As for how to reclaim those two castles stripped from the family decades ago...
Titus's answer was: couldn't anyone with hands do that?
Confining himself to one corner, holding fast to a single "village," was not his style...
Looking down over his "Starpike Village," Titus thought:
It was too early for those things. Better to focus on what was in front of me first.
An opportunity to set foot in the Stormlands rarely came along. This time, he could not let it slip away easily.
But while his subordinates made their preparations, he still had something to do himself.
Titus returned from the terrace to the study and casually picked up the sword Captain Parker had previously propped against a leg of the ten-foot-long desk.
With a metallic rasp, he drew the sword from its sheath.
After a round of swordplay with Othello, the once-sharp, gleaming blade was now covered in tiny chips.
This sword was no longer usable.
Titus thought.
In truth, it was not that the sword could not be used, merely that he had something better.
Titus laid the sword across the broad, solid-wood desk, picked up the black, silver-plated holly scabbard, and strode to the wall opposite the desk, where medieval ornaments stood beneath numerous oil paintings.
The paintings on this wall were portraits of the Earls of Starpike through the generations. A quarter of them were named "Titus Peake."
Yes, they shared his first and last names.
This was nothing unusual. In fact, there were as many men named "Titus" in House Peake as there were men named "Aegon" in the Targaryen royal family.
The East had a tradition of "observing naming taboos for the honored, one's kin, and the virtuous." Out of respect for those taboos, later generations often consciously avoided the names of their forebears and past sages.
The custom in Westeros was precisely the opposite.
When it came to honoring their ancestors, fathers preferred to name newborn boys after an ancestor of standing, accomplishment, and renown, or even a hero from another family.
"Samwell," for instance.
From Dorne at the continent's southernmost tip to the North at its northern end, and even Beyond the Wall, farther north still, the name could be found everywhere.
Samwell "Starfire" Dayne, King of the Torrentine, Lord of Starfall, and head of House Dayne, who had once taken Oldtown...
Samwell "the Savage" Tarly, Earl of Horn Hill and head of House Tarly during the reign of Aenys I, who had wielded his ancestral Valyrian steel sword, Heartsbane, during the Vulture Hunt and slain dozens of Dornish outlaws in one stretch, staining it red with blood from hilt to tip...
The continent's history had produced many famous men named "Samwell," and many noble families liked to give their heirs that name.
House Targaryen was another example.
Since Aegon's Conquest, almost every generation of the Targaryen royal family had produced an "Aegon."
Among these "Aegons," whose rate of sharing a name was quite alarming, only four had become kings to date, not counting the original Aegon I, Aegon the Conqueror.
Only these four kings had qualified to append the suffixes II, III... V to their names.
Returning to the figures in the paintings hanging on the study wall, most had dark hair and brown or amber eyes.
Their eye colors differed greatly from those of Titus, who stood before them.
Titus himself knew why.
House Peake of Starpike evidently did not possess the trait of "the seed is strong."
Titus had indigo eyes, unlike the vast majority of Peakes, inherited from his maternal bloodline with its stronger dominant genes.
His long-dead mother had come from east of Westeros, marrying into the family from a powerful, wealthy house in Tyrosh, one of the nine Free Cities across the Narrow Sea.
There had, in fact, been a few complications with this marriage pact across the sea between Starpike and Tyrosh.
The Earl of Starpike two generations before, Titus's grandfather, had originally arranged the marriage for Titus's uncle.
But when this uncle, the second son, crossed the Narrow Sea eastward, he met with an accident at sea. Only the rescue of a young pirate named "Gino" had saved his life.
He had nevertheless suffered grievous injuries. After dragging his wounded body back to Starpike, he remained bedridden and died not long afterward.
He had failed to bring Starpike a bride from a wealthy Tyroshi house, but he had left Starpike's Peake troops a loyal, dependable centurion skilled in battle: the former pirate named "Gino."
The marriage pact between the two families was already settled. After his younger brother died, the previous Earl of Starpike, Titus's father, had no choice but to take his place.
He briefly recalled his late mother, whose surname had been "Adrys."
Titus thought to himself: The Peakes not only liked building wonders, they liked stirring up trouble even more.
He first examined the portraits on the wall, then walked to the seventh painting from the left, a portrait of an Earl Titus who shared his name.
The oil painting had faded somewhat. The ancestor in the portrait wore black armor, his hand resting on a cross-hilted sword set with an orange-yellow gemstone.
Titus moved the frame aside with one hand and used the other to turn the brass lever exposed behind the painting. After hearing a click, he steadied the painting and returned it to its original position.
Then he went to the bookshelf on the left side of the study and located the seventh book in the fourth row-
It was The Four Kings, written by Grand Maester Qarth.
Titus pressed his right hand against the book's gilt-stamped spine and pushed it firmly inward.
Clack, clack. Two sounds rang out.
The tall bookshelf directly before him slowly parted to either side, like Moses parting the Red Sea, revealing the entrance to a secret chamber in the middle.
This was ironwood from the Haunted Forest beyond the Wall, heavy and harder than iron... yet it made only the slightest noise as the "door" opened.
He marveled at the sheer prowess of Emmerick Peake, "The Avenger," "the Second," and "the Master Engineer"-all these mechanisms owed their origins to the writings on Engineering that Emmerick had researched and left behind.
Holding the holly scabbard in his left hand and remembering to take the book in his right, Titus stepped through the "door" behind the bookshelf.
The Four Kings.
It was a book of royal biographies written by Qarth, the Grand Maester at court during the reign of Aegon V.
Its style bore some resemblance to the Records of Daily Life within the Palace from Titus's previous life.
The book recounted in detail the historical deeds of four kings: Daeron the "Young Dragon," Baelor the "Blessed," Aegon "the Unworthy," and Daeron "the Wise."
Perhaps Maester Qarth had doubted the rumors that Viserys II had murdered his kin, or perhaps he had felt that Viserys II's reign had simply been too short... in any case, Qarth had chosen to omit this king from his book.
Otherwise, the book ought to have been called The Five Kings.
Of this book, originally written in Maester Qarth's own hand, there were only four manuscript copies on the entire continent.
One was in the Red Keep in King's Landing, another in the Citadel in Oldtown, and the whereabouts of the third were unknown.
The one in Titus's hand was the fourth.
Once inside, he adjusted to the enclosed air, with its mingled smells of mildew and sandalwood.
By the fluorescent green glow of the phosphorescent stones on the walls, Titus lit the oil lamps in the dark chamber one by one, then placed the thick book into a slot specifically set at the entrance.
This would prevent the chamber door from closing automatically.
The Peakes had always liked using these hefty tomes as part of their mechanisms.
Before The Four Kings, they had used The Nine Voyages, The Sons of Summer, and The Kingdom of the Sky...
Clearly, House Peake had a particular fondness for "grand narratives."
The Four Kings:
Before you continue