Chapter Text
Hailey realized she was dreaming suddenly. In one instant, she was nowhere, and in the next, she became aware that she was in that nebulous, infinite moment on the verge of consciousness. A character in her dream was talking, but she had no sense of the context; anything that happened before this moment, or to whom else in the dream they were speaking to.
“You will ask why,” a voice said solemnly, “yet no answer will please you. There is no return. Accept your fate and change theirs. There will be no more assistance than the advantages you wake with.”
In the distance, birds cawed and something tickled her nose. “—lady?”
She woke with a start, direct sunlight irritating her eyes and icy apprehension burning like acid in her stomach. She turned her head to burrow into her sheets and ignore the morning anxiety, only to promptly eat dirt. She coughed weakly; what the hell?
“You’re alive!” A voice declared. Happy, close, and masculine.
Instantly, the grogginess disappeared. Suddenly the sun wasn’t so bright and the dirt wasn’t so distasteful. In seconds, she was standing, feet shoulder-length apart and fists up in front of her face, ready to defend herself.
She took in where she was: open blue sky, dirt path carved out by years of frequent use, wild grass and plants arching to take it all over again. Someplace remote and rural, not a building nor a proper road in sight.
Wrong, everything in her screamed.
She needed no internal voice to warn her of danger when her eyes settled on the man some dozen feet from her. For a terrible, heart-wrenching moment, she thought she was facing a centaur.
The reality—a tall, broad man on a tall, broad horse—was much more mundane, but only slightly less terrifying. She shook her fists threateningly.
“Who the hell are you?”
The man, younger than his size suggested, puffed out his chest. He was white and reddened by sunburn, wearing a well done medieval-warrior costume in a patchwork of different shades of brown, like he was on his way to a RenFair. He even had a sword hanging from his waist, the scabbard resting against his thick thigh. Two more horses trailed behind him, riderless and secured with a length of rope. A variety of bundles and objects were carried on their backs, including a shovel and was that a fucking lance?
“I am Sir Dunk, m’lady. I mean you no harm. I came upon—”
“Sir Dunk,” she repeated skeptically, a hair's breadth from mocking, because who went around introducing themselves as ‘Sir’? “What, like a knight?”
He shifted in his saddle, and his horse followed, swaying side to side. “Aye, m’lady. Sir Arlan of Pennytree knighted me.”
Arlan, Dunk. She recognized those names. Not Sir then, but Ser. And Dunk as in… She took in his appearance again: shoulder-length brown hair, sweat-stained tunic cinched at the waist by a fraying rope belt, dust covered mid-calf boots, and a helplessly open and earnest expression.
“Are you LARPing right now?” He could be, he must be. This was all just annoying role players going too far and dragging un-consenting innocents into their silly little games.
Unbidden, she recalled the vague impression of terrible finality from her dream. But that was only a dream, and this was only a game.
He glanced down at himself, and then behind him, as if searching for something, before turning back and hesitantly offering: “I’m sitting on my horse, m’lady. I am not familiar with lur–with lurping?"
"Jesus Christ, dude! Stop playing pretend and tell me what the fuck is going on!"
"I am sorry, m'lady, for offending," he rushed out, bumbling and stuttering. "I don't–I don't understand? I came upon you while traveling and thought you dead at first, laid out on the side of the road. Did you fall from your horse?"
"I don't have a horse," she snapped on instinct, the ‘you idiot ’ clenched behind her teeth but heavily implied by tone.
"Whose horse is that?" Hailey turned to look at where he pointed.
“Huh.” There was indeed a horse, saddled and everything, some thirty feet down the road, grazing lazily at some grass. Was that supposed to be hers? Once again, the dream came to her again, already hazy. Something about waking with help, maybe.
Hailey stared dumbly at the horse for too long, trying to make sense of it all. A horse didn’t mean anything. Really, it didn’t! Horses exist in the real world too. Sure, the saddle on its back looked odd, out of time, with the cantle coming up too high, and a thick, black velvet quilt acting as its skirt. But it was still just a saddle and a horse. Nothing special about that. Yet the sight froze her stiff. Her vision blurred, even as her hearing sharpened. Not only was her heart’s quick tempo clear, it was as if she could distinguish each individual blood cell as it pumped through the veins of her ears.
She blindly reached to pinch her arm—“Fuck, ow!”—and looked down when she felt layers of fabric. She was wearing a long-sleeved, loose and flowing dress in cobalt blue. Overtop, a dark green cloak made of heavy wool, trimmed with a dark brown fur of some kind (hell if Hailey knew her furs enough to identify it), was secured at her throat. None of it belonged to her, and she certainly was not wearing it before she fell asleep.
She slowly turned back to the man. "You're not joking? You're really Ser Duncan?"
“Ser Dunk,” he corrected, rubbing the back of his neck.
"And we are, umm, in Westeros? The–the Seven Kingdoms?" Please laugh; ‘the place from that dragon show? Don’t be silly!’ Please be a kidnapper really into fantasy role-play. Anything but…
"Aye."
“This isn’t happening,” she said. But her usual grounding technique was only confirming the opposite. As clear and real as anything she’s ever experienced before, she saw flys orbiting around Dunk’s horses, heard birds caw in the distance, felt the thick and itchy fabric of the dress across her chest, smelled her own sweat and body odor, and still had the taste of dirt on her tongue.
“M’lady?”
“This isn’t real,” she muttered, trying to deny her five senses. It was impossible.
But she thought of her dream again. One part stood out clearer than the rest: No return. Accept your fate.
The onslaught of nausea was sudden. She bent over and vomited, barely clearing the unfamiliar boots she had on.
“M’lady!” Dunk vaulted off his horse. He made towards her, but she halted him with a panicked yell.
“Don’t!” She stumbled back a few steps.
“You are unwell,” he stated the obvious.
“I’m fine,” she told herself, then knelt to vomit again. A third time too. When she was done, she stood and wiped her chin clean with the back of her shaking hand. “I’m fine, everything’s okay.” You’re fine, everything’s okay. Everything’s fine, you’re okay. You’re okay, you’reokay, youreokay, youreokay, you are okay. Just don’t think about it.
Dunk gestured to his horses and stuttered about offering her water, only he had no water, just weak ale in his wineskin, and would that help, and perhaps she should sit and—
“Where are we?” She asked abruptly, eyeing the green countryside. She was disappointed to find no foreboding, fantastical tree or large slabs of stone suspiciously placed in a circle nearby; no magical landmark to transport her back home, or however it worked in Outlander.
He gaped. “A day or so ride from the castle at Ashford, m'lady.”
“Ashford,” she repeated, trying to organize her thoughts. Westeros. Dunk and Ser Arlan and Ashford. “The Reach?”
“Aye, m’lady.”
“It is…two-oh-five? No! Two-oh-eight, right? After the—after Aegon’s Conquest?”
Dunk frowned. “It is the two hundred and ninth year, m'lady. The new year was little less than three weeks ago. Are you ill? Did you hit your head when you fell from the horse?”
“No, I’m fine,” she dismissed, mulling over the year. She could have sworn the ill-fated tourney was in 208. The next year was known for something else, but she didn’t have enough room in her brain right now to remember what exactly.
“You should sit. I can bring the horses close, if I stand them right, there’ll be shade.”
“No!” She said, louder than intended. If she sat, she would think, and thinking was the last thing she needed. “Sorry, just stay there, and don’t move,” she commanded the knight, raising her fists again to show she meant business. She had never thrown a punch in her life, but she was more than willing to break that streak today.
“Aye, m’lady,” he agreed hesitantly, frightened of her right-hook. She eyed him once more before setting off, clicking her tongue and holding her hands up reassuringly.
“Here, horsey, here. Come here, horsey.” The horse did not come towards her, but neither did it run away as she approached, so she considered that a win.
It held still as she peered into the two saddle bags draped over its back, one on each side. They were stuffed with bundles of clothing, all seemingly era-appropriate, like the dress she woke up in. But there were other items as well. Of most note was a small sheathed dagger, the blade only four or five inches long, which she resettled at the top of the pile (just in case), and a leather pouch. She knew what was in it as soon as she grabbed it; the contents clinked with each shift of her hand. She opened the top only enough to confirm her suspicions before yanking the strings tight to close.
She pulled gently on the reins, and the horse easily trailed her back to Dunk.
“She is yours, m’lady? You recognize your property?”
She gave a careless nod, glancing over his shoulder at his train of horses. There was neither an old man clinging to life nor an annoying bald boy in sight.
“You're on your way to the tourney, yes?”
“The tourney at Ashford? Aye, m'lady.”
Hailey considered her options. There weren't many. She had woken up alone on an open dirt road. The whatever— we are not thinking about the how and who and why of it all right now —that had dropped her here had made Dunk be the first to run across her. There was no telling who would be the second.
“Right. You pass the inn yet?”
“What inn?” He asked stupidly.
“Good,” she declared. Post-Arlan, Pre-Egg, she could work with that. “Here's the plan. There should be an inn nearby. It's only about another day's ride to Ashford from there. You let me travel with you and protect me and stuff, and I'll buy us some food and lodging for the night. And then again when we reach the tourney. Agreed?”
“Shouldn't we wait for the search party to ride by?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Dunk's face flushed, making Hailey feel bad for swearing at him. He had to still be in his teens. She always pictured him older, for some reason. “Won't your lord father send men to find you?”
“My what?” She laughed in disbelief.
“Or your husband?”
That stole the laughter from Hailey's throat. “Husband? I don’t have a husband!”
Behind him, Dunk's horse whinnied and shifted. “Ah, I’m sorry, m'lady. I didn't—”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” Hailey demanded.
“M'lady?” He asked.
“Yes, that!”
Dunk’s eyes went wide, before he tucked his chin into his chest and dropped to one knee, bowing to her. “I meant no offense, Your Grace! I've never met a princess before.”
Hailey's jaw dropped. “What? Are you kidding? Get up, you still haven’t!”
Dunk glanced up at her through lashes, face framed by greasy, thin locks of brown. His eyes were the same shade of warm chocolate, as wide and innocent as a fawn’s. “Are you not a princess?”
“No, of course not! Oh my god, stand back up. Do I look like a princess?” She demanded hotly.
She expected him to turn sheepish, to blush and stammer his apologies. He would tell her he was a lunk, and thick as a castle wall.
Instead, he nodded his head fervently as he slowly rose. “Aye, m'lady. Or, what Ser Arlan said they look like. The Blood of the Dragon. Silver-gold hair and purple eyes, even I know that. And your dress is nice too. Real, er, pretty?”
Hailey patted her non-existent pockets, desperate for a phone or mirror to suddenly appear. When none did, she grabbed at her scalp, finding her hair was bound in a single thick braid. She pulled the tail over her shoulder and brought it up in front of her face to see clearly. Even braided, her hair was longer than it was just yesterday. It would hit the lower ribs instead of resting against her breasts. More alarming was its color.
At first, she could only take in the washed out dye tinging the ends a horrendous blue-green. But then, somehow, it got worse. Instead of the dark brown she expected, the hair on her head was indeed a pale blonde. Only the last two inches were twinged with colored dye, and even that was so faded it did little to obscure anything.
Silver-gold, Dunk had described; it was more silver than gold, an unnatural glowing shade you would find only after dropping a cool $800 in a salon. And it had no place being on her head.
“Fucking shit!” She exclaimed. The voice in her dream had promised her assistance. A horse was one thing, but God damn it, how was this any help at all?
“Did you not recall your looks, m’lady? I think you must have hit your head when you fell,” Dunk said again.
“My head's fine!” She snapped, although it wasn't at all. “I just really, really need to get rid of this.” She yanked on the braid, half expecting it to slip right off like a wig.
“Ah! A moment, m’lady.” Hailey blinked, releasing her grip. Alright, don't go full crazy right now. Keep it together. Breathe. In: one, two, three. She rubbed clammy palms against her cloak as Dunk took a couple steps back to the spot she had first awoken. He picked up a wrinkled scrap of linen that had gotten stuck amongst the inches of grass.
Out: one, two, three.
“It must have slipped off when you fell,” he said, and she hesitantly took it from his extended hand. “To cover your hair.”
The shape of it was not unfamiliar, though she had only seen something similar in period pieces or old portraits. It was simple enough to work out though: the head-covering pooled in the back to form a pouch for her hair, and the front was cut with long scraps of fabric on both sides of her face, to wrap tightly around and secure everything with knots.
It took her a few attempts to get it right, but finally Dunk confirmed all her hair was tucked out of sight.
“I can't do anything about the eyes,” Hailey lamented afterward, “but keep my head down, I guess. Well, whatever, this doesn't change anything.” (It very much changed everything, but in the short-term at least, she was still a woman alone in Westeros. Her safety had to be assured first.) “We travel together to the tourney.”
Dunk grimaced. “M’lady, I don’t think–”
“What’s the issue? It’s only a couple days, we’re going to the same place, and I promised to pay for your food. I'm the one risking everything. You could rape me and leave me for dead.”
Dunk wouldn’t, she reassured herself. He was from Westeros, but he was good, and she needed him.
Dunk rolled back his shoulders, somehow growing even taller, his face flushing with anger. “I am a knight!”
Are you, Dunk? Are you really? “That means nothing in this day,” she said instead.
“Well it means something to me! I would never–A knight vows to protect all innocents,” he said hotly.
“Glad to hear it. Innocent in need of protection here. Now, be a good knight and help me on to this stupid horse. We need to make it to the inn by nightfall.”
Riding a horse fucking sucked. She wasn’t a complete novice, not that it helped her much now. She had ridden before, but that was back when she was ten. For a year or so, she spent an hour once a week sitting on a small pony as it walked around a soft and sanded paddock. That was absolutely nothing like riding a full grown horse on a rough, rocky dirt path for half a day. Not to mention the saddle! There was little padding to the leather between her legs, and the cantle came up higher than any saddle she had used before. It was supposed to offer support, she guessed, but it did nothing but rub her lower back raw.
It became clear she wasn't very good at it early into the journey.
“Small wonder you fell,” Dunk commented idly.
“Thanks,” she mumbled half-heartedly. She had more important things to focus on than making sure her riding posture was correct. Like what the hell her cover would be. Every potential story she thought up seemed weaker than the last.
“Do you know your name, m'lady?” Dunk asked. “Ser Arlan said that happens to knights in jousts sometimes. A bad knock to the head and they don’t even remember who they are.”
“Well first, I'm not a lady, so stop calling me that,” she ordered.
“Are you certain? You talk like a lady.”
“Really? You hear many ladies cursing like a sailor?”
Dunk’s ears flushed red. “I haven’t met many ladies. Or sailors,” he admitted, “but your speech is proper, swears or not. You’ve a fine horse, and a well made dress.”
“All of that could be explained by any number of things,” Hailey dismissed, faking the confidence in her tone. “And you’ll get us both in trouble going around calling me a lady, or a princess, when I'm not one. So stop.”
“What's your name, then? If you know it.”
“Hailey.” She might have lost her hair, her eyes, and her life, but she would not lose her name.
“Good name,” Dunk offered stiffly. “Do you remember where you are from as well?”
She hadn’t quite figured out what to say to that yet, and aimed for coyness to hide her uncertainty. “Where does my accent sound like I’m from?”
She could hear that she did have an accent of some kind, different from, and much subtler than, Dunk’s own. She wasn’t sure how that happened; it didn’t feel like she was saying the words any differently than she had before, but she nonetheless sounded different. At least no longer Southern American.
To her ears, they were both speaking English, though she had to focus a bit more than normal to make out Dunk’s speech. She was no accent expert, but Dunk’s wasn’t so unfamiliar from what she’d heard in films and television, including Game of Thrones. Southern English, and definitely not posh, but it wasn’t as strong and distinct as Cockney.
Dunk considered. “You talk like the lords and knights we served in King's Landing, but you’re familiar with this land well, to know of an inn ahead. Perhaps you’re a knight’s daughter or married to one of Lord Ashford’s sons?”
The Crownlands or Reach. Hailey could work with that. She was already thinking it'd have to be one of those, given the unfortunate circumstances. If she had kept her brown hair and eyes, she would have claimed to be from Wintertown, and no one down here would know enough of the North to question. But silver hair and purple eyes would stick out too much there.
Hell, they stuck out too much in the south as well. She could always claim Dragonstone for her home, as there were probably thousands of dragonseeds there, but she would be running into some Targaryen princes soon, and didn’t want to raise their suspicions. Maybe Driftmark would work, but what would a smallfolk woman from Driftmark be doing in the Reach?
“So I sound Westerosi?”
“Westerosi?”
“I don't sound foreign—err, from Essos? Like if I said I was from Oldtown, you'd believe me?”
“Are you from Oldtown?” Dunk asked slowly.
She paused too long. Oldtown was a large port, which meant it had merchants visiting from Lys and Volantis, where this body’s hair and eye combination were found in spades. She was pretty sure many in the Free Cities colored their hair too, like Jon-Con and Young Griff. She could claim to be a Lyseni merchant’s daughter, born and raised in Oldtown, dying her hair in honor of her father.
“Yes,” she finally agreed, and moved on. “How old do I look to you?”
Dunk opened his mouth to say something, then stopped himself. His Adam’s apple— what do they call it in this world? —bobbed. His features were more delicate than she imagined, his jawline still soft and dotted with acne.
Finally, he hesitantly offered: “Eighteen?”
Hailey pouted. “Are you trying to flatter me?”
“No,” he blurted, the sun pinking his cheeks. “Am I wrong?”
She wouldn’t know. She hadn't been able to do a full accounting of her body to be able to say for sure if it was just her hair that was different or if everything was brand-spanking new. But she was closer to twenty-five than to eighteen.
“I don't know for certain either,” Dunk said when she didn't respond. He looked stubbornly ahead, avoiding her gaze. “I was an orphan, and Ser Arlan guessed I was five or six when he found me. That was more than ten years ago. When the year turned new, he let me have a sip of some good ale he’d got from the lord we’d been serving. He told me, 'you'll be turning sixteen or seventeen this year. Either way, you're a man now. You can't be so thick anymore.'”
Dunk went silent suddenly, and Hailey wasn’t sure if it was because he was embarrassed or if that was simply the end of his story. She gazed at his side-profile, fighting off the way her chin wanted to quiver. It was stupid to care for him. So unbelievably stupid and dangerous. But how could she not? She had loved him when he was nothing but a fictional character in a book, and now he was in front of her, sharing his own uncertainty to ease hers.
“You're seventeen,” Hailey declared.
“How’d you know?”
She didn't. If George ever said for certain one way or the other, she couldn't recall. “Because today is your birth—name! Today is your nameday. Last night, you were sixteen. And today you are seventeen. Congrats, happy nameday!”
Dunk scratched his face. “I don't think that's how they work. You don’t get to pick.” But she could tell the idea pleased him.
“Nonsense! It's exactly how it works, because I said so.”
“Do you know your nameday?”
“May—” Hailey cut herself off with a fake cough. She presumed the month of May did not exist here. “Uh, mayhaps not. But I’ve decided to declare it as the sixteenth day of the fifth month—ergh, moon?—of the year.”
Dunk nodded his head politely. “Why that day?”
It was her actual birthday, and like her name, she was not willing to give it up.
She shrugged. “Because I can, and it feels right, and I like it.”
Dunk was silent for a minute. “I buried Ser Arlan this morning. Perhaps tomorrow can be my nameday instead?”
Hailey felt like slapping herself on the forehead. How could she be so insensitive?
“Oh! Oh Duncan, I'm so sorry. I didn't even—yes, of course. Tomorrow it is. God, I'm such an idiot!”
“Duncan?” Dunk asked. This time, Hailey really did facepalm herself.
“Huh?” She said right after, shaking the sting from her hand and doing her best to look unaffected.
“You called me Duncan. Again. You said it before too, I think.”
“Did I? Slip of the tongue. I meant 'You, Ser Dunk, can wait,' but it got all jumbled. Anyway, Ser Arlan! Let’s talk about that, yes You were his squire, right? Tell me more about him finding you in Kin—did you say where he found you? Wherever that was. What did you do, where did you go after that?”
Hailey spent the rest of the ride steering the conversation with pointed questions and keeping Dunk too distracted to ask his own. She listened to the tales of Ser Arlan and his squire, concluding when the old man sickened suddenly and knighted Dunk before passing in the morning. Dunk was lucky he had the excuse of grief and youth to explain away his stuttering when he told the lie. She hoped the practice would make him more convincing for the performance he’d need at Ashford.
One pit-stop (it wasn't the first time she had peed in some bushes, but it did fill her with dread to think about what would happen when she inevitably had to shit) and many adventures of Dunk the Squire later, they finally came upon the inn.
She had imagined it would simply appear on the side of the road, the only thing for miles in the sea of farmland. But it was actually nestled in a small hamlet. There were twenty or so buildings tightly packed together, all one level but for the three storied inn. It stood only a few dozen yards from the stream they had been following for an hour. The town was quiet as they passed through; no one outside, and only a handful of houses had smoke rising from chimneys.
Hailey was surprised by how sturdy and inviting the inn looked, with the soft glow of firelight shining through the front windows. Above the arched doorway, carved into a faded plank of wood, was its name: Peaches Inn.
Hailey was so focused on remembering if the inn had been named in the book that she didn't notice Dunk dismount. “Are you the stableboy?” He called out. She whipped her head around, searching…
—THERE! Crouched down by the stream, a boy was poking at the mud with a stick. He wasn't naked, like Hailey thought he had been in the original timeline, but his head was as bald as could be. He stood at Dunk's call, looking unimpressed by what he saw. His simple brown tunic was not that much nicer than Duncan’s garb upon first glance.
He really does pass for a peasant, Hailey thought, before she tucked her chin down and turned away. The last thing she wanted was for Aegon to catch sight of purple eyes and get spooked. She felt queasy at the possibility of her presence fucking up this very important moment in history. Or maybe that was still the aftereffects of dimension traveling.
“I'll want my palfrey rubbed down. And oats for all four. Can you tend to them?” Dunk took Ser Arlan’s shield from Chestnut and casually slid it over his back.
“I could. If I wanted.” Egg’s tone was terribly haughty.
"I'll have none of that disrespect in front of the lady."
Hailey was not pleased that Dunk called attention to her, nor that he called her a lady again. But she couldn't yell at him when he so gallantly came to her side and held her horse steady for her. He wrapped a giant arm around her waist, bracing her as she stood in the stirrups and swung out of the saddle.
“Fuuuu—dging shitballs!” She exclaimed as her feet hit the ground; she’d been in pain while riding, but standing made it worse somehow. Her back and underused abdominal muscles throbbed, but it was everything south of the waist that hurt the most. Her legs were on fire, her groin so tight she feared even the smallest shuffling step forward, and her inner thighs were rubbed raw. They must have only ridden for three or four hours, yet she felt like she had run a marathon. Or, what she imagined it felt like after running a marathon. The closest she got to a marathon was jogging half of a 5k and walking the rest.
“She doesn’t sound like much a lady.”
“That's because I'm not, as the Ser very well knows.” That was as harsh a reprimand as she could muster at the moment, clinging to Dunk's arm so as to not collapse on the ground.
“ You’re a knight?” Egg questioned.
“Aye, and lady or not, you should take care of how you speak in front of a woman,” Ser Dunk said as he easily unstrapped both her saddlebags and lifted them onto his shoulder. He carried the weight of it all as if it was nothing. “Now see to our horses. You'll get a copper if you do well, and a clout in the ear if you don't.”
Even though she had to hobble as Dunk led her into the inn, Hailey smiled. She shouldn't have interrupted their banter, but Dunk had officially threatened Egg with his first clout. He did sound a bit ridiculous, scolding a young boy for giving attitude in front of a woman who had clearly heard and said much worse before, but their relationship was progressing nicely. She even thought that Egg looked awed by how easily Dunk balanced two saddlebags on one shoulder.
Just as Egg was found right where she expected, so too was Daeron: passed out drunk, cheek resting in a puddle of wine on the table. It was silly how much comfort it brought her. She was in a scary world, but not one completely unfamiliar.
The innkeep—short, plump, and stern faced—came through the door to the kitchens. "Sit where you like. Is it ale you want, or food?”
Dunk led them to a table near the back, far away from the sleeping prince. Hailey slowly lowered herself into the uncomfortable, wobbly wooden chair with a groan, her ass greatly protesting sitting on another hard surface so soon.
“Uh, both, for both of us.” She certainly had enough in her purse for that.
"There's good lamb, roasted with a crust of herbs, and some ducks my son shot down. Which will you have?” The innkeep wore a cloth bonnet, her own hair completely covered.
The innkeep set two tankards of ale at their table after they placed their order; duck for Dunk, and lamb for her.
“Will you be wanting a room for the night as well, m'lady?” Her hands twisted around each other fretfully.
This time it was Hailey who frowned. “I'm no lady, ma'am.” The woman cocked her head, and Hailey rushed on before she could be questioned. “But yes, we'll need a room, please. Do you have any with two beds?”
The older woman flickered her eyes up and down, and then between Hailey and Dunk, puzzling something out. “I’ve a men’s room, for single travelers, with four open beds. But you’ll be wanting your own room, for the two of you? I’ve a room left, and it’s only got the one mattress. Nice, wool and straw. My girl laid fresh sheets down this morn.”
“Oh, I see. Yes, I think we’d like the private room. Thank you very much.”
She thought she had sounded polite, but the woman still looked at her queerly before addressing Dunk.
“You off to Ashford for the tourney then?” She eyed the knight skeptically as well, which made Hailey feel slightly better. It's not me she's suspicious of, it's everybody. And when running an establishment in Westeros of all places, who could blame her for the wariness?
“Aye,” Dunk confirmed. “How much farther is it?”
“A day's ride. Bear north when the road forks at the burned mill. Is my boy seeing to your horses, or has he run off again?"
“No, he's there,” Dunk said.
“Seven blessings,” she muttered, glancing between the two again before making back for the kitchen door. “I'll see about that food.”
“It was kind of you to offer, but I have coin for my own meal,” Dunk told her as soon as the woman was off. He had yet to touch his ale.
Hailey rolled her eyes, strangely comforted by this familiar aspect of Westeros gender politics. “We made a deal. You and I travel together, you protect me, I pay for the food and lodging. Are you going back on our deal, Ser Dunk?”
“No,” he grumbled, jaw tightening.
“Then accept the food and drink graciously,” she said sternly. “I would bet all the money in the world that I have more coin than you, Ser. Save yours for something else.”
Dunk straightened in his chair, determined. “I will pay you back with my winnings from the tourney,” he promised.
His certainty startled her. He believes that, doesn’t he? Oh, poor Dunk. She nodded her head in a way she hoped he took to be encouraging, instead of condescending.
“And you are kind to ask about the beds, but the floor shall be good enough. A roof over my head is already more than I get most nights.”
She would have protested this chivalry as well, except she eyed the way he made the chair and table look toddler-sized. “Probably for the best. I'm not even sure you'd fit in the bed anyway.”
(Also, Dunk had a bit of a smell, but she wouldn’t embarrass him by saying so out loud.)
She was rewarded with a boyish grin. But Dunk’s dimples disappeared with his smile as something behind Hailey caught his eye.
“Wine,” a voice slurred. Ah, right on schedule.
Hailey turned to observe Daeron; half-hooded eyes stared morosely into his empty tankard, wine sticking his tangled dirty blonde hair to his cheeks. He lifted his head to look around the room, still blinking sleep from his eyes, and startled when he saw them.
His face went slack with disbelief when he recognized Dunk. He pointed accusingly, hand badly shaking. “I dreamed of you,” his voice quavered.
Daeron’s eyes, hazy and dark, jumped to her. He blinked, then shot from his seat, only to sway and almost topple over. “You stay away from me, do you hear? The both of you! Stay well away."
“M’lord?” Dunk asked hesitantly. Hailey’s tongue was stuck dry to the roof of her mouth.
Daeron snatched his cup from the table and frowned into it. “Empty!” he muttered, as if suddenly forgetting there were others in the room. “…drink…whores. I wanted…find…”
Hailey and Dunk watched in tense silence as Daeron stumbled up the steps of the inn, clutching the tankard to his chest protectively and mumbling under his breath. Dread churned Hailey’s stomach.
“Do you know him?” Dunk asked quietly.
“What?” Hailey turned back to glare at him. “No! Never seen him before in my life.”
“He seemed to recognize you. Mayhaps you had been traveling with him, before you fell from your horse.”
“Then why didn’t he say anything to that effect?” She snapped. “And he recognized you first, genius. Do you know him?”
Dunk swallowed, brows furrowed in confusion. “No,” he admitted, pausing briefly. “What is a jen-yes?’”
Hailey looked away, too ashamed to admit she had been mocking his intelligence. “I misspoke,” she said simply.
They fell into silence as Hailey swung between guilt and anxiety. Her worry must have shown on her face. “We’ll bar the door tonight,” Dunk told her reassuringly. “And be gone before he even wakes tomorrow.”
She only nodded. She had nothing to fear from Daeron directly. But if he was still having dreams of a dead dragon falling upon Dunk, could the outcome of the tourney even change? And why the hell, as Dunk pointed out, had it looked like he recognized her?
When their meal—dry and unseasoned as fuck, but delicious if only because she was starved—was finished, Dunk left to check on the horses (and hopefully further the plot with Egg), and Hailey bought half a bar of soap from the innkeep. She was not brave enough to go out in the open stream to wash, as the woman suggested, so she paid an extra groat for a bucket of clean water to be sent to her room.
As she waited, Hailey unloaded the saddle bags and finally took stock of her belongings. She had four pairs of what she determined to be underwear; loose full coverage bikini-like bottoms made of two thin layers of light linen, with a piece of twine sewed in so it could be secured around the hips. Five simple ankle-length shifts, a handful of stockings, socks, and four other dresses completed her closet. There was also a second headcovering, and about a dozen dark colored thickly quilted cloth squares that she suspected were the beginnings of a blanket, yet to be put together.
I don’t know how to sew, lamenting never learning the skill.
The only shoes she had were the heavy pair of mid-calf boots she wore today. Nothing was brand new or especially ostentatious, but it was all in good condition; relatively clean and well-made.
There was a wooden brush, bristles tangled with threads of shimmering silver and faded blue-dye, an empty large wineskin, and 2 Quart sauce pan. There were also a few ceramic jars full of some kind of dark brown dried out meat. Beef-jerky perhaps, though she was not certain what type of meat the dried and tough strips of reddish-brown actually were.
Her worldly belongings were completed by two wool blankets, and a half-inch thick bedroll, stuffed with straw as best she could tell.
She dug around the empty bags for a few seconds before she realized there would be no toothbrush or toothpaste included. Her teeth were coated in the oppressive dried slime of stomach bile and meat, and the texture against her tongue was enough to water her eyes.
To distract herself, she decided to count out the contents of her coin-purse on the floor, forcing her body through simple, limited stretches at the same time. If she was going to cry, she preferred to pretend it was from the physical pain.
After paying for the meal, room, and washing supplies, she was still left with two pieces of gold, fifty-nine silvers (forty-two thin coins with a crude etching of a deer on the opposite side of a king’s face, and fourteen bigger ones, differentiated with a crescent moon), and over a hundred coppers—a good mix of “stars” and “groats,” the names of which she had picked up from the innkeep.
This night had cost her two stags, sixteen stars, and five groats. She had no idea if that was a good deal, but simple math assured the money would not last long at her current rate of consumption. Ten percent to a 401k and two-hundred dollars a paycheck to my savings account, and what fucking good would it do me now?
Some of what she had left was already spoken for; one of the stalls at the tourney would surely be selling tents, and she’d pay whatever their asking price. There would be no inn at Ashford Meadows for her to rent a room, and she couldn’t survive in the wide open, completely exposed to the elements, like Dunk lived.
A simple plan was beginning to form in her mind:
First: get herself, Dunk, and Egg out of Ashford alive. She did not think she could convince Dunk not to attend anyway, and staying by him was safer than striking out on her own for now. (Baelor…who hadn’t wished Baelor had lived? ‘Change their fate,’ the Voice had ordered and then sent her into the path of Dunk, on his way to the cursed tourney. She got the message loud and clear, yet had no idea how she of all people was supposed to save him. And what makes Baelor’s fictional life more important than my real one anyway?)
Second: travel somewhere safe, far away from Targaryen princes and the other evils of Westeros.
Third: find a way home.
Now, she wasn’t sure how she was going to achieve step one of that plan yet—let alone step three—but she knew being safe in Westeros was easier to do with money. Not that different from her own world. Her pitiful wallet would not be enough, so there was a sub-step (a) to step one: earn some coin. She felt clueless in even achieving that goal. She could sell the horse and perhaps trade the dresses for cheaper alternatives, but after that?
A proficiency in excel would do her little good in this labor market.
The innkeep’s daughter delivered the bucket of cold river water, and Hailey was all too glad to abandon her pathetic plots in favor of giving herself a thorough sponge-bath. She parked the bucket near the room’s hearth, the small fire keeping the worst of the goose bumps at bay.
There was no mirror to see herself fully, but it was clear she was definitely not in her own body. Her breasts were smaller, and all the moles and little imperfections were in the wrong place. She was still white, but no longer as fair and pale, the blue in her veins not as noticeable under the warm beige skin tone.
She might even be taller now. She hadn’t noticed around Dunk, who made her feel tiny in comparison, but her perspective was off and the ground seemed farther away than before. While it was clear her new body had not seen grueling work, she did have some muscle in her thighs and arms.
She was washed and redressed in a shift, combing through her hair and massaging the inflamed scalp, when Dunk came back.
“That stable boy is the most—” He cut off suddenly, whirling away from her. His sack of belongings thumped heavily against the doorframe. “Ah–apologies, m’lady! I shouldn’t have–I didn’t see! Nothing!”
“Oh,” Hailey said, slowly realizing even though the white chemise had long sleeves, a high-neckline, and covered her to the shins, it was perhaps a bit scandalous for a young knight to see a woman dressed so. She felt no embarrassment herself, but nonetheless wanted to be sensitive to Dunk’s cultural expectations.
“Hold on, let me get under the covers.” It was the best she could do, save redress completely. “You may turn around now, Ser.”
He didn’t. “I will speak with the innkeep. I have enough coin to pay for a bed.”
Hailey rolled her eyes. “Don’t waste your money simply because you fear you have…dishonored me or whatever chivalrous bullshi–stuff is going on in your head.”
“There’s sure to be a good tree nearby I could shelter under for the night. I shall return on the morn to escort you.”
“Oh my god…sss, Dunk! Don’t be ridiculous!” Gods, gods, gods, she repeated firmly to herself.
“It’s not right for a lady to share a room with a man not her husband, ‘specially a hedge knight. You will feel shamed when you remember your station. Your lord father—”
“For the last time, I am NOT highborn! And it’s not as if we are sharing the bed. Ser Dunk, please, I feel my…virtue is most protected with you staying here. Who knows what that man from earlier might do in the night.”
The reminder of Daeron worked. Dunk finally turned around, although he kept his eyes lowered. “Thank you.” She gestured towards the bucket and small liver of soap left over. “Tell me more about this stable boy.”
Dunk set his things in the corner, stubbornly refusing to look her way as he washed his arms and face. She pretended the red on his cheeks was from the friction of his vigorous scrubbing. “He’s an insolent brat,” Dunk said. “I caught him sitting on Thunder and wearing Ser Arlan’s armor.”
“Really?” Hailey acted surprised, smiling on the inside. She set the brush aside and began rebraiding her hair, securing it with a piece of black ribbon. “It must not have fit him well.”
“He had no shame. Asked that I take him on as a squire to Ashford!”
“What did you say to that?”
“I told him no. Not with his wretched behavior—”
“Behavior can be fixed.”
“—And the innkeep does not seem likely to allow it.”
“Why would her opinion matter?”
“I can’t run off with her son. S’a crime to steal a ‘prentice for your own.”
Hailey held back the urge to laugh at such a strange, specific law. Definitely not in Kansas anymore. She curled her braid at the base of her neck and secured the head covering again. The innkeep said the sheets were fresh, but Hailey didn’t want to chance any lice.
“Did he actually say he was her apprentice? Or her son?”
Ser Dunk gingerly perched himself on a small stool, the only other furniture in the room beyond the bed. The wood protested under his weight. “He said he was an orphan,” Dunk admitted, shaking his head. “But squiring for a hedge knight is a harder life than being a stableboy at an inn. He’s best staying here.”
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Hailey had long ago mastered the art of a Womanly-Skeptical-Hum, and deployed it perfectly here.
Dunk snapped his head up to look at her. “You think I should take him on?”
She shrugged, aiming for casual. “From what you told me, Ser Arlan took pity on you and changed your life for the better. Perhaps the boy needs someone to do the same for him.”
He considered that, his irritation softening, before shaking his head. “I kicked him out of the stables and saw to the horses myself. Most like he’s given up on me and’ll bother the next knight to stroll by instead.”
Hailey pressed her lips together and didn’t comment further. Dunk already sounded like he regretted doing so. Nonetheless, she felt pretty strongly that Egg would make his way to that tourney (and back to Dunk) one way or the other.
Dunk didn’t undress anymore than taking off his boots and sword belt. He had brought his bed roll inside and wedged it between Hailey and the door. He laid his sword out right next to it, in the shadow of the bed-frame. The room was rapidly darkening; there was only one small window for the last rays of the setting sun to shine through, and the fire flickered shadows across the wall.
“What time do we have to wake up tomorrow?” Hailey asked.
“What time?” Dunk repeated hesitantly, in a way that made it clear she messed up. She added the phrase to her ever-growing list of things to avoid saying in Westeros.
“The, uh…you know what, never mind.” Given the cramped quarters, she’ll probably wake up when he does anyway.
“You say many things I do not understand,” Dunk admitted with a deep sigh as he sank to his knees.
Hailey pushed down her panic. Dunk was not accusing her of anything. Yet. “Must be the head injury,” she offered lamely.
She resolved to be less conspicuous with her language—less conspicuous with everything—tomorrow. Was ‘conspicuous’ a word in this world? She wondered if she was even speaking English. She knew they called it ‘The Common Tongue’ in-universe, but perhaps the Thing that did this to her had implanted a translator in her brain, and she was really speaking a completely different language that just sounded like English when it filtered through the brain chip.
“So you did hit your head? When you fell?” She saw his massive shadowed form dip down to settle on his cot. The floorboards creaked with his every shift.
She sighed heavily, flopping back on the bed. Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t very comfortable. But it could be worse, she supposed.
“Well, I wouldn’t remember if I did, would I?” A riding accident resulting in amnesia was indeed a convenient excuse for all her blunders. Once she was a bit more settled in the world, she could feign a recovery from her injury. Maybe she’ll take a page from Egg’s book and “remember” she was an orphan as well.
“Perhaps someone will recognize you at the tourney. If you are from nearby, your family could be there already,” Ser Dunk said, and a sudden grief burst through the dam in her mind.
I will never see my family again. The Voice implied as much, at the beginning of this nightmare. All day today, she had simply focused on the task in front of her. Get off the side of the road, don’t fall from a horse for real, get to the inn, make sure Dunk still meets Egg, eat dinner, organize the saddlebags, wash off…But now there was nothing left to distract her.
Step 3, step 3, step 3; find a way home. I must not lose hope, she told herself, even as she imagined what her mom was going through at this exact moment. Hailey wasn’t even sure anymore what the last thing she remembered was, before the dream and waking up under the Westerosi sun. Had it been a work day? Did she call her mom while driving home from work, like she did everyday? What was the last thing Hailey told her, did her mother know she loved her?
And her dad…it had been close to a week since she last texted him. She regretted that now, even if it was sometimes hard to talk to him. Did they know she was missing already? Had her body blinked out of existence or did they find her dead? They always say, in those press conferences where the missing’s family has to cry and beg the public for help, that the not-knowing is the worst part. My sister will help Mom survive, but the shock alone might kill Dad, with his heart already weak.
“Ser Dunk?” She whispered, aching to rest her head on her mother’s chest, to breathe in the same vanilla body lotion she had worn since Hailey was a newborn. The scent of her childhood.
“M’lady?”
“Don’t be alarmed if you hear me crying tonight,” she said bluntly, staring up at the wooden roof. “I’ll do my best to keep it down, so you may sleep. But…” Her throat was already constricting tightly. “I’m not hurt or anything, I just need to cry, okay? Fuck, I–I mean ‘alright?’ And I don’t want to talk about it.”
Ser Dunk was quiet for a moment. “Perhaps I will cry as well, for Ser Arlan. Then I won’t be able to hear you.”
When the sobs came, she felt no embarrassment.