🂭 IF THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS, THEN RELIGION IS IN THE GAP OF YOUR TEETH 🃟
(Starter with @sewn-from-stardust)
The hall was cold as a crypt, though the hearth roared with flames. Arthor felt it down to the marrow, that same cold that had settled in him the moment he’d spoken the words aloud: I will take vows. I will give my life to the gods, not to this house.
The silence after had been worse than the storm outside that chained them all to King’s Landing. The sea was frozen, the roads snow-choked; he could not flee, and so he stood now before his parents, waiting for the storm inside his father to break.
It did not take long.
“You dare,” Clement spat, voice rough with wine and fury. “You dare throw away everything? Twenty years, boy. Twenty years of coin, of lessons, of tutors and masters, all of it poured into you. Every stitch of silk, every sword you carried, every feast you were seated at, paid for by this house, by me. And now you tell me you’ll piss it all away, shut yourself up in a sept, and shave your head like some lowborn zealot?”
Arthor swallowed, his throat dry. “I don’t seek to shame you, Father. I only—”
The blow came faster than thought. A sharp crack across his face, fist slamming into the bridge of his nose. His vision swam, hot blood flooding at once, copper stinging his tongue. The world tilted. He stumbled back, a hand flying up to staunch the rush, eyes watering from the pain.
Clement’s fury was a living thing. “Is this what the gods have taught you? To defy your father? To spit on your duty? To make a laughingstock of House Celtigar? You were to be lord one day. You were to bear my name, my hall, my blood! And now you tell me you’ll toss it aside for robes and prayers?”
A shrill, furious cry split the room.
Mercy.
The falcon dove from the rafters like a streak of stormlight, wings beating, talons flashing. She struck Clement’s shoulder, claws raking across the fine velvet of his doublet, feathers scattering like sparks. Clement cursed and staggered, swiping at the bird, rage breaking into something closer to shock.
“Mercy—no!” Arthor choked, lunging forward despite the blood dripping from his face. His arms wrapped around the bird, pulling her close against his chest. She thrashed, talons cutting even through his sleeve, wings buffeting wildly as if she’d tear his father’s throat out then and there if only Arthor would let her.
“Down,” he whispered desperately, voice ragged. “Hush, my heart, hush—”
Clement reeled back, face scratched, his fine collar torn where Mercy’s talons had caught. His chest heaved. His eyes burned with fresh hatred, but not at the bird. At him. Always at him.
Elinor did not move. She stood across the hall, still as ice, her veil shadowing her pale face. She did not reach for him, did not cry out at the blood smeared down his chin, did not even lift a hand when Clement’s fist had cracked against their son’s nose.
Her eyes met his, and what Arthor saw there chilled him more than Clement’s rage.
Not fear. Not pity.
Disappointment.
Like he’d taken the last fragile hope she’d harbored for him and dashed it in the muck.
“Elinor,” Clement snarled, still rubbing his shoulder where Mercy’s talons had dug. “Look at your son. Look at this disgrace. He would rather kneel before statues than take his place as heir. He’d rather beg crumbs of comfort from stone gods than wield the power we bled to give him.”
Her lips parted at last, but no defense came. No balm. Only words soft as a dirge:
“You were not meant for this, Arthor. Not meant for vows. You were raised for duty. For more than prayers and shadows. You… you shame us.”
The words cut deeper than Clement’s fist ever could.
Arthor’s grip on Mercy faltered, his arms shaking with the effort of holding her still as she hissed and snapped at the air, wings half-spread. He pressed his face into her feathers, letting her rage cover the sound of his own faltering breath.
He wanted to scream. To curse. To tell them that all their feasts and finery, all their schemes and scorn, had left him hollow. That he had knelt in the sept until his knees bled, and there at least, in silence, he had felt something like peace.
But the words never left him.
Only the old ones did. The same ones that had guided him through every storm.
Obedient. Dutiful. Coward.
When Clement finally turned away, muttering about sons wasted and heirs lost, Elinor’s gaze lingered on him, cold as the snows outside. She did not touch him, did not follow, did not comfort.
Arthor stood alone in the hall, Mercy trembling in his arms, his nose still bleeding freely, shame burning so hot it seared him raw.
And still, beneath it all, a stubborn, flickering ember of resolve.
He would take the vows. He must.
Because if this was all his parents’ love amounted to—blows and disappointment—then the gods could not be crueller.
Arthor liked the royal sept best by night. By day it teemed with courtiers and supplicants, each wearing piety as if it were a brooch of gold, pinned bright for others to see. But when the torches guttered low along the serpentine stair, when the stables hushed and the castle stilled, the sept was his alone.
He went softly down the nave, candle in one hand, rag in the other, the faint scrape of wax on marble loud as thunder in the quiet. Incense lingered yet, a sweetness cloying at the tongue, curling heavenward as though reluctant to quit the place. The seven altars shone pale in the moonlight, and the faces above them seemed sterner for it.
This was his rhythm, his penance. Scrape away the wax. Set new tapers. Strike flint and steel till the wicks took fire once more. Pray. Be silent. Believe. The Faith asked no more, and for a while he almost believed it gave no less.
Kneeling came easy. Silence came easier. The Faith gave him both.
He was crouched by the Crone’s altar when the voice came, deep and steady, echoing strangely in the stillness. “That bruise looks painful.”
Arthor startled. The candle in his hand snapped clean in two, wax crumbling into his palm. He rose sharply, heart hammering. “Who—?”
The man was tall, with more delicate features than most in King’s Landing, and clothed for a winter twice as cruel as the Crownlands ever knew. His robe shimmered like the deep of night, embroidered in golden flowers that caught the firelight like stars. Bracelets winked at his wrists, and when he smiled, two golden hoops glimmered from his lower lip, catching the lamplight like fangs.
A foreigner.
“Davos Allyrion, Lord of Godsgrace,” he said easily, extending a henna-stained hand.
Arthor remembered the name. His father had spoken of him with disdain, calling him rabid, a beast with too much hunger and not enough restraint. A boy parading in silks and bangles, playing at healer with desert tricks better suited for hedge witches. Unmuzzled. Unfit.
The sort of man who ought to blister and burn on holy ground.
Yet he extended his own hand, because that was what a man of the Faith did. Their palms met briefly, before Arthor pulled back.
“My lord,” he murmured, wary. “What brings you to the sept at such an hour?”
Davos’s smile deepened, half amusement, half mischief. “Curiosity, perhaps. Though I confess I don’t pray here. My prayers are spoken by water, under stars that do not belong to your Seven.”
Arthor stiffened, the candle stump still tight in his hand. “You… do not believe?”
“I believe,” Davos said smoothly. “Just not in your statues. My mother is the Rhoyne. The river herself. Her waters flow eternal. It is she who carries us, she who hears us.” His bracelets clinked as he gestured toward the silent figures looming above the altar. “These are strangers to me.”
Arthor nearly dropped what remained of the candle. “Blasphemy,” he whispered. His pulse raced. “You speak of false gods in a sept of the Seven—”
“And yet the ceiling has not fallen,” Davos said lightly. He stepped closer, his presence filling the small space. “Do not look so stricken, Celtigar. I come with no sword, no fire. Only a thought… and perhaps an offer.”
Arthor frowned. “An offer?”
“Friendship,” Davos said, as if it were the most natural word in the world.
Arthor blinked. “Why?”
The Dornishman tilted his head, as if pondering. “Why indeed? I made the same offer to your High Septon once. Poor man refused me. So I turned my kindness elsewhere. And in doing so, I discovered many mistresses, many bastards, scattered across the city like spilled seeds. A pity. I had to stop looking kindly upon him.”
Arthor’s mouth fell open. The High Septon? The man was near-infallible, a paragon to the devout. To tarnish his name so casually—
“You—you dare to speak such things of the High Septon?”
Davos’s smile was sharp as a knife, the golden hoops flashing like teeth. “Think of it as a confession, if that makes it easier. And what is a confession to a devout man? Something he cannot repeat.”
“I am not even sworn yet. I have not taken vows. Why bring this to me? What use is friendship with a man who holds no influence?”
At that, Davos laughed. A full, bright sound that rang in the still sept like a bell. “Oh, haven’t you heard?”
Arthor’s brows knit.
“Your grandsire Bartimos speaks of you often,” Davos said. “He dreams aloud, even to strangers. He does not see a boy cleaning wax from marble floors. He sees a saint in the making. The youngest High Septon the realm has ever known. Crowned in crystal, with kings bowing at your feet. He says it plain: ‘I raised no princeling. I raised a saint.’”
Arthor felt sick. His stomach twisted, the incense cloying in his throat. He shook his head, backing a step from the altar as if the statues themselves might scorn him. “No. No, I do this not for crowns or glory. I do it for atonement. For guilt. For—” His voice broke. “I want no throne, no crystal crown. Let them give it to another.”
Davos’s eyes narrowed, not in mischief but in something nearer concern. He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “Then all the more reason you should have friends. The Faith will swallow you whole if you are not careful. A man who kneels too long forgets how to stand.”
Arthor looked at him, torn between suspicion and some fragile thread of relief. His knuckles whitened around the broken candle. His cheek throbbed where his father’s fist had landed hours ago, punishment for daring to speak aloud his intent to take the vows. The bruise burned with every breath, shame and defiance pressed into the skin.
Davos seemed to read it in him. Carefully, he reached into his belt and withdrew a small earthen jar, pressing it into Arthor’s palm. “Ointment,” he said simply. “For your nose… or your father’s temper.”
Arthor froze, the cool clay heavy in his hand.
Davos spread his arms, bracelets clinking like wind chimes. “So. My offer remains. Simply because I think you need it. You need an ally who sees you as a man, not as some golden idol they wish to parade.”
The sept was very quiet. Only the candles crackled, only the incense drifted. Arthor’s gaze flicked up to the Seven, their faces cold and still. Then back to the Dornish lord standing before him, too catlike, too strange, too alive.
He wanted to refuse. He should have refused. But the word caught in his throat, and instead he only whispered, hoarse, “Why me?”
Davos smiled like a man who already knew the answer. “Because you look lonelier than I’ve ever been.”
Arthor did not knock. He shoved the oak door open hard enough that the hinges groaned, striding into his grandfather’s solar with the broken candle still clutched in his fist like a piece of damning proof.
Bartimos Celtigar looked up from his wine. At eighty, the lord was wiry, but his eyes gleamed with the same unsoftened steel that had carried him through half a century at court. He smiled as though nothing at all were amiss. “Ah. My saint returns. Did the Crone whisper wisdom to you tonight, or only the rats in her rafters?”
The word struck harder than a blow. Always that word, saint. A name that clung like pitch no matter how often Arthor tried to wash it away. His jaw set, his pulse quickened. “Do not call me that,” he snapped, his voice unsteady beneath its edge. “Saint, savior, High Septon-in-waiting. Do not put those words in my mouth.”
Bartimos set his cup aside with unhurried grace, lacing his fingers together. “I put them nowhere save where they belong. A man must be named what he is. And you, child, are meant for more than sweeping candle wax from cold floors.”
Wax and cold floors. The words stung. Penance was not play for him, nor some menial task beneath the family name. The silence of the sept was all that kept him from drowning, the ritual of scrubbing and kneeling the only balm to the weight he carried. Yet his grandsire spoke of it as if it were nothing at all, a mere rung upon some ladder to glory.
“You speak of crowns and thrones of crystal as if they were yours to give,” Arthor flung back, pacing across the rushes, unable to keep still beneath the pressure of those eyes. “Do you know what they whisper of me already? That I hunger for glory. That I crave power in the Faith. I wanted penance, Grandfather. Silence. Instead, you make me a mockery.”
Bartimos studied him with the air of a falconer considering a bird that strained against the glove. “The Faith is a game no less than the court, boy. Penance alone makes martyrs. Influence makes shepherds. Would you sooner die forgotten in some cloister, your bones gnawed by worms? Or will you guide kings, whisper truth into crowns? You were not born to be faceless.”
“You do not see me,” he said through gritted teeth, growling like an undisciplined hound. “You see only what I can buy you. A saint in your pocket. Another fortune, another seat at council. Have you ever thought of what I want?”
Bartimos laughed, rich and warm, as though humoring a child. The sound drove into him like a blade. All his grief, his guilt, his penance, it was nothing but a stepping stone toward a future he had never asked to walk.
“You speak like a boy, and yet you ask to be treated as a man. Men want little, Arthor. They want security, renown, and to leave the world better than they found it. You will have all three. I give them to you freely. And in return, I ask only that you stop mistaking my vision for chains.”
Chains. That was what they were, no matter how finely gilded. His grandsire might polish them with pretty promises, but Arthor felt the weight all the same, pulling him down, down, down.
The candle struck the table with a sharp crack, wax shattering. His breath shuddered loose, ragged, perilously close to sobbing. “This is what I am,” he said, voice breaking. “Broken. Weak. Not your saint, not your heir, not the jewel of the Faith. I cannot—will not—be what you parade before the court.”
For a heartbeat, silence stretched. Then Bartimos’s smile gentled, as though he faced a tantrum. Patience, not pity—that was worse. That look hollowed Arthor like a bell.
“Do you know why I call you saint?” his grandsire asked softly.
Arthor’s chest heaved. He had no words left, only the ache in his throat, the sting in his eyes. He hated that the old man could still look at him and speak as though he knew him better than he knew himself.
“Because you kneel, yes,” Bartimos went on. “But also because you rise. Because guilt has not yet soured you into bitterness, as it did your father. You burn still. And that burn, boy, will carry you farther than prayer alone.”
But Arthor knew the fire for what it was. It did not carry him, it consumed him, licking at his insides until only ash remained. He knelt because he could not stand, rose because fear of falling forever was worse.
There was no holiness in it. Only exhaustion.
His shoulders shook despite himself. His grandsire’s voice rolled over him calm as tidewater, inevitable, inescapable.
“You may hate me now, but one day you will thank me. One day, when the crystal crown sits upon your brow and the realm bends to hear your word, you will know I gave you not chains, but wings.”
The word struck like a cruel jest. Wings. What wings could he have, when all he felt was the drop beneath?
Arthor stumbled back, eyes blurred, tears burning. He turned and fled before the old man could speak again, wax still clinging to his palms.
A saint in name only.
Nothing but a drowning boy.
Clarence found him at dawn. The septon’s bulk filled the narrow cloister door, the sun cresting gold behind his head like a halo that sat crooked. He stood there, frowning down at Arthor as though the bruises on his cheek and jaw were blemishes on holy marble.
“Gods preserve me,” Clarence muttered, seizing Arthor’s chin with fingers that smelled of ash and incense. He turned his face this way and that, tutting. “What mischief drags a would-be brother into a fight like a dockside brawler? Drunkards, you said? A boy of the cloth brawling with drunkards?”
Arthor’s throat tightened. He had said it quickly, too quickly, when Clarence first demanded an account of his injuries. Better drunkards than the truth. Better a tavern scuffle than his father’s fist.
“Yes, Septon,” Arthor managed, his jaw aching under Clarence’s grip. “I—I was set upon. I gave as good as I got.”
Clarence barked a laugh, sharp as a crow. “As good as you got? I should hope not, else they are sprawled in the gutters praying to the Mother with their teeth in the mud. You’re a child, Celtigar, not a sellsword. You’ll not make the Seven any holier by splitting skulls for sport.”
He let go at last, sighing through his nose, robes whispering about his legs as he paced the cloister. “Bruises like these will sour the court’s eye, and worse, they make me look a fool for keeping you under my wing. No, no… penance alone will not do. You’ll need a lesson in humility. A task fit for bruised knuckles and a puffed cheek.”
Arthor lowered his gaze. “As you command, Septon.”
Clarence stopped short, squinting toward the inner doors of the Red Keep. His mouth twitched with something like mischief, though it sat sour on him. “The Queen’s seamstresses prance about with their silks and needles, fussing over who shall stitch what into whose hem. Pompous highborn brats, the lot of them. But one has been given leave to embroider the High Septon’s ceremonial robe for the feast. The Vale’s little display of pride, I hear. As though the Mother Above will swoon over falcons and snowflakes sewn in silver thread.”
Arthor blinked, uncertain. “You mean to—”
“Yes,” Clarence cut him off. “You will assist her. You will carry spools, fetch dyes, trim thread, and keep your tongue behind your teeth unless she asks for it. The lady cries out for counsel on color and pattern, but my true apprentices are too busy with matters of worth. So you, bruised and battered as you are, will play the dutiful little drudge. If the robe dazzles, she’ll preen like a peacock and thank her own skill. If it falters, well… who will she blame but the novice who muddled her skeins?”
The thought turned Arthor’s stomach, but Clarence was already shepherding him down the corridor, one heavy hand pressing between his shoulder blades. They passed beneath the painted glass of the Queen’s sept, the light falling jeweled and fractured across Arthor’s bruises.
At last they came to a chamber set apart from the usual clamor of the seamstress’ hall. Clarence rapped once on the lintel and pushed Arthor forward.
The room smelled of dyes and fine linen, a sharp contrast to the incense of the sept. Sunlight fell across a frame where a robe of pale cloth was stretched taut, its surface already jeweled with threads of gold and blue. A woman bent over it, slender and still, her hands deft at work with the needle. Even in silence, her bearing carried something of hawk and mountain
Too proud to bow, too intent to falter.
Clarence cleared his throat, not unkindly, though his words were as blunt as ever. “Lady Becca Arryn. The boy will serve you until your work is done. Don’t spare him, don’t flatter him. Use him as you please.”
He turned to Arthor, gave him one last squeeze on the shoulder, and left without a blessing.
The chamber fell quiet again, save for the whisper of thread sliding through cloth.
Arthor swallowed, stepped forward, and inclined his head. “…Arthor Celtigar,” he said softly. “At your service, my lady.”
