The Kingbreaker; A Dance with Dragons, ser Barristan prepares for taking down a king

Ser Barristan Selmy in his room in the Great Pyramid of Meereen dressing himself in the Kingsguard white

From A Dance with Dragons the Kingbreaker chapter; ser Barristan in his small and spartan room, getting dressed in white after a bath, preparing himself for capturing king Hizdar.

Thoughts of dead kings come to his mind.

Reference excerpt from the book: The Kingbreaker; A Dance with Dragons

When the last light had faded in the west, behind the sails of the prowling ships on Slaver’s Bay, Ser Barristan went back inside, summoned a pair of serving men, and told them to heat some water for a bath.
Sparring with his squires in the afternoon heat had left him feeling soiled and sweaty.
The water, when it came, was only lukewarm, but Selmy lingered in the bath until it had grown cold and scrubbed his skin till it was raw.

Clean as he had ever been, he rose, dried himself, and clad himself in whites.

Stockings, smallclothes, silken tunic, padded jerkin, all fresh-washed and bleached. Over that he donned the armor that the queen had given him as a token of her esteem. The mail was gilded, finely wrought, the links as supple as good leather, the plate enameled, hard as ice and bright as new-fallen snow. His dagger went on one hip, his long-sword on the other, hung from a white leather belt with golden buckles. Last of all he took down his long white cloak and fastened it about his shoulders.

The helm he left upon its hook. The narrow eye slit limited his vision, and he needed to be able to see for what was to come.

The halls of the pyramid were dark at night, and foes could come at you from either side. Besides, though the ornate dragon’s wings that adorned the helm were splendid to look upon, they could too easily catch a sword or axe. He would leave them for his next tourney if the Seven should grant him one.

Armed and armored, the old knight waited, sitting in the gloom of his small chamber adjoining the queen’s apartments.

The faces of all the kings that he had served and failed floated before him in the darkness, and the faces of the brothers who had served beside him in the Kingsguard as well.

He wondered how many of them would have done what he was about to do.
Some, surely. But not all.
Some would not have hesitated to strike down the Shavepate as a traitor.
Outside the pyramid, it began to rain.

Ser Barristan sat along in the dark, listening. It sounds like tears, he thought. It sounds like dead kings, weeping.

Ser Barristan Selmy in his room in the Great Pyramid of Meereen. by Winter Design is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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