I waited three days before I brought it up.
Three days of settling back into Velton's rhythms, of walking the fields with Merlon and checking the drying racks and holding Erik in the yard while the gulls wheeled overhead. Three days of watching Father sit his chair and hear petitions and tap the arm when he was thinking and drink small beer when he was done. Three days of eating Mother's stew and listening to Hobb grumble about the south gate hinge and watching Ser Tolan drill in the yard with a quiet intensity that drew boys to the fence. Three days of choosing my moment, and waiting.
I chose supper on the third evening, when the hall was empty save for our family and the fire burned low and Father had poured his second cup of wine. The second cup always softened his jaw and made him lean back in his chair with his legs stretched toward the hearth. Mother sat beside him with Erik asleep against her chest, her hand moving in slow circles on his back. Merlon had gone to his chamber with his tablet and his candle. The servants had cleared the trenchers and left us to the quiet.
I set my cup down and folded my hands on the table.
"I want to travel to King's Landing," I said.
Father's cup paused halfway to his mouth. He looked at me over the rim, and then he drank and set the cup down carefully.
"King's Landing," he said. “Again?”
"Princess Rhaenyra asked me to visit her," I said. "She wished for us to be friends, and I gave her my word that I would come when my duties permitted. She was kind to me in King's Landing, and I mean to keep that word."
Mother's hand stilled on Erik's back. She looked at Father, and then at me, and then at Father again.
"That is a fine invitation," Father said. He had a voice he used when a petitioner asked for something unreasonable and he wanted to say no without making the man feel small. He was using it now. "The Red Keep is a seat of kings and you were personally invited. You would be honored to visit."
"I would," I said. "But I do not wish to go by ship."
Father's brow creased. "The sea road is fastest. A vessel from Duskendale can make the harbor beneath the Red Keep in a day with a good wind."
"I want to go by road," I said. "Down the coast and through the towns along the way. I want to see the country between here and there with my own eyes, not from the inside of a wagon or a coach."
Father set his cup down again, harder this time, and the wine sloshed against the rim.
"You want to ride the roads," he said. "After what happened on the roads the last time."
I kept my face smooth.
"I would travel quietly," I said. "Without banners or livery or a column of riders. Ser Tolan would ride with me as my escort and sworn shield. We would dress as common travelers and keep to inns along the way and draw no attention. I want to see the world as it is."
Mother shifted Erik to her other arm and sat forward. "You are three-and-ten, Amelia. A girl of three-and-ten does not ride the roads alone with a single knight and call it an adventure."
"I would not be alone," I said. "Ser Tolan is the finest fighter in the realm. He proved it in King's Landing before twenty thousand witnesses. No bandit or brigand on the coast road could threaten me with him at my side."
"One man," Father said. "One man, however strong, cannot watch every road and every hedge at every hour. He must sleep. He must eat. He must tend to his horse. What happens when he does those things and you are sitting by a fire in a ditch somewhere between here and the Blackwater?"
"I am not helpless," I said, and the words came sharper than I intended.
Father's eyes narrowed. He gave me a hard and patient look.
"I know what you are," he said, low. "I know what you can do. That doesn't make you proof against an arrow in the dark or a knife in the back or a dozen men who don't care about miracles and care very much about the ransom a lord's daughter will fetch."
"Father, I have to see more than Velton. I have to understand the world beyond our bay and our fields and our little hall. King's Landing taught me that much, at least. I can't do it from a window."
Father's jaw tightened. He picked up his cup and drained it and set it down with a thump that made the table shudder.
"You sound like your mother when she has made up her mind," he said.
"Then let me go," I said. "Let me ride with Tolan and see the coast and the towns and the people who live in them. I'll keep to the main roads. I will not seek trouble."
"Trouble doesn't ask permission, little bird."
"I know that. That's why I have Ser Tolan."
Father looked at Mother. Mother looked back at him with her mouth set and her brow drawn. Erik slept on, oblivious, his small fist curled against her collarbone.
"No," Father said.
"Father..."
"No," he said again. He leaned forward and planted both his elbows on the table and fixed me with a look that didn't leave much room for argument. "You will not ride the roads with one knight and a pack horse and call yourself a traveler. You are the daughter of House Darkwood. However small our house may be, your are still of noble blood."
"I can take care of myself."
Father's face went still. The fire popped in the hearth and a log shifted and sent sparks up the flue.
"I’m sure you can, little bird." he said, "But I said no and I meant no."
He rose from his chair and came around the table and stopped before me and put both his hands on my shoulders. His palms were warm and heavy. He bent until his face was level with mine, and his eyes were bright and afraid.
"You are the most precious thing in this world to me," he said. "You and your mother and your brother. Everything I have built, everything I have fought for, everything I have sweated and bled and begged the gods for, sits in this hall. If I lost you on the road, Amelia, I would not survive it. I would go to my grave and dig it with my own hands and lie down in it and let the dirt take me."
My throat closed. I swallowed twice and blinked and looked away.
"I will arrange passage by ship," he said. "A good ship, with men I trust, and Ser Tolan beside you. You will see the Red Keep, and you will see the princess, and you will come home to me whole and safe. That is my offer and it is my last word on the matter."
He kissed the top of my head and straightened and went to pour himself another cup of wine. His hand shook when he lifted the jug, and he turned away so I wouldn't see it.
Mother watched me from her chair with Erik's small body rising and falling against her chest.
"Your father loves you," she said, quiet. "Don't make him a villain for it."
I nodded once and excused myself and went up the stairs to my chamber and shut the door.
I sat on the edge of my bed and stared at the wall and listened to the wind work at the shutters.
He was wrong.
I loved him for the reasons that made him wrong, and I understood every one of them, and they changed nothing. Something had opened up in me when I went to King's Landing, a hunger to see and know and understand, and sitting in Merlon's solar with a tablet and a charcoal was never going to fill it.
Of course I told myself I would accept the ship. I told myself I would be a dutiful daughter and do as my father asked and arrive at the capital by water, having seen nothing of the land between here and there, having learned nothing of the roads or the towns or the people who traveled them.
I told myself that for the better part of an hour.
Then I pulled my travel pack from under the bed.
It was a simple thing, canvas and leather, small enough for a trader's apprentice or a girl on the road. I'd bought it in Duskendale on our way south to King's Landing, with coins from my own small purse, and I'd tucked it beneath the bed frame and said nothing about it to anyone. I hadn't been planning anything when I bought it. Or... maybe I had.
Now it sat on my blanket and my pulse quickened.
I packed it in the dark. The shutters were closed and the candle was out and I worked by feel, my fingers finding the shapes of things without needing my eyes. A change of clothes, plain and rough-spun. A hooded cloak. The dagger Mother had given me, small and sharp, in its sheath on a cord. A waterskin, empty for now. A handful of coppers in a pouch that I tied inside my bodice.
The food I took from the kitchen. I went down the back stair in bare feet on cold stone, through the servants' passage, and into the kitchen where the embers of the evening fire still glowed orange in the grate. Bread wrapped in cloth, a wedge of hard cheese, dried fish in strips, two apples from the barrel by the door. I packed them around the clothes and tightened the straps until the pack sat firm on my shoulders.
I went back up to my chamber and changed into the plain clothes and pulled the cloak over my shoulders and drew the hood up. I tucked my boots under my arm and carried them. The hall was dark and still. Father's breathing came from behind his door, deep and steady, and the faint whistle of Erik's small nose.
I paused outside my parents' chamber. My hand hovered near the wood. Father was right there behind the door; I felt the warmth of him, the beat of his heart, the slow rhythm of his sleep. Mother beside him, her breathing soft and even. And Erik in his cradle, his tiny chest rising and falling, his body humming with all the gifts I'd woven into him.
I pressed my fingertips to the wood and held them there.
"I will come back," I whispered. "I promise."
I pulled my hand away and went down.
The yard was silver with moonlight. The banners on the palisade hung limp. The sea was between tides, just breathing.
I crossed the yard in bare feet and stopped at the gate. The postern was latched from inside, a simple bar that lifted with one hand. I set my boots down and reached for it.
"You won't get far without shoes, my lady."
The voice came from the shadows beside the gate.
I turned.
Ser Tolan stepped out of the dark with his cloak over one shoulder and his sword on his hip. He wore traveling clothes, leather and wool, plain and road-worn, with no sign of Darkwood colors. A pack hung from his left shoulder, heavy enough that the strap dug into the leather of his jerkin. And his horse stood saddled behind him against the wall, saddlebags already packed full.
He looked at me. I looked at him. The moonlight caught the stubble along his jaw.
"How long have you been standing there?" I asked.
"Since you went to the kitchen," he said. "You're quieter than you used to be, my lady."
I stared at him. A flush crept up my neck.
"You knew," I said.
"I suspected after you came down from supper," he said.
He shifted the pack on his shoulder and looked at the gate and then back at me.
"I can't stop you," he said. "I am your sworn shield, my lady; I am not your jailer. If you mean to walk through that gate, I won't hold you back and I won't try. Your father told me to keep you safe. He didn't tell me to keep you prisoner."
He took a breath.
"But I will tell you this plain," he went on, and his voice dropped low and steady. "If you walk through that gate, I walk through it with you. Where you go, I go. Where you sleep, I stand watch. Where you eat, I eat. If trouble finds you on the road, it finds me first, and I will put myself between you and whatever comes; the same way I swore to do in your father's hall. That oath doesn't have walls around it. It doesn't stop at the gate. It goes where you go, for as long as I can draw breath."
He let his hand fall from his pack and stood straight and looked at me.
"So," he said. "Are we going, my lady?"
I bent and pulled my boots on and laced them tight and stood and slung my pack onto my shoulders. The weight of the bread and cheese and dried fish settled against my back. The dagger pressed cold against my ribs through the bodice. The hood cast my face in shadow.
I lifted the bar on the postern gate and pushed it open. The hinges groaned, and the night air came through, carrying the smell of the sea and the road.
I stepped through.
Ser Tolan followed.