The Maester Cressen had never seen it

, yet they said it was something wild, savage, and new. As though in reply, Stannis kept his own hair trimmed tight and short. They lay like a blue-dark shadow across his square jaw and the hard hollows of his cheeks. His eyes were serious injuries underneath his weightytemples, a blue as dull as the ocean around evening time. His mouth would have made even the most droll of morons miserable; it was a mouth made for grimaces and frowns and strongly phrased orders, all slender pale lips and grippedmuscles, a mouth that had forgotten how to grin and had never known how to giggle. In some cases, when the world became exceptionally still and quiet in the evening,Maester Cressen liked to hear Ruler Stannis grating his teeth half a palace away. "When you would have woken me," the elderly person said. "When you were youthful, Presently, you are old and debilitated, and you need your rest. " Stannis had never learned to relax his speech, to mask or compliment; he said whatever he thought, and those who could have done without it may be condemned. I realized you'd realize what Davos needed to say soon enough. You generally do,don't you? " "I would be of no assistance to you in the event that I didn't," Cressen said. "I met Davoson on the step." "What's more, he left out nothing, I assume? I ought to have had the man's tongue abbreviated alongside his fingers. " "He would have made you an unfortunate emissary then, at that point." Regardless, he made me an unfortunate emissary. The tempest masters won't ascend form. It appears they could do without me, and the equity of my objective amounts to nothing to them. The timid ones will sit behind their walls, holding back to perceive how the wind rises and who is probably going to win. The powerful have already declared their support for Renly. For Renly! " He spat out the name like a toxin on his tongue. "Your sibling has been the Ruler of Tempest's End these many years. These masters are his sworn bannermen —""his," Stannis broke in," when by privilege they ought to be mine. I never requested Dragonstone. I never needed it. I took it since Robert's friends were here and he instructed me to uncover them. I assembled his armada, took care of his responsibilities, obedient as a more youthful sibling ought to be to a senior, as