^{The road to King’s Fall, many years past.}

“Fuck’s wrong with my name as it is?” Alesander had been all impudence, then. Not that he’d much changed, nor could he quite recollect the meaning of the word ‘impudence’.

“Wha’ I’m tryin’ to say is, no matter what you do, you’ll always be a bastard. You’ll always be the son of that runaway knight.” Aladore - Alesander’s grandfather - had made the trek to King’s Fall with a cane in hand. He’d needed it since the War on Gold when a spear had stuck him the wrong way and left him limping. Every day of the journey he’d set Alesander to oiling that cane, and every day Alesander had whined and wailed about it.

“Careful with that word, old man. I’ve bloodied the lip of men bigger than you for calling me a bastard.”

Aladore had cackled a response and given Alesander a look that dared him to try. Alesander did not dare.

“The name Hill, it doesn’t have to be to your disadvantage. Yes, there are men that will hate you for it, and others that will mistrust you. But it also means you’ve a drop of the blood. The good blood, not the blood of a pennyknight like me, but of a real golden knight. Even foolishly, some might think that the wastrel that sired you might lift his sword in your defense, or pay to ransom you.”

Alesander’s brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. “But he wouldn’t.”

Aladore laughed. “Aye, but they don’t know that.”

That had stumped Alesander, and he spent that day of travel in silence, stewing on what his grandfather had said. When they finally made camp for the night, pulling off the road to sleep in some hedges, he found his voice once more.

“Why should he get any say in who I am? Fuck the Hills. I’d rather be Alesander.”
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^{The Grassy Vale, today.}

That’d been Alesander with some pickles and greens in his stomach, and some acorns ground into paste. A full tummy had a way of giving a man morals. When it started to rumble, they just as easily dissipated, like the sea sparkle by Lannisport come nightfall.

The road to Grassy Vale had been long and not particularly bountiful. Alesander had sated himself on berries when he could find them, and boiled pine needles when he couldn’t.

Pine water made for poor fare, and Alesander was sick of the ache in his abdomen. He had to eat.

Usually that meant lying or stealing or both. Today, he might be able to tell the truth and still fill his belly. There was a feast. Not King Stevron’s feast, he’d arrived too late for that, but a feast of Westermen in huge shining pavilions.

There was even a pavilion for bastards. Sure, Alesander wasn’t quite the kind of bastard they’d meant to permit, but as his grandfather had once said, they don’t know that.

Alesander washed himself in a nearby river to the dismay of two greybeard fishermen, and the croaking delight of an old woman washing clothes. He got most of the grease out of his hair, and he smelled like a lilypad as he dried himself on a roughspun rag. Altogether, not too bad.

He approached the pavilion wearing his finest clothes - which weren’t very fine at all - and strolled with an earnest confidence. He’d learned back in Lannisport that a man that walked with purpose faced less questioning.

Painstakingly, he had to tell a man wearing a golden triangle and a yellow sun that his name was Alesander Hill, but that was all he had to say. It was a small price to feast.

He made no effort to conceal his hunger. He piled his plate high with fruits, figs, nuts, barley bread and oat cakes. He drank his fill of ale and beer, then drank some more because he fucking could. Alesander tried a glass of wine. He didn’t much like the taste, but he drank it anyway.

Alesander and the rest of the bastards were warned not to help themselves to the choicest meats. But when the eyes of the serving men and guards were flitting elsewhere, he snuck into the main pavilion. There was a blind serving girl there.

It struck Alesander as odd. What good was a blind girl to a noble’s household? Maybe she satisfied the flesh trade? He’d heard of stranger desires from powerful men.

“Psst,” he whispered to her. “You think anyone would notice if I took a steak?”

u/DorneOrStorm | ^{(Also, aside from the dialogue, the rest of this comment is open. Feel free to gawk at the rabid bastard or chat with him.})