the boy were likely to make his mood worse instead, reminding him of what he desired most and how he couldn’t have it. Barristan was in a much better position to help the boy sort out his life.

It was a testament to the boy’s mood that he didn’t notice Barristan until he was almost close enough to touch him. Lady Yang would call that out as ‘situational awareness’, or lack thereof, no doubt.

“Ser Barristan!” the boy exclaimed as he shot to his feet. “How can I help you?”

Others - especially the late Ser Jaime - would have made a jape about being here to help the boy. He wasn’t like them. “What is on your mind?”

“Nothing,” the boy snapped at once.

Barristan raised his eyebrows. “Truly? You were lost in thoughts about nothing for so long, everyone else has already left without you noticing?”

“You’re still here, Ser Barristan.”

“And did you notice me until I approached you?” Barristan took care to smile gently.

The boy blushed at that.

Barristan let out a small sigh as he leaned against the fence next to the boy. It had been rebuilt twice in its entirety, and strengthened each time since Lady Ruby and her friends had started training here, so it didn’t even creak under the weight of his body and armour, though he knew it would not last overly long, either. Then again, not even a stone wall would last much longer, and wooden fences were easier to replace. “What are you thinking about? I do not claim to be very wise, but I have lived a long life, and I may be able to give you a piece of advice or two. I was once a boy worried about my future myself.”

“I’m not…” The boy swallowed what he had been about to say, pouting for a moment before he sighed. Louder and more dramatically than Barristan had, letting his shoulders sag. “I… I have received an offer, a very generous one, and I am not sure if I deserve to accept it.”

“Oh?” Had someone offered to squire the boy? Or had a noble come to the conclusion that having the bastard son of the Lord Regent in an honoured position in his household would be of advantage to their family?

The boy sighed again. “Lady Ruby and her friends, they… Well, it wasn’t originally their idea; Lady Brienne and I, I have to admit, approached them, after talking with a few others, about their lack of a retinue.”

Barristan nodded to encourage him to go on. Things were getting clearer, though he still lacked the entire picture.

“So, they agreed, in principle, but they had to discuss this amongst themselves. So they did - and they decided that they would found an order of knights.”

Barristan’s eyebrows rose. That was a surprise. He had expected Lady Ruby to get a handful of retainers - guards, maybe sworn swords. They didn’t need guards for themselves, of course, but they could not be everywhere, and they had a proven need for people they could trust with all sorts of tasks. But to found an order of knights? That was unheard of. 

The boy nodded with a grimace. “I told them I was no knight, I wasn’t worthy, but they disagreed.”

Ah. He didn’t quite understand the gravity of this news; he was too young and too concerned with what it meant for him. 

But this went far beyond the boy’s fate. An order of knights. The Kingsguard was the last such order, and the most famous. The most infamous, of course, would be the Noble and Puissant Order of the Warrior's Sons, having been disbanded centuries ago by King Jaehaerys I Targaryen after they had raised arms against him with the rest of the Faith Militant. And now Lady Ruby and her friends - the Four Blessed Maidens, as decreed by the High Septon, messengers of the Seven Who Are One - wished to found another Order of Knights.

Many, especially amongst the Faith, would consider this the refounded Faith Militant. But so would the Court.

“So…” The boy’s voice interrupted his thoughts. He was looking at Barristan for guidance with an earnest hope in his eyes.

Barristan took a deep breath. He could ponder what this meant for the kingdom and his sworn duty later; he owed the boy his honest counsel. “You think you’re not worthy to become a knight.”

The boy nodded.

“I assume the Maidens disagreed.”

He blushed in response. “They did, yes. But I haven’t even been a squire - how could I be knighted? I haven’t done anything to earn such an honour. And I’m…” He trailed off, pressing his lips together.

“Any man can be knighted, no matter their birth,” Barristan told him sternly. That was the foundation of Chivalry.

“But only after they have proven themselves worthy of this honour!” the boy retorted. “I haven’t done anything.”

“You have earned the Maiden’s trust,” Barristan pointed out.

“Yes, but…” The Boy bit his lower lip.

“How many men do you think could say the same?” Barristan smiled. “No more than a handful, I would say.” He hesitated, then added: “Do you think they trust the Lord Regent?”

“Of course!” The boy was loyal, no doubt.

“Truly?” Barristan tilted his head.

The boy opened his mouth, then closed it again. Though his expression told Barristan enough. 

“Lord Eddard is widely known as one of the most honourable men in the realm. And yet, the Maidens trust you more than they trust him.” Barristan wouldn’t have to betray their and the Lord Regent’s confidence; it was no secret at court that Lady Ruby and her friends disagreed with several of the Lord Regent’s actions, most of all the use of torture. “You have earned their trust,” he repeated himself.

“But that doesn’t mean I’ve earned a knighthood!”

“Do you think proving yourself so honourable and trustworthy that the Four Maidens offer you a knighthood is less impressive than winning a tournament or killing a few bandits?” He inclined his head again. “I will not disparage how many of my fellow knights have earned their knighthood, but the true test whether or not someone is worthy of being a knight comes when he has to live up to their oaths.” And he was aware of how many knights slipped up there. “Do you think you will betray the oath you’ll swear as a knight? To be brave, to be just, to defend the young and innocent and protect all women?” 

“I don’t know,” the boy blurted out. “I don’t want to, but… I don’t know if I can.”

“Even the best of us will not be perfect; all we can do is strive to do our best,” Barristan told him. He certainly had failed to uphold some of his vows when he had served King Aerys II - and yet, to uphold one vow would have meant breaking another oath, and the Kingsguard served the King.

The boy stared at him. He probably thought Barristan was perfect. Well, he wasn’t. 

“I understand.” The boy sighed once again. “But… can they do that? Grant knighthoods to others?”

“A Knight swears to the Seven. The Maidens are the Blessed of the Seven. Who would argue against their right to knight people they consider worthy?” Even those who doubted the High Septon’s declarations - and Ser Barristan knew the Four Maidens well enough to dismiss the accusations that their power came from magic instead of the gods - were aware that no one else at Court or in the realm could stand against them.

But many would question, in private, at least at first, what would be seen as the return of the Faith Militant. But that was not something he could discuss with the boy.

The boy nodded with a shy smile. “Thank you, Ser Barristan. I think I know what I shall do now.”

Barristan nodded, returning the boy’s smile. Though as soon as the boy turned away to leave the yard, Barristan’s expression grew serious. This development would spell trouble for the Court; he knew it. And he also knew that there wasn’t much, if anything, he could do about it. He was sworn to serve the King, after all, and that bound him.

He could only hope that no one of importance would do anything foolish and escalate matters. Alas, he feared that not every noble at Court would realise how foolish it was to oppose the gods and those blessed by them.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So!” Ruby Rose clapped her hands together, then glanced at Blake. Her friend nodded, which meant they were in the clear. No spies around. She cleared her throat. “We’re going to found an Order of Knights - the RWBY Order. This is going to be how we make sure things won’t go bad once we leave, so we’re going to do it right!”

“Yes.” Weiss agreed. “We’ll need a good set of rules and regulations for the order, to ensure it will not be taken over by corrupt people and used for nefarious means in the future. I’ve prepared a proposal for that.” She put a few scrolls of parchment on the table and flattened them.

They were covered in text. Densely written text, Ruby saw. Yang groaned softly next to her.

Weiss ignored her, though Ruby saw that her partner’s smile grew a bit more toothy. “Rules of conduct to prevent abuse of power. Regulations to ensure there are no easy ways to embezzle money. Not merely adequate accounting standards, but checks and inspections to ensure the regulations are followed.” She pointed at different parts on the parchment.

“We’re founding an order of knights, not a business, Weiss,” Yang complained.

“It’s basically the same, Yang - in fact, the potential for corruption and abuse of power is even greater than if we were to found a business - although I’ve also covered various ways to finance the order so they do not have to rely on donations; even the money Blake won at the tournament won’t last forever, after all.” She held up another piece of parchment. “It’s not a real business plan, I didn’t have time for a decent proposal, but I have sketched the potential ways to earn money in Westeros.”

“Uh…” Ruby winced. Her partner was great. Smart, experienced, stylish. But this sounded more than a bit… too much? She peeked at the first page. Yeah, she doubted anyone else but Weiss understood exactly what all those sentences were trying to say.

“Wait!” Blake spoke up with a frown. “You’re planning to have the order be involved in business?”

“They need secure funding to last,” Weiss replied. 

“If a knightly order also has business interests, that creates an incentive to leverage its power to support those interests,” Blake pointed out. “That’s an incentive for corruption.”

“That’s why we need a tight set of rules and regulations and the mechanics to enforce both. If the order is dependent on donations from outsiders, it will find itself beholden to them - and tempted to act in their donors’ interest. Like politicians,” Weiss replied. “The order will need to be financially independent to avoid being turned into a tool for the highest bidder. We cannot rely on donations from the wealthy or the donours will soon control the order. And we cannot rely on small donations from the smallfolk - even if they had the coin to spare, they cannot transfer money to the order. The Faith might help out here, but that would likely create a conflict of interest with the Faith’s own finances and grant it greater leverage over the order. The order will need independent and secure sources of income.”

“But that means it will likely start pursuing its own interest - like every other faction at court here,” Blake said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“The odds of that happening can be lowered with a strict set of rules, as I have stated before.”

“Guys!” Ruby raised her hands. “Stop it!”

“Ruby! This is an important point!” Weiss frowned at her.

“If the order we found turns corrupt, we might as well not do it at all,” Blake said, also frowning at Ruby.

“Guys!” Ruby repeated herself. “First, we need to decide what the order will be doing, then we can start thinking about how that will be done!”

“Yeah,” her sister agreed, nodding emphatically. “You need a target before you start shooting.”

“Of course you would word it like that,” Weiss grumbled, but she was conceding the point by not arguing further - Ruby knew her partner.

“So!” She cleared her throat again. “What do we want our order to do?”

“Keeping our friends safe when we’ve returned home,” Weiss said.

“Protect the people,” Blake added.

“Kick butt when needed,” Yang said with a grin.

Weiss rolled her eyes. “That’s included in the need to protect people, I believe.”

“Kick butt when needed, with style,” Yang replied. Before Weiss could argue further - she was already opening her mouth, Ruby saw - Yang went on: “They should inspire people to do good as well.”

Ruby nodded. That was a good point. “Leading by example,” she quoted - or misquoted, she wasn’t entirely sure; it had been months, closer to a year, after all - Professor Oobleck.

“Exactly!” Yang pointed at her.

Weiss frowned but slowly nodded. “I can’t argue against that, though that seems more like a side effect.”

“In any case, the order needs to be powerful enough to do what’s necessary to protect our friends and uphold our - and its - ideals,” Blake said.

“Yes.” Ruby nodded again.

“And that means we’ll have to plan for a significant growth in membership,” Blake said. “Our reputation alone won’t be enough to build and sustain the influence it needs to fulfil its purpose; the order will need enough members to be able to actually accomplish enough to become renowned and to have ties to enough families to keep it safe from vengeful nobles who might carry a grudge against us.”

“You mean Lord Tywin,” Yang said. “Tall order.”

“Having ties to noble families will also raise the risk of the order taking sides in political struggles,” Weiss pointed out with a frown at Blake.

“Taking sides is the point,” Ruby said. “The Order needs to do what’s right, and that means making a stand and taking the side of those in need of protection.”

“And what when it’s two noble families feuding? If it’s just a power struggle?” Weiss asked.

“In that case, the order should stay neutral,” Blake said.

“That needs to be a rule,” Weiss said. “I’ve covered that in my proposal.”

The proposal that was so long, Ruby would never be able to remember all the rules in it. And that would be embarrassing for a founder of the order. “I think we can cover that with a simple rule that they should only fight to protect people, not for power.”

“Many will claim to fight to protect people when they’re only fighting for their own goals,” Blake pointed out with a scowl.

Weiss agreed with that. They were probably both thinking of the White Fang. 

Ruby wasn’t going to touch that. She shook her head instead. “We have to trust people to make their own calls.”

“It would be good to have an ideal of erring on the side of caution,” Blake said. “To reduce the risk of being used as a tool in a power struggle.”

“Yes.” Ruby nodded. “They should focus on the smallfolk, anyway. Those need protection the most.”

“And that will make them popular with the smallfolk,” Blake agreed.

“And the Faith,” Weiss added. “In fact, aligning the order with the Faith should be a good way to keep it neutral - as the Faith is.”

That made sense. “Yes.” Ruby nodded.

“But what about Tommen and Myrcella?” Weiss asked. “They need protection as well. And the Kingsguard will probably not be enough for that.”

“If things are stable, that might be enough,” Blake said. “Though yes, this has to be considered. If there’s a coup or a rebellion, then the smallfolk are likely to suffer as well.”

“The order should protect all children,” Ruby said. She pressed her lips together when she remembered the poor spy kids they hadn’t been able to protect or save. They wouldn’t let that happen again. “Put that down on the list.”

“In my proposal, there is a section covering the founding and maintaining of adequate facilities for juvenile delinquents," Weiss said. “Though that assumes sufficient and secure funding.”

Ruby sighed. This was getting so complicated! “Alright, let’s start a new list of simple, basic rules that are totally necessary for our order. First, protect the innocent. Smallfolk, children.”

“Women,” Weiss added.

“Just call them ‘those who cannot protect themselves’,” Blake suggested.

“Given the sexist attitudes, I feel women need to be mentioned explicitly - they are part of a knight’s oath, in any case, and our order’s rules should be compatible with the existing chivalric customs.”

“Colour me suspicious about the knights here protecting all women,” Yang spoke up.

“As usual, enforcing such rules is a problem,” Weiss said. “Hence there need to be both rules and institutions to enforce them.”

“Let’s just start with the rules,” Ruby repeated herself. “They can’t be too complicated or people will mix them up.”

“Or they will end up contradicting themselves,” Blake said.

“And they need some flexibility so they won’t be trapped in some legal loop or what,” Yang added. “Members need to be able to do what’s needed. And we shouldn’t just lay down rules for everyone without their opinions being heard.”

“But we need to determine the foundations of the order. It will bear our team’s name, so we have to ensure that it will be and stay something we can stand behind,” Weiss pointed out. “We can’t just leave everything to the others.”

“Yes.” Ruby sighed. This was going to be a long discussion. And they hadn’t even discussed how they could found the order so it was all legal and accepted yet.

She should have grabbed more cakes from the kitchen.

*****

“...so, a member must swear to be brave, just, protect the children, the innocent and those who cannot protect themselves - that’s the existing oath a knight swears, and we’ll copy that.”

Weiss Schnee nodded at Ruby’s words as she noted them down - even though she had already written them down on page two of her proposal. More or less; hers had been a bit more detailed. But Team RWBY had decided to start from scratch and build up.

“And they also should swear to do what’s right even if it’s against the orders of a local lord,” Ruby went on.

“What about the King?” Blake asked.

Weiss winced. That was a very delicate subject.

“If the King is evil, they should be fighting him,” Ruby said.

“Rebels generally claim that the authority they are fighting is evil,” Weiss pointed out.

“Often, they are right,” Blake shot back.

“Guys!” Ruby shook her head. “We can’t have the RWBY Order follow evil orders, I mean, ignore evil if it’s ordered by lords - or the King. Like Huntresses, our knights aren’t soldiers who obey orders blindly. They need to judge every situation and act following their conscience.”

That was a very nice rule - in theory. In practice, though… Weiss shook her head. “If we stipulate that the order is, ultimately, not loyal to the King, the court won’t be happy.”

“The same court that is made up of nobles who went to war against the Mad King?” Yang asked with a snort.

“People in power are often hypocritical. Rarely do they want to have the same tools they used to get into power used against them,” Blake said.

“Yes.” Weiss was well aware of that. Still, Blake probably was a bit too generalising there. “But the order will face a lot of scrutiny…” She noticed Ruby blinking. “...People will keep a close eye on them, trying to find faults and reasons to attack it. And they will suspect it will be trying to overthrow the King.”

“If the King’s evil, he should be overthrown,” Ruby said. “That’s what they did.”

“And we don’t want people to ‘just follow orders’,” Blake added. “Not even - or especially not - those of the order’s leaders.”

Weiss didn’t think she was going to win that argument. She wasn’t certain that she wanted to, anyway. However, she knew there would be problems with that kind of rule. “So… what will the oath be?”

“Uh…” Ruby grimaced. “They will swear to uphold justice even if it’s against the law?”

Weiss shook her head. “They still follow the concept that the King’s word is law.”

“As long as they like what he’s saying,” Yang added with a snort.

“We cannot have knights swear to uphold justice without defining what justice is. Many people here would execute kids and think that’s justice,” Blake spat.

Weiss nodded in agreement. “We should note down a comprehensive definition of justice.”

“You mean, we would be the higher authority than the King?” Blake asked.

It was Weiss’s turn to grimace. That wasn’t a very favourable way to word it, but it was, nevertheless, mostly correct. Team RWBY was, effectively, above the king by right of might. But their order wouldn’t have that might once they had left.

“They swear to the Seven. The Seven are gods, and they are above the King,” Ruby said. “We don’t need a higher authority than that, do we?”

“No. But that means the Faith would define what the gods want,” Blake said.

Weiss nodded. This would subordinate the order to the Faith. And while the High Septon apparently had turned over a new leaf after Team RWBY’s arrival, he had been known to be corrupt before. “And the Faith is made up of people. Handing them that power will risk corrupting them - and through them, the order.”

“But we have to trust someone!” Ruby objected. “We won’t stay here forever.”

Weiss certainly wouldn’t stay in this world forever!

“And even if we try to keep it all in the Order, one day, someone we don’t know will be their leader,” Yang said.

“That’s why we need a strict set of rules and a solid method of checks and balances.” Weiss grabbed her third scroll again.

“Weiss!” Ruby shook her head. “According to your proposal, we would need to recruit half a dozen people just to check the books for the order!”

“That’s not true! We only need three for the accounts. The others would be to check their work and investigate any discrepancies,” Weiss protested. “And that presumes a rather robust rate of growth, which might not happen.”

“Really? You think all those people rushing out to help us when we ask the High Septon for a favour wouldn’t rush to join an order founded by us?” Yang grinned. “We’ll have to beat them off with sticks so we won’t get overrun.”

Weiss gritted her teeth. That was… unfortunately very plausible. But that only strengthened her arguments for a comprehensive set of rules! The bigger the organisation, the more rules it needed. And she wasn’t willing to let all her hard work go to waste, either. “Then we need structures that can handle such an influx of people.”

“Or we don’t let just everyone in,” Yang countered. “We need to have some requirements.”

“If we want to let all our friends who are interested into the Order, we can’t have too strict requirements,” Ruby pointed out. “Or Gendry won’t make it.”

“We can found the order with our friends and then expand it later,” Yang said.

“But that would be hypocritical!” Ruby protested with a frown that slid into a pout.

“I’d say it would be pragmatic.” Yang chuckled at her own remark.

“We are still on the general oaths. Can we finish that before we switch to the requirements for acceptance into the order?” Weiss asked through slightly clenched teeth. This was one of the worst team meetings she had ever attended.

“Yeah. So…” Ruby smiled. “We just need to add something about not putting anyone above the Seven, right? The knightly oaths are fine - if they’re enforced.”

“That would be their main fault, yes.”

That would still be a political landmine, but it was probably better than turning the order into a tool for a bad king. “They will swear to the Seven not to put a man’s desire above the will of the Seven?” Weiss suggested.

“Yeah, sounds good.”

“Or ‘I will swear to follow the Seven before anyone else’?” Blake cocked her head.

“Might need some clarification,” Yang said.

Weiss agreed. It was the same as with contracts: One had to be as precise as possible, or people would twist and stretch the wording as much as possible to their advantage.

“Swear to obey the will of the Seven before the orders of everyone else?” Yang shrugged.

It would still grant a lot of power to the High Septon or anyone else who could define the will of the gods, but that was probably inevitable. Weiss nodded and wrote it down. They could ask an experienced knight like Ser Barristan later if this would work out.

“So! Next oath: To be humble and kind!” Ruby said.

“Wouldn’t that exclude Yang?” Weiss asked with a toothy grin.

“Hey! I am very kind! So kind, I’m not going to kick your ass for that remark!”

“Kind, yes, but no one ever called you humble, Yang,” Weiss’s partner chimed in.

“Hey!”

Blake sighed, and Weiss felt herself flush a little. She should have stayed more professional. This was an important task they had to finish, after all. She cleared her throat. “A rule against ostentatious lifestyles should also be present. We’ll have people from all stations in Westeros join, and if rich nobles can flaunt their wealth without any limit, it won’t be good for the order’s morale and cohesion.”

“Right. So… humble and kind, and no showing off luxury,” Ruby said.

“What kind of luxury? Westeros or ours?” Yang asked.

“Westeros’s standard. And we should keep it flexible so that as norms and standards change, the order can adapt,” Weiss said.

“Good idea!” Ruby nodded.

“So, be humble as well.” Weiss made a note.

“Do you think we can find seven things they need to swear? For the Seven Gods?” Ruby asked.

That was another good idea. Weiss nodded. “Let’s make a list. They already have a few set in their knightly oaths. Brave for the Warrior. Just for the Father. Defend the children and the innocent for the Mother. Humble for the…”

“Crone. Old people make you feel humble. Like the Headmaster,” Ruby said.

“Humble for the Crone. Kind for… the Maiden?” Weiss looked around.

“Might feel a bit pretentious, given they call us the Four Maidens,” Yang said.

“But we try to be kind,” Ruby pointed out.

“Kind for the Maiden. Singular,” Weiss noted. “That leaves the Smith and the Stranger.”

“Hard-working for the Smith,” Yang said. “Working in a forge is hard work.”

Weiss hadn’t made Myrtenaster herself, but she had worked on her weapon often enough to know that. “Right.”

“And the Stranger…”

“Swearing to grant people the Stranger’s mercy seems a bit… misleading,” Blake said.

“We could word it against being cruel.” Weiss looked at the others.

“Maybe. Still a bit… violent.” Ruby didn’t look convinced. “We don’t want our knights to eagerly kill people.”

“We don’t want them to shy away from doing what they need to do, either,” Yang said.

“I don’t think the locals have too much trouble with killing,” Blake said with a wry expression.

“Right.” Ruby nodded. “Be merciful when killing? Sounds like a contraction.”

It did. And yet… “How about ‘In the name of the Stranger, don’t be cruel’?” Weiss knew it wasn’t a good proposal before she finished.

This would take more time than she had thought. Even after she had realised her proposal wouldn’t pass.

Well, it wasn’t as if they had other pressing meetings to attend.

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

Blake Belladonna suppressed a yawn when she entered the training yard. She shouldn’t have gone on tunnel patrol, as Yang had taken to call it, after they finally finished their discussion last night. But… If she had paid a bit more attention, perhaps she might have been able to stop the children in the tunnel before they killed a guard…

She shook her head. She shouldn’t blame herself; she had done all she could. And yet, she felt guilty.

Behind her, Yang yawned. Loudly. Blake’s partner had stayed up until she had returned from her ‘patrol’. Blake refused to feel guilty about that; it had been Yang’s decision. She couldn’t help feeling oddly pleased about the care it showed - although she also felt a bit annoyed that Yang was mothering her. Then again, her partner had always been that weirdly appealing mix of annoying and caring.

Ser Barristan was already present, and Blake narrowed her eyes a little. It wasn’t that rare for the knight to be there before they arrived, but it was certainly a little unusual. And the way he looked up at their arrival, the way he tensed a bit before relaxing… She looked around for spies since Ser Barristan must have something to discuss before the others arrived.

Except for a few crows - and Blake still wasn’t convinced those were potential spies even though, apparently, there were magic ways to see through their eyes and listen through their ears - the coast was clear.

“Good morning, Ser Barristan!” Ruby, of course, was as chipper as ever - she had slept like a log, or so she claimed. 

“Good morning, my ladies.”

“Good morning.” Weiss didn’t sound tired, but that could be deceptive. Blake’s friend was almost as good at hiding how she was doing as Blake herself. Though if Ruby wasn’t hovering around her partner, she was probably fine.

Blake had to suppress another yawn as Ser Barristan waited for them to put down the sealed jug of water and the basket with snacks. And for Ruby to finish the lemon cake she had taken.

“I have heard you were thinking of founding a new chivalric order, my ladies.”

“Yes?” Ruby licked a few crumbs from her lips and nodded. “The RWBY Order! We actually had a few questions for you about the whole thing.”

“Ah?” Ser Barristan looked surprised - and slightly hopeful.

“Yeah!” Ruby nodded again. “We wanted to know if you’d knight the founding members, so to speak. We aren’t knights nor royalty, so we can’t knight them. Well, so we think - we heard only knights and the King could do it.”

“And we would prefer not to ask the Prince to do it; it might raise accusations of nepotism. Your honour, of course, is beyond reproach,” Weiss added.

“Ah.” Ser Barristan smiled, but it was a polite smile, not an enthusiastic one. “I would gladly knight every worthy candidate. Although I must ask if you have considered the ramifications of a new Order. Especially one associated closely with the Faith.”

Ruby looked confused. “Aren’t all knights associated with the Faith? You swear oaths to the Seven, right?”

“Yes.” Ser Barristan nodded. “But a new knightly order, founded by the Blessed Maidens, might appear to be the Warrior’s Sons reborn.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be just men but women as well,” Ruby replied.

“Oh.” Weiss frowned. “That was the order that was dissolved after the Faith rebelled against the King, right?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Blake frowned as well.

“But we’re not restoring that order - we’re founding our own. With our own rules and goals. And we don’t plan to rebel against the King. Well, not unless he turns evil.” Ruby smiled.

Blake winced as Ser Barristan’s expression froze for a moment. 

“I fear that many nobles would be concerned that such a claim - that the King were evil, or illegitimate - might be levelled lightly against the crown, if certain people were sufficiently motivated.”

“Concerned - or tempted, you mean,” Weiss said.

Ser Barristan inclined his head but otherwise didn’t confirm that.

“Crap!” Ruby cursed.

“I was concerned about the influence the Faith might have on the Order,” Weiss said.

“Yeah,” Ruby grumbled.

“So, the nobles are afraid of the Faith?” Yang snorted. “Doesn’t sound very faithful, does it?”

“The nobles are aware that while the Gods are, of course, above us all, men, whether at court or in the Faith, are merely mortal and, therefore, prone to making mistakes - or developing ambitions beyond their station,” Ser Barristan said.

Yang snorted again. “So, they are afraid that the Faith will do what they would do if they had a shiny new friendly knightly order?”

Once again, a wry smile was the only answer Ser Barristan gave. And once more, it was enough.

“Well, that might be another reason to found our order,” Ruby said with a frown. “Why should the nobles have all the power and the Faith none? No one complains about all the Lords with their armies.”

“They complain about each other all the time,” Weiss pointed out.

“You know what I mean,” Ruby told her with a pout.

Weiss smiled in response. “Yes. And I doubt I could argue in good faith against it. If certain nobles can be trusted with the power to raise armies, the Faith can hardly do worse, can’t it?”

“I would not think so, my ladies,” Ser Barristan said, “but I think a lot of nobles would disagree.”

That sounded like another reason to do it, at least to Blake. The Faith wasn’t perfect, but they cared far more about the smallfolk than the vast majority of the nobles she had come to know.

“Well, we’ll have to discuss things with the High Septon, anyway. About financing and stuff,” Ruby said. “Let’s see what he thinks about this.”

“I doubt he will question your decision, my ladies.”

Blake didn’t think so either. But the man had a lot of experience in his office and, presumably, at court. He could give them advice about how to implement their order without starting a civil war.

Or a holy war.

“But you’d still knight, say, Jon and Brienne?” Ruby asked.

Ser Barristan nodded. “Both will make fine knights.”

“Great!”

Blake was surprised - she expected him to baulk at least a little about knighting a woman. On the other hand, if Ser Barristan thought they were messengers from the Seven, would he oppose their wishes any more than the High Septon would? He hadn’t mentioned opposing their idea himself, had he?

It was something to consider.

*****

The Great Sept of Baelor, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“...so, we’re planning to start small. A few friends, friends of friends - people we trust. See how it goes, what works and what doesn’t work. Let it grow slowly and naturally. What do you think?”

The High Septon was intrigued, Blake could tell. He nodded slowly. “A knightly order sworn to obey the Seven-Who-Are-One above everyone else.”

“It won’t be the Warrior’s Sons reborn,” Weiss said. “But it would be clear that their oaths to the Seven take precedence over any other oaths.”

“Yes!” Ruby nodded emphatically. “We don’t want people having to choose to break one oath to uphold another. Well, we don’t want them to break their oaths to the Seven to uphold an oath to a noble, but the other way around.”

The High Septon smiled. “That would certainly help a great many people who might become torn between their loyalty to the Seven and their loyalty to their lord. Though people might worry whether a chosen course of action would be the will of the Seven.”

“Well, we don’t really want to recruit people who have trouble with that. It should be clear when one oath is more important,” Ruby said.

It should be, Blake agreed, but it often might not. Still… “It’s for clear-cut cases. Not minor disagreements,” she commented.

“Yeah. Like, evil orders to kill innocent people,” Ruby said with a scowl. “Helpless smallfolk. Children.”

“The Faith has long argued that the smallfolk should not be punished for the deeds of their lords,” the High Septon said.

“Exactly!” Ruby nodded. “Soldiers should protect them - and fight each other if they have to. Not attack civilians, I mean, smallfolk.”

“Still, as you mentioned, many will fear this is the Warrior’s Sons reborn,” the High Septon said, sighing a little. “It would probably be best to tread carefully to avoid any… misunderstandings. Mentioning the Faith Militant still causes certain people concern, and some nobles do watch smallfolk taking an interest in matters outside their own lives with suspicion.”

“But you don’t think it’s a bad idea, do you?”

“Of course not!” The man shook his head almost violently. “It is the will of the Seven, after all, voiced through you.”

Yes, Blake had been right - they couldn’t expect an unbiased opinion from the High Septon. But who could they ask for an unbiased opinion? Everyone at court had a stake in this. Even Lord Eddard was a follower of the Old Gods, not the Seven, but that didn’t exactly make him unbiased either, given the history between the two religions.

Well, as Blake’s partner would say, in some situations, you had to trust your gut.

And founding the RWBY Order felt like doing the right thing for their friends and the kingdom.

*****

Street of Steel, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

“So, we’ve got the basics down, but we want to start small and see how it goes. Check what the members think,” Yang Xiao Long explained while she fiddled with another chain link Gendry had made. “That includes you, by the way,” she added with a grin. “If you have decided to join.”

“Ah.” Gendry looked a bit torn.

“The boy wants to join,” Mott complained. “And will probably get himself killed in some dirty field somewhere. The foolishness of youth.”

“Master!” Gendry protested.

Yang suppressed a yawn. She was still a bit tired from staying up until she was sure her stubborn partner was safely back in their bed, but it would have been rude to yawn into Gendry’s face when he was making an important decision. “So, you want to join the Order?”

“I would be honoured to, though I am not quite sure in what, ah, role I could serve.”

“Whatever role you want,” Yang told him with a smile. “The whole thing’s still shaping up, so to speak. We’ve settled on the seven oaths for the members, but that’s it. Oh, and we’ve got a sort of agreement about funding with the Faith from the High Septon.”

Gendry straightened at hearing that. “The High Septon supports this? Of course he would!”

“Yeah. He was pretty happy,” Yang agreed. “Though we need to be clear that this isn’t the Warrior’s Sons reborn or something. It’s the RWBY Order.”

“Of course.” Gendry nodded. Then he bit his lips. “Though… You mentioned knighting.”

“Yeah. Ser Barristan will knight our candidates.”

“I have no skill at arms. I am a smith. I can learn, but… I would rather not be seen as knighted without having earned it just because of my friendship with you. It would… cheapen it, and the Order itself, I think.”

Well, she had to respect that. “You can get training and get knighted later, if you insist. We were thinking about some basic requirements, knowing how to fight, and such.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“We’ll train you,” Jon said, nodding from where he was leaning against the wall. “I’m sure you’ll be quick to learn.”

“And, of course, your skill at the forge would be a blessing for the whole order,” she went on. “It’s not as if you won’t be allowed to keep working here.”

“You flatter me.”

“Nope, just being honest here.” She grinned at Mott. “Right?”

“The boy’s pretty decent at the forge,” the old man grumbled. That was pretty much high praise from him.

“I’ve seen your work. I am no expert, but I know the swords are good,” Jon said. “I would pick one of yours if I had to replace my own.”

“Thanks, Jon.”

“I’m just being honest.” Jon smiled. “And I would trust you with armour for Bran, once he joins, and for Arya, once she convinces h.. father to join as well.”

Yang snorted. She wasn’t quite as optimistic about that as Jon and Arya were, but the girl was more stubborn than Ruby was when she was working on a new way to improve Crescent Rose. Maybe she would wear down Lord Eddard. Especially if she could point to Brienne as an example. 

In any case, it would be years before Arya could be knighted, so there was no rush there. Though while she doubted that Lord Eddard would try to marry her off, it wasn’t impossible, so, maybe, they would have to think about how to handle girls fleeing arranged marriages to the Order…

“So… Jon and Brienne will be your first members?” Gendry asked.

“And maybe Lancel, once we talk to him. And you, of course,” Yang added with a grin. “We’re not going to found a typical knightly order. We’re going to found the RWBY Order.”

*****

The Red Keep, King’s Landing, Crownlands, Westeros, 298 AC

So, that was Lancel Lannister. Yang looked the boy over as she approached him in the courtyard. He looked a bit older than Jon, though it was hard to tell. Blond, as expected - all Lannisters were. Kind of cute - he'd probably be handsome once he grew up. About as tall as Jon himself - both were standing side by side, with Brienne a bit behind them, so it was easy to tell.

“Hello!” She smiled at him. “You must be Lancel?”

The boy dropped on his knee. “Yes, my lady.” He was blushing already. If Yang turned up the flirting, he'd probably faint. Not that she'd do it, of course - she didn't want to scare the boy off.

“So, you're interested in joining our retinue.”

“Yes, my lady.” He kept his head down.

“Come on, get up!” She snorted. “We can't really talk if you're staring at the ground.”

“You've heard Lady Yang,” Jon whispered.

The boy stood up so fast, Yang wondered if he’d suffer some vertigo. “I'm sorry, my lady!”

Yeah, avoiding meeting him with the whole team had been the right call, Yang thought. Ruby would probably overwhelm the guy. “So, did Lady Brienne and Jon fill you in on what kind of people we're looking for?”

“Knights who will charge into the Seven Hells if you command!”

Yang winced. “Ah, that's not entirely correct.”

He blinked.

“We want people who will do that, but only if they think it's necessary. We don't want people who obey blindly,” Yang explained.

He stared at her as if he didn't understand what she had just said. Well, being the eldest son of Lord Tywin's brother, he probably hadn't been raised to think for himself - at least that was the impression Yang had gotten from Lord Tyrion's drunken talk about his family.

So she smiled rather than grinned at him. “We want people who think before they act. People who ask questions if they don't understand something. And, most importantly, people who aren't afraid to say so if they think we're in the wrong.” She reached out and touched his chest, right on his Lannister lion. “We need people we can trust to do the right thing without orders. Sometimes even against orders.”

He blinked. “But… You're the Four Maidens! Blessed by the Seven!”

“We don't know everything, though. And we aren't perfect. We'll be making mistakes - and we need people who will call us out if we do so.” She looked at him as he seemed to ponder this. “People who have the courage to question us if they don't agree with our orders. Or anyone else's. Can you do that?”

“I… I don't know, my lady.”

And now he looked lost. Damn. Yang kept smiling gently. “When you take the oath as a knight, will you uphold it, even if your lord orders you to break it?”

“Of course not!” he snapped at once. “Knights swear to the Seven, and they are above any lord!”

“Good answer!” She grinned. “So, before you meet the rest of the team, how about we spar a little?” That would help him relax some, and allow her to get to know him a bit better as well.

“Of course, my lady! I'll do my best!”

She nodded. 

“Lady Brienne, Jon - you also coming?”

“If you'll have us, my lady.”

“Of course, my lady!”

“Great!” Yang stretched. You could tell a lot about people when you saw them fight, after all. Yang knew that better than most, even if her friends might disagree. And you could tell even more about them if you saw them spar or fight with more people.

*****