Chapter Text
She was born into a world where there were dragons, but the dragons were all dead. There was magic, but the magic had died with the dragons. Except even before the dragons, there were the children of the forest and the First Men who both wielded the magic of the Old Gods, but the Andals had killed and burned them in the name of the New Gods. Then the New Gods didn’t do anything magical—she had already asked—and the Old Gods didn’t speak to her through the weirwood tree—she had already tried.
Then there were knights, but women couldn’t be knights. There were kings, but there definitely couldn’t be queens. There were noble houses, but women couldn’t lead them unless through the direst, arm-twisting circumstances. Women could be maidens and mothers and crones, but they couldn’t be anything else, which was why if a woman was a whore, she was no longer a woman, but filth.
Beautiful filth. Prized filth. Wanted, needed filth to make the world turn. But filth, nonetheless.
She wasn’t strong enough to be a whore, and she would never risk being a mother. To be a maiden in perpetuity was to be a septa, yet she lacked the respect required for the religion. Never could she be a traveler or adventurer and take in all the sights of Westeros and Essos and beyond, like her heart longed to do, because these places were dangerous and deadly for a woman, and just as dismissive. This same body also barred her from elsewise learning about the lands and histories as a wise scholar, for only men could make maesters.
And even though there were years-long springs and summers and autumns, there were also years-long winters—years where nothing grew and animals starved, so people starved, and there was no warmth to drive away the sickness.
It was just her luck to be born into a fantasy world that had none of the fantasy and all of the fucking miseries. If she had a choice in the matter, she would have stayed dead rather than haul buckets and light fires and shit in a hole since she hadn’t even been special enough to be born a noblewoman, which would have spared her from some of the worser things. Instead, she was born in a hovel by a woman screaming on a bloody straw mattress, a woman who was in the service of a lordly house and would bring her daughter into that same service.
And this peasant woman gave her one name, but it was quickly shortened by her and others in favor of a nickname more befitting of a strange and willful girl: Ham.
Now, Ham had the small mercy of being born in a region of Westeros named the Reach, where the soil was fertile and the weather temperate, so she spent the second turn of her youth terrorizing and tending to the residents of Ashford among green fields and forests sustained by the Cockleswent. She didn’t, however, have the fortune of carrying any particularly revolutionary skills from her modern life into this one that would catapult her into importance. Neither was she very good at being a peasant woman despite the attempts of those who tried to teach, or beat, valuable skills into her. She had no eye for cooking and baking, no unnoticeability for serving, and no patience for anything else.
Averageness, it seemed, had reincarnated with her.
As disappointing as that was, Ham would take being average any day over being useless. She could talk easily to many people and meanly when she had to, and she had a broad knowledge of plenty of things to start and direct conversation, so she became the chief errand girl for the castle staff since she could get what others needed. Eventually, errand girl shifted to an ambiguous “finder” role, which was hazily situated under Plummer’s purview, where, servants, soldiers, folk of the meadow, and a few secret nobles came to her for things that the requisition master couldn’t or wouldn’t supply.
In other words, Ham worked with favors. Leveraging favors between herself and others, handling favors between individuals or parties, searching for favors with potential…tradeable kindnesses that benefitted everyone, which merely required her knowing people and being friends. And most people here, well, they weren’t perfect, but they were good.
It wasn’t a womanly role, which some were quick to remind, but since this world was so intent on grinding her poor feminine body and soul into the dirt, she was also intent on pushing back without apology or prettiness.
Maester Garl, in the service of House Ashford, was one of Ham’s friends thanks to years of pestering him and reading his collection of tomes after she taught herself Westerosi letters. He frequently relied on her for gathering herbs and items because he trusted her to retrieve what he needed; his sore joints prevented him from moving as well as he used to. He had already gone through some of his stores due to pre-tourney games and wanted to be well stocked for when the real bloodiness began. So, despite Ham’s own busy day, she went to the spots where the best stashes grew.
She had also caught a fish from the stream with her bare hands. This trick, she learned from one of the fishermen that brought his catches to the castle. Even though he told her that she’d make a poor fisherwoman because she talked so much, if she could shut up and stand still for a few minutes, then she had a chance of getting herself a meal here and there. Ham had been eleven back then. Now she was twenty-four, blessedly unmarried and with no marriage prospects, and had the promise of a bellyful of food when she took her lunch.
As she came around the stream bend, she expected to see birds, maybe butterflies and dragonflies, with smoke from the tourney grounds rising into the sweet, late spring sky. She didn’t expect to see a giant, naked man wading in the stream pool.
Between the two of them, he was the one who let out a little scream and threw his hands over himself to shield his modesty. Ham cast her gaze up to the treetops and gauzy clouds, sighing.
“Begging your pardon—” he started, and from her periphery, she saw him try to crouch into the pool for better coverage. It didn’t work out very well since the pool was rather shallow and he was very, very tall; he should have chosen the one farther upstream. “I had not known anyone was thereabouts!”
“There are a few.” Her gaze drifted down to the three horses tied to a tree. At the tree’s base were likely all of the man’s belongings, which included a sword and a weathered shield. “Have you come to enter the tourney?”
“I—I have.”
“You’re one of them hedge knights, then?”
“So they say.”
“I’ve heard that hedge knights are poor. Is that why you’re bathing out here, beneath the eyes of the Old Gods and the New?”
A little indignantly, the knight replied, “I have coin to my name. I’ve simply no need for tents in this fine weather, and a stream cleans any man as well as a bucket of bathwater.”
Ham laughed. “Meaning no offense, Ser Knight. Water is water, yes, though one may be colder than the other. Do hedge knights carry soap?”
She asked this because many men in general who had no wives or daughters to mind them did not, and they always liked to make it a problem for Ham’s nose.
When the knight didn’t reply, she sighed like she always did whenever anything of this world disappointed her. “There is a woman on the east end of the tourney camp. Look for the red and cream ribbons hanging from her stall.” Ham reached into her basket, pulled out the trout, and laid it in the grass. “Give this to Marna—that’s her name—and say that Ham sent you her way. She’ll get you some good soap in exchange.”
“Ham?”
“That’s me.”
“Well, aye, ‘course it’s you, but…Ham?” Then she heard water slosh as he shrugged. “Ah, it’s just as well. My name’s Dunk.”
Not a very knightly name, but what difference did a name make for a knight? There were plenty of knights in the tourney camp with noble names, and they were scum.
“A pleasure, Ser Dunk.” Ham continued to walk along the stream’s bank, careful to avoid his horses. Just because they were standing completely with their heads lowered to the grass didn’t mean they wouldn’t kick her the moment they could. “Remember that soap!”
“And if I’ve no need of soap?” he had the gall to ask back.
“Trust me—you need soap.” She hopped over his pile of dirty clothes, which looked as if they would calcify at any moment. “As do your garments. Good day to you!”
“Er, good day to you as well! A-and thank you for the fish!”
Dunk earned a small point of favor for that. No regular knight would have even noticed her, let alone bid her anything, since she possessed a broad stature and blunted facial features, brown hair and eyes, and an air of complete and utter disinterest heightened by commoner’s clothes.
There was a reason why she hadn’t heard of any famous hedge knights, though. This world liked to make sure they knew their place as well.
Ham delivered the herbs to Maester Garl in House Ashford’s healer’s tent, distracted a young Florent squire while his arm got sewn up, and took soiled bandages to the laundry station so Tinny could rest and eat since she often missed breakfast.
Since she had given dunk the fish, she had no lunch of her own to prepare. Thus, she ate what the kitchen staff stationed at the grounds prepared and filled her belly with bread, duck, and apricots. Then Evona’s rolling pin suddenly broke as she was rolling some pie dough. It would have sent her into a spiral since she was prone to chef meltdowns, but Ham explained the situation to the small kitchen staff belonging to House Beesbury, and they gave her an extra one so long as she found them a wheel of acorn cheese from House Smallwood, who was maliciously hoarding their stores.
After Evona thanked her over and over for getting another pin, off she went to the Smallwood tents. Being stubborn and suspicious was a pastime for Riverlanders, but Ham’s conversation could wear down most walls. After a while, she walked away with a wheel of acorn cheese and the promise that she’d return with some tea to alleviate the terrible cramps that the lady’s maid was suffering through.
On and on these things went for the rest of the day and well into the night. Ham picked up some coin like she usually did, but she prized the wooden hairpin carved with flowers far more, which a jewelry merchant had gifted her as thanks for finding a new tentpole when his had collapsed and the Ashford men-at-arms directed him to her.
Ham wound up her hair to secure it with the hairpin while she walked toward the edge of the tourney grounds, where a wagon heading back to the castle would take her and other weary servants who wanted to go to their homes instead of slumming it at the grounds.
Then a woman called, “Hambone, lass, glad I spotted you. Busy day it’s been, eh?”
She turned in the direction of the voice and saw Red. That was what she called herself now, anyway. She lounged on a chaise, disinterestedly sipping wine from an expensive goblet. Ham hadn’t been sure if she’d blow back into her hometown after she left to make better coin pleasuring knights and squires on the tourney circuit, most of which she sent back to her sisters. But it seemed that wherever the jousting knights went, she and the ladies did too.
Ham was glad that Red had returned and had soaked up all of her tales about everywhere she’d been. Red Lake and Harrenhal, King’s Landing and Casterly Rock, Oldtown and Maidenpool; she saw them all. Ham longed to see them too.
Smiling, she strolled over. “So many people to serve, so little time to do it.” She jerked her chin toward the tent. “Dondarrion, was it? He’s treating you well?”
“Aye, very well. Been sleeping most of the day, and he’s a quick fuck when he ain’t. Come, sit for a moment and let me have a look at you. Gods, you’re leathery from the sun. Would you like some wine? It’s some fine Arbor gold, but I’m full up on it.”
“I’m not keen on indulging this late, especially with the early morning I have on the morrow. How about you let me take the rest of the bottle? I know a few people who would trade it for something.”
Red snorted a laugh. “Always thinking about the next barter. You have a disease.” Still, she passed over the wine bottle. “Maybe that’ll be a fair price for what I’m about to ask of you.”
“As if I care about the wine. Honey, I’d do anything for you.” And it was true. Ham never exacted payments from her friends before she helped; favors were lateral and fluid and came in many forms, often as a want to show or return kindness. Because, in spite of this world’s predisposition toward cruelty, kindness could be found everywhere. Ham only helped facilitate and distribute it.
Even though Red put on a breezy attitude, it was only to protect herself from the hurt that came with caring so much. Before she left, she liked to go to Ham for things to sidestep the weight of these emotions, trusting that something would get done since she’d seen the lengths that Ham would go to in order to help others, with or without prompting. After all, she was the one who dove into the Cockleswent when she was fourteen to save Red’s little sister from drowning in the swollen, early spring waters. Nobody else who was screaming for someone to save her could swim or wanted to risk their own lives.
“Yeah, well, there’s a sad hedge knight who’s been lumbering around here. You seen him?”
“Earlier today. Came upon him bathing in the river and kindly pointed him in the direction of finding soap. Ser Dunk, I believe.”
Red laughed. “Ooh! He’s hung, ain’t he? Be honest now.”
“Sure, he’s hung, but reasonably so. He was embarrassed too.”
“Because the sweet lad’s a maiden as much as he is a hedge knight. Wish I could’ve seen him blush and stammer.”
“So, what concern do you have for this Ser Dunk?”
Sighing, Red replied, “The hedge knight who knighted him, a Ser Arlan of Pennytree or something like that, went and died right after, and there was no one to bear witness to the knighting. Ser Dunk needs someone to vouch for Ser Arlan’s knighthood so that he may enter the lists—but nobody here remembers Ser Arlan, or at least nobody he was ever in the service of, including Lord Dondarrion. Not sure he’ll find a single highborn who does.”
“That’s a shame.”
“It is. Look, all I’m asking is that you keep an eye on the lad while he’s here. You’re good at that sort of thing.”
Ham gently smirked. “He must’ve made quite the impression on you.”
“He’s made me pity him,” Red pointedly corrected, but then she softened and sipped at more wine. “Lads like that don’t have anyone looking out for them in a place like this. I’ve seen it before, and no doubt I’ll see it again before the pox finds me. But he was earnest for a knight—for a man—which is rarer still. So aye, make sure he has his soap, and something other than salted meats, and that he doesn’t get into any trouble outside of the tilts.”
“Doesn’t sound too hard. I’ll do my best to mind him.”
“Thank you, love. Now go on. Don’t want you getting left behind and having to walk alone in the dark.”
Ham went on her way and caught the wagon right as it was departing the grounds. Ering lifted her up onto it, and although she would have happily slept the entire ride back, she was prodded into telling a story. She was terrible at telling stories—she couldn’t do voices for shit and never kept a straight narration—but people liked them anyway.
“One day, two farmers, who were never blessed with a child of their own in all their years of marriage, were awakened in the middle of the night by a frightfully loud crash in one of their fields. They hastened with lantern and pitchfork to its center and found, much to their shock, that something of the strangest make had fallen in the center of the field, leaving a crater in its wake. At its center, they came upon a contraption. It was crafted from strange, sleek metal that glowed in the night like a star.
“Although the farmers were afeared, they placed their hands on the metal. At once, its center pulled back like a veil, somehow both solid and fluid. Before they could scream, however, what lay within the contraption silenced them, and they realized that the contraption was indeed a cradle.”
Those who had heard the story before rested their heads upon shoulders and laps. Those who had not propped chins on their palms or brought their knees close.
“For they beheld a babe, swaddled in soft white linen, with curls of black hair. He opened his eyes, and blue they were, bluer than any sky or sea. Then the babe smiled at the farmers, who had so longed for a child, as though he had always known their faces. He had fallen from the heavens, perhaps past the stars, and landed among their oats. So although they were uncertain if the gods delivered him to them, they deemed him a blessing nevertheless, lifted him from his cradle, and named him their son.”