SOMETHING WICKED IN THE WATER
CHAPTER 3 | m.list
#SYNOPSIS. Ser Duncan the Tall had only meant to enter the tourney at Ashford Meadow, but the registration clerks demanded proof of his knighthood before he could compete. While lingering near the tents, he meets tanselle whose cheerful demeanor and skillful performance drew him in. Unfortunately, Nimue doesn't share his admiration.
#CHARACTER(S). Ser Duncan the Tall, Aegon Targaryen
#WARNING(S). Dark romance, gore description
The man at the registration had looked at him the way men looked at things they found beneath their consideration — a brief flat assessment, top to bottom, taking in the worn boots and the mended gambeson and the absence of any lord's seal or witnessed document, and had set down his quill and asked Dunk, with the patience of someone who had already decided the answer, who exactly had knighted him and whether said knight was present to verify it.
Dunk had stood there for a moment with nothing to say to that because there was nothing to say to that. Ser Arlan was dead and in the ground and the only other person who had witnessed anything was Egg, who was a boy of ten and a squire and hardly a reliable voucher for a knight's credentials, so he had said thank you in the flat toneless way he said things when he was swallowing something larger, and the man had written something down that Dunk could not read and told him to come back tomorrow, and Dunk had come back out into the afternoon light with his jaw tight and his pride in tatters.
Lost in his own thoughts he nearly collided with a horse — a fine one, pale grey and tall, the kind of animal that cost more than a hedge knight would see in a lifetime, held by a stablehand who scrambled out of the way as Dunk lurched sideways and caught himself.
He straightened up and opened his mouth to apologize and then saw the man holding the reins on the other end and closed it again.
The high born looked at him the way men of his station looked at large inconvenient things that had wandered into their path — a brief flat assessment, not unfriendly exactly, simply absent of any acknowledgment that Dunk was a person rather than an obstacle. He held out the reins without looking at him fully.
"You there," he said, “ Take it to the stables”
“Ser,” Dunk said, trying to keep his voice steady, “I’m not a stableboy, my lord”
The young lord’s answer came quick as a whip crack. “Not clever enough?”
He looked at Dunk then — truly looked — his pale eyes traveling slowly from Dunk’s worn boots to the mended seams of his gambeson, lingering just long enough to make the meaning plain.
Heat flooded Dunk’s face
He had known, of course. He had always known. A hedge knight’s kit was rarely fine, and his was worse than most. No bright silk, no polished silver clasps, no cloak trimmed in fur. Just plain cloth and leather patched where it had worn thin on the road.
Before him stood the opposite of that — silver hair bright in the sun, garments cut and fitted so well they might have come straight from a lord’s own tailor.
The noble ser snorted faintly.
“Well then,” he said lazily, swinging down from the saddle in one smooth motion, “if you cannot manage horses, fetch me wine and a pretty wench “
Dunk swallowed the knot rising in his throat
“My lord, pardon me,” he said, forcing the words out carefully, “I’m no serving man either. I have the honor to be a knight”
The silver-haired lord paused
His gaze slid over Dunk once more, slower this time, as though inspecting something mildly offensive that had been left in his path.
“Oh?” he said at last. The disdain in his smile was thin and sharp as a blade, “Well, Knighthood has fallen on sad days”
And with that, he turned and walked off without another glance, leaving Dunk standing where he was, feeling larger than most men and yet somehow very small all the same.
Dunk stood where he was for a moment longer than he should have, the sting of the exchange still sitting unpleasantly in his chest.
He turned back toward the registration office where he had left Egg and Nimue and found them more or less where he had left them, which was to say Egg was exactly where he had been told to stay and Nimue was standing three feet to his left studying a banner with a sigil on it that had apparently captured her complete attention, her head tilted, the teardrop pearl swaying gently at her brow.
The sound of a small wooden rattle drifted through the crowded market lane, joined by the soft pluck of strings that rose above the chatter of the tourney grounds. Dunk had seen plenty of crowds and tents before, but he had never had the chance to watch a puppet show up close.
Peering through the gap in the canvas he could see a tiny painted figure dancing across the stage, twirling on invisible wires as the puppeteer's deft fingers made it leap and bow in perfect rhythm.
He glanced down at Nimue
She was watching him instead of the puppets
He cleared his throat and looked back at the stage
He glanced down at Nimue again— still watching him
He pointed at the stage. One large finger, very deliberate, “ That," he said, “ Look at that”
She looked at his finger then back at his face.
"She's looking at your finger," Egg said
"I can see that”
"You pointed like she was a dog”
"I was showing her—"
"You showed her your finger, Ser”
"I was showing her the puppet—"
"By pointing," Egg said, “Like a dog”
Dunk lowered his hand. He looked at the stage. He looked at Nimue. Nimue looked back at him with those wide pretty eyes.
"Just—" His hand came up slowly, big and careful, and he cupped her cheek in his palm and turned her face toward the stage the way you turned something fragile and worth being careful with, “ There," he said, a little gruffly. "The puppet. See it?"
She looked at the stage for exactly one moment.
Then she turned her face back into his palm, nuzzling into the rough calloused skin with a purr rumbling low and steady in her chest. She looked up at him with those eyes and her cheeks had gone the faintest pink and her lips had curved into something so open and unguarded it barely resembled the small sharp smile he had grown used to.
She was just — happy. Simply and completely happy, looking up at him like he was the only thing worth looking at in a field full of color and noise and spectacle.
The flush crawled up the back of his neck before he could stop it.
He was not a man women smiled at like that. He was too large and too rough and too uncertain in polite company and he had made his peace with that a long time ago. And yet here she was. Looking at him like that. Like he was something.
A sharp tug at her coat interrupted them.
Nimue looked down.
Egg had the fabric bunched in both fists, his face tipped up toward hers, and he was pointing at the tent with one hand and then looking back at her with the particular expression of a child who wanted something and had decided she was the one to give it to him. He made a sound — impatient and wanting and very young — and pointed again.
She looked at what he was pointing at.
Something settled in her face that had not been there before.
His sire had done the same thing not moments ago — that same large deliberate finger aimed at the tent, that same wanting in his eyes. And now here was his guppy, small fists bunched in her coat, pointing at the very same thing with the very same expression on his small face.
She took his hand.
Egg pressed forward through the small gathered crowd with the focused determination of someone who had decided on the best vantage point and intended to have it, towing Nimue behind him by the hand. She followed without resistance, stepping around land-dwellers.
His eyes moved across the little stage, tracking the painted figures as they danced and dipped on their strings, his lips slightly parted.
Nimue stood beside him and watched.
Not the puppets
She watched Egg's face
The wonder on it. The way his chin had tipped up and his eyes had gone wide and his small hand had tightened slightly in hers without him noticing he'd done it. She looked at him the way she had looked at Dunk in the lake — with that still, certain, unhurried attention of a creature that had found something worth keeping and was quietly deciding never to let it go.
Her guppy
The puppeteer took her bow to a scatter of applause, the little painted figures stilling on their strings, and the crowd began to shift and disperse the way crowds did when the thing they had gathered for was finished.
Egg clapped with the focused enthusiasm of someone who had genuinely enjoyed himself and was not embarrassed about it.
Nimue released his hand and looked back through the crowd for Dunk.
He was already there. He had found them sometime during the second act, large and unmistakable at the back of the small crowd
He cleared his throat
The puppeteer was packing away her figures with quick practiced hands when Dunk stepped forward. "Hello there." He tossed a coin toward her — quick and easy — and she caught it without looking up, fingers closing around it neat as a snap, and when she did look up there was a smile already spreading on her face, warm and unguarded.
"That was great," Egg said, materializing at Dunk's elbow, "How did you do the fire tricks?"
The puppeteer — young, dark haired, paint stained fingers — reached into her kit without ceremony and threw a quick pinch of powder at the nearest burning candle. The flame flared sudden and bright and Egg flinched back half a step before he could stop himself. She dusted her hands off on her skirts, satisfied.
Egg recovered his dignity immediately, “ Is it pollen?"
"Collected on the way," The puppeteer replied
Egg hummed, filing it away in whatever part of his mind stored useful information. His eyes had already moved to the puppets being carefully folded and packed away, large and intricate and painted in vivid colors. "I've never seen such giant puppets," he said, “ Did you make them yourself?"
Nimue cared little for their conversation; instead, she remained quietly watching Duncan.
The way he stood — too straight, too careful. His weight shifting almost imperceptibly from one foot to the other. The hand that came up to rub the back of his neck and then thought better of it and dropped back to his side and then came up again anyway.
She could smell it on him.
Salt and warmth and the particular sharp edge that came with nervousness, rolling off him in waves she could feel from where she stood.
She could feel the heat radiating off him too, that specific warmth that had nothing to do with the afternoon sun and everything to do with the woman standing in front of him.
Her eyes flicked from the dancing objects to the female land-dweller. To the smile. To the way it kept finding Duncan’s face, smiling up at him.
Nimue’s expression fell flat. Her lips curled upward, revealing the jagged points of her teeth, and her head tilted slightly to the side, nose upturned, as though measuring the threat before her.
Her gaze hardened, cold and unblinking. The faint flare of her fins along her ears twitched, rigid with tension, and the faint shimmer along her skin seemed to pulse like a warning.
Foolish land-dwelling female — and a dull one at that.
No wonder she carried no scent of a male on her. For who would take such a plain female? She had no jewelry worth speaking of — no pearls, no luminous things, nothing that caught the blotted light the way it ought to be caught. Only small trinkets hanging from her fins and wrapped through her dark hair like an afterthought.
So instead of finding her own she set her eyes on others— she had set her eyes on a male that was already taken for.
Her mate. Who had taken her pearl and placed it carefully on his person.
How could she let such a male slip from her webbed palms?
Broad, warm and steady as a kelp bed, the kind of steady that did not shift with the current but held firm underneath everything, something you could wrap yourself around and trust to stay. A male who had sired a fine guppy— surely to grow strong and capable, to catch strong prey one day, to make any mother proud.
And no dull plain land dweller with trinkets in her hair and no pearl to her name was going to take either of them from her.
She imagined burying her teeth deep into the flesh of the female land-dweller, feeling in her mind the stringy meat give way beneath her bite. Muscles would tear and pull apart as she wrenched at it, the tough fibers stretching before finally snapping under the strength of her jaws.
In her thoughts she ripped the flesh free piece by piece, savoring the brutal satisfaction of the hunt.
Her kind was no stranger to such disputes— you fought for what was yours or you lost it. You ate or you were eaten.
Nimue watched her with the patient certainty of a creature who had no trouble waiting for a promising hunt.
The waters just needed to thin a little more
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